Regular readers may know that I am now planning on starting afresh on my layout. This requires the old layout to be taken apart piece by piece and disposed of appropriately. This is something I did not really think of when I built the thing back in the day. The screws that hold the frame to the baseboards are now covered with various types of scenery, scenery formers (either scrunched up paper or card, cork underlay and various other bits and pieces). All of this covers a fair amount of the scre
Although there are going to be some VERY exciting posts about rolling stock soon, in terms of the layout it has gone a bit quiet for me recently. The reality is that I have become increasingly fed up with my layout taking over half my hobby room which leaves me very little space to actually do anything. This means that I have had to compromise my work areas when building stock and it also means I tend to leave things on the layout for storage because there are simply no other storage solutions.
Over the past 2 weeks I have had a few running sessions on the layout. I have enjoyed operating it and when it works it is a good layout. However the key phrase in the last sentence is "when it works" because the times "when it works" are getting fewer and further between.
The reason behind this is largely because I am just not competent enough to lay track very well. One of the major issues has been the derailing of stock over board joins. It usually takes me half an hour of fiddling to get
To start with, here is a similar picture to the one that I posted last weekend. A few minor changes have taken place including the placing of reeds, spraying the trees with matt varnish and some minor tidying. Plus this is the best looking image I took today so it is always good to start with that!
This next one is the field which I started last weekend but have now continued. The track has also been ballasted and the bushes alongside the line added. The camera was really not playing ball tho
Just a quick picture to show the progress I have made since last week in the small wooded area:
The forest has been made out of cheaper trees because this section of the board is removable and therefore these needed to be easily replacable. There is a small pond (that has yet to have water put into it...) which has a deciduous tree hanging over it with a tyre swing. Towards the lense is the start of a field which will extend over the entire elgnth of this removable baseboard with the oc
Last week I wrote an entry about the camp by the lake. This entry is a progress report on this section of the layout.
So I got out the Busch camping set and had a go at placing them on the shore of the lake. It looked good enough to spur me on to do some more (the white stuff is cheap clay which I was using to do some scenery).
Thinking the adjacent board (which is removable) was a bit bare I added some cheaper trees to it to see how it might alter the look of the scene.
The area I have chosen to model is a popular tourist destination so one element I was keen to model was a small man made lake next to the line as it curves around. The base board has been in situ for a while now but there has been little in the way of scenery aside from my crude pencil drawings to show where things will go. So today with my wife away I decided to crack on with the small hill and the bridge. I started by using foam board for the main sections of the scenics then card where it was
After starting my station with such promise I came to the conclusion today, after leaving it to one side for a couple of weeks, that I need to start again. This is a bit of a blow but I was looking at the station and it really needs a redesign, especially the support infrastructure. Also I negelected to coat the initial layers with varnish so some of the base layers were starting to come away which was not a huge issue now, but considering there is a large amount of work still to be done I thoug
I have been working quite hard on the new station building for the layout. Although until this evening I felt the work was not paying off. Today I created the windows, the frames and the interior of the station. It is all very basic inside at the moment but the good thing is that it is all pretty prototypical.
To end the evening I attached the wall panels to the frame and took a few pictures to celebrate. Only the West Wing (not the TV show) is assembled as of now as I need to print some wi
Well in my last blog I hinted that I was going in the direction of digitally designed models as pioneered by some of the other modellers on this forum. If this works then it might enable me to have more bespoke buildings on my layout to a higher level of quality.
This first entry is a few weeks into the construction process. I actually started learning photoshop when me and my wife were on holiday in France. She showed me the basics and I started editing some pictures I had taken of the loc
Well I returned (reluctantly) from a trip to France on Saturday night. Since then I have attended a wedding, obtained a kitten, got a pretty nasty cold and had all sorts of undue stress at work. I have posted in the overseas modelling section about my X2400 and X2800 projects and wont say any more on these except that I was going to blog about them under the topic of "2 Budds the Wiser" *tumbloeweed blows through my modelling room*
Anyway Whilst in France I managed my first proper trip to Pa
When I started the layout the village that formed the main centre was going to be very basic. Over the past few months I have "regenerated" the main section of the village and put in new supporting walls thus creating a new open space and a village on two levels. However there was something missing. The villages in the area I am porttraying have had similar regeneration but there are often large sections that have not changed significantly in hundreds of years. Therefore I decided to move the sm
In my last blog I think I mentioned that I had purchased some kits from France. The first of these was a goods shed manufactured by ARA. The detail of this kit was superb and although it came with hundreds of extremely detailed pieces it was not too difficult to construct. The shed will be going in the goods yard at the main station on the layout. It will be disused for the purposes of goods but will be used as a track maintenance building. Here are a few pictures of the constructed building:
I think I have too many projects on the go. Mind you I do prefer this, I get bored with one thing when I stick at it and if that's the case then I don't do as well with it (although my modelling is never that amazing even when I do my absolute best!).
