Emerging blinking into the light 'Shasta' our new Espee layout made its public debut at last weekends Millom Model Railway show. Held at the Palladium theatre in the quiet Cumbrian coastal town the show is small but high quality. 'Shasta' had only been out once before when it appeared at ZEDEX 2011 in 'bare boards' form and that event was used to proof test the superelevated curves (Tony Waitzmans Challenger was also given a chance to stretch its legs) Now as some of you are aware a recent promotion at work has resulted me being in charge of Direct Rail Service's Sellafield engineering facility and this combined with an urgent need to scan in a large portion of my colour transparencies from the 80's and 90's has meant that I have done virtually no modelling for over 6 months with the exception of taking 'Cuyahoga' and 'Midsomer Mardy' out to shows. As the deadline for Millom approached I had to pull out all the stops to get the layout in some form of presentable condition. The scenery was added fairly quickly but the 200 Architrees I had in stock just disappeared into the layout and I reckon I need at least another couple of hundred to fill it out An overall view of the layout shows the basic outline, The change of the colour of the front fascia shows where the Z-Bend track interface is Obviously there is still a lot to do, The lighting canopy and fascia for a start. The big empty green area at the front is going to be Dunsmuir depot in time and the back corner of the 'balloon' module will be Shasta Springs. The yard at the back, in a departure for me, will be scenicked as 'Dunsmuir yard' to allow viewing from both sides. I'm not sure how much I'll get done before Zedex 2012 on 14th of October but I'll keep you posted Perhaps the most pleasing aspect of the weekend was the running of the layout. The SD70s GP7s and GP35s worked flawlessly and we ended up running trains 11 foot long on Sunday afternoon at nice slow scale speeds. The only things that misbehaved were the 5 unit spine cars that at every other show run perfectly and some of the Military train. Video of the layout can be found at [video=youtube;Sicv4WgAFp0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sicv4WgAFp0&feature=share&list=UUI6p-eLL5zX3K226z27Josg[/video] Cheers KEV By the way, for those of you wondering about the Berkshire, now the nights are drawing in I'll get it finished and complete the youtube series, promise!
Nice "fleet" you got there Kev. The Shasta section looks pretty good. Nice work - just need more friends with Z Bend modules.
That's the plan, try and get more people interested and start a U.K chapter. I'm going to talk to Andrew Burnham, the editor of Continental Modeller magazine at Zedex 2012 about launching the idea out to the modellers in the U.K.
Congratulations Kev! Very nice video indeed. I love those long trains crawling by on those sweeping curves! Oh, and as a rock'n'roll fanatic, I'd really like to know which song from which band we hear on this video. Could SO tell me? Dom
The song is called 'She brings the sunlight' by Richard Hawley who is from my home city of Sheffield. The album is called 'Standing at the Skys edge' Richard was the guitarist in a band called Pulp who were one of the biggest bands in 'Britpop' KEV
It looks very good! I like the long trains running. ...and when 'finished' you simply add another module.
