Bochi

One of the fun things about the Port Road is trying to work out what goods traffic would have been seen on it in the 1935-45 period. Photographs are hard to come by: the vast majority of pictures I've seen are post-1948. There are not so many from the 1930s, and virtually none from the war years: no doubt because taking photographs of railways, and especially those used extensively by troops, would have been a national security issue! Swan gives the impression of a wide variety of wagons, with horse boxes from "all over the country" as well as a fair number of private owner wagons in addition to standard LMS and ex-Caley stock. Most photographs of all periods show a predominance of vans and cattle wagons - milk, meat, fish and general goods. But what about the London milk train? Or motor spirit? Shell had a refinery at Ardrossan with those early Shell tank wagons. Did any of that make its way to Newton Stewart?

I am glad to report that the first track not just for testing was laid today!

Looks really good, that simulation! The layout has been dormant for much of lockdown: I got involved with other matters and although the virus passed casa Bochi by, there were health issues. On the bright side, my choice of point motor was simplified by the return of Cobalts to these shores so I splashed out on a dozen of those. Now to get on with laying that fiddleyard.

Newton Stewart had a little bay siding on the down line which was used for horse traffic. Originally it was a stabling point for locomotives, before the engine shed was built.

There is a middle ground on files which is to run a Kickstarter-type campaign for them. Say you are offering a range of Caledonian wagon kits (hint hint). You have developed a series of files for them: some are just little tweaks on each other, some are very different from each other. You calculate how much would be a decent recompense and you set that as your funding goal. So perhaps £30 for the set of files, you want to sell a minimum of 300 packages, so you set a goal of £3000. When the target is reached, you will send the files to your customers. This seems to work for a number of fantasy miniature producers where it's just one or two people with a home-based cottage industry. Perhaps they have a bigger market. If so then perhaps you need an open-ended subscriber campaign so that you are prepared to wait six months before getting enough orders to make it worth your while. This is of course like some of the dealer campaigns for new locomotives where they are, in the first stages, testing interest. I do think people can be a bit precious about the sanctity of their files. The major producers of fantasy/wargaming terrain seem to be doing all right - I've never passed on the many files I've bought and I have never seen anybody offering them. The two biggest providers (Printable Scenery and Fat Dragon Games) have licensing systems to enable people to sell models on eBay or Etsy or tweaked and modified files via online sites such as DriveThruRPG.

Memo to self: try to avoid humping 18mm plywood boards by yourself in future. Especially when trying to race against the threatened rain...

Thanks! Nice to see it in colour. I spy some proud kilt-wearing enthusiasts standing on the signal platform!

It's been a few weeks since I reported progress. During that time I've wrestled with DCC, not having used it before, and blown some old loco motors I was hoping to use. Old motors can be replaced, though, I hope. Also I've been focussed more on the workshop side, with a bench, some tools and sharpening gear and so on. I built a 4ft diameter test track for DC testing and I've laid cork for the fiddleyards and cut out on of the turntables with a router. So next up is to mount the turntable so it's level and moves smoothly. I may finally get to connect some cable at the weekend, but don't hold your breath! I am doing the fiddleyards first because I'm out of practise and they are more straightforward than the scenic area. Also I mean to use them for testing Sprat and Winkle couplings. As 26Power advises above, best to make sure I get on with them before committing to the arrangements on the scenic side. I also have to commit to point control. I'm inclined towards MegaPoints and their servo motor systems. It doesn't look as if the slow motor companies are going to have stock any time soon although I bet one could rig something up with those tiny Chinese geared motors.

Excellent! Now I'm really going to have to work hard to keep up! Your plan looks good: you've got all the main features and I admire the way you've fought to get the overflow siding into the engine shed area. At 30" ruling radius (and a larger area) I couldn't manage it and keep the platform length I wanted, although if I can shave a few inches off there, I still might squeeze it in. I briefly considered a train stacker and felt similarly about my carpentry, although I was tempted to lash out on one of those digital jobs which require a second mortgage. Common sense reeled me in and I went for two side by side yards with end turntables and a linking road for a continuous run. It looks as if you too will need the arms of a gorilla to reach the loading banks on the far side of the goods shed. Are you going for automatic couplings?

Old Hammant and Morgan controller. Tests fine on the multimeter.

Sigh. I've built a test track, a circle of 4th radius set track on a nice solid frame. The Compound runs fine forwards but stutters going backwards. I fiddled with the blanking plate to no avail A previously unused (but quite old) tender driven 4F ran fine for half an hour forwards and then after one good lap in reverse the tender started smoking and now it won't run at all. I'm burning through locomotives just trying to test the little wretches on DC! (It's clearly not the track circuit which is very simple and in any case, ancient warhorses such as my GWR pannier and Bachmann Royal Scot ran in well both ways).

