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  • SouthernRegionSteam

    Coastguard Creek - 15 months of planning!

    By SouthernRegionSteam

    Hold on to your socks - this is going to be a lengthy one! (In fact it's so long, I've now split it into 2 separate posts - the next will be up soon...)   I think it's fair to say that you are all long overdue an update on Coastguard Creek. Due to other commitments, no real progress has been made since the last post way back in March 2021; almost 15 months ago! If anything, things went backwards for quite a while, as I kept finding more and more inspiring locations that I really wanted
    • 8 comments
    • 2,778 views
Dad-1's Blog

Current Diorama, or is it a Micro ?

I'm a fidget, I can't sit watching TV for long without wanting to do something with my hands.   Had over 35 years of scale aircraft modelling, but needed a change a couple of years ago. As with many I'd always dreamed of having a model railway, but never had the space, time, or finance. With retirement and the children all having flown the nest that just left finance, with interest rates at such low levels I thought I'd spend some money before it became worthless.   This means my knowledge o
Dad-1

Dad-1

14
Skinnylinny's Blog

University layout - fresh beginnings in N (and 000!)

After a year in university halls, in which I dabbled a little in 009 and N scale (mostly building wagon kits and two Parkside 009 coaches), I moved into my flat for the next three or four years on Monday. Considering that I had the smallest room of any of the bedrooms in the flat, I didn't hold much hope of having any space for modelling. Cue two surprises when I arrived.   The first surprise was a shelving unit with shelves 5'6" by 1'. Hmmm... enough space for a small N scale BLT?   The se
Skinnylinny

Skinnylinny

6
Protocrastinations

A short history of planning

I've been reviewing this section of my 4mm scale agonies blog http://4mmscaleagonies.blogspot.com/search/label/plans I can't believe that in the space of less than 2 years I came up with 20 schemes for layouts. Looking at them all again after not having seen them together in a year makes me realize that I'd still like to model them. All the concepts, Nuclear flask terminal, scrapyard and of course the Haven. Sometimes I wish I wasn't so creative
Ian Holmes

Ian Holmes

2
Redgate's Modelling

The leg bone don't connect to the knee bone ....

Am I glad I fitted the return crank/eccentric rod before anything else.   It doesn't connect to the expansion link too well at all, in fact by 2mm   Looking again at the drawing (a lot!) leads me to the conclusion that the motion bracket/weighshaft needs to move back. The weight drawing of course shows a Britannia type bracket and I'm using a 9F one and there are differences.   One advantage of all this rework is that the valve rod will not need shortening and clearances underneath the
RedgateModels

RedgateModels

6
Barry Ten's Blog

Centenary restaurant car and Class 117 DMU

Couple of long-term projects here: the Centenary coach is one of two that I'm doing with Comet sides on the Airfix/Hornby body - the other will be a restaurant third. The underframe and roof detail is a mix of Comet parts and plastikard/microstrip.       I used Railmatch spray cans and Tamiya masking for the paint, followed by Fox lining. I don't think Coachman will be losing sleep but it's about as good as I can achieve and will look OK in a train, I think. Still be done is final letter
Barry Ten

Barry Ten

9
wiggoforgold's Diddington blog

Fen Drayton: visual design;placement of buildings;thoughts on seasons

I've given some thought to how the finished layout will look and what buildings I need to acheive this. As I'm going to refer to where the buildings are placed on the layout I'm putting up the track plan again to save the need to refer to a previous blog entry to see where the buildings go on the plan. My aim is that a person looking at the layout will be able to get an idea of location and period without a single item of stock being present. An indication of the area modelled can come from two
wiggoforgold

wiggoforgold

2
Protocrastinations

gotta baseboard..

These two baseboards were built with the P87 project in mind but I'm not averse to using them on the P4 layout. Makes for a total layout length of 5' x 19" at the deepest, with the shorter dimension being 13". Built from 3/16" ply strips 3" deep on the sides and 1/4" ply on the tops. They are rather light and strong.
Ian Holmes

Ian Holmes

2
work bench

GNR Atlantic

This picture shows the lumps of Milliput which I have used to build up the gap on the corner of the coal rails on one side and level up the poor fit on the other side. Also some other bits filling the joins above the buffer beam.     I used a mini drill to level the tender sides on the inside, then I filed the filler flat with the body. I used a razor saw to start the gaps between the coal rails followed by a needle to open up the gap. All looks fine now.     Poor picture but shows the
hayfield

hayfield

0
The 891mm Project

Exhibition Test Track

As always what seemed like the Lydney Exhibition being "months and months" away, slowly and very surely its nearly upon us.   This will be the first outing for the 891mm project and we had discussed many times about how we would present the scale and the models as part of the demo stand.   So with a fiddle yard baseboard from a previous unfinished project a layer of Sundela board was added and set to work laying the track.   The track itself is Code 100 Peco FB, pinned down onto the slee
Bristol_Rich

Bristol_Rich

0
Gloucester Road's Blog

Gloucester road - track being relaid

Well the bike ride did not go as planned. 30 miles in had a puncture followed by a bent rim.... Oh well will try again. Came home to try and do some work on the layout and got fed up with a strectch of track that was not working, tried all i could to fix it in place and then just pulled it up.   So some track laying will commence the next week i am home.                
Gloucester Road

Gloucester Road

0
Engine Wood

Callow Lane ballast - to gunge or not to gunge?

