Workbench

I’ve been working towards ‘replicating’ my Phoenix Yard layout in P4, and there have been some early steps documented here already. I’ve been working with the name ‘Twenty and Tanks’ for now, since that’s the rolling stock the layout is dimensioned for. However, that’s not a name that rolls off my tongue.

I want to base the scenery on the Oil Depot at Michledever station, but since I won’t be attempting to replicate it, I don’t want to name the layout directly after it.

Looking around on the map, there is an airfield just up the road – Popham – and it seems sensible to steal the name for the layout. I’m guessing the military may well have had usage at Popham in mind when they built the obviously camouflaged facility.

So, my new P4 inglenook will be ‘Popham Depot’. Set in the 1970’s, with BR blue motive power, and with a fleet of TTA tanks as shunting fodder.

I’ve recorded my modelling in a couple of other places online. I started on the RMWeb Forum as jhmcaleely. I’m still on the newer ‘community‘, but only as a reader (to date).

Notable threads I started there:

• My 00 Inglenook: Phoenix Yard
• Getting started in P4: Can I buy all the bits I need at Scaleforum? (Yes!)
• My first P4 track work: An A5 point kit from Exactoscale
• My first contributions to JMRI: Hornby Decoder XML files

I am also a member of the Scalefour society (since 2008), and post on their forum under my own name.

Threads there include:

• My first ‘from scratch’ point work: “Workshop Homework“
• My first P4 loco: A Hornby 08 conversion
• My first brass chassis: A Highlevel Class 03 Chassis
• Something more ambitious: 60163, Tornado
• A test bench, for the CHEAG spot-on (ish) competition