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About this blog

Started in 2004, this layout was originally an end to end with a run-round loop and a bay platform. It now forms part of double track layout. I built it in the early days when I hadn't really taken into account moving it about so its 2m long and about 630mm wide. However it has been moved about 5 times from house to house. It started as an analog layout and then was converted to DCC, then lots of wires for everything were added but in 2020 I discovered MERG and CBUS so its be re-wired again which has simplfied the underboard somewhat. The original layout consists of baseboard 1. But following another move I am now adding about 12 new baseboards to it plus a rear upper deck

 

Layout is in an insulated loft ontop of kitchen base units for storage.

 

Its not prototypical but wouldn't look out of place for a somewhere place for somewhere in the GWR / Midland territory. The station on baseboard 1 does have Great Central influences as is scratchbuilt. I like running GWR/ LMS / LNER and BR Standard steam locomotives, plus early diesels so its the early 1960s on the lower deck. The top deck is intended to be 1960s to 1990s but will retain semaphore signalling. It could also be a double track heritage railway......

Entries in this blog

Oh no not painting!

I think the worse job on a model railway is painting - I really do not like it as it can be quite tedious at times. I have been driven out of the Mattington room by the paint smell and as I have had to use a fair bit of paint thinners it absolutly reeks in there. Just finshed doing some rust on some of the shed roofs and for a first effort I think it has come out fairly well.   Some photos of the layout that I took earlier attached
MattB

MattB

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General work on Mattington

The list of jobs to do seems to have grown longer. Luckily it is still the winter but as daylight creeps into the evening hours work on the railway will likely be reduced to rainy days and weekends. I have to work on the scratchbuilt station platform which has a slight clearance and warping problem. It is a mix of several different kits and building sheets and tieing it all together is proving to be a bit of an issue which isn't helped by a board join.   Other work includes scenery on the new
MattB

MattB

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Junk Yard Lane

Work halted on Mattington for a short while as I wanted to do some touching up on the Junk Yard boxfile layout mainly planting a few bits of vegetation, scattering some more grit and scenic powder and hunting in the bits box for a small door for the shed - (found one eventually! no scratch building required yay ! )Older photos of this layout are located in the gallery.   Why build a boxfile layout - Simple - for a laugh! and somewhere to run 009 stock on a portable layout (possibly even at wor
MattB

MattB

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DCC Shortcircuits on Insulfrog points

After buying a Q1 (Hornby one) I was eager to try it out. Unfortunatly the wheel rim width is slightly wide and causes a short circuit on some points. A possible solution is to extent the 'frog' by painting (in black or rusty colour oil paint) on the corner where short circuit occurs. Tip for viewing the track on the other side of the engine I have found that a macup mirror from christmas cracker helps this way you don't need to lean over too much.   On the downside painting obviously increase
MattB

MattB

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Hornby Dean Goods DCC conversion

This is a great little engine but has the problem as with many Hornby engines that the motor is in the tender and the pickups are all underneath the boiler. Instead of a pin & spring that usually has one pickup connecting the tender to the engine there are two wires (painted black) that look like vacuum hoses a seperate plastic drawbar.   At the time when I started this one I was still fairly new to DCC conversion and bought a Lenz silver mini but if I was to do the conversion now I would
MattB

MattB

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Layout extension (to make the small layout larger)

In November I had the mad idea that I wanted to extend my layout from its current length of 2m to a layout that extended entirely round the room - (non scenic) Purely as somewhere where I could run trains up to their full scale speed and have break from the shunting which had been the practice from 2004.   I had a room that measured 11ft by 7ft with alcove for the door. Items that could prove to me a bit of an issue included a tall bookshelf, computer desk, workbench, tool drawers and a few ot
MattB

MattB

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Working slowly on Ivatt tank dcc conversion

Well a few weeks ago I started taking apart the Bachmann Ivatt 2-6-2 Tank. After a bit of fiddling around I managed to remove the cover and then got rather worried when I saw the split chassis underneath... One hour later and about 10 screws I had succeeded in removing the wheels, baseplate, two chassis halves, the cylinders (that was a mistake and will have to glue those back) the cab and the motor. In fact the engine didn't look remotely like an engine anymore. With the engine in bits I was ab
MattB

MattB

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Progress so far - 00 gauge layout

I started a new 00 gauge layout back in 2004, originally an end to end layout with a fiddleyard at one end and a runround loop on the main board. Recently I decided that I wanted the trains to go round the room and I now have a complete circuit.   Layout was originally designed to be analogue using gaugemaster control but now in the process of converting to DCC - 6 engines chipped so far, the smallest being a 0-6-0 terrier.   One of the big headaches was with a diamond crossover that kept
MattB

MattB

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