In my previous blog entry, I referred to the fact that the ballast on the main running lines on Callow Lane would be 'grunged up', with mud/cinders mixed in with the ordinary ballast, plus weed growth.   Since making that comment, I've been checking out some photos of goods-only lines in the area (North Bristol/Gloucestershire) in the period (1960s), in particular the former MR Stroud & Nailbridge branches (the Oakwood book by Colin Maggs), and I've noted that despite these being freight-o
Captain Kernow

Captain Kernow

9
Stubby47's Micro Layouts

Drinnick Stores - the old building

Last night's modelling saw this first wall take shape. Using the Scalescenes' Dark Ashlar and window arches, I've built the main wall. So far I've left the end walls until I work out how deep I can make the whole shell, it might transpire it won't be 100% square to the backscene either.   First piccy, - don't worry, the dodgy bits will be hidden by tree foiliage !  
Stubby47

Stubby47

0
Redgate's Modelling

Motion

Not much done over the weekend, more kitchen hard labour and a trip to Alton Towers water park yesterday. We do however have the beginnings of the left hand side motion     Valve rod has been modified to have the forked end into the expansion link and seperate lifting link added within the fork. The valve rod is free to slide in the "forward" slot of the expansion link. in fact the whole lifting mechanism works as prototype at the moment   Return crank and eccentric rod next to see if
RedgateModels

RedgateModels

3
Jon020's Layout Blog

Scenic Photo/Display Board: Third ballasting attempt - 1 step forward, three steps back

Well, last night I tried with my third attempt to ballast what seems to be commonly referred to as a scenic photo plank – or what I was going to call a display board. This board is the subject of my first attempt at ballasting and suffice to say, it did not go too well.   I am also using this as a practice for scenic stuff, as this is something that I’ve not attempted before… and I’m obviously still doing something wrong.     I started this project using a 15cm wide planed plank,
Jon020

Jon020

14
Stubby47's Micro Layouts

Drinnick Stores - not another china clay layout

Following the pleasure I had building Woodbrick Road, I'm embarking on a new photo diorama / micro layout based more in the far south west, so I can have somewhere suitable to take piccys of my Beattie Well Tank and various clay wagons,   The real Drinnick Stores was never served by rail, in my imagined scenario the rails were laid many years after the buildings were constructed, so are just simple sidings into the yard. The ground has had to be cut away to provide level rail acces, so a simpl
Stubby47

Stubby47

1
TBG - Bulleid Nutters New Blog

August is here, as is another entry

My latest two commissions are with a very satisfied client (he took one of them down the pub to show his mates!!)   Before she departed I took some hi-res pictures of rebuilt Merchant Navy 35030 Elder Dempster Lines.       Before I start on this months pair (34064 Fighter Command and 35015 Rotterdam Lloyd), I've got Schools 30914 Eastbourne to complete (waiting on shedcode plate (75B Redhill) from Fox Transfers and cabside number transfers from Modelmaster). I've also acquired another
toboldlygo

toboldlygo

0
billc's Blog

Test track became a layout

Last year I set out to build a test track for N locos, but it got a mind of it's own, and became a small layout. I plan to use this blog as a way of noting what I have done, and progress as it occurs (sporadically) in building this little layout up into something demonstrable, a switching puzzle, and a test track too.   But first, I have to work out how this blog works!  
billc

billc

1
OFFTHE RAILS Projects

Triang L1 Body On A Hornby T9 Chassis

I bought a slightly damaged Triang L1 body and tender about 30 years ago (!) with the plan to put a decent chassis under it but apart from fitting wire handrails and RHS steam pipe and carving away the boiler skirt that was it until now. The Triang tender (which the L1 was forced to share with the Triang Midland 3F 0-6-0 and wasn't even accurate for the latter) was ditched long ago. The project was brought back to life when I spotted a Hornby T9 loco chassis on eBay at a very reasonable Buy It
OFFTHE RAILS

OFFTHE RAILS

2
wiggoforgold's Diddington blog

At last a track plan!

I said a couple of months ago that I would put up a track plan of the proposed new layout, Fen Drayton. I've finally sorted out the technology to do this, so here it is. The idea is to have a through station with a cassette fiddle yard at the Cambridge end, and a sector plate at the March.StIves end. I've invested in Templot, so when I can manage it I'll create a better plan in that and put it up.
wiggoforgold

wiggoforgold

1
Highclere - 2mm Finescale

Flying Banana - Part Va

Hello   OK. Third time lucky?       To me it looks much better and you can see by how much gap there is between the roof and the top of the windows how much I have lowered them. I havent figured out the best way to fill that gap yet!   Missy
-missy-

-missy-

6
Protocrastinations

What are Protocratinations?

What indeed. Protocrastinations are the ramblings of a frustrated finescale railway modeller. It will be an amalgam of my external blogs "4mm scale agonies" and the "Protocrastinator" which cover my so far unsuccessful attempts to build a finescale layout in 3.5 and 4mm scales. It's tough being a finescaler in the USA. You guys in the UK have it so easy with your P4, EM, S7 and even 2mm area groups. You can all meet once a month and share ideas and get personal contact with like minded modelle
Ian Holmes

Ian Holmes

1
Calshot 4mm - SRS's Blog

The construction of Calshot - Part Seven - Sub-frame assembly

Unfortunately carpenter Dad has been unwell recently so I've had to go it alone on the woodwork front. However, all is not lost as I'm not too bad at it myself (although not a patch on Dad!). Yesterday and this morning I started building the sub-frame. I have left it quite late but in actual fact this has been for the better. It is made from softwood reclaimed from an old layout.   To start with I marked out the longitudinal battens and worked out where I wanted the notches. The notches were t
SouthernRegionSteam

SouthernRegionSteam

9

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