Metcalfe PO235 Stone station platform build 

Thanks for filming this, really helpful to understand what the kit can do and what is required of the builder.

Thanks for an informative post. I have built this N gauge and I have found that the trick to concealing joints and edges is careful use of watercolors or colored pencils. Running a 2B pencil along the edges before butting the platform surfaces together goes a long way towards concealing the joint. I can't see the joints in my platforms unless I look very carefully.

I am using these kits to make my station platforms and I think it is a very good kit. For some reason the last one I built, which is 3 feet long, I have made it too narrow. I am now sure if I have enough spare pieces left to widen it. Thanks for making the video. I did try to shout out "Fit the inner ramp strengtheners first" Martin. (Thailand)

Thanks for the video, was wanting someone to review the platform kit. Well done.

You're very confident with your blade, next to a flat edge. I prefer to use the sculpted cutting edge, where the fingers are protected behind a ridge. Just a comment for those who are less adept (or patient) than you.

Epic build, card kits are laser cut and perfect and the end result looks great. Thanks for sharing. Cheers John

I have made a platform from that kit with the top walling. That reduces the length of platform that can be made from one kit. I have glued in a lot more strengtheners, as I live in Thailand and have high humidity problems. I also spray them with clear matt varnish. I will have to wait and see what happens to them. But that is a very versatile kit. I think in the newer one there is also some back walling to go down the slopping part too. My father is from Salcombe and I have many cousins and their families living in South Devon. The price of houses the further south you go the more they want for them. Pushing the younger ones away from where they were born.

Nice match of brickwork. And using the support to assist the joint is worth mentioning. Note that at this stage, you have not braced the vertical wall as vertical. Can the l-shaped braces have their fold vertical, so the reinforcing panel fits the wall (without cutting) and the bracing panel at right angles to both the platform and the platform wall? When you join the two platform sections, would it make the joint stronger (and more likely to be flat) to run the edge spacers as well as the walls across the gap? And, of course, reinforce the brick wall joint as soon as the but joint is made, so the later reinforcement is supporting that visible joint.

Nice walk-through. Thanks for taking the care to present it. Was it hard to keep it all flat, so it fits flat and easy to the layout?

Could you score the bit where the platform begins to slope down on the underside instead, so that you don't see a white 'seem' on the platform side?

To bend the score mark, take a hint from tiling, and use matchsticks (or the ruler) to support the joint, and break the score over that straight support.

You're right to cut the wall off the edge of the platform: the platform edges should always overhang the support walls, in an attempt to stop water marking. Of course, your weathering may chose to show where this has failed! And, of course, you then use the thin grey strip to provide that overhang definition. (Takes some time to beat these Metcalf guys :) Note that the edge is visible, and so should butt together, or even (gilding the lily) chamfer the edges to give an angle joint.

Good how to video

Presumably real platforms, like real roads, may have repairs, or have been made in sections. So the perfect platform always looks a bit "model". The trick is how to join the sections, and how the real platform would have been made, to make this join realistic. Time for some research, methinks!

One for one side, one for the other? Nope: all from one view (i.e. The left edge of the platform) but not both left and right edges of the platform. (Been there, done that! :)

No clothes pegs have appeared? Have they escaped to the wild outdoors again? Lol.