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About this blog

Originally built as a Modern Image layout for the 2007 RMWeb Challenge . The blog now also covers my other layout (the Boxfile),  wild ideas for new layouts and general reflections...

Entries in this blog

Way and Works

As well as floating various tramway pipe-dreams I have actually made a bit of progress with Blacklade in the last 2 months. A sustained attack during part of my holiday last month has cleared a number of outstanding jobs . The remainder of the station screen wall has gone in , and although the back of the station building needs adding (I'm not actually basing the model on Kings Cross circa 1942, even though it looks remarkably like bomb damage!) , we are more or less there in terms of the statio
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Mercia Wagon Repair

Wagons Roll!

So - the wagon works layout project described here is now on. And very much as forshadowed in the subsequent comment.   Several things have pushed me into actually doing something. The first and most powerful is a problem that has developed with my right eye. Gloomy reflection suggested that if anything was to be done with the N gauge bits it had better be done quickly, whilst I was capable of it.    (I am glad to report that I saw the eye specialists yesterday, and they stat
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Time-slip (with continuity errors)

This blog hasn't been too active recently. Not a lot has happened on the layout in the last 18 months , though it's been up and run a few time. I had some time for modelling in the early part of last year , but that was almost completely absorbed by a bout of stock building. Only some of that was written up in my workbench blog , and I must add the other items.   Basically the idea was to try to sort out the outstanding/stalled projects , plus the easy bits and pieces then get stuck into some
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Thoughts on Track

I wouldn't normally touch on controversal subjects in a constructional blog. But in the case of the current OO track thread, http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/79416-poll-ready-to-lay-oo-track-and-pointwork/ my views arose in the context of the layouts on this thread, and are best explained in their context , and flow back into "matters outstanding" with the layouts, and things that need to be done.... So really it's more sensible to reflect on how my own approach to OO track has
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Layout schemes

This Time I May Be Committed.....

I mentioned in a previous posting   Shifting Sands  that recent developments in RTR had tempted me to consider a possible 009 layout. Things have now moved on...   In the end, the Bachmann Baldwins proved rather too tempting to resist. I think the tipping point was when a little internet research revealed that 2'6" gauge was a de facto British military standard up to WW1, accounting for the Admiralty operations at Chattenden and Devonport and the RNAD explosives factories and depots. 9
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Reflections

The Ghosts of Flaxborough

A very long time ago, I read an article by Cyril Freezer in the Railway Modeller. It was called "Modern Image is Easy" and if you judge by the impact on my modelling it must have been the most important magazine article I've ever read. At least it's the only article that has ever resulted in me scrapping my layout, selling up my stock, and completely changing direction in my modelling.   Mind you I was a highly impressionable young teenager at the time.   I was then attemptin
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Ravenser in Reflections

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The Donkey and the Bales of Straw

I said in a posting on my workbench blog that layouts required seperate comment, and I've remarked a couple of times that I got myself hopelessly overcommitted on far too many fronts , even before work matters absorbed all my energy in the first half of last year. The two things are linked..... so perhaps a survey of my layout commitments is over due, at least to show where I'm coming from   For quite a number of years I was extremely heavily committed to a layout project in my club . It wasn
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Spend, Spend, Spend, or, Sunday after the Battle

It's officially a day for quiet reflection and I'm back from Warley after what inevitably seems to turn into a spot of retail therapy. And since I've not actually made or done anything - I've simply flashed the plastic in various directions - it seems inappropriate to muse on the fact on a workbench blog. That's for making things.   I finally succumbed to an order from Hattons a week or two back . I'm now the proud owner of a Central Trains 158. It needs a decoder fitting of course, but that i
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Tramlink

Skeleton in the Cupboard

A very long time ago, I went to one of the CMRA Workshop events. The bookseller was selling a copy of "Tramlink - Official Handbook" published by Capital Transport. (It was Geoff Gamble - I told you it was a long time ago)   Anyway I bought the thing, discovered that Alphagraphix were doing card kits of light rail units, and I got fired up with the idea of building one , and making a working model. This obviously would need somewhere to run, so the idea of building a small layout based
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Ravenser in Tramlink

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Single Yellow

Progress on the wiring continues, though more slowly than I'd wish.   The three station signals were finished and duly installed. . Wiring has proved a rather lengthy and tedious process with 8 fine short wires and two resistors needing to be soldered under the boards for each one. Resistors have been fitted to scraps of veroboard and the various wires soldered to these small boards in situ: the job's done now , but it's taken an evening's work per signal. They are driven off the spare contact
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Layout schemes

Shifting Sands

This is by way of a speculative post.....I've remarked before that it's been a very long time since I started a new project. Over a decade in fact. Between 2000 and 2007 I launched into 4 different layout projects, all 4mm/OO - Tramlink, a club layout project, the Boxfile, and Blacklade - but since then, nothing.   I've recently resurrected the Boxfile - see postings here - and though I'm still hunting gremlins in the stockbox it's working a whole lot better than ever before. Proper sy
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Boxfile

Served Up On A Tray - Main Course

The deed is done - or at least most of it. On Saturday I duly trotted off to the local DIY sheds. Unfortunately Wickes and B&Q locally do not cut timber , and Buildbase - who might - were closed. But a sheet of 5mm ply in B&Q was only £5.47, so I bought it anyway.   Having got it home and marked out the cutting plan I discovered that if you heavily score the desired cutting line on both sides with a Stanley knife you can snap 5mm ply along the line much as you would do 40 thou
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Ravenser in Boxfile

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Boxfile

Served Up On A Tray - Dessert

We left the Boxfile last time safely installed on its new tea-tray, but with the track joints still to patch, and scenery to touch up.   The track joints were not at all good - they never have been. In the worst place I think there was a horrifying 4mm long gap in the railhead.   The solution was a bodge I've used in one or two places on Blacklade, though not on quite such a scale. This is to cut a sliver of 40 thou plasticard and superglue it in place in the gap. Once the
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Ravenser in Boxfile

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Boxfile

Served Up On A Tray

This is by way of a short "statement of concept" note.   The Boxfile (formally Whitefriargate Goods) has been out of commission for a couple of years, after the end of the fiddle yard track became damaged. At one level this simply means a basic and fairly straightforward repair. But it has thrown into sharper relief the main problem with this layout.     That's the board joint. The two files are currently held together - when assembled - by fishplates connecting th
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Ravenser in Boxfile

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Route One

With DCC Installing the point motors and decoder isn't necessarily the end of the story. Yes, it gets the points working , but more than just that is possible, and yesterday I took the final steps in commissioning the installation   Working the points one by one through the handset is a little slow and clunky . Probably no slower than flicking a set of switches on a DC panel, but just as liable to operator error. I suspect that one of the major causes of derailment and intermittant running on
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Railway Modelling without Modelling

I've been pretty busy on the hobby front in the last few weeks. The trouble is that it hasn't involved making any models....   A few weeks back I was helping with the DOGA stand at a show in the Midlands, which meant a couple of days away. Very nice and hopefully productive, some nice layouts , and I was a good boy on the spending front.   Then the following day someone from one of the magazines came over to photograph the layout for an article, which will (I hope) appear in the next few mon
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Operational

Postcards from the Layouts

As Blacklade is effectively completed, and so is the Boxfile there isn't too much to post in the way of layout construction these days. Lockdown efforts have mainly been focussed on sorting out the litter of unfinished stock projects - and if the truth be known, drifting into one or two more. And those things have gone onto my workbench blog..   However just to prove that the silence is not that of the grave, here are a few snapshots from when each of them was last up - "Pictures from
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Ravenser in Operational

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Points Arising

Things are a bit heavy at work at the moment which is probably why this posting's three weeks late, but the wiring is finally done. Well, sort of just about.   The new DS64 decoder is in , the NCE switch it is disconnected, the last two motors (Cobalt and Tortoise) are in , they're all wired up , and they work. I admit that one half of the slip is only about 98% reliable, but this was clearly the stiffest tie bar on the layout and always going to be the place where any intermittant incomplete
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Layout schemes

Pardon My French - or Paint Your Wagon

I started a new job after Easter, and the big lockdown modelling push basically ran into the sands in May and June. But the sale of my late mother's house has now been completed;, and a long-overdue attempt to reduce the chaos of the study has taken place. Out went a large broken computer desk and the very old desktop it housed , and in came a small computer trolley; the office chair moved from the sitting room to the study, the study chair went in the bedroom, and a broken chair from the bedroo
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Ravenser in Layout schemes

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Multiple, as in Diesel Multiple Unit

The obvious thing to be done when you have a new model is to run the layout... So the 101 was given a thorough workout during a running session, just to make sure there were no hidden bugs   :   Tail traffic is an operational feature of the layout - the CCT will be attached to the outward working of the morning parcels. Hence DMUs need functional couplings. This gets in the way of full end detail, and I'm toying with the idea of giving the 114 fully detailed ends to use the Craftsman pack I
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Mind the Gap......

The trouble with lists is that they show you up.   So how far have I actually got with my ambitious list of jobs? Well.....   5 out of 6 points have had their drive wire replaced with 0.9mm wire . The other seems to work ok anyway. This has pretty well cured the problem of point blades not closing fully. One point , where the commercially available offset drive Tortoise mounting has been used (possibly from Exactoscale?) is still slightly uncertain , perhaps because I've not replaced the fin
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Layout schemes

Messing Up Sydney Harbour

This is another of those speculative posts about possible layouts, so here goes....   Not so long ago someone posted a video to Clive Mortimore's layout thread that got a few people going - including me.   http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/87205-sheffield-exchange-what-a-to-do/page-66   In short it was a rather eye-opening documentary film about operations at Darling Harbour Goods in Sydney in its dying days during the late 1970s. Backed up with anot
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Ravenser in Layout schemes

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Magpie's Nest

A couple of weeks ago I was meant to have someone round to see the layout . Unfortunately they went down sick on the day, Blacklade was up so I had a bit of a play - and things weren't running especially well. So I started fixing things and well...   In fairness I'm not sure the layout had been run more than once since Shenfield last September. My attention has been fixed on sorting out the Boxfile for the 4 months. If you don't use things it shows, so action had to be taken. I bought a rollin
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Operational

Layout Operation - Some Definitions

This arises from the recent thread on Ally Pally.   Blacklade's modest experiences at the show are matter for another post, but one aspect of the post-show discussion was the claim by several people that many or most of the layouts were not running trains, and somewhere [probably at post 358] the idea arose that this was because the layouts and their operators were using timetables or sequences or something of that kind.   As will be evident from the subsequent discussion htt
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Ravenser in Operational

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It Looks Better on the Big Screen

You may have noticed in these postings occasional mutters that "I must build the screen walls for the station" . In most postings in this blog , in fact.   Well, with the electrics more or less done (only the Kadee electromagnets and a couple of signals remain to nag at my conscience) I've finally attacked what is the last big scenic job on the layout. Quite a bit of tidying up, fettling and detail work remains but this is the last big block of new construction   Here we have the back screen
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