Model Railway Forum

Hi Everybody,
Members of the old MRF may remember the Shankly and Gdynia Railway. It's time I brought things up to date with the developments that have been made over the last ten months or so.






The S&GR is an OO gauge semi-portable layout. By 'portable', I mean that all the scenic features lift off and the six legs unscrew, so that the board can be put against a wall and the loft can be used as a guest bedroom. By 'semi', I refer to the fact that the board is probably too big to get out of the loft although I have no desire to do that anyway. I admit that this portability may cause it to look a little toy-like, but we all build our layouts within the limitations that we have. On the other hand, it gives me total freedom to change the scenic aspects of the layout with ease, which is very liberating for me, especially as I'm not the kind of person who likes destroying my work when I want to change something. I can take things off and put them back on again any time I please.

As to the name of my layout, I chose the fictional town name 'Shankly' in honour of the great Bill Shankly, who brought Liverpool FC back to the old First Division and ushered in LFC's successful modern era (currently club Champions of Europe, in case you have forgotten ). I should mention that I'm from Essex but have supported the Reds since 1971. Regarding 'Gdynia', my wife is Polish and we visited the port city of Gdynia in the Bay of Gdansk two years ago. I wanted a 'water feature' in the layout, and was impressed by Gdynia's sprawling container port. I realize that the S&GR makes no logical sense, but 'Art' can be inspired by 'Nature' without needing to follow it. I don't have a professional railway background, which may also account for the way my layout has developed.

More photos to follow. Ian Alan

Since the demise of the old MRF, I've completed the tunnel, added two walls to stop trains falling off the edge of the layout (removing the cushions that had been strategically placed on the floor), made a lot of model kit buildings and painted a great many model figures and animals. In fact, I've got too many buildings to have on the layout at any one time, but this allows me to swap things around.

Mod edit: Images from this post now appear in post #7

The layout uses some old locomotives, rolling stock, buildings, road vehicles, animals and figures from my childhood, rescued from four decades of oblivion in my mum's loft. That includes several kits that were still unmade in their original packets, now gloriously resurrected. This explains why some of the figures may look a little funny. Many were originally Airfix 1/72 scale 'little soldiers', including 'cowboys and Indians' (aka Native Americans) and 'ancient Britons'.

The third photo in this post shows the Gdynia end of the layout. This is the least finished part. I plan to add a detachable extension of about 15 cm width to have room to build up the port and it's railway station. The station halt will be replaced by a proper station building. The railway track will be extended to form a pier jutting into the harbour with a dockside crane (bought but not made).

The signal box in the second photo is a Triang readymade from the 1970s. I've slightly customized it with the S&GR company colours of blue and white. My late father gave me some blue enamel paint for the engine sheds in circa 1975, so that's how blue became the company colour. If I had been thinking logically, I would have picked red and white.

Regarding the first photo, I kicked myself for forgetting to add the chimney pots to the foreground building and have now added them. This station is called Shankly Gerrard Street. You can see the way my mind works.

When I click on your pictures on my iPad to enlarge them it takes me to the Postimage web site. No pictures. Might just be me.

Not just you WTD - me too on a PC.

All three images produce the same result IanAlan. The image posting page not your images.

Can you try again making sure you are on the image page before posting here.

We can then remove [or you can] the current images and start again.

R-

I've changed the size of the image to 'for message boards'.

Well done. Post #2 amended. R-

The photos in Post 7 show:
First photo: The Shankly Depot. Most of the coaches are in blue which matches the company colours rather well.
Second photo: The Vicarage and just visible behind it the rather underscale Dapol church. These will eventually be located on a hill (the church will be the highest point). The locomotive is a cheap Hornby Railroad which I bought my son, but it's a great runner, impeccably reliable. I call it Old Faithful for its sterling service.
Third photo: The Flying Scotsman is another Hornby Railroad locomotive.

Both locomotives are in LMS livery, which raises the question of why aren't they in S&GR colours. I said in the first post that it's not logical. Perhaps the S&GR leases it's facilities to other companies.

Dusk is falling on Shankly Gerrard Street and two school girls wait for their train home. The model figures represent two real people, both from my son's former primary school, but now at secondary school. My son also appears in model form on the layout twice, once as a primary school boy and once as a secondary school pupil although not in this photo.

I've found that the Airfix / Dapol station accessory figures are rather small, but make excellent teenagers, so there are a lot of school pupils waiting for trains and buses.