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Therealnips

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Everything posted by Therealnips

  1. My track from Peco finally turned up! Its only taken 10 months, but I have my first box of code 75 concrete sleeper track, yay! This is of course in jest, I know Peco have been very unlucky over the past year, so thank you to them! I have been playing with the track plan as I just wasn't happy with it. The helpful ideas suggested to me in previous posts were playing on my mind and although I wanted 4 running lines, It would have been expensive and difficult to get right. I have to remind myself that this is my first ever layout and its a learning curve. I would rather not be like Top Gear: Ambitious, but rubbish! So that in mind, I bought AnyRail 6 and started from scratch, I moved the station area to the side of the loft as I think I will still be able to access the eaves for storage and that gave me a longer run for the platforms. Not as long as I would like, but better. I moved to two running lines, but a junction where two split into four which should create a bit of interest. I've added a small branch line that will disappear behind a scenic board as well. I have based it on a real station, see if you can have a guess which one on the Brighton Mainline! The loft is slowly getting there, plasterboard and insulation is going up, once that is done Ill paint everything white and get the wiring done. Im doing it myself along with a fulltime job, so progress is slow!
  2. I have spent the past two weeks reading up on your thread and layout: I love it! I haven't even started my layout yet, but if it turns out even half as good as yours ill be happy. By the way, I'm from Eastbourne where around page 100 somewhere you said you used to live here! Keep up the good work, cant wait to see the new lever frame and some scenery going down
  3. So work has stalled... Lockdown and the virus has stopped Peco as we all know, so my birthday present (June) of several boxes of flexitrack still hasn't turned up and Hattons can only tell me thats its still on order. Kinda annoying, but hey what can you do in these strange times... Wiring up the loft is on hold because my tame electrician isn't working at the moment, so that's on hold as I don't trust myself to do it.... I finally got a DCC controller from ebay, the small Hornby one, nothing special to start with, but it didn't work so got a refund. Bought another, that didn't work either, so sent it off to Hornby's repair dept, hoping to hear back from them soon as its been 10 days so far... Some might feel this is the universe telling me not to build a model railway! I will stick at it and maybe see if I get finish the loft before the wiring gets done so at least I can start on baseboards for when the track finally turns up. Positive attitude, stiff upper lip, fingers crossed....etc...
  4. Im good with computers and ok will electronics. Ive had a look at JMRI and looks interesting. I have a couple of PCs knocking around somewhere, so might jump in
  5. Hi Paul, I like your idea, I never thought of having two tracks on one side and four the other. It captures the look of a busy mainline outside the depot, but also creates a countryside scene well. I do use the flexitrack trick in SCARM as much as possible to help, I was having to use three files, but got it down to two which is easier to photoshop into one file! The layout will definitely be digital, although I haven't got a controller yet! I tried bidding on a digitrax set that came up on ebay a few weeks ago, but didn't win it. I may just buy the Hornby cheap small controller until another digitrax becomes up. Digital is the way forwards I feel and as a bit of a computer nerd, I like the idea of progressing up to automation (like McKinley railway) but not as large or complicated! Tom
  6. Hi, I use the free version, so I build the plan 50 items at a time, save it and then do the next section. I then photoshop all the files together to make one image of the full plan. Thanks for the link, I will check it out! Yes, I'm glad someone pointed the curves out and hopefully they will be ok. I have four MK4 coaches (recently purchased on ebay) to test the clearances when I start track laying. No plans for a fiddle yard in the tunnel, but I will park the trains in there when not using the layout. At this time, I only have one train. I can't see myself buying loads of rolling stock before we move house in the future, so I have decided to fore-go a fiddle yard and use sidings and the station to store stock if I suddenly start getting a large collection. The green lines are the fast lines, blue the slow, red is the depot and yellow are station sidings/loops (I don't know the technical phrase...!) I can't really play around with the height of the baseboards as they are a "shelf" above the access to the storage in the eves of the roof and I only have about 10" before the pitch of the roof. As a bungalow, the footprint of the loft is large, but the height in low. In the dead centre of the loft, I can just stand up straight although I can't have too long hair! As the house is our first ever purchase, we won't be here forever (although longer than we thought due to this pandemic now!) so I wanted a layout that was reasonably simple to build i.e straight flat baseboards and simple to remove when we move in a few years time and as its my first time building a layout, I didn't want to make it overly difficult for myself. I'm going to make mistakes and bad decisions, but I see it as training for when I build the layout I want in a house I will be in for many years to come. This is a learning stop-gap if you will... My next step, other than fine-tuning the layout design, is to get the loft wired and lit and start building the baseboards. I have a two week holiday coming up, as we cant go anywhere I might just start with some baseboard construction!
