Sheffield Midlands

That would be really useful Mike - thank you. In the past I have used small brass screws driven in to the baseboard top (through the cork which is glued to the baseboard top with heavy duty contact/carpet adhesive), dremelled and filed to make them inconspicuous and it has performed really well in temps from -20C through to +25C with no realignment issues. I have tried pins before and found that they have a little too much flexibility with 4mm cork (not very supportive) and then a gap (sleeper depth) up to the base of the rail itself. Concern is cork potentially getting damaged or worse - peeling up!

Hi Mike, Ive followed your build very closely and loved watching its progress, your attention to detail and I have laughed at the frustrations that I too know all to well! Ive been meaning to ask - board joins and cork..... have you experienced any damage to the cork and wished you had taken a different approach? On my build (a scale replica of Sheffield Station in OO with handbuilt track), I have a fairly unique approach to my boards (jigsaw approach!) and have cork exposed on all sides on some boards. I am wondering if maybe I should edge the baseboard tops with 4mm ply so the cork doesnt get damaged and hence rip ballast etc off.

I am going to embark on making a few (100 odd??!!??) strtcher bars with the 2 strips of metal epoxied together with the paper. I have some Colin Craig ones (now closed for business ) that I am going to try and replicate. How did you cut the N/S into such small strips? I am hoping to use brass - never chemical etched in the past and havent attempted cutting the 0.005" sheets with scissors yet to see if that would work. These are purely cosmetic. Will post a pic later of what I am trying to achieve.

all good when you live in the UK - although I am british, I live in Canada.

again - it is Plastic Weld by Plastruct but I originally wanted help with application and not a Chemistry lesson

clearly says MEK on it.... 5-15% but also has Methylene Chloride in it

a mix of unstained wood ones and plastic/styrene (concrete)

Both plastic weld is definitely MEK according to the label..... i guess I need a smaller brush than the 000 that I’ve been using. Wondering if syringes might be good to with a very fine needle?

Silly question perhaps but what methods do you use to apply Butanone / MEK (Plastic Weld) to fix rail chairs to sleepers? I may be applying too much or too much pressure but many look distinctly melted and distorted.

Thanks David! I am doing my utmost to make sure there are no ugly (in my opinion) join lines running across the layout and the scale pointwork also won’t allow it. As I plan to return to the UK one day, it also has to be fully portable for up to a 4,600 mile trip. The joints are going to disappear under concrete cable trunking, platforms etc.

You should be able to view the pictures on Facebook unless they’ve clamped that security down. im working on a website too but carpentry and joinery have taken presidency! Quite a lot of Model Railway stuff going on across Facebook too. ive added an image of the most recent AutoCAD image below: layout measures 10m (33ft) x 1.8m (6ft) excluding the storage yard (one day this will become Etches Park MPD).

The jigsaw puzzle style baseboards have proved a resounding success so far! Having drawn the entire layout out in AutoCAD (tight down to each lamp post!), I sent the baseboard pattern off to be CNCed from 1/2” ply. Once cut, I have begun adding the 90mm reinforced sides to each board. 6.5 boards complete for the south end of the station....9.5 to go to reach the north end tunnel portals! Plenty more photos and progress is added to my dedicated Facebook page - please visit, Like and favourite to get notified of further progress. https://www.facebook.com/sheffieldmidlands/

Another house move but this time to an owned house again at last with a huge basement! Abandoned the Peco route to return to 100% handbuilt track after working out logistics to get components over from the UK to Canada! Spent today building the first turnout...... number 753 which is located at the south end of the station feeding Platform 8. It is a CV8 constructed from Colin Craig components with sleepers from DCC Concepts on a template from Templot. Bit of adaptation and fiddling due to slight differences in sleeper sizes, Templot v Colin Craig but I’ve ended up with this prior to giving it a thorough clean of flux. Couple of wonky sleepers that I will address as I work along supergluing millions of cosmetic pewter chairs but apart from these and a few other cosmetic additions, here it is in all its 37cm (14.5 inch) glory....complete with stretcher bars. The massive tie bar is only temporary (testing to see which locos and rolling stock have fat wheels to determine the flangeway) and will be removed.

Sttting the mammoth wiring of the various Block monitors and signal controls today. I’m using the LDT block monitors that arrived from Germany yesterday. Here are the 6 RM-GB-8-N’s that cover the station boards alone attached to their hinged board under the station. Each one monitors 8 blocks for current draw and then registers this on my ECoS (compatible with almost all other DCC systems) which in turn transfers to iTrain (laptop software) giving me full loco/train ID and it’s location (https://www.ldt-infocenter.com). All blocks outside of the station itself are scale lengths of 1,000m in line with British Railway standards with each having up to 183 of track beyond the signal locations for overshoot.

It’s on the list of things to do but I have 50 points installed and another 30 odd to go. That will be something for another day! The guard rails can be scalpelled off and finished off with a dremel. Doesn’t take long and then the planes versions can go in. The scissor crossing at Sheffield has vast guard rails that I intend to put in eventually.

Those driver bars will be shortened when they make it to the layout - one side at least anyway as I am putting in the dummy point motors too. Have been toying with the idea of removing that bar and replacing with rods like the real thing.

All turnouts are large radius apart from the 2 feeding the crossing which I think are the ones you mean. These 2 short radius have been somewhat modified (you can tell by how close the diamond is to their frogs). The entire crossing including the double slip is one unit with no joins apart from insulation gaps). In real life, they serve Platforms 3 and 4 with local DMU services (153, 156, etc) and have a 15mph speed limit. On the model, even a stiff old class 66 will fly over them at a scale 60mph!

Opinions please..... Top or bottom?

Thanks JCL - been here 3 and a half years now but taken a while to get started with everything but well under way with stage 1. Supposed to be taking it to Toronto in May but suspect it won’t be ready. Vancouver Island is beautiful! Calgary is very white and cold at the moment but due to warm up next week. Give me a shout if you visit Calgary.

Any photos all welcome, no matter what the era is. Helps identify what things were etc.

Hi all, I moved to Canada a couple of years ago. Fortunately, most houses come with basements here, giving me a lot more space (20x20 ft!). Still in the process of reconstructing after the layout arrived by container!

Haha! These will be used for exhibiting

I am lead to believe that it is the managers/administrators/drivers/guards office/rest area for Northern rail services from and to Nottingham

Originally I had 7.5m available to fit the station in but like most modellers I eventually gave in to the need for accuracy and detail and consequently had the water tanks moved from the middle of my loft to give me around 15m x 5m to play with. The station area from tunnel mouth to tunnel mouth fits quite nicely within 9m (27ft) with 3ft radius curves at each end without losing any amount of length off any of the station area between the tunnel mouths at all. This will make it a 100% scale model. The use of Templot to draw out accurate point work which will all be hand built has proved invaluable. The baseboards have all been very carefully designed in AutoCAD to ensure joins are tight and as hidden away as possible - not easy with the complex track formation at each end of the station. The laser cutters are also going to etch the track work onto the MDF to do away with paper plans stuck to the top. It's a shame that it will all end up buried under cork/foam and ballast. I'm no engineer but probably should have been! Hoping to have all 10 sub baseboards completed this weekend so I will be able to lay them all out and join them up for a real sense of the size. Still time to convert to P4 too if I am going to be as accurate as possible!

I believe they have a similar approach on the excellent Copenhagen fields Talltim yes - it is certainly modular but I am not sure about the design and methods used