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Hi All A little more progress on the way to getting the layout fully operational before RMweb Live. Work over the last couple of days has focused on getting the join between scenic and fiddle yard complete. Unfortunately this ended up being more work than anticipated due to a flaw in the original plan. I had attached two strips of 5mm sqaure wood across each end of the board, with the intention that this would provide a solid edge and something rigid to hold the rail ends in place. When track was laid up to the edge of the board, it was discovered the foam board base used was slightly thinner than the stripwood, resulting in the very ends of the running lines raising up and creating an incline. To rectify this, the strip wood was removed, along with a section of the running line and foam board underneath and then a new, larger piece of wood fixed in place to give a solid base at the joints and remove the slight incline. To fix the rail ends firmly in place, strips of copper clad sleeper were added at the edge of the board and traverser joins, the line laid over the joint into the yard and then the rails cut once I was satisfied the joins were level and all was soldered into place. Hopefully it will be strong enough to endure being dismantled and assembled on a frequent basis! It was nessecary to increase the clearance slightly in the backscene opening to allow taller funnels to pass through and this needs to be tidied up before the backscene gets another coat of white paint. It would have been slightly embarrassing to get to Coventry and find out nothing could actually gain access to the yard! Next on the agenda is further track laying on the traverser and fitting of the alignment wires and tubes before moving onto the second yard board and doing it all again. Finally, a short video showing the first service to run from fiddle yard to scenic board under its own power. Not very exciting as videos go, but you get the idea! Cheers all, Tom. Ropley is a N Gauge Model using 2mm Finescale Easitrac modelled after the real location on the Mid Hants Railway Watercress Line.

Evening all, I'm trying to do one post a week in the run up to RMWeb live. Just a quick one this week, hopefully more coming soon. Replying to comments from last week's installment: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/351/entry-14551-ricoh-preparations-victoria-bridge-lighting-carriages-and-photographers/ richbrummitt: (edit.. 2m's and 2t's) That young gentleman in the second picture looks very happy. How old is he now and what impact has he had on modelling progress? He is just nine months, and is taking a healthy interest in modelling, to the extent that certain modelling supplies have migrated to higher shelves! He stays with his slightly older cousins while Katie and I are are at work, who are involving him in some epic Thomas the Tank Engine toy train set constructions, which he enjoys. Modelling process in recent months has been set back more by working away from home so much (1:1 scale railway engineering....) and a house move. The latter has had a silver lining in a little office room that is all mine, with a long, unencumbered wall along one side just waiting for a layout. paulprice: As an LMS man I must say the LNER coaches look great any chance of some more photos? Here you go. All based on Dapol underpinnings. The Great Northern carriage is a bit of an approximation with some home printed panels, the open 3rd is an Ultima etched side, I'm quite pleased with the wooden paint effect. Bits of humbrol, and detailing with, of all things, a black biro... To finish, some freight. See you all soon!

In my previous post, I described a little about the location of North Leigh station on the branch line to Witney, originally planned in 1849. For some reason, this line was omitted from Bartholomew's 1/2inch map of 1903 but I have restored it to its rightful position, in order to show the location of the station and its proximity to the tunnel through the ridge of high ground between North Leigh and New Yatt. The later, cut-off, which allowed trains to run directly from the Worcester line towards Witney is not shown on the map but it diverged close to North Leigh station, to join the OW&W main line near Wilcote. The map clearly shows Wilcote Manor, home of Sir John and Lady Wilcote, plus their lively daughters. This region of the Cotswolds was long famous for its many stone quarries, perpetuated in the name of the nearby village of Stonesfield. Some of these quarries were served by a narrow gauge (2' 6") railway, with an exchange dock at North Leigh station. Unfortunately, all these lines seem to have been omitted by the map-makers, and even diligent searching will fail to find any traces on the ground, today. My own model, therefore, seeks to re-create this lost world and provide a glimpse of what life might have been like in the area, towards the end of the 19th century. The following photograph shows the chute that was used to transfer stone from the NG railway to the main GWR system. A Hudswell Clark 0-4-0ST has recently taken over from horse power, for shunting wagons under the chute. On the upper level, a stone train has just arrived from the quarries, ready for unloading. The quarries run along the edge of a steep scarp slope, above the town, and the following scene shows the small workshops nestling under the much-quarried slope. Small farms dot the countryside immediately below the quarries and the railway also serves to bring goods and to carry animals, and occasionally people, to and from these scattered communities. The sheep-nibbled turf is represented by dyed lint, whereas the longer rough grasses are made from pieces of a very old long-haired camel coat, suitably dyed and painted! In addition to the quarries, the NG line also serves a saw mill, since there are extensive woodlands in the area of Wychwood Forest. The saw-mill has a curiously 'Black Forest' look, probably a whim of Sir John's. The following scene shows a short train of bolster wagons, which has delivered several large logs to the mill for sawing. The water-wheel that powers the mill can be seen towards the right of the picture. Later, the sawn timbers will be taken to the yard, on the upper level at North Leigh. There is still a lot of work to be done in all these areas and a large part of my purpose, in taking these photos, is to help me visualise possible ways ahead. The back-scene behind the saw-mill does not yet exist - just a plain white frieze - but I intend to print something similar to the scenery that I have added to the photo. Another aspect, revealed by the photos, is a distinct lack of human activity! I have a substantial backlog of painting to do, both of several sets of figures and of various horse-drawn vehicles, which I hope will add more 'life' to these scenes. Plenty to keep me occupied Mike EDIT : I felt that I had cheated a bit with the last photo, so I printed the back-scene onto some sheets of A4 and stuck them onto the frieze. Here's a genuine photo - un-retouched! This is an example of using test photos to suggest the way ahead 🙂

