Last updated October 2024

August 2024

Our intention is to motorise a few items on the layout, such as the cranes and the loco shed doors. We have a number of ‘Clearbox’ motors spare from previous layouts and these are ideal for the purpose. They consist of a 6V motor and a gearbox which can be adjusted for speed by adding or removing elements of the gear-train.




The simplest one to experiment with is the main railway entrance gate. This is operated by a single pole sprung centre-off switch on the control panel. With the switch pushed up, the power is fed through a diode to give positive half-wave rectification opening the gate, and pushed down power is via an opposing diode, giving negative half wave rectification to close the gate. This is the same principle as used for the Tortoise point motors. (Diagram right).

The loco crews obviously need a mess room, so we have made an old carriage body. This is based on a drawing in Volume 1 of White’s books on LBSCR carriages. It is a Craven brake third type 6L no 479, surveyed at the Bluebell Railway. It was made by redrawing the illustration in the book, for cutting out on the Silhouette cutter. The sides consist of three layers - the inner layer for the droplights, the main middle layer for the body side, and the outer layer for the external mouldings. It’s a fiddly process, but has enabled us to create a carriage body not available commercially.

Next to the carriage is a forge, complete with a hearth created using coloured LEDs (photo right). There is a lot more detail to be added here.






September 2024

Major progress this month on the main office building - a rather grand structure to match the ambitions of the Ouse Wharf Company, complete with a clock to remind the employees that it’s not the end of their shift yet! All that’s left to do on the building is the guttering and down-pipes.





The backscene is coming along nicely (credits to my artistic wife) showing the chalk quarries, cut into the Downs behind the wharf (the reason for the lime kilns and cements works in the vicinity).





We’ve also been busy tidying up and improving some of the scenic detailing, and adding a few more people.

On the left,an optimistic fisherman, and on the right, the wharf foreman getting a dressing down from the General Manager.






We’ve achieved everything we wanted to do before the Uckfield show - we just need to clean locos and track, and make sure everything still works!