  7. After taking on-board (pun intended!) all the advice from the previous blog, I have come up with the new track plan. I am useless at doing curves that are parallel to the tracks next to them, so don't take it as gospel. I have brought the pointwork closer into the station to assist the signallers arms, I have angled it as well to try and smooth out the 90 degree corners on the left side. I was hoping for straight platforms (as i don't think I have the skills to do curves platforms at this time) and think I will still manage that although they will be shorter. I have added in the sweeping curves along the top (countryside scene). I would like to put in some super-elevation, but don't want to cause myself issues. I have also added in plans for some triangle bits of baseboards to allow more space to smooth out the 90 degree corners on the right side. Again, I am useless at using SCARM, so don't take the radius as gospel. As always, input is always welcome!
  8. Ok, thanks for the heads-up! How would you go about smoothing out the curves? Would putting a triangle piece of baseboard in the corner help? I will have a look at moving the point work into the station area more, it make total sense really. This is why I wanted a blog some that more experienced people could weigh in!
  9. Hi Will, Thanks for the input. The track plan is a work in progress and I was hoping for some advice, so I have thought about making these changes: The straights I was planning on changing them to slight "s-Bends" with super elevation, to make it look better. The turns at each corner are not minimum radius, but until I get the boards built and temporarily lay some track with a tracksetta, I don't know what they will be. I want them as gentle as possible in the space available to avoid issues. My SCARM skills are not the best so the plan is more of a rough guide rather than 100% accurate, same with the spacing between the tracks. I was going to go with a wider areas down the centre between both pairs of tracks. I didn't think about the length of the headshunt, so I'm glad you pointed that out. Ill plan for it to be longer. Makes perfect sense! As its my first attempt at a layout, I didn't want to over complicate it with pointwork (therefore motors, point controllers, signals etc), so I was going to treat the station more as a through station such as Haywards Heath or Three Bridges. Also at £40 a point, I was trying to keep the cost down a little. The plan is the bare minimum in point work to allow access to and from all areas, but after what you said, I am thinking of moving some of the crossovers into the station area rather than where they are now? Would that look more realistic? I am more than happy for people to weigh-in with positive criticism, its how we learn and im pretty thick skinned. Thanks!
  10. With my plan of using a 40cm wide "shelf" to run most of the layout, I was um'ing and ar'ing over to run a double track or a quad track. I like the sound of a double track, more space for scenery on the "shelf" areas of the layout, but I also like the idea of four tracks running together. Brighton to Victoria is both, but I do like the four track sections between Haywards Heath and Gatwick. I have made a plan for four tracks after checking 40cm would be wide enough for 4 tracks. The picture still shows 30cm, but I just haven't updated it. I wanted a big through station with express lines that don't stop and decided that had to be on the large board at the back of the loft. The board at 5m wide, should be fine for a nice long station. One side of the loft will be countryside (with possibly a smaller country station, which I have added to the plans, but maybe taken out). So the idea of trains rushing through past fields and cuttings before entering the tunnel that goes along the front wall of the loft behind the computers (loosely based on Balcombe tunnel). On the other side of the loft after the tunnel, I want it to be a vaguely industrial area that turns into a small depot/yard on the larger "shelf" board, maybe based on Threebridges depot. With that in mind, I jumped onto SCARM and