Well, rather like Topsy, Forster Street just sort of grew, my original plan was to build the layout from 3 equally sized boards to give a maximum length of 9 feet, however when I visited my friendly timbre merchants, I managed to get boards measuring a total of 10 feet. Not a problem I thought, they will still fit in the spare room, as its 11.5 feet long, and it gives me a little more railway well what I have come to realise now, is that the 1.5 feet of space between the end of the layout and the bedroom wall is not that big to a six foot seven Gorilla like me. Not a problem I thought, if I fix the layout on tall enough legs, it will not be a problem to duck underneath it when I need to access each side, then I realised that maybe an exhibition layout set 5.5 feet from the ground is not a good idea Anyway today I moved board number 3 from the Kitchen table to the spare room to be joined again to the other two boards, and what an exercise this turned out to be, after much swearing, frustration and trapped fingers, the boards where finally together (not due to constructional errors, just due to a Numpty like me) The problem now is that I have to crack on with the following job list before its exhibition debut, just a short list, so not a problem 1 Completely re-wire the layout, should be simple its a simple track plan. 2 Rebuild the storage yard to include space for the branch line 3 Give the backscene on board 3 another coat of paint to tie the colours in with the other two boards. 4 Get the Domestic Overlord to finally built the "promised" trees 5 Fit some sort of automatic de-coupling to allow hands free shunting in the goods yard (I may just glue staples to the peco couplings and use perm magnenets) 6 Sort out the exits for the main lines and the branch through the backscene 7 Sort out the final list of trains to fill the storage yard 8 Ballast the last remaining odd section of track 9 Weather everything in site 10 Add as many of those small details as I can in the time I have left Easy or what, I really don't know what I'm worried about (please help your suggestions for any of the above would help) Until the next time as ever Happy Modelling

Well the next couple of weeks will see a concerted effort to get a load of things done and finished in time for a rather well publicised show in the Coventry area.....yes that one! One thing to get sorted recently is the Faller road vehicles, a recent project has seen a Base Toys Bristol BRS wagon married to a Faller truck chassis, fairly easy to do by fitting the cab and altering the box van body to a Luton type with an over cab bit, with a bit of careful sawing this was done without having to resort to a repaint. One thing that's always 'bugged me' is the speed of the Faller chassis, I did have a chat and was given a sheet explaining how to slow them down with Paul Derrick and Paul Windle at the York show, however being a bit thick where electronics are concerned I'm afraid it was straight over my head..... So I thought I'd take the approach Andy Ross (Headingly Depot) kindly explained to me, that of substituting the 3v (?) Faller battery for a 1.5v AAA one, well easily done and by using a battery holder fitted into the original battery space in the Faller chassis easily altered back should I ever need to. A quick test run proved that it runs considerably slower. as they'll only be run intermittently battery life etc is not an issue and having a set of rechargeable AAAs to hand means that if anything it's easier than using the fixed Faller battery. I'll need to put some form of railing up as the Faller vehicles turn 90 degrees on the layout and if they lose the guide they'll be heading 4ft straight down. I'm sure much fun will ensue on their first outing at the Ricoh Arena, fortunately there is no interference with the cyclist so that's one thing less to worry about! Quick pic and test video.......

