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About this blog

An O Gauge BR Branch Line Terminus Model Railway set around 1980 in or about Somerset. Ish.

 

The lock-down diorama kind of got out of control.

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Entries in this blog

The Ground Signal Projects Nears The End

It's been a while since the bog has been updated. Stuffs been going on, but musicy stuff has also been happening so the blog got a bit ignored. So, the dummies... The dummies got assembled in a sort of production line after the first one proved successful. That's seven (I did say somewhat over-signalled!) and one double one. This is essentially like the others, but with just one stand. The LED hole was drilled right through the lower one and the upper ones wires passed through. T
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Stone. Loads Of Stone. Walls.

And so to the excellent tunnel mouth and stone walling from Invertrain. The first thing was to paint everything grey (a match pot from B&Q). I kind of assumed the plaster would suck the paint right in requiring many coats, but it just needed the one. Not the greatest photo, the flash on my phone is way OTT, but here's the bit I tackled first - the tunnel mouth. After the grey had dried I got out my chalks (did I mention I love chalks now for weathering). Basically I 'drew' wh
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Paper Mache...

With walls in place, the general ground level sort of said what it wanted to do, so... And then... On the right of the main line there's a cardboard former that supports the footpath. It came out a bit higher than intended, but actually allowed the addition of another set of 'steps' - a fancy crossing will ensue at some point. A huge mountain of green and similar stuff should be arriving in about a week, that will really move things along.   View the fu
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More trees...

So the on-going tree project is .. on-going. The trees looked quite nice with just the green poly stuff, but driving round it looked not very typical of an English tree in summer, so I ordered some Gaugemaster 'leaves' in a summery dark green. I teased out the poly a bit more to get those fly-away ends so hated by hairdressers, then gave it a good spray with 20% PVA and then essentially tipped the leaves on - the more you put on the more sticks it's seems. It looked good, but turning the tree up
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More Slartibartfast Stuff.

And back to the landscape. While doing the papier mache for the other side of the tracks it turned out that the hill was a bit steeper than intended, so another set of sleeper steps went in, glued to a cardboard former as previously. The flash messing the photo up again. The steps have been weathered since - you guessed it, chalks again. Time to un-mow the grass. But then I looked at the pile of bits left over from the assorted walls and got this idea of having a
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Static Grass. Man.

This is something that just didn't exist the last time I built a layout, but Chris Nevard's photos of it's use convinced me that it's the way to go. So, over to Youtube and see how it works. Obviously the first thing is getting a static grass tool. Some googling revealed news that would not impress the bank manager, so I looked up the technicalities of how it works and got wondering if there was a Plan B short of making a Van Der Graff generator. Indeed there is, cheap and nasty bug swatter
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The Headshunt Is Done(ish)

After a deal of uming and aring about it, the headshunt has been clayed, a bit of ballast pushed in before drying, and then painted with sleeper grime. While still wet, a very dilute black was dabbed onto get the good old oily stains. The sidings will ballasted with clay and black N gauge ash ballast, suitably smoothed where walkways go and washed with sleeper grime and any other yardy colours to hand The first dummy is in place too, working and illuminated (but not at the moment!). T
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A Banner Repeater

Whilst painting the inside of the tunnel I got to wondering about Starter signals. Plan A, not that one, the other one, was to put a Section signal at the tunnel entrance but even by model railway standards the Station Limits would be ridiculously short, especially when there's quite a lot of shunting moves that would require blocking back inside the home signal all the time (an even bigger pain in the bum on a single line with tokens going in and out all day). While perusing the Wizard/MSE site
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Stuff Starts Coming Together

With the banner repeater done and installed (painted the hand-rails white for some reason, will have to change that), the far corner tree placed (but not fixed yet) and the footpath lamps in place all that needs to be done is: Fix bushes etc to hide the gaps; Put the foliage on the RBO (Ridiculously Big Oak) and plant it to the left of the tracks; Plant the other NSRBT (Not So Ridiculously Big Tree) on the right together with the tiny trees; Add some 'dry grass' and some dark
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All Moved.

So that's everything moved across. Just need to figure out how to get pics into the blog post listing rather than the default snazzy designs.    Back on the layout, more ballasting has been done, all but the RBO trees are made and placed, though not fixed yet. The signal wire posts are fitted and the point rodding chairs painted, the remaining cranks fitted. Ballast has been quarried for the point rodding to pass under the rails. Quite a lot of fencing to do, but that'll have to be wor
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Baseboard Building With Off-Cuts

A day sorting through bits of baseboards that started out life for one layout, got chopped up for use in another and are now doing it all again. Amazingly there's exactly enough! Had to stop when next doors kids go to bed, so it will be finished tomorrow. Even more amazingly, not one of the timbers fouls a point motor! This is in breach of the laws of physics and must be a mistake. And I had the loft so tidy... All done - creative carpentry rocks. No, sucks. Pretty chuffed that I got it all
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The First Parcel Arrives.

So here we are, a nice parcel arrived... Being in big kid mode, I opened the slip first. There's just something about them, isn't there? Ok, just me then. There's not a lot else to say other than in O it's pretty impressive. And big. So to the 08. Sad old me had watched an unboxing video of one, luckily as it happens, because getting it out of the foam had no obvious route. The bod in the video broke his, so with some trepidation I tried tipping it out into my hand - all was good, except one
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Inevitable Irrational Rationale For Highly Improbable Scenario

The era wasn't going to be an issue : BR blue is the best train livery ever (there, I said it), not least because that was the colour when I worked on the Railway. It is going to be set in Somerset. Or Wiltshire. Or, for technical reasons, Aberdeen. Plan A was a simple wagon repair facility but... Technology Ramble Alert ... I had bit more room than it looked, about 14ft x 3ft, with a 4ft wide bit for the last 3ft. So, out with Templot and... well, I admit it, building one set of points was g
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Old Endings & New Beginnings

So this is where it ended, and this where it started. After just putting my soldering iron down to open the door to get my nice new shiny (but not very good) guitar I never went back into that side of the loft, except to round up all the 30 odd wagons (O gauge) I'd built, brass and plastic, to sell on eBay to buy a moderately seriously expensive (but gorgeous) new guitar. Not a yard of track had been laid. All that was left was a set of home made points (the Great Plan required about twenty sets
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The Big Move

It doesn't seem I can just transfer my blog across from it's old home, so... rewind to the start of the great lock-down and hopefully things should catch up quite quickly.
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