Replacement Windows The layout is now in its final stages of construction. For the past two years it has endured cardboard mock-ups for the windows which seperate each of the scenes. Now that the scenery is all but complete, I've finally been able to determine the exact size required for the windows and replace them. Here is an overall view of the layout without its windows, now moved to a corner of the spare bedroom....
...and here it is with the new windows in place, and lighting on...
Yes, the port scene has a name. There's a castle at the top of the hill, and a port at the bottom - hence Castleport. How dull, I hear you say, and you may well be right. If Google is to be believed, no other town in the whole of the English speaking world has deemed the name worthy of use, even though there are plenty that would qualify. Where the name does crop up it tends to be associated with mundane things like retail outlets and shopping malls.
The town itself, clim
I don't know if its the same with you folk, but I do get a bit of a kick out of finding a use for something for which it was never designed or intended. So when it came to needing a turntable for the new Tweedale appendage mentioned in the previous blog, the first thing to do was look through drawers and cupboards for 'something rotatable' that could be adapted. That something turned out to be a hand drill...
It had been bought some time ago from one of those bargain discount stores, bu
This 2nd blog installment describes the Tweedale layout in a bit more detail, with a tour of each station in turn.
As might be guessed from the name, the railway supposedly serves an area known as Tweedale, but apart from that it has no particular history or geographical location, it just is. My interest is in shunting puzzles and the layout was designed with that in mind. A number of industrial supply chains have been set up as a foundation for the layout operation, best explained in a tour
Here is the July progress report for Tweedale, which includes a method for creating dense woodland from corrugated cardboard shapes.
Firstly, the Poshington-Upon-Twee scene is now declared to be finished. The station has acquired a canopy (as befits a town of such importance), plus a coal yard, some fencing and other details. Nothing special about construction, the canopy is from card and balsa, and the coal heap from a piece of 'oasis' flower-arranging foam shaped with sandpaper.
The
Until now wagons for the facing sidings at Dale End have been rope-shunted at Slaghill, to get the engine at the correct end of the train. However the imminent scenic development of Slaghill threatens to surround the railway with tall industrial structures, making rope-shunting impractical. The simplest solution seemed to be to provide the railway with a second loco.
Luckily in the spares box I had a Tenshodo SPUD (24.5mm wheelbase), which could be used as the basis for a small industrial cr
One layout scheme that has nagged me over the years has been that of a table-top modular system. That is, small scenic boards with simple track arrangements that can be plugged together in any configuration on a table top. I suppose it's just the next level up from set-track really. I've mentioned it before in an earlier post, but it didn't get much further at the time. However the idea has never completely gone away and the system of self-contained track modules that I'm currently using for Twe
As this is the first blog post dealing with the new Tweedale layout, I'll start with some background.
The space available for the new layout is a spare room which had long been earmarked for the proper serious layout that never materialised, and has meanwhile been used as a storeroom/workshop/shed. The size of the room is 11x11 feet, though the planned layout only takes up about 8x6 feet. Well I'm not a greedy boy. Actually it had more to do with leaving access to other fixtures in t
As I continue to wallow about in Tweedale's little backwater of dubious freelancedom and outdated technology, I keep getting these feelings of deja vu. It started with the reappearance of Castleport. Now Tweemoor Yard has also made a comeback. If I'd known I would be going around in circles like this I would have hung on to the original versions! Although the new scene is not an exact copy of the original Tweemoor, there is a rather creepy family resemblance.
I had a couple o
I'm not one for doing much modelling in the cold dark days of winter, and progress on the layout is only just starting to resume after fizzling out way back in the autumn. However the trains have been running regularly during the interval, and over the past few months the layout has become a testbed for trying out a new operating scheme, which has seen the line running as a single-commodity railway for the transport of coal. I'll start by saying that it is far from being a wholly realistic simul
It's been awhile since I last posted here, but now that the days are getting lighter (and I can see what I'm doing), the modelling juices are beginning to flow again. It's time to stir out of my winter lethargy and get back to the next phase in Tweedale's evolution. First though I thought that a recap and update might be useful for putting everything into context.
Tweedale was started in 2014, as a temporary, freelance, low tech bit of fun, with an estimated lifetime of about 2 years
I was rather late getting back into the swing of modelling this year. The trouble was indecision over how to proceed, which brought everything to a grinding halt early on. While I was happy with the track design and operation of the layout, the overall appearance was a disappointment. The minimal scenery idea with which I was trying to speed up construction, by ignoring anything outside the boundary fence, hadn't really come up to expectations. I still liked the idea in principle, but I don't th
Welcome to the Tweedale Layout Blog.