At the moment I am doing the following rolling stock modelling projects:
1 X5800 Autorail (needs painting)
1 X3800 Autorail (repaint)
1 X5600 Autorail (rebuilding the cab, adding buffers and then repainting)
1 X3900 Autorail (needs to be p
Here is a quick update on one of my projects that I have been dabbling in over the past few weeks. This is the X3900 autorail. It is different from other Picasso Autorails in that this one and its sister X3896 were converted into salloons for the SNCF management (much in the same way that the EWS company train is on the British network Today). It was painted in a green livery with a white stripe that is not too disimilar at the ends to the DMU's being run in the United Kingdom. With the conversi
So with the new backscene in place the module is starting to look a lot better than just a few pieces of wood (if anyone is interested in a bespoke backscene like this then please contact me and I can put you in touch with the people that made mine!). Over the past few days I have removed a few parts of the valley that were just not up to scratch and replaced them with some polystyrene. This has helped with the viaduct as I was never entirely satisfied with the quality of running over it.
As
My in laws have just returned from France and with them they have brought back a backscene that has been painted by some friends of ours from the Limousin.
It is a backscene for the new module I am (slowly) building. I am hoping to get this fixed to the main module and start work on the scenics soon. I am really impressed by the trees and the clouds.
I was wondering if there is a market for this kind of painted backscene in the UK (or Europe)? What sort of prices would people be willing
Hello again,
After hacking up the track, I have now managed to get the main passing loop installed in the station on the main baseboard. It is looking a lot better than it did before, although I am not too pleased about the track running straight into a tunnel so I am considering changing the freight sidings and the depot side around, although I am really unsure about this right now.
Anyway here are some pictures:
The track soon after it was layed.
Some test trains. I can now ge
It has been a fair while since I blogged but there has been a fair bit of activity. My postlady must be getting sick of having to bring packages for me. Here are some of my more recent purchases:
The Mikadotrain X73500 - A truly spectacular model! I have written a rather rudimentry review of it here .
The Busch campsite which will be position adjacent to the lake I am going to construct on one of the new baseboards.
A fantastic french building that uses a rather unique method of constr
Over the past few weeks I had come to the conclusion that the main village on my layout was born out of lack of thought and that a few changes could be made to enhance the village and make it look similar to other villages and towns in the area it is meant to represent (The Limousin Region of France). So over the weekend I hacked away at a portion of the village and stripped it back. The intention is to create a small road that is on the level that runs paralell to the main road but at a differe
More progress on the railcars.
In the above picture you will notice the new cab for the X5600 that has been stuck into position and the alterations to the front of the X3800 to make it look more like the inspection vehicle X3900. Also note the citroen vans that arrived yesterday.
This view affords a better view of the X5600 cab. It is not quite perfect yet and perhaps needs new front and rear sides but the rest is good and I am pleased with the scale of it.
The base boards are also
I promised that I would do a layout plan to highlight how the layout will look. I have taken the time to do that today and here it is:
Board 1 is the original board. It has seen some remodelling of the station tracks to give longer passing loops, more room at the depot and more siding space with the option of using one of the sidings as a third platform.
Board 2 is the extension module I have built. The woodwork for this is largely done and the track has been partially laid. It is a small h
From baseboards to rolling stock there has been some progress which I am actually quite pleased about.
Starting with the baseboards, My father in law has helped out with some of the construction of some frames that are going to be supporting the link to my new module. The only picture I have of any relevence to this is the Cobalt Point Motor in the new module which I installed on the same day we constructed the frames:
I will get to work in drawing up a track plan for the new set up in i
Well its pretty cold here in Staffordshire so I thought I would post some pictures of warmer times from last summer in France. I should have done it a long time ago but other things got in the way.
We went on a trip to Mont Dore for a day trip and visited the station in the resort. It being a Sunday there were no trains due but I snapped a few pictures of the station. Here is one:
Then we went down the line to Bourboille (please forgive me if I am spelling these incorrectly) and again snapp
This time last year I blogged about how I had done nothing on my layout for some time. Well this year is no different and I think I am discovering why. I find that winter is a bad season to model for me because of Christmas eating away at my budget and the lack of light makes it more difficult to do any decent amount of modelling.
Still I do enjoy messing around with my trains, its just that major projects seem to be a bit much at the moment for me to handle. Therefore I am postponing some
