Category Archives: 2003

Quarter 4 2003

Progress over the autumn has continued slow, mainly as a result of spending time on society business. However, the pace has now picked up and progress is more obvious.

This is what we have been up to:
To start with here are some general shots taken on our Open Day in early November. Paul has continued to build switches (pointwork) for the front of the layout and he has been joined by Chris in this. Chris has started on the pilings that hold back the track after the wall has collapsed. Steve has finally started on the next (third) building on Susquehanna Street and, finally, we have acquired an RS3 and S1 to add to our F3 and SW9 – with some dull-coat and weathering these will fit in well when we model the early fifties.

Quarter 3 2003

Progress over the summer has been exceptionally slow, mainly as a result of vacations and having to spend time on society business. Chris has also been very busy building lighting gantries for the MMRS – however, we are certain that normal service will resume as as soon as possible !!

This is what we have been up to:
Steve has finished (except for the shop interiors – which Ian is doing) the first two buildings on Susquehanna Street. Paul has been busy too, building switches (pointwork) for the front of the layout; here he is being carefully supervised by Bill, our tea-bar manager. Paul has also painted and decalled an ATSF switcher into CNJ livery.

June 2003

Here’s the progress in May and June together, as May was rather slow. Paul carried on cutting holes for switch motors and wiring the switches in the storage yard, and has now completed it. Steve carried on laying sidewalk and Ian carved a tunnel mouth, required to get the track off the LH end. Chris and Steve cut away some of the riverside wall as in the prototype and Chris planned out the bridge and built the buttresses. Chris (with Paul’s help) spent most of May and June building lighting gantries for the club layouts. Steve has been building the first store on Susquehanna St. from plasticard on a perspex frame. This will be the subject of a separate article shortly (it looks better in the pictures than in real life!).

April 2003

Chris has been reshaping Mount Pisgah as it abuts onto route 209, introducing more polystyrene shavings! Steve has started to lay sidewalk from 3mm MDF in Susquehanna Street. Ian and Chris have used brick plasticard on the river wall and Ian has added the capping stones to the wall at the side of route 209. Finally Paul has started to permanently lay and wire the staging-yard track.

Photos include Ian cutting capping stones from plastistrip and glueing them along the top of the retaining wall

March 2003

Chris has been smoothing off Mount Pisgah and it looks pretty good. Paul has repositioned the trackwork at the end of the staging yard to allow for stock on the westbound track to cross to the eastbound. Steve has started tracing photos of other buildings on his computer – Hooven Mercantile and the Navigation building – and card mock-ups of these have appeared. We have recently acquired a large number of freight stock items from a neighouring club (Chester) at a knock-down price. Finally, Ian has started work on building out a couple of the walls preparatory to adding the stone facing and has cut the culvert through the river wall. The photos below were taken on February 15th and the open night on April 4th.

Photos include a smooth Mount Pisgah, new track layout, new building mock-ups, new retaining walls and New rolling stock on the open night,

February 2003

Chris, Ian and Steve have been working on a permanent version of Mount Pisgah and have made a wonderful mess sawing up polystyrene sheets. Paul has been finishing Flagstaff Mountain and playing with the trackwork. Steve has continued tracing photos of Susquehanna Street on his computer and some new pages have been added to the website to provide access to them. We have all had a go at weathering our rolling stock and some of this can be seen in the photos. The photos below were taken on February 28th and the open night on March 7th.

Photos show Chris constructing a mountain, the staging yard finished and some weathered coal hoppers.

January 2003

Over Christmas Paul relaid the main lines and much of the yard track according to the Templot plans, leaving spaces for the pointwork (switches) except on the main lines which where temporarily laid through to allow us to run trains. Paul and Chris cut up the temporary Flagstaff mountain so that it could be permanently mounted – the gaps are over the baseboard joints. A tunnel has been introduced to allow the track to run off the modelled area at left. Steve started tracing photos of Susquehanna Street on his computer – using Adobe Photoshop to “straighten out” the images and PowerPoint to trace the outlines. Ian and Steve started to remount Mount Pisgah, starting with route 209 which has been built in plywood.

All photos were taken on the open night on Feb. 7th and include the special train consisting of stock supplied by Eugene Mones of Jim Thorpe.