Rather than getting on with long term layouts I've allowed myself to be distracted again. Is it a case of a change is as good as a rest ? Anyway I ended up with a requirement for a pub to fill an awkward corner. The whole thing, a corner filler needing to be an odd shape meant bespoke window frames made from microstrip & scrap plastic. As yet not fitted due to my satin black is being slow to dry, but here is the current state of play. I've come to the conclusion I love diorama scenes. No electrics needed, no turnouts, in fact little if any stock. Just hours of fun, cutting, scraping, glueing, painting to make that 3D picture floating in your minds eye ! Need to get the railway set up as my 3 year old grandson will be here soon. Dad-1

Hi All, With RMWeb Live on the horizon I have, after the dust settled from moving house, got Victoria Bridge back home for some pre show improvements and adjustment. Big thanks to Wyre Forest MRC for keeping the 'shelf' and associated bits out of harms way over the last few weeks! I like the arrangment in the Ricoh floorplan, with Victoria Bridge in between the likes of Cliffhanger and Kinlet Wharf in the Scenery Zone. Presumably sanwiched between these rather more epic layout presentations I will be there to show what can be done with similar ambitions but rather less space! Victoria Bridge has seen some photographers gather in advance of September at the Ricoh... probably fair to say that the variety of trains count as a gala... these are not a great feat of modelmaking, rather a box of Noch figures picked up on holiday the other week at Pecorama. Luckily the newest member of our family has indulged his parents by pointing, grinning and genuinely appreciating the things he was introduced to (whether trains, aeroplanes, art galleries...) Good lad! Back the the micro-layout; you'll recall the 'box' is illuminated with blueish LEDs along the 'roof' sourced from a caravan supplier. These bathe the sky at the back with a blueish, bright light, but it can look a bit cold in isolation.. The plan, according to this evening's experiments, is to add a directional more yellow source of 'sunlight' to warm up the scene, and pick up the details of the bridge. Other recent developments have included modified additions to the teak set, with open thirds appearing, plugging a gap in the Dapol range with some Ultima etches. Tomorrow I hope to add some 'traffic' in the sky too..... Looking forward to meeting as many RMWebbers as possible at the Ricoh, do come and say hello, don't worry, so long as all the electricity ends up in the right place the layout doesn't need much operating... it is more of a talking point!

As a member of MERG. I have been looking at the MERG Stepper Motor Turntable Operation for long time. after reading through the forum, I decided to have ago. I ordered the pre programmed PIC and the PCB from MERG, and the components from RS Online and Rapid. I made a start on the PCB putting the components on that was not to bad as in the component list there is a list of numbers and that correspond to the PCB. I have not put in the IC's until I have done the first test. This the back of the PCB showing the soldered components. I am still waiting for some compasitors to come, but when I get come I will put them on the PCB then fingers X'st test the board to if all is ok, then I will put IC's in. Then I turned to the control hand set, there is no instructions on how to build the box as it is to your own preference but there is a wiring diagram that you can go by. The box I got from Maplins, I had to plan out were I was going to put the components, the 16way hex switch (the postion switch)I soldered to a peace of stripboard and drilled the hole for the shaft to go through the I attached to the box, then I drilled the holes for the switch (haed and tail) /push button (run/stop) and the LED, as you can see on the stripboard I had to cut the copper strip to isolate the two soldered joints, Here is what it looks like inside the box. The H and the T is for the head of the bridge or the tail of the bridge to go to the place you wish to go to. The top end of the box I drilled two holes for the wires from the PCB to go into the box and soldered to the stripboard make a note of what colours go were, the other end of the wires, I have put the socket pins on the wires then put the right colours in the right place in the plastic housing so each wire corresponds to the right pin. I used CAT5 cable complete with plugs on each end, I found it cheaper then buying the cable by the metre. Here is some pictures of the finished hand set. Some pictures of the Stepper Motor and gearbox This is as far as I have got for the moment. I will try and take a video of the operation when complete Wednesday 20/08/2014. I got the capacitors yesterday and soldered them in this morning, I then connected to a 15v transformer and done the test and the test went first class know I was able to put the IC's in there sockets plugged in the two plugs from the hand controller and the stepper motor and all is first class IT WORKS, I am a very happy chappy. I have done a video and have uploaded onto You Tube. Click on the link below to see the video. .