Pottington Quay – the new layout and a modelling new year!

I hope everybody has had a fantastic xmas and I wish you all well for the new year.  Over the xmas period, alongside eating way to much and doing a lot of great walking, I have made a lot of progress on the Pottington Quay OO gauge layout, amongst other modelling projects.  

I initially spent some time building the curved baseboards that I ordered from Tim Horn last year (obviously they were awesome and went together like a dream). After this, I aligned the curved boards  to the pre-existing Pottington Quay scenic board and built a simple straight fiddle yard board (Tim Horn again).  I then laid and soldered the track down for a continuous run. This was a pretty simple wire up and three points have been installed on the fiddle yard and one on the scenic section.  These are now ready to lay down the track for the fiddle yard sidings and quay front, but I did not manage to get that far over the xmas holiday. What has been awesome was to plug in the NCE powercab and just run some trains on the loop – it is amazing how different it is to operate the trains on the continuous run instead of the terminus to fiddle yard as per the Charlton layout.  For a start – many of the trains had a much lower top speed than I anticipated. Secondly, the way you have to drive the trains is quite different, notching up and then easing the power off – all good fun – but it will take some time to learn how to operate it all properly.

Alongside building the OO gauge layout, I have paint stripped the O Gauge SPV and Dapol milk tanker (that is another blog post in its own right) and I also stripped the paint on an OO gauge CCT and PMV.  These are all now pretty cleaned up, partially rebuilt and are now ready for re-entering the paintshop.  The platform has also been rebuilt on Pottington Quay and likewise this now needs some repainting.

So at the start of January what does the modelling year hold for me?  Well initially we are about to move to our forever home early next month – this will be a real relief after several years of hopping around.  Once we are moved in there is a lot of decorating to do. This will take up a lot of time. However, after the initial burst of sorting out the house, I have a summer of modelling planned. I have an O gauge layout and an OO gauge layout to finish and that is the goal this year, alongside getting back on the exhibition circuit. I have a drawer full of model wagons to build, alongside Warships, Westerns and Hymeks to detail and sound chip in both O and OO gauge! So I have plenty to do and an exciting year of modelling planned.