Well 2018 was a very quiet year for Junction Dock - I did precisely nothing! No, sorry, I take that back - I fitted one piece of ~A4 card to complete the curved back scene in, I think, April... Club commitments, and 12-inch-foot commitments, mean I've not done much 'home modelling' this year. I have had fun with a few wagon kits, so I thought I'd round out the year by posing them in front of the half-finished 'goods shed' on Junction dock.
From left to right, an LNER Fruit; mostly d
Real work has been very busy this year, so slow progress on the layout. I've mainly focused on the first building for Junction Dock - a goods shed/office based on vague aireal photographs and imagined details from similar styles of extant buildings. The building is roughed out now, but still needs a fair bit of detailing to finish.
The biggest effort -- due to their extent -- has been the slate roofs. These are made from painted copier paper, nicked and cut into strips, and then stuck o
Finally managed to make some turnout operating units (TOUs) for Junction Dock, and all the switches are now switching. The whole process was really a massive pain, but I've ended up with an implementation I'm happy with. My original idea had been to use wire-in-tube to operate the points, but moving the layout operation to the front meant I didn't have a good location for the lever frame. So I ummed-and-ahhed, and decided to go with rod operation under baseboard and out the front panel. As I'd
I've now completed the trackwork for the scenic side of the layout, and done most of the "backside". Attached here are some pictures of what I did, and some notes on what I wouldn't do again!
The pointwork for the layout - which accounts for most of the front area - was built off-board, and shown in a previous entry. Here it is lain down on generous bed of PVA (I didn't bother with any copydex/sound insulation, as the whole lot will be encased in DAS cobbles anyway).
Maximum possibl
The boring blog entry on woodwork... but I always like reading how others build their layouts, so I thought I should put an entry in too. It is about all I've managed to progress in the last month or so anyway. Really, this has been an exercise in "fail to prepare, prepare to fail; and then try to work out how to recover with out it looking like a total c*ck up"
Junction dock was meant to be totally self contained on a 4x2ft board, and presented 'cameo' style. I fairly quickly realised thou
Hi all,
I've been making some good, but slow, progress on trackwork for Junction Dock. One of the main aims of this layout was to have a go at building trackwork; with the safe assurance that I'll be able to hide most of the resultant horrors under a thick layer of DAS. I've found the trackwork threads/posts on here incredibly helpful, so I hope me listing my first fumbling steps below might help someone else at some point. This is all PCB construction. The techniques here are pretty much pu
Hi Again,
A quick entry on the baseboard and building mock-ups to get a feel for the layout. The baseboard is a rather simple affair with a sheet for 4x2ft 6 mm ply on top of a softwood frame. I added some diagonal bracing to stiffen things up, but it's probably a bit of overkill... Plan is to fill the underneath of the board with expanding foam to reduce noise (leaving a few clear areas for the limiting wiring, most of which can be surface-run anyway)
Sector plates were mark
Hi,
I thought I'd start a blog on my small (4x2 ft) scottish dock side layout I've been working on (very slowly!) for the past few months. It's based on a real corner of Grangemouth docks, with hand-built inset track in OO-SF. I haven't decided the era yet, but could be set anywhere from 1890s CR up to 1950s BR...
I decided I wanted try a small layout because a) I have very little spare time at the minute, b) (I think!) I like building track, but should try a small project before committ
