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Being an S&T man I’d feel very at home with an NX panel. Something for me to consider, I’m a bit limited on the number of buttons I can use. A digitrax bdl168 is about £130 and that gives me 16 inputs, I’d rather spend that again for a second only to add an extra 1 or 2 buttons John

Basic design of the control panel and how we intend it to be used, your thoughts would be highly appreciated as when you design it yourself it’s hard to think about how easy it is for somebody to learn it Method Signalled routes Press the red signal button required for the route providing it is illuminated (if not illuminated it is locked out by another route). The signal button pressed will extinguish to acknowledge the button press. Any conflicting route buttons and points buttons within the route will extinguish to show they can’t be pressed. Points will call to the correct position (indicators on the panel show there location). The signal will clear (repeat on the panel will also show clear). The signal button will re illuminated to show it can be pressed to cancel the route. Once the train has completed the route, the signal button is pressed again to cancel the route. The signal button pressed will extinguish to acknowledge the button press. The signal is replaced and the indicator on the panel will show red. All conflicting route lights and point buttons will illuminate. The signal button will illuminate bringing the panel back to normal. Train movements around the yard Providing there are no conflicting routes cleared the point buttons will be illuminated. The point indicators show the position of the points. If the points are in the wrong position the press the associated button to change the point position. The point button will extinguish to acknowledge the button press. The points will be called to the opposite of their current position. The point button will illuminate again to return to the normal state.

On the very front right of they layout we want a pub and a couple of shops to add a little interest and show the start of the town. This is the design work for the caucus and now printed. It’ll be clad in flemish bond slaters plastic card

I am convinced they were a B&Q find although they are years old as all of our layouts fit on the same legs john

Boards 2, 3, 4 and the F/Y all completed. once completed we couldn’t resist assembling it to have a look at it for the first time. It’s hard to imagine it unless your familiar with the track plan but after building 2 8’ shunting puzzles we really love the length of run on this layout

From a kit of parts to complete baseboards. Last night we had a very successful night. After several weeks of prep work to produce baseboard kits, we’ve finally put them together. This is the all of the ends and internal webs for the layout Construction started on the outer frames of the first board Board 1 completed, it takes 20 minutes to assemble each board and they are complete with all of the risers for the track bed, joining dowels and bolts to assemble them together

First prints done of the deck and test fitted. Really happy with how it’s turned out. It’s likely not to 100% correct but at least it’s a good representation

Thanks for your reply, first question is would you ship them in kit form? This would allow me to use my own wheel sets. Reading your description you had previously used Dapol wheels which the flanges are a bit big and the treads too wide for EM gauge. The pinpoints are the same as most OO gauge, 26mm point to point and the back to back is 16.5mm. Using Alan gibson wheels the measurement across the wheel faces is fractionally less than 22mm (this will be much greater with Dapol wheels) Many thanks john

I did clock you set of pollens on ebay the other week, question, can they be converted to EM gauge?

Thank you, yeah it is a shame, we put all this effort in and no one gets to see any of it.

A very successful night on the baseboard again. Tonight we’ve fitted alignment dowels and Tnuts. The outside Tnuts are only on one board and are bolting the layout together when set up, the set beneath the dowels are for bolting on the transport plates

Spent this morning cleaning all the locos ready for it’s outing later this month. This will be one of a few times Shwt will be out alongside the previous layout ‘Bicsdale’. Will be fun for is keeping 2 layouts running!

The one bit which is very evident on there which I haven’t included is some vertical ballast strips to contain the ballast within the ballast box

After the success of the plasticard mock ups for the bridge deck. I’ve spent the morning designing the finished deck. It’s to the same dimensions however it has the correct corrugated section from underneath Thanks to a Pete Williams who uploaded this photo of the real bridge in long melford. It’s helped a lot to understand the design of the deck without having to dive to the other side of the country

As well as building the boards, work continues on the bridge, I’ve now got it together including a deck, I’ve discovered a few locos including the Hornby 61xx are a bit wide to gauge so I’ve had to open up the bridge by 2mm per track to allow for the cylinders

Thanks James, yeah there’s a far bit of planning that goes into the baseboards before we even cut anything. These are the plans for board 1 which is the station end, probably the easiest as it’s all flat so all the risers are the same heights. We’ve done a fair bit of testing on the layout already with full size print outs so hopefully a lot of evolution was done then. I’ve already started on the brass signals so there’ll be no major changes now!! And these are the webs for board 1 Regards John

The final parts of the baseboards have been assembled, this means we can finally start putting it together!

Assembling the ply sandwich. all of the sides have been made as they are easy. We’re now assembling the ends and the inner web, these are all individual as they support the baseboard and the heights change with gradients

Hi Noel only just discovering your Pollen wagons, I’ve looked on shapeways and Ebay and I can’t seem to find any for sale. Do you still make these and are any available. thanks in advance John

Day 10 - ready for service!!! The bogies have been painted and weather which means she’s now complete and ready for service. It’s been good to take a nice old kit and bring it up to a decent standard, hopefully I’ve done it justice!

Hi Paul, Yes nice and simple, how we like it! I could do a sort of point detection but for the expense I don't it'll ever be worth it. On the whole it's generally pretty reliable, the only problem we found is where you'd change 4 points all in 1 go, it would occasionally miss one so you just could rely on the route setting. I've designed in a time delay now so no points are thrown together. I've seen pictures of his IECC and I guess our common knowledge has meant they look very similar although on completely different developments John

Although we had a good first outing with Shwt, we had a few things that didn't work perfectly The main one was the our virtual control panel wasn’t working correctly, so after a rethink, hopefully we’ve designed out some of the bugs. This is the new Panel, we now have individual point buttons and route buttons. If you press the route button required, the system will automatically press the right point button and illuminate the route set in blue.

Well fingers crossed for 2021 for Taunton, I know the organiser wanted to speak to me about it when we’re there exhibiting Bicsdale in October. Yes Bicsdale was completed a few years ago now and it was in Model Rail’s ‘great british model railways’ mag. I know it’s only a shunting puzzle but it keeps us busy and the brain cells active! I’m glad you liked it, it can be a bit of a marmite layout good to meet you and look forward to catching up again soon John

Day 9 - fitting the GWR American bogies and NEM coupling pockets. The end is now in sight as all that’s left to do is paint and weather the bogies

Day 8 - The monster has gone though the weathering works today. I’m really happy with how it’s looking now. The bogie sides arrived this morning as well so will hopefully get those on tomorrow ready for painting