An AJ for our Sludge Tender

Brian recently fitted an Alex-Jackson coupling to the sludge tender we will use on Bankside. This vehicle will have a starring role once or twice a sequence when it will be removed from the water softener siding and taken away for emptying.

Metal Box Factory Progress

Bankside has a representation of the ‘Metal Box Factory’ among its buildings. The building is real, but our model is intentionally an impression, rather than an a scale model. On our most recent club night Andy brought along his results; having completed painting the brickwork:

Many members have got the building to this stage. It is satisfying to see some of the first painted brickwork for our model!

New Stock for Bankside

At a recent Monday meeting, we had the chance to look at some of the stock taking shape for Bankside (See if you can spot the work remaining!). Relatedly, we have been recently researching Ferry Vans. Bankside is inspired by the depot in Southwark that was known as the ‘Southwark Continental Depot‘. What we are not clear about is how much of its traffic was of goods imported via ferry vans. They make for appealing looking models, and would look a little different from many other layouts we have seen.

Bankside lives!

After a lot of effort designing, building and installing the electrics for our new Group layout ‘Bankside’ we connected to the power supply for the first time last night.  It all went well and therefore the first locomotive has run on ‘Bankside’.

Edited, Jan 2025: An update to this website no longer allows videos that previously appeared here, so the post has been simplified to remove them.