It was at our club exhibition that we spied a stand selling laser cut buildings, and we thought that one of these could form the basis of our maltings, which we were still to build. The kit based upon the maltings in Snape is only a façade, but does include windows, doors, and a staircase.

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We bought two kits, and by joining them together, and cutting out more windows we created the façade of our building. Around this an MDF and ply structure was made, and with the addition of two extra laser cut sheets of brickwork we were able to clad the ends.

The roof was added in card and the guttering from shaped plastic strip. The building at Snape has a lucam, and we studied photographs so as to estimate its dimensions before building it in card. To assess whether it looked convincing, both this and the staircase were roughly taped to the shell to give us some idea of what the completed maltings would look like.

The brickwork was painted, the widows added and glazed, and the doors fitted with some partially open; this left the roof to complete. The slates were laser cut from thin card, which had been laminated to a sheet of double-sided film. The strips of slates could then be separated from the cut sheet, the backing peeled off and positioned on the roof, before being pressed down.

After a wash of grey, the three Tamiya acrylic paints were mixed together in different proportions to pick out individual slates. Similarly the brickwork was given a coat of red oxide car primer over a base of gloss white, and individual bricks picked out in differing tones using Humbrol paints.

The completed building sits at the right hand end of our layout. The track passes on the quayside in front of it, with pointwork giving access to sidings leading to a wood yard, and also allowing us to run round incoming trains. As in the docks at Ipswich, a J70 tram slowly goes about shunting wagons.

Images of Cobbolds Wharf from raw baseboard top to exhibiting at the Warley show.

Scenes at Cobbolds Wharf

We are modelling a number of scenes on Cobbolds Wharf. Each shows life at the quayside and this sequence of photographs records the progress we have made so far. We aim to attract the viewer’s eye, and lead it from scene to scene along the layout, from one end to the other. We believe a layout needs to be interesting both operationally and visually and we hope this is beginning to show in these images.

SOME PICTURES TAKEN AT THE CLUB’S 2023 SHOW

A GOOD ACHIEVEMENT FOR THE CLUB AND THE MEMBERS INVOLVED IS THAT THE LAYOUT FEATURES IN THAT MOST PRODIGIOUS OF MAGAZINES THE RAILWAY MODELLER, SEPTEMBER 2024 EDITION.

PICTURES SUPPLIED BY BARRY NORMAN