Midland Railway Holloway Signal Box Kit

Purchased and reviewed by Ken Gray

This kit is from a range of products by Rail Model that includes several different signal boxes and goods sheds.

I needed a signal box for my “might have been” Midland & Great Northern layout. The M&GN had a variety of signal boxes mostly in their own house styles, but with a few built to various standard Midland designs. As I believe life is too short to scratch build everything I opted to purchase this kit. As a result the model is in M&GN colours rather than Midland or BR colours.

The kit is multi material. The main components are laser cut MDF, the guttering is plastic, half round and rod, and there are paper overlays for some planking and the slates, and wire for the walkway handrail. The first two pictures show the main MDF components.

The instructions consist of two pages with a logically laid out assembly sequence. There are also two pages with drawings of the assembled signal box.

The instructions are relatively good so I will only comment on mistakes I made, variations and additions to the kit. Some spare components for the more delicate parts such as windows were provided.

The instructions recommend that the modeller spray prime the MDF components before assembly. I wanted to achieve subtle colouring using acrylic paints so did not spray prime the parts. The result was that the water element from the acrylic paints weakened some of the more delicate parts. To put it bluntly I should have followed the instructions.

My second mistake was to change my mind after starting to assemble the walls, about the position of the veranda. Signal boxes have a wide variety of verandas so check before you start to assemble. Altering the support beams for the veranda before starting assembly would have been much easier.

The main components went together fairly easily as described in the instructions. The windows are unavoidably delicate, but once assembled with frames on both sides of the glazing, are both reasonable to handle and look good. The instructions warn about the side windows being different sizes although they look very similar they are not interchangeable.

I chose to use a glazing glue to assemble the windows rather than the method of using PVA as described in the instructions.

The walls have markings to space the weather board overlays for the lower floor. Although the paper overlays look a bit flimsy once glued to the MDF and painted they give a good representation of weather boarding. Some of the overlays were slightly short but this is not very noticeable.

The assembly of the roof is the area that perhaps needs the most care. The main trusses and the central ridge back bone are easy to assemble and relatively strong. The elements that form the hips of the roof need to have their ends shaped to the correct profile. This needs to be done carefully. If not the MDF cladding of the roof will not fit properly. This can also then impact the appearance of the slating on the roof. The slate courses will not be even, or not match at the hips.

The roof slates are in pre-coloured strips of what appears to be paper. I was a bit doubtful about how they would look, but they actually make up into very convincing slating. I am not sure if they are available separately, but if they are I would use them for scratch built models.

I chose to build my roof with finials made from cocktail sticks, dress making beads, and brass tube with paper flashing. The rope top ridge was paper wrapped around a wire. The hip ridges had fishtail soakers which are lead flashing under the slates so no ridge tiles are required on the hips. Be aware that some signal boxes were latter reroofed to have ridge tiles on the hips.

The guttering is mitred at the corners. It is attached to the fascia boards by short lengths of brass wire in holes drilled into the back of the guttering and through the fascia. The down pipe material supplied seemed a bit thick to me so I used a length of brass rod to form the down pipe. This is held in place by flattened copper wire used as split pins with the head around the pipe and legs in a hole drilled in the wall.

The handrail for the window cleaning walkway is made from brass wire. I made three sub-assemblies, one for each side and one for the front. These were then glued into holes drilled into the walkway before being joined together by soldering.

The brick base is foam board clad with Slaters English bond brickwork. This is painted to resemble engineering bricks as the brick base needs to have the strength to take the forces from the lever frame and cranks.

The interior is based on a second hand interior kit that has recently been reintroduced by Seven Models. Some components were scratch built. The kit contains various block instruments but not a Tyer’s tablet instrument which the M&GN used so a representation of one was scratch built.

The round needle indicators on the block shelf are 60thou Plastikard punched out using a leather punch and painted appropriately. This is the first laser cut kit I have assembled, and the medium works well for many components. The windows may benefit from a different material such as plastic however that would considerably increase the cost of the kit without providing a huge benefit. The kit required some care when assembling the windows and the roof hip components. The instructions are a little bit weak regarding assembling the veranda. There are numerous parts with no guide as to which is which, although most are fairly obvious there are a few that are not.

My view is that this is a reasonably priced kit that is relatively easy to assemble and has produced a good model.

A copy of Ken’s review has been seen by Andy Pearce at RailModel. Andy said he has nothing to add except to say that they strive to produce accurate, value for money kits.