Good Intentions
Tweedale has been under construction for just over a year now, but work on it has been slowing down noticeably of late. When I set out I was hoping to get the whole thing finished in a year - hopelessly optimistic in hindsight, but I suppose a useful measure of my 'production rate' for planning future projects. What was needed, I figured, was a boost in motivation. So I've created this blog, with the pressure of a regular monthly progress
For some time now the denizens of Tweedale have been clamouring for better passenger train accomodation, having become dissatisfied with the old brake van that has been used hitherto. Personally I can't think of a nicer way of travelling along lazy bylines, but there is no accounting for taste, and the Tweedalers disagree. So the railway company has finally given way and obtained a Park Royal railbus. Sadly this was found to be too long for the line's sharp curves and short platforms (both pract
The standard tension lock couplings in use on Tweedale have been an ongoing source of irritation. They work reliably enough, but they are just so darned ugly. The original plan was to replace them with Alex Jacksons, but that has now changed and I've decided to stick with tension locks but make my own from from thin wire. They seem a bit less fiddly to set up than the AJs and the tolerances are more forgiving. I'm very pleased with the results, so I thought I'd share the details below on how the
One problem with having an exhibition organizer among your circle of friends seems to be that you are constantly subjected to thinly veiled hints and an underlying pressure to provide something for a show. I used to exhibit some 20 years ago, but in the end I found that the stress involved outweighed the enjoyment, so gave it up. I have no great urge to get drawn back into all that again. So far I've managed to fend off enticements to show Tweedale, by pointing out that it was designed very much
My old copy of Tweedale Byways (1908 edition) includes a sketch of Frog Fen Lane, which I've reproduced below...
It looks a pleasant enough spot. I imagine the artist sitting happily beside the dusty road on a lovely sunny day, the only sounds being the gentle tinkling of sheep bells and the chuckling of contented chickens, with maybe the odd skylark thrown in for good measure. If you were to have wandered along and informed him that the area was to be designated as a 'g
This month's blog looks at an alternative to electro-magnetic uncouplers, plus a few progress shots on the newly started scenic development of Slaghill. As a reminder, Slaghill is the high level section at the rear of the scene below, and represents Tweedale's heavy-industrial zone.
As mentioned in last month's blog, I wanted to look into the feasibility of replacing the hook and bar couplings with Alex Jacksons. Tests using a couple of wagons fitted with AJs turned out more promising than
In the past few months since the last update, the main progress on the layout has been the addition of scenery in the Slaghill area. The photo below shows the shuttle railbus for Poshington waiting at the new Slaghill station...
Those of you who remember the old layout may have noticed that while the original Slaghill station was perched on a viaduct this new one is at ground level. To get around the discrepency I'm reasoning that there were two stations in Slaghill, buil
Tweedale was declared 'finished' over a year ago, and indeed nothing of great significance has been done to it since. It still gets operated fairly regularly though, and for a small self-contained system I've been very happy with it on the whole. However there are a couple of things I thought would enhance the operation. One is a basic sorting yard, from which trips could work out to other parts of the system. The other is a sea port, allowing the Tweedalers to join the global economy and dabble
Since the last blog the Tweemoor Yard scene has lost its post-apocalyptic nuclear winter look. Grass has sprouted from the wasteland, trees have burst forth, and buildings have popped up like mushrooms, including Mr Yardley's long awaited yard office.
As can be seen the forestry department have been busy. It was a long and tedious job that can be summed up in two words - never again. On the plus side, the newly planted ancient woodland has now become something of a local
With the Tweemoor Yard scenery all but finished, I was ready to move on to second of the three scenes on this layout extension board. I decided to tackle the (as yet unnamed) port next. This was the starting point...
The area is 17 inches wide by 13 inches deep. The trackwork consists of a simple fork, and not a very satisfactory one at that. I had originally installed a handmade point to a smaller radius than the Peco one in order to squeeze in a capacity of 3 wagons for
Development of the industrial scene has continued during the past month. The chemical works at Slaghill is now complete, and a start has been made on the lower level Grimley area. The staple diet of Tweedalers is pie and peas, and the demand is met in part by Grossman's of Grimley, whose abattoir, tannery, glue and pie factory is a major industry in the town. It has been allocated 2 siding spots out of the 6 available at Grimley, and has its own loading/unloading platform. Inward traffic compris
Tweedale Lite's exhibition outing has now been and gone. There was a pleasant friendly atmosphere at the show and a good selection of layouts. Tweedale seemed to go down well and received some nice comments. The layout ran all day without any major problems, so I was very pleased with it. Exhibiting is not really my thing, but just as a one-off, I have to admit it did make for a novel and enjoyable day out.
Here is a photo showing the layout set up at the show. The church venue was r
This month's blog looks at progress on the Dale End sawmill scene, a method for creating low relief conifers, and the latest update from The Pits.
Dale End Diary
Dale End is the upper terminus of the line, situated at the edge of the extensive Tweedale Forest. The main industry is a sawmill, supplying pit props, sawn timber, and wood waste to other industries down the line. This month a start was made on the scenery for this section of the layout. Here are some in-progress shots...
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