SamHill

There is a video of Dillmouth in action at the Witham show on YouTube -

The layout proved very popular with our visitors at the show - and ran without any faults, although we did burn out Percy, so that's off to the repair yard now.

Just to let you know - Whitebelle will be on show at the Enfield Whitewebbs Model Railway Show tomorrow! Come along and see it plus 16 other layouts. Whitwebbs Museum of Transport in Enfield - EN2 9HP Full details at www.ewrm.org.uk

Hello all - the list of 17 exhibiting layouts is currently confirmed as: Brownsville - HO Clone Line - OO In the dock - L Ken Kenny Castle - N Kings End - Hornby Dublo 3 rail Lindsell Town - OO Little Colne - OO-FS Masbury to Windsor Hill – N Middleton - OO Oakgrove Central - N Porlock - OO Sine Nomine Terminus - O Tappers of Bromley - O The Trench - OO-9 Whitebelle - OO Whitewebbs Park - OO Wilstone - O-16.5 -- subject to change due to unforeseen circumstances.

This years show takes place at the Whitewebbs Museum of Transport in Enfield, North London - the clubs home. The exhibits are in various locations - the ground floor of the Museum, in the new exhibition hall, Copelands Room, and in the railway carriage clubhouse. To find us use the postcode: EN2 9HP or by train to Crews Hill station. Full details can can be found on our website - www.ewrm.org.uk There will be 15+ layouts covering most scales - full list revealed soon; many traders and more. Doors open at 10:30 am, with free parking on site - and a fully accessible location. Adults £5; Children (under 11 if accompanied) FREE, Children (11 to 16) £3. Family ticket: (2 adults+children) £13 We have several layouts focused on inspiring the younger visitors (next generation of modellers) including the chance to drive a gigantic Thomas and Percy and a completely new hands-on visitors are in charge layout - whitebelle. We are an everyone is welcome event. Car parking is free. Plenty of toilets. Refreshments and light lunches available in the museum cafe. Large outdoor picnic area.

An early morning view down Whitebelle high street - you can see a Southern tank engine in the distance going over the crossing.

Yes you did well to do that...! I still haven't received it in the post....!! For any future show's he may appear at I'd strongly recommend people avoid him.

Latest update - continuing work on the scenery a horse field added (whitebelle ... its a bit like black beauty in name, which was a horse... ) and someone hanging out their washing. Nearly finished now - just some more trees to plant and an awkward empty space in the middle to fill in.

The finished tunnel and crossing combo - with Bertie bus waiting for Thomas.

creating a path for the footbridge then adding weeds to soften the landscape mat uniformness...!

And... here is how we got to the photo above... 1 - firstly ballast spreading.: 2. Glue dribbling... 3. Waiting for glue to dry... 4. Making the tunnel portals.. 5. and hiding the buffer...

It's been awhile - 6 weeks since last post here is the latest look ... scenery is mostly done a few trees still to place, the town buildings are placed, the tunnel finished and next it's to install working signals one is in to the left of the station one to go and switches are still loose too. on the hill top will be a field of horses.

This shows the current overall view - one board is further on than the other (it splits into two 4x2 boards) however trains are running! Total time spent: 9 hours.... Roughly: 1 hour baseboard construction. 1 hour track planning and marking. 2 hours painting the board and sky back scene. 2 hours on installing the track and electrics. 1 hour on landscape mat fitting. 30 minutes on installing the controllers. 1 hour on making the tunnel. 30 minutes fixing down the first set of buildings.

Another week (and a bit) here is our latest progress... So, a bit of cheating by using a landscape mat for the large green areas, its very uniform and will be subsequently toned down with scatter. Lots of glue was spread, matt rolled out and cut to fit the areas then power controllers (basic Hornby ones) were installed. Then moved onto making the tunnel using lots of polystyrene!

The electrics for the tracks are now finished. More will be added later for LED signals. Next up its to move on to the main scenery and track ballasting.

There are joins between the tracks as baseboard splits into two sections for storage but these are managed, no split level as its a bit tricky for a child to build and not robust enough either for the level of use it will get at our show.

Then, while the grown ups were busy doing the electrics ... Isabelle had a practice go at the scenery.

Once the black has dried it was time to relay the track and nailing it all in place. This took... quite .... a ... while....! And a lot of miss hits - but, remember she is only 6...!

Next, Isabelle sanded the edges of all the boards to remove rough edges and then painted the track areas black - and also the road sections to run into the town.

And completing the outlining of all the track. You can see here the layout of track more or less matches the plan above. with the tunnels being tested. Trusty "annie" and "calarabel" were used for testing the track was all ok.

As its a children's layout - what is better than having it made by children for children. Enter Isabelle (hence the "belle" part of the name, the "white" comes from the name of the club - Enfield Whitewebbs). Isabelle is 6 and will be lying all the track, creating the scenery, the ballasting, the buildings and all the painting! What she won't be doing is the woodwork (saw's are a little dangerous) or electrics (less dangerous as the power can be turned off but a bit fiddly)... Here is Isabelle having laid out all the track marking around it to show where to paint in black to go under the ballast.

After a few years of service our club's existing Children's Layout had seen better days and over the winter suffered from poor storage and the boards warped out of shape so a replacement was required. With this years show 6 months away (28th September) a new layout was needed. Yes, a "childrens" layout can be built very quickly, and simply but, that isn't what we want or offer in our club. Our club tries to inspire the next generation of modellers so having a rough and ready layout just isn't going to work it needs to instead look the part. That means proper scenery, working signals and more. Whitebelle is going to be the new club's children's layout and construction has just begun. And it needs to meet the following requirements: - simple track plan to minimise failures and running issues on "show" day. - supports two trains running to allow two children to use it at the same time. - be robust and able to withstand a certain level of bumps, knocks and bashes. - be portable and able to be stored underneath our permanent layout "Whitewebbs Park" in our main club room. - be big enough to be interesting to use but small enough to fit into the corner of one of our exhibition halls. - feature working signals to add interest. Based on all of this - the layout will be 1200 x 1200 mm in size (4ft x 4ft) entirely scenic that splits into 2x boards 1200 x 600 (4ft x 2ft) sections that can lock together into a cuboid for storage. The track plan is shown, with two simple sidings but mainly its just two running loops with a tunnel to add a bit of the surprise factor. The boards are constructed from 6mm plywood with 42x21mm pine framing spaced at 300mm intervals for strength.

"a rant about a trader should not put a dark cloud over a very enjoyable weekend."... Sorry, @Clive Mortimore I hadn't intended to take over the thread I originally asked simply for contact details as none are provided in the exhibition show guide. As for Pig Lane - that looks like it was a good layout and "modern" image for its day. [Edit] And I now recall seeing the newer version at Ally Pally with the playing cards shunting moves decider - it was a good layout for movement and interest. If you check my original post, I did say I enjoyed the show - just needed a bit more modern image things for me but what was there was generally very good.

Thanks Chris and John. Whilst its sad to know I'm not alone its reassuring too. Yes they are popular, and agree they certainly should have a cut off time and offer refunds if its not made by collection time and not offer a postal service - I wasn't the only one left in this position 3 other people also gave their address details for theirs to be posted to them I imagine they are also in the same situation. Their stand should carry a "buyer beware" warning on them. The quality is good, the service, reliability and honesty is far from it. Perhaps exhibition managers should also exercise caution with them too. As disappointed visitors due to poor traders can impact the reputation of the show. My over-riding memory of the London Show is nowone of feeling ripped off and disappointed and not about the layouts I saw...