East Anglian Area Group S7 update May 2016

Finally we have an update on Love Lane. The good news is that we’ve had an invite to take the layout to a local exhibition in October being put on by the O Gauge Guild. This we thought was a great opportunity to showcase S7 to Finescale modellers. The bad news is that we’ve got to get the layout pretty well finished by then. To make this more achievable we decided that the layout needed to be moved from Peter’s shop to a larger location; it is 41 feet long including fiddle yards! Fortunately John Birch has recently completed his train shed and offered it to the group in order to get the work done on time. This offer was accepted at an Area group meeting and the move has been completed. An upside of this change is that Peter gets his shop back and that we can now have 2 Wednesday working groups as well as the monthly meeting. We now have a steady working group of 5 or 6 plus some less regular attendees as the location is a fair distance from Sudbury.

The centrepiece of the layout is the station building (based on GER practice at Chigwell) situated on an overbridge at one end. Trains from Liverpool Street will mostly terminate here and there is a push pull service onwards to Ongar and perhaps Dunmow. There will be a rush hour through service from Dunmow. Freight will largely be trip working shunting Love Lane’s two sidings, mainly coal, while there will be fairly regular through freight. No big trains, no expresses, (although who knows what will head the Dunmow flier) but we believe it will interesting to operate and entertaining to watch.

With the track all down and tested and with stock largely accounted for, the thrust of our activity is now on the scenic side. We are particularly lucky to have Peter Insole as our ‘artist in residence’. His amazing artistic skills have helped greatly with colour while his encyclopaedic knowledge of railways, especially in the Great Eastern Railway area, keeps us on the straight and narrow. Peter has supervised a couple of painting masterclasses for us with the result that completion of the building is progressing well. Additionally if it weren’t for the hard work of 2d and 3d drawing and laser cutting by John Birch, Phil Healey-Pierce and Mike Carless there wouldn’t be very much to paint.

The net stage will be erecting the platform canopies followed by groundwork which will include further ballasting, point and signal rodding together with signals.

So plenty to get on with and not much time to go!

Tim Humphreys.