Latest is that I'm putting together a DC test circle so I can properly run in the locos. Framing a 4' x 4' baseboard for it atm.

I agree, it's probably coincidental - but confusing for a noob! It may be of course that I knocked something while fitting/unfitting the decoder and blank. That seems the most likely explanation.

It's on DC with the blanking plug in place but it still has this graunchy sound coming from the loco when it runs in reverse - sweet as a nut forward though. It is much, much faster on DC (old H&M kit) and doesn't stop and start but powers on through while making its unpleasant noise, which I guess might be a pickup issue? I'll just note that the blanking plug sits in the tender with this model, I've never had the main loco open.

It was running OK on DC before I fitted the decoder. Now it isn't running OK on either.

I got an Ultrics multimeter and once I worked out which end was up and deciphered the Chinglish instructions, got a straight 14v AC reading off the tracks.

Thanks for all the advice which did enable me to track down some mistakes - hadn't installed one decoder properly after all, and misunderstood some aspects of programming. I still have a mechanical issue with the 4-4-0 which has developed a stutter in reverse. It runs (but with a stutter) on DC but in the much slower DCC mode it grinds to a halt with a horrible ratchet sound as the motor, presumably, is spinning or trying to spin without engaging properly.

Will try that in the morning, thanks.

Multimeter on order. One of my other hobbies is building stuff out of Meccano. The old Meccano E20R and E15R motors ran on AC or DC. Rugged beasts.

Thanks Ray. I don't have a multimeter. I do have some motors somewhere which run on AC or DC current so I could see if those turn. I appreciate that it's all floundering in the dark. Alas, no, I don't have access to a "known to be working" DCC loco.

I recently decided to take the plunge into DCC, not least because I want to do double-heading on my Port Road layout, and have an operating team with drivers and signalmen working separately. But I can't get it to work at all. I have a Prodigy Advance 2 and a couple of Zen Black 8-pin decoders. I fitted them to a "DCC Ready" Hornby Compound and 2-6-4T after first checking that the locos run OK on DC. The hand unit and its box power up fine. The programming track has power. The chips are well seated in their sockets and the orange cable is in the marked corner. But when I try to READ the address of the chip I get nothing back. When I try and program CV values into it I get "SEND" messages but when moving to a main track, the locomotive doesn't move and the DCC controller doesn't seem to recognise there's anything there. I get the same result with both locomotives. I can't help feeling I'm missing something but the more nothing happens, the more frustrated I get and the less sense the manuals make, because, of course, I'm not seeing the results they say should happen when I go through the prescribed steps whether they are the steps in the Gaugemaster manual or in the Zen V12 booklet. Does this strike a chord with anybody? What could be going wrong?

Hi Iain, First up, I noticed the word "Orangery". If you haven't already considered this, you need to think about the environment and particularly the amount of sunlight and extremes of heat that might be involved. My old conservatory got immensely hot in Summer! - and bright sunlight will be unfriendly to both RtR models and self-painted models and scenery. So if you haven't already looked into dealing with that, you should do so before you begin. Rails, being metal, expand and shrink with temperature changes just as the real railway does: so does wood. On the layout design I won't make any concrete suggestions because I'm not especially experienced and particularly with O gauge. If you were planning a 00 gauge layout you could certainly have all the things you want and your ideas lend themselves to a set of cameo layouts strung together. Iain Rice's book "Designs for Urban Layouts" has several small goods yards and a couple of engine shed designs that might inspire you and could be worked up to the larger scale. I don't know how one would go about fitting a continuous run into that space at 5'6" radius - it leaves virtually no room for anything except the oval. I wonder if an overhead railway might work though, quite separate from the goods/MPD setup, perhaps with a simple shuttle service? Rather than go round and round you could automate it to go back and forth in a U?

Iain Rice is always writing about "Layout Design Elements" which are characteristic reference points to fix the layout in a time and place. I do think it's possible to make a list of such things whether or not you're modelling a real location or a "might have been" and create an overall effect from them. I certainly hope it's possible to capture atmosphere in spite of compromises! I am currently beginning a layout depicting Newton Stewart in Galloway. My feeling is that as long as the layout plan can be operated prototypically then compression, thinning out sidings (perhaps so the rest become more accessible) and the exact positioning of some elements is not so important.

Iasou Manos! I remember the Greek railways from around 1979-1982 when I was a student and then an English language teacher in Athens and Thebes. There are some really spectacular routes. I've often thought about a Greek layout but been put off by the lack of RTR stock available, especially for earlier periods. My favourite was the metre gauge Pelopponesian railway which I think is a fantastic subject with dramatic scenery. Has anybody ever modelled the ex-Us Army Baldwin MacArthur locomotives that ran on it?

The dock wall looks really good!