As you would be aware, my narrow gauge layout has been based on a fictional railway on the far South Coast of New South Wales. Its location was carried on from my previous HO style layout, why change a good thing?
Station names on the new layout are Eden, Snug Cove, Broadwater, Pambula, Wolumla, Bega and the branch terminus of Candelo (a town put on the map by two contestants of the 2018 House Rules renovation show on TV)
Station lettering for New South Wales stations are 12" high but I found out that the equivalent Victorian lettering appears to be around 10" high. Despite my efforts to track down the official Victorian standards for the lettering, none was forth coming. So this involved a different approach to re-create some accurate lettering.
As far as I could ascertain the lettering for the narrow gauge stations was the same size as used for the Victorian main line stations, not smaller as one might think.
I am in a Facebook Modelling the Victorian Narrow Gauge pages and posted the request for any info on the VR lettering.
The Mallee shed seems wider to accommodate the wider sign. Internet photo |
Eventually all the letters were gathered, luckily the 'Z' was available from Menzies Creek and the letter 'Q' was available from Queenscliff. I had been having conversation with Stephen Ottaway from Stephen Johnson models regarding the production of these letters and he offered to have them etched.
Work on this project only started early this year and I thought it would be good if they could be produced and made available for the Narrow Gauge convention over the Easter period. Some tweeking of the letters was done by Stephen and they were sent off to Scotland (somewhere) to be etched. To my surprise they were done and finished in advance of the convention.
The finished product |
Some of the station boards on my layout when I finally get around to building them will be facing inwards but one station at Broadwater faces outwards. I had a go at this one first and as shown in the below photo. I used some Evergreen square styrene but the only one available ends up giving a 6" square post which I think is too chunky. I will source out something smaller.
Now he knows where he is! |
And while we are on the subject of signs, part of the preparation of having my layout on display for the Narrow Gauge convention was some housekeeping to have what was available to actually look presentable. I had often admired finished layouts that had a nice fascia on the front of the layout. I obtained many sheets of 2400 x 1200mm 3mm mdf to finish of the front. They were duly cut out, undercoated and then painted the finished colour of Malay grey and then attached to the front of the layout either by gluing direct or screwing on at places where I might need to get access to the wiring.
I thought of using stencils for the lettering for the stations but couldn't find anything suitable. A posting on the FB site by Dan Pickard showed the lettering that he used for his module was produced using vinyl stick on lettering. It looked good and following the link I obtained some lettering for the face of my layout and one sign for each station. This helps for visitors to the layout and me when I get forget full later on!
Other Side of the Tracks
Another five 'Other Sides' have been added to the link above. They will all be there eventually including the ones they didn't print.
Link to 'The Other Side' |
Bob, You missed the opportunity to use your station name letters as the font for the signs on the fascia. Stephen
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