Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Progress Report 79

It has actually been quite a mild winter so far in this part of the North West of England and so I have actually had time to get out into the garden and do some civil engineering and tracklaying. I have also spent a fair bit of time in the new workshop painting figures and getting the workshop sorted out.

Permanent Way

 The most significant job has been to add a new siding to Bulkeley Station (see How I remodelled the layout at Bulkeley Station).

Bulkeley Station has been in situ for around fifteen years and, apart from adding a new siding last year (see Progress Report 75), it has remained untouched. After adding a half relief brewery building to one of the sidings at Beeston Castle (see Progress Report 76), I decided I would like to do something similar at Bulkeley. The problem was that both sidings at Bulkeley were to the front of the station and there was insufficient room for a building. If I could move one of the sidings to the rear of the station then there would be space for a half relief building.
The half-relief brewery at Beeston Castle Station
 I have now more or less finished re-landscaping the area, having decided the raised bed was now too narrow for the new arrangement of tracks ( see How I re-landscaped Bulkeley Station - pending).

  I am in the process of cladding the new retaining wall with sandstone ....

 .... and trying to decide how best to make use of the newly acquired strip of real estate. All I need is a spell of decent weather to finish off the job but Storm Ciara seems to have intervened!

Lineside

Having recently detailed and painted 30 figures (see Progress Report 78),

 I realised there were a few more figures in my 'spare people' box awaiting similar treatment. These are now in the process of remodelled and painted (see How I prepared and painted some Perfect People metal figures and Where do I get my figures?).

 I think, once these figures are finished, the population of the area served by the railway will be more or less complete - though, of course, there may be an influx of tourists during the summer!

Workshop

I am slowly reorganising the storage spaces in the workshop which I built in the autumn (see How I constructed the workshop). As I am in the process of painting figures, I decided the drawer in which the acrylic paints were stored was in need of a bit of rationalisation and so added some Correx dividers and now store the paint tubes according to colour - which makes finding them a whole lot less frustrating.

The newest addition has been a sink, which I recycled from our caravan. It was much too large for the toilet cubicle in the caravan and so I took it out and replaced it with a much smaller one. However, waste-not-want-not and so the fixture has now been transferred to the workshop.

The water is pumped up from the 25 litre container below via a 12v pump and the waste drains into a soakaway which also serves the guttering for the workshop. At present, the pump is powered via a small lead acid battery housed under the sink, but eventually, I will find a suitable 12v transformer.

I had intended to store rainwater from the gutters in a butt and use this as a naturally replenishing supply, but then decided I would probably want to make hot drinks from the water and so opted for a more potable supply.

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