DLR Press Release - New Signal Box at Tramways now in commission
By Mark Thatcher
At the same time as I picked up the new rakes of carriages for the line I spied a rather nice signal box in the second hand bin at Glendale Junction. The box itself emanates from Garden Railway Specialists – I think it is prototypical of something, but of what I was not sure. It was already built up quite well, but the glue, being a twin pack, like Araldite, had gone quite brittle, so the first thing to do was to gently prise off the roof, the gable end porch bit, stairway and guttering. The latter was dispensed with as I felt it cluttered an already busy looking building. The original building was painted very accurately, but it looked a bit glossy, with no depth, and was the wrong colour for the line anyway, so a repaint was in order, but before that I turned my attention to the interior.
"The signal box was unglazed"
Back to Bay 6 do a very nice signal box detailing kit for only £10.50. These white metal castings comprise a token machine, a desk, clock, bell and most importantly, a five-lever signal set. For an extra £3.50 this can be augmented further by a another five signal levers, which I also bought. The signal box was unglazed. In the early days GRS supplied their kits without glazing, which I understand they now include, so I used sections of clear glazing to cover the three internal walls with windows, then pasted dolls house wallpaper to the inside of these, cutting out the paper to reveal the clear acetate windows underneath. I also found a spare internal door to almost match the exterior door on the box itself. The rear wall was wallpapered Plasticard. Firstly, the wooden floor was set in. Again this is pre-slatted wooden dolls house flooring. Then the internal walls were added. In fact, there is a good deal of 1:24 dolls house stuff around which makes handy detailing for these kinds of buildings – like the stove and one of those new fangled typewriting machines which I also added for Mr. Cholmundly Warner to produce his timetables with!
"Dulux exterior emulsion paint "testers" from B&Q"
So with the floor and internal walls in place, it looked like the new staff member of the DLR was going to have quite a comfortable time, so now it was time to concentrate of the exterior of the building. With the roof off this was easy to deal with. A coat of satin black spray paint was applied to give me a base to start with. Then I bought a number of Dulux exterior emulsion paint “testers” from B&Q. They only cost £2.50 each and are a cheap way to apply a range of colours that are actually designed to deal with the outside world. I lightly sponged the colour on, using a dark grey first, highlighting this with a lighter grey to add some contrast. Just grab an old washing up sponge and cut it into three pieces and lightly sponge the colour on. Less is more, as you need to leave a little of the original black colour showing through underneath. Its not a precise art, so don’t worry if you get it wrong as you can always add more dark grey, or blow the whole thing over with satin black and start again. Try to work quickly though as the emulsion paint dries quite quickly. The lower walls were dealt with in the same way to add a little depth to the finish.
The rest of the painting was by brush and thanks to the crisp lines of the model the delineation between the green and cream colourway was easy to paint.
Lighting
The lighting was a single yellow LED mounted in a plastic section, attached to a twin AA battery holder. Similarly the lamp has a red LED in it and is wired up the same way – both sets of wires are fed through Faux piping (which could be anything really) and pass through to the lower floor where the battery boxes are both located.
"I also dispensed with the standard barge boards"
I also dispensed with the standard barge boards on the gable ends, and copied, out of Plasticard, a rather fetching patterned bargeboard template from a British Outline Buildings signal box kit I had already built, topping these off with some spare finials I had in stock from Lineside Delights – left over from one of their kits.
"if I can then you could too!"
All in all this project took up a couple of gentle days’ modelling, the interior being the most fiddly. The end result I think is not bad, a £25.00 signal box augmented with another £15.00 worth of so of bits stands up quite well to a kit you would buy from PIKO or POLA for at least £80.00 – and that’s if they modelled the British outline scene – which they don’t. The nice thing about modelling at this level is, thanks to the large size of the buildings, even clumsy fingers like mine can knock out a plausibly acceptable end result and I am sure if I can then you could too!