Ok so it has reached that time - time to disassemble Little Scrumpton. "Boooo" I hear you say. Well sometimes a room needs a rennovation and it should always be remembered, removing one layout leaves room for a new one. "Yay" I hear you say.
So a plan is afoot for something completely different. A modern layout set on the chiltern Mainline north of Banbury - look out for Magnerton!
So I thought it was time I put together a video of Little Scrumpton. Hence, out came the camera and I began recording an operating session.
I intentionally haven’t followed my usual timetable to the letter as it would have resulted in far too much footage and, in some cases, would have been rather difficult to control, so instead I have taken a few services from my timetable and run them to give you an idea.
The result? Well its not going to win any Oscars, but it does in
Is any model railway ever finished? Who knows, but after 2 years I have reached a point where only the smallest details will be added from now on, and considering I have just put some n-gauge cats on the layout, "smallest" is an appropriate word! Hence the following photos hopefully give a good idea of where Little Scrumpton has got to.
Since my last entry I have been added a number of details to Little Scrumpton. I have constructed a Loco service depot from the Ratio kit that has be
I started the scenery by looking for a decent Cotswold countryside panorama photo on the internet. Fortunately I found a suitable image and was able to take this and a further Cotswoldian village picture, put them into some photo software and develop the background image I was looking for. The village was blended in to appear behind the station building as with my limited space I would be unable to fit in suitable village buildings in 3D. A few further touch ups to remove the odd 21st century pe
In my previous entry, The Blackbow Line History, I described the imaginary line that led to the development of Little Scrumpton. Once the layout was completed I wanted to develop a suitable timetable for the stock movements based on the activity on the line. Following my map of the line, I developed a timing structure for the journey times between stations for standard passenger journeys and also a semi fast service (XP). As a result, and some slightly loose maths, I developed the table seen und
The fiddle yard area of my layout is compact and busy, containing not only the controller and stock but also a mimc diagram set up of power switches and a further diagram for the points. Also included is the timetable for the layout , the stock set up list for the traverser and information on the "world beyond", the Blackbow Line, which of course the fiddle yard represents. Part 1 of Stage left will explain the set up of the electrical requirements of the layout and the traverser, part 2 will lo
As mentioned previously I had developed a list of my requirements for my layout, however as with every model railway the first consideration was space. After various negotiations, I decided the best plan was a shelf layout based upon a 180cm floating shelf. This would allow for storage underneath and also be long enough to allow for 120cm of viewing space with a 60cm fiddle yard. Within these limitations I then worked through a selection of tackplans and settled on the following:
Before writing about my current layout Little Scrumpton, I wanted to present some of the thought processes behind the layout from a planning perspective. I enjoy reading about the history and development of railway lines of interest and I have read in the past that the railway modeller should consider the history of their model, whether real or imagined. Therefore when I was in a position to starting building my current layout, I wanted to provide a link between this and my old layout, Blackbow,
Blackbow was my first proper attempt at a model railway after (teenage) years away from the hobby. I have included this history as my current layout is based around the same fictional Blackbow branch line and I wanted to reference to where my ideas began. The layout was built incredibly cheaply and with very limited room at home. It was a micro layout, at 3 x 1 ft with a 2 x 1 viewing area. The fiddle yard consisted of 2 single sidings entering the upper and lower sections of the layout, with a
