I need to start with a little explanation of this layout. Planning was well under way towards the end of 2018 but no start was made until August 2019 once our house move was completed and I had the time to do all those things that need doing after a move.

The layout has been on the RMWeb before but was removed due to "life" getting in the way. I really want to get back into my modelling now and share what I have been up to. My first blog entries will therefore be familiar to some as they recap the start I made a couple of years ago. They are only intended to show the whole story of how Northumberton has progressed. When I used to hear that a railway took 10 years to be mainly finished I wondered why - now I know the answer!  I'll pop these catch up entries up now and again rather than swamping the blog entries in one go - hope that's OK.

I did far too much planning, well in my case this has been years with major changes to plans along the way. I've tried to think of everything, you can't by the way, but you read about mistakes or pitfalls and how to do or not to do things from magazines, forums, YouTube or any other resource you care to mention but the problem is remembering all this as you go. I've tried to keep files, bookmarked web pages and I keep a notebook of precious information gleaned from research, the latter has proved to be the most useful. Too much planning can be stressful and indeed starts to prevent you from building anything due to the fear of "getting it wrong", but now I have found the cure to this and its by making a start with the understanding you can only do your best and that some things will inevitably cause you problems. After all if you look at building the entire layout, in my case about 4.5m x 3m in an "L" shape, it can be incredibly complicated and requiring a myriad of skills.

So this is how I've started. The home for my layout is a garage; this one is built in and benefits from a cavity wall all around. I decided to build a semi-permanent wall across the main garage door entrance. This started with insulation to the door itself, then a damp proof membrane sheet fixed across the whole opening followed by a stud wall packed with insulation board followed by plasterboard that has a vapour barrier backing. I did not board the whole end wall as I wanted to leave it possible to remove this wall if necessary; however I have decorated this and painted the whole of the garage internally white. 

Then I tidied up!

This was followed by my overhead layout lighting. Why struggle over your layout when you can do this before it exists? A few years ago I purchased a Uhlenbrock Intelilight system, I see it's very expensive now but I got it as part of a deal at the time and for a good price. I have the LED version and it is basically an LED bar that simulates night and day - fading between the two producing sunset and sunrise colours. It is DCC controlled on my Z21(Roco/Fleischmann) controller. I added a thunder and lightning unit to this which has a loudspeaker and a LED lamp which produces the lightning. The speaker produces the rain and thunder sounds. This sort of thing is more common in Europe than here in the UK but at one point I was considering a continental layout and so did quite a bit of research into this. Also as I am so interested in the landscape I thought this effect would show it off well. In addition to this system I am also installing a basic LED strip light of 6m - the set I found has a remote controller which not only allows dimming of the lights but also the ability to change the "temperature" of the LEDS from bright white to soft amber.

I will be spray painting the background sky and clouds - this will be interesting as I haven't used an airbrush before - I've seen a YouTube video - how hard can it be! See my next blog entry!

Below are a couple of screen shots showing the track plan and a rendered 3d image of the layout. I find SCARM really excellent for track laying, flexi track works really well especially using the tool box. If anyone has any questions on SCARM I would happily try to help. Where I find SCARM a little more frustrating is in the development of the landscape and also the fact that you have to create any buildings etc. using some very basic tools. Although I am now able to build layouts quite quickly they are often populated using my own library of parts. E.g. I have constructed representations of the Flying Scotsman and Mallard together with some coaches (all to scale length) so that I can check train lengths in platforms etc.