nharding99

We are making final preparations for our show on Saturday 8th April at White Waltham near Maidenhead. We will have 13 N Gauge layouts on display of various sizes and eras - from our large club modular layout with 4 track main line to a layout in a suitcase and plenty in between. There will be trade support, a Models for Heroes display, our N Gauge Society mini stand with lots of society information and, of course, refreshments too. You can find plenty of information at: https://bagladdies.weebly.com/2023-exhibition.html We'd love to see you there!

Some minor changes, 3 buildings have been added to the layout in an effort to extend and balance out the existing industries. In the lower yard a builder's merchant and saw mill have been added (both MMR kits). The signage (Cox and sons) is a tribute to my mother who is no longer with us, using her maiden name - I am one of those sons! In the upper level timber yard an additional timber store has been added (another MMR kit). Below are a few photos. The layout has been running well enough. It will appear at the N Gauge Society Berkshire Are Group exhibition near Maidenhead on April 8th if you're in the area and would like to see it in the flesh. All the Best Nigel H

Probably the last post in 2021. This year the layout has seen one or two refinements and improvements, some of which are shown below... A Hunslet seems to have sneaked into the goods yard with some coal wagons. You can see that the yard has recently been made more grimy with some darker patches of colour. I felt that the grey tone throughout much of the layout was previously a bit too uniform and similar. This class 122 needs to have it's destination blind updated. It is passing Trinity Road signal box which now has interior lighting. The 122 is perhaps not a typical south Manchester unit but when there are shortages anything can be pressed into service! Detailing the rolling stock has become something of a preoccupation. Here a bolster wagon has been loaded with some Finetrax lengths of rail tied down with chains as part of an engineers train that is still being developed. I can highly recommend Noel Leaver's book "Advanced Modelling in N gauge" which discusses this topic in some detail. And in a similar vein, here are some NGS kits that have been made up into freight stock. The tractors (from Osborn's Models) have since been chocked! That's all for now but rest assured that the improvements will continue in 2022. Happy Christmas everyone and thank you for reading!

It looks like the layout's latest outing was captured on video too (not by me I hasten to add).

I was in two minds as to whether to add working street lighting to the layout. I always think that less is more and lighting can be overdone. However, encouraged by my wife's predilection for the working yard lights I bought some street lights from Layouts4U at the G.E.T.S. last weekend and thought I would try them out. Removing the old metal posts did, of course, damage the pavements so they had to be recut and re-applied. I decided to carefully bend the arms to make a right angle at the top of the new posts, considering that this was a bit more in keeping with the style of 1960s Britain . I also painted them to tone down the shiny plastic. I then painted the LEDs yellow to tone down the very bright white light effect. Here is the original against my modified version. I did clean up the paint work later! In the end I'm quite happy with the result. See what you think...

The layout has been set up for a few days and I have performed a few maintenance tasks (as well as having lots of fun operating trains). I have experimented with creating a short video using my GoPro. This "on the tracks" view gives a slightly different perspective so here you can see a bit of shunting in the yard. There's nothing like double heading to make sure that you bridge any unintentional dead spots (which are thankfully rare and usually due to unclean track!). But if it's late at night and you can't be bothered to clean the track then it's the way to go! Thanks as ever for reading! Nigel H.

I'm not sure exactly whose sound recordings Farish use for their factory fitted sound DMUs, quite possibly their own sources or combination. It's not YouChoos as you have also concluded. Digitrains is close and I'm a happy user of that for my DMUs but clearly there are one or two differences. Maybe legomanbiffo/DC Kits but if you look at their functions list that differs from the Farish list of functions: https://www.dckits-devideos.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&path=221_251_229&product_id=1506. Of course functions can always be remapped to use whichever F key you like. I hope that helps a little Nigel H

Some very interesting ideas Paul. Moving away from signalling for the moment... at the top of the hill from Bradenham, in Walter's Ash, there is an RAF base. I'm sure you could use this to justify some traffic and perhaps depict travelling servicemen with kitbags on the station platform. Cheers Nigel H

Yes, I have to say it has exceeded my expectations. Of course I had a great example layout to follow What of the future? Well, I will continue to refine things over time. I've no desire as yet to replace it or build another layout. Maybe I could join a club as we fully ease out of lockdown and give the club layout experience a go. My wife wants to know what to do with the layout when I have gone. I've told her that it worries me when she talks about me in the past tense. Hopefully I have a few decades left yet

I have a few updates to report on, nothing major, just further refinement to try and improve things. Some of the fiddle yard extension track was laid quickly and roughly as you can see in this image! The original track was largely glued and then ballasted on the viewing side, I have addressed the untidy and potentially troublesome sections by drilling deeper holes to take a track pin without bending it. I have just about completed the factory on the upper level that was a replacement for a terraced section. It is listing slightly to the right so the pavement and foundations may be relayed to improve its appearance. The intention was to add a bit more height at the front of the layout. You can see it in this shot: In the following view of the goods yard you can see some Stanier coaches behind a class 25. I do need to get better at weathering and here is a case in point. The two maroon coaches are pristine and do look somewhat out of place. The custard and cream one has had a watery wash of weathered black acrylic paint (with the excess dabbed away afterwards). This does reduce the lustre and is going to be the way forward for some modest weathering. Weathering is one thing I need to improve upon, maybe one day I will get an airbrush and dabble with that but for now dulling down some of the colours and gloss does seem to improve things. That's all for now. Thanks Nigel H

The layout has been set up on a couple of occasions this year for operating sessions. There have been one or two scenic improvements... The paving at the station bus stop was really much too narrow so now a wider bus stop island has been created along with a Farish Scenecraft bus shelter. I was never quite satisfied with one of the buildings at the right hand side of the layout so that is in the process of being replaced by a Gaugemaster brewery building (posing as a factory). This still needs to be better dry brushed and weathered but it's taller than the old building and to my mind leads the eye in a bit better. And finally, a new loco, the Farish 8F looking very much at home with a coal working. Thanks Nigel H

Thanks Matt. I have a number of Western Region locos that are all itching to make an occasional appearance!

Thanks Steve. All the best to you too!

2020 has seen the addition of detail and hopefully more finesse to the layout. I'm now starting to experience that "layout is never complete" concept. I'll continue to improve things where I can. We are now in December and fifty years ago I'd be eagerly counting down the days to Christmas and be hoping I'd get a few Triang Hornby items; it must be around 50 years ago that I got an EM2 and AL1 (not at the same time!). It's pleasing to have 2 electric locos (2x AL6) on the current day layout. Here's a short image gallery with some comments to round off the year... It's all gone a bit Western Region on platform 1 as a visitor trundles through. Maybe it has been back to the factory at Gorton for some reason and has been pressed into service! This is an area that needs some more refinement. I have added Belisha beacons and a figure carrying an umbrella - this is south Manchester after all! - but I'm not happy about how that pedestrian crossing sits up. The road is too bumpy so I think that at some stage I will take steps to smooth it down. A BRCW type 3 passes through with an oil tank train, mostly made up of the excellent Revolution B Tanks. The control panel is illuminated and the fiddle yard is pretty busy. Increasing storage capacity with the additional long sidings has definitely made things easier. And finally, a class 04 on a short trip working. Thanks for reading! Nigel H.

As mentioned a little while ago some of the overgrowth and yard clutter have been built up. You can see how the grass has spread with weeds and grass closing in on the building structures. We now have some more goods packages on the cobbles and some odd bits of debris (such as by the boiler house). In its initial form I think that the goods yard was a bit too clean. More clutter will follow. Also the newly painted AL6 looks right at home on the layout... You can see that I forgot to refit a couple of the engine windows so that will be fixed soon. Thanks Nigel H

Some progress on the early AL6 this week... The spare body shell shows the starting point. Maybe one day I'll try a version with spray paints but for now the newcomer isn't looking too bad. Onwards and upwards! Thanks Nigel H.

Another layout project on the go... an AL6 in early rail blue with no warning panel. So, I have 2x AL6s for the layout. One (not shown here) was resprayed into early BR livery with small warning panel by Mercig Studios and they did an amazing job. However, I don't have limitless funds so thought I'd have a go at an early livery AL6 without warning panel (the loco on top of the paint pots). It's a straightforward colour scheme, sounds easy right? I was so confident that I purchased a spare body in case I made a complete mess of it!! That's what you see in the foreground. Anyway, I mixed the blue shade myself. It is brush painted, there are still a few areas to touch up. Transfers from Fox are on order, let's see how it turns out! I do think it's extraordinary that Dapol hasn't yet released this loco in its original livery but I'm not going to let that stop me! Although you won't appreciate it from this image I have inserted a sound decoder into each chassis (a bit of a squeeze for the speaker and I didn't want to remove the PCB or mill out the chassis so it is placed in the rear cab and won't be visible in forwards operation). These bad boys really have a roar now! Cheers Nigel H.

It's half term week and the domestic authorities have been amenable to the layout remaining in situ for a few days. Following up on an earlier post here is a shot of the recent NGS van kits that have now been completed. The shock van and loriot had been previously built. The 3 latest additions (vanwide and 2 standard vans) came out quite well. Only the mineral wagon is not an NGS kit. Cheers Nigel H

Just in case you ever wondered this is what the underside of the board looks like... I'm not the tidiest wiring practitioner! I'm going through the process of tidying this up, not least of all to support the wire and fix it to the baseboard so that it doesn't pull at all on any of the connections (I have some adhesive wire tidying clips on order). You can see that I have added some labels to the wiring and I do have a wiring document which details the connections. The red/black wiring is the track bus. In addition there is an accessory bus which runs power to the control panel then back out to the various accessories. The accessories include Cobalt point motors, yard lighting, a MAS sequencer to control the colour light signal and a USB track interface. I'm also putting together a brief technical manual just because I seem to always work things out and then forget how I did them! Getting a bit more organised just helps me feel a bit more on top of things and the idea is that it will help prevent future issues or at least make them easier to fix. I'm very open to any comments on wiring or any further advice... Thanks Nige H

The goods shed was always intended to service van traffic and I recently recognised that there was a lack of box wagons on the layout... so I have ordered some kits from the N Gauge Society (always an economical way of arriving at a fairly decent end product). On the workbench you can see a Vanwide (with wide doors) and 2 BR standard vans. I have replaced the plastic wheels from the PECO chassis with metal ones. Just need to fix a bit of coupling droop and then it's off to the paint shop for these 3 specimens. The layout is now connected up to my PC via an NCE USB interface and JMRI. I've been having fun setting more realistic speed curves and trying to speed match locos of the same type. I'm not going to be obsessive about this (I won't speed match the entire fleet to a particular standard) but I do need locos of similar class to be well matched for the occasional double header. I'm going to use the "J" word, it's all part of the journey :-) Thanks for reading Nigel H

Something a little different tonight... I've put together a cradle for my DCC programming track (rather than scratching around for some spare straight tracks or using the layout itself to program CVs as I have done on occasions). This will just hook onto the layout backscene. It's made from materials that I happened to have lying around, some of it is balsa, it's lightweight and it's certainly not over-engineered! It's arguably longer than it needs to be but I do sometimes have to program DMUs together. I've been a DCC user for some time. I'm hoping to hook up the layout to a PC using a DCC/USB connector in the near future which should open up easier options for CV tweaking and allow me to use my mobile phone an as extra controller. I'm probably not ready to consider digital points control yet but you never know maybe one day... Thanks for reading Nigel

I seem to have been busier than ever with non railway projects during the Covid-19 era. Tonight I managed to get the layout setup for the first time in months. After giving it all a good clean I enjoyed what was mostly a freight night. The Brush Type 4 and Clayton are newcomers. The lack of buffer beam detail is noticeable. I have always avoided committing to a one way running loco in the past but for locos that are unlikely to be involved in shunting or running around I'm tempted to add the details now. Maybe it's a sign of modelling maturity. There are still one or two details on the layout that can and therefore will be improved when I'm in the mood. Things like a few more random patches of grass and bedding down some of the buildings a bit better. I'll keep you posted!

I've created another short video focusing on some of the off peak movements on the layout...

Also, further to what you were saying Tomj about layout interpretations of Lymebrook Yard, there are a few in progress as well as yours. I think there's definitely a "genre" of continuous small layouts with built up ends or disguised curves. For example Hedges Hill Cutting and Steve's slightly larger Tanner's Hill - and I'm sure that there are many others. There's definitely lots of mileage in the Lymebrook Yard plan. In the future I may connect up one of those outer storage sidings to the main line to create a loop in the fiddle yard. It's sometimes a bit awkward to reverse in a long train and for longer trains the front of the train can emerge out of the tunnel before reversing back into the siding. A loop would avoid that problem by allowing a train to run into it from either direction. I'm aware that the layout could easily be made into a double track layout but I have always resisted the temptation and kept my station as a point at which the main line singles. I think it's more interesting that way but others may disagree.