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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

Bits and Pieces

I've had the layout up for a few days, and as well as a couple of operating sessions, I've taken the opportunity to sort out various jobs , as someone is slated to come and see it...   The big one is that at long last the station building has been finished off, with an end, back wall and door, and the "bomb damage" is no more. Quite deliberately the effect is that a section has been taken through the building - rather than paint the back wall black , I used some Superquick red brickpaper - thi
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Electrical

Hanging By A Thread

One of my outstanding projects is to do something about electrical connections and points on the boxfile   This arose from some comments from a fellow DOGA member a couple of years ago. DOGA had their stand at Watford show that year, I was helping on the Saturday, and I took along the boxfile as a display item , and also something to provide intermittent movement (We had a Hornby Sentinel on it for a while and it looked the part - I really must built my Judith Edge Vanguard Steelman..)
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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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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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"For you ze Var is ofer!"

The sirens have sounded the final all clear, the blackout and the blitz are things of the past - and about 40 years after it should have , Blacklade has finally acquired station lights and station signs. I'm even intending to sort out the "bomb damage" behind the station facade and actually finish off the station building. Not before time, either...   In short over the last couple of weeks I've had a big burst of detailing on the layout, and it's made a huge difference.   Not, I must admit,
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For One Night Only...

Blacklade had its first tentative public appearance a few weeks back, when I took it along to the CMRA Workshop event as a display item. It's been taken along to a society area group meeting twice, but this was the first time it had gone into the wider world.   Chiltern Model Railway Association is the federation of model railway clubs and societies in the South East of England and beyond (Indeed over the last few years they've picked up members well into the North of England, and seem to be g
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A Bit of History

I think I may have sketched the background for Blacklade a very long time ago , probably when it started as part of an RMWeb Challenge some yearsago. If so , the original posting was probably on a version of RMWeb which disappeared into a vortex in cyberspace/a hosting company's servers, and it was probably buried in other comments anyway.   So it's probably worth giving an outline of the assumed history as a seperate posting - if only to provide a baseline from which it's obvious which bits o
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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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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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Layout schemes

I'm Not Committed to Building this, You Understand...

In a previous posting , I mentioned trams . I am trying quite hard to be a good boy and finish things off ,not take on new projects and commitments; but despite my best intentions there have been stirrings on the tramway front.   It started when something caused me to look at the Street Level Models website. I spotted a card kit for Manor House tram station (LT), and that started something stirring. Wasn't Manor House the northern terminus of one of the Kingsway Subway routes ? It was
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Ravenser in Layout schemes

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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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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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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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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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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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A Statement of Intent

Having chickened out on fitting 4 small etched brass stips as hinges to every door of the Van B, I've decided to tackle finishing the point motors and associated wiring under the layout. This posting is largely to draw the attention of non-DCC users to the query I've just posted on wiring one of the motors here : Hoffmann query, since the solution I've come up with - hardwiring and switching through the spare contacts on another point motor - isn't really a DCC method at all   However this fit
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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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Layout schemes

In which Ravenser finally locates the "Create Blogs" page

Longer-standing members will remember the 2006/7 Layout Challenge which started on RMWeb2 before we broke it. This produced a number of rather fine layouts including Keyhaven. It also - mostly - produced Blacklade.   The basic remit of the Challenge was to produce a small layout providing a showcase for some of the high standard RTR we have enjoyed in recent years . LisaP4 defined the rules to require layout to have a maximum footprint of 6 square feet . That killed off an idea of mine
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