ATT

Luckily for the next six months or so there will be no mosquitos or other annoying insects out there. Well, not much daylight either.

Has it already been 1½ years since I last time visited here? Not much has happened with the layout or the railway room in general. For the past year a certain star decorated hobby item has taken most of my time. Taking it slow has had it's advantages though. Having enough time to think about it, the layout of the city on the layout has also started to make more sense after few complete redesigns. Also, I think I've found a commercial turntable that is suitable for conversion, that hopefully allows me to finish the track around the locomotive depot area. More as soon as there is something new to tell.

Thank you very much for the kind words! Hopefully that landscape will have trees and bushes planted soon so it will be less like desert...

Those building photos are all from the city of Lahti. There are many more similar buildings there and although I haven't yet decided what buildings I'll be modelling mine after, at least some will be from Lahti. Helsinki has also some very attractive early 20th century buildings that would be interesting to use. The Finnish state railways used typical drawings for most of it buildings so that same station master's house can be found from few other cities as well. That also makes it more realistic to use them in a fictional landscape (like all mine are) as the building doesn't belong to only one specific place.

The city station now has almost all track laid. Only the locomotive depot area and two industrial sidings are still missing at one end of the yard. There are five sidings on the main yard, first from the station house is a passenger siding, the second is the main line also with passenger platform. Third is a siding without a platform for freight trains. Fourth and fifth are storage sidings, the fifth will have a platform for freight services. The main freight depot is at the extension of the first siding. The background will have a city centre with mostly art noveau/jugend buildings. There are many good examples for such buildings at the nearby city and few of them will likely be used on the layout. There is also a delicious building near the railway station that used to be the station master's house. Currently it serves as a café. Although I have not decided which buildings to use from the city, the station master's house will be included in the layout.

Some small updates about the layout project, unfortunately without photos this time but there will be some later. As I mentioned, the layout now has a proper space, a warm 8x3 metres room built inside an old cow house (if that is the correct English name for it). The optimistically named exhibition layout has a space at one of the long walls and to extend that, a permanent layout is and will be built around the rest of the room. There will also be proper work benches, paint booths and so on. On the other side of the room there will be another station that is set in a Finnish city in about 1938 with business and apartment buildings from the early 20th century art nouveau period as well as older wooden buildings. The two stations are connected by lines at both ends so that the track will eventually form a complete continuous loop. I'm still to decide whether there will be a fiddle yard between the stations on one of the line sections. Knowing that I'm not particularily interested running the trains, that wouldn't be an essential thing to have. So far a 1.2 metres wide table frame for the city station has been built as well as an 0.8 metres wide table frame between it and the exhibition layout. Track has been laid for part of the line but so far no base for the landscape has been built.

Thank you Kev! Technically I'm not back as I haven't actually left! I have been reading RMWeb daily, there has just not been much interesting going on to write about - just doing same things what I've written about already. Sand, grass, trees, bushes, repeat... Thank you, Tom! There is one track plan that is the original CAD drawing plan for the layout, unfortunately it is rather spartan in detail. There are some minor variations here and there but the basic setup has stayed the same from the beginning.

First photos taken in the new model railway room where the layout will be placed. The main interest while taking the photos was not the layout but the freshly painted walls. The top half of the room is painted so that the blue gradually lightens when nearing the horizon and also some very light clouds have been added. There will also be a low relief of trees manufactured from a panorama of photos in the horizon to improve the illusion of a large distance. A real life example of a similar background can be seen in an earlier photo in this thread from this same spot of the layout that has an actual photo added to the background.

Well spotted - majority of the early locomotives are actually British design and build. Apart from couple of test builds, domestic locomotive industry didn't properly start until 1900 and the Finnish locomotive design tradition started around the same time. In my personal opinion the early British types as well as the first own designs from around 1900...1910 are the best looking locomotives we've had.

I've always wondered why I absolutely hate the appearance of most German steam locomotives unlike the majority of the fellow Finnish railway enthusiasts and now realized Edwardian said there why. Although we were influenced by German designs luckily our own designers appreciated more the clean appearance.

There's of course no an actual need for isolated sections but as the track has already been laid with insulated joiners and each section of track wired individually, I might as well do the routing of track power with switches. That allows easier search for, say, short circuit and also proper analogue operation in case the layout is run connected with another layout that most likely won't use digital.

Why on earth there is a photo of a GW engine in this conversation!? The question of electrics have been unanswered as long as the layout has been under development. I have purchased a handheld PICtroller in the past and intended to use it as the controller for this layout. A while ago I started to put together the control panel for isolated sections of the track and point contols and the number of wires needed was closing fifty. As it is not a permanent layout but consists of sections there needs to be a solution for connectors between the control panel and the sections, as well as between the sections themselves. I have been following the development of radio control for some years now but with them there is still the problem with batteries that are virtually impossible to fit to the small Finnish steam locomotives. I am also reluctant to add a permanently connected wagon or coach to the locomotive where the battery could be located. Previously I haven't had any kind of interest for digital control but earlier this summer I decided to have a go with it to see if that could solve the wiring issues on the layout. I purchased the latest incarnation ot the ESU ECoS to see if that could serve as the control for the layout. So far the impression have been positive and it looks like the solution has been found. I installed decoders for some of my RTR models, which are mostly GW engines and powered up a couple of the sections for the first time. It probably describes how much I'm interested in actually running the trains that my previous layout from over a decade ago also had a train actually running on it for the first time now. For the connectors between the sections of the layout I purchased PC power extension cables which I cut in half resulting a six pin cable that can be used as a connector between two sections. Six pins should be enough to give three pairs of wiring, one for track power, one for point control and one reserve. As the layout will not have an actual control panel, I'll add fixed switches for each of the isolated tracks on the shelf at the back of each section where the electrics are located for possible troubleshooting and temporary analogue operation.

What an ingenious solution to ensure the volume of library is smaller than a horse - to locate it inside one.

Horse, yes. But I'd rather not measure the volume of my books with this method. I am relatively sure the wife would complain about water dripping on the carpet when I'm reading. Although - that would bring some authenticity while reading, say, Moby Dick or Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea.

Oh dear. Is the volume of a horse negotiable in this case or is there a standard value?

I've always wanted a model of an Aberdare and have been considering designing a kit of it in similar manner I've used on our native engines. Maybe I should do Kruger instead - apparentily an easy way to remove all suspicion whether I have already gone completely soft in the head. An opinion I must completely agree with. There is a government building in the nearby city from 1969 which is basically a concrete box. And yet there is something interesting in it's appearance. Perhaps my sick interest in it is caused by the unfortunate fact that there are no RTR models of our local locomotives - that's why everybody who buy theirs off the shelf opt for German prototypes. I've seen too much of those over the years and consider them much, much more ugly than the Kruger... My apologies - I'll sprinkle ash over myself and try to stay on topic in the future.

Since I have been reading this thread from the day it was started without writing a line so far it is highly inappropriate my first contribution has nothing to do with the topic, but... Am I the only person in this world who actually likes the appearance of the Krugers? Yes, the prescription of my glasses is up to date.

Oh my, how I haven't noticed this thread before? Excellent modelling! Will start reading from the page one immediately.

The edge between the trees/bushes and the long grass looked annoyingly clean in the previous photos. To correct the issue I added some flock to piece of poly fiber and placed that at the edge of the bushes. It's not perfect but unless I can come up with a better solution, that will be used elswhere too.

Unfortunately so! It's probably the biggest job for the layout. Luckily not thousands though but hundreds, yes. Over half of the 3m² area of the layout will be forest/trees. Thank you! The brown trunked trees represent pines, the others are birches, aspens and alders. I'll probably need to work on that particular area more as when pines grow together they have branches only on about the top third or quarter of the trunk. That leaves the forest rather spacious closer to the ground. Here the depth of the layout reserved for the trees is only about 20cm or less so you can see right through the pines. Hopefully a background with a print of a real forest will enhance the depth illusion. If not, something must be done...

Here's the same trees as in the post above. Some seamoss based bushes have been added. The enbankment at the edge of the forest needs some further wild flowers and such although on this kind of dry sand based ground not much is growing except grass. The plain grass doesn't look right though so the issue requires further attention.

The Tree Show has begun. The first batch of trees is ready for coating of the trunks. They will be covered with a mix of concrete plaster and glue. The foliage for pines (twelve on the bigger block in the photo) will be Heki mikroflor in different shades. The five trees on the left side will be miraculously transformed from copper to birches. Their foliage will consist of Woodland Scenics' Poly Fiber and Noch's Classic Flock. The task of making trees is rather terrifying. Here's only seventeen of them and the whole layout will require something in between 300-400 full grown trees and smaller bushes and shrubbery will be added to that.

The passenger trains on the layout will be operated with two kit built ten wheeler locomotives. The unbuilt kits are from 1980's and I've managed to find them during the last few years. Both locomotives are basically the same type, the main difference are the tenders; one has a short three axle tender and the other a four axle longer one. Currently the short tender is ready for the paint, otherwise there is still a long way to go. The original Gibson wheels have been specifically made for the kit. Unfortunately the plastic of the wheel centers is very fragile after three decades, like glass. That's why I'll replace at least the drving wheels with new Romford wheels. They are not quite as accurate but close enough. The boiler and cylinder blocks will be replaced with resin cast items, the originals for the castings will be 3d prints. Two main reasons for the replacements are the modeller's laziness and also the fact that the appearance of the original white metal detailing parts can be improved.

It's not just about the landscape, here are some examples of the rolling stock currentily under construction and ready for the paint shop. First, two examples of the luggage/conductor van type F. These were used on both passenger and freight trains as the quarters for the train staff and for transporting small freight. Next, two variations of a general purpose closed van, type Ga. This type was introduced at the end of the nineteenth century and was the standard type until it was replaced in the twenties and gradually left for secondary duties. On the left, the van has a lever operated hand brake and the van on the right has a compartment with a handbrake for the brakeman. Although Finland was one of the earliest adopters of the Westinghouse brake system (second in the world if my memory won't fail me) neither of these have it installed.

Indeed, cows are (or at least have been) a very common sight - at least if you go outside the cities to the countryside. Unfortunately nowadays only large farms are able to succeed here so it's not that common to see fields here and there with cows on them, like you would have seen still in the 1980's. I've lived all my life at the countryside so I didn't even think somebody would consider seeing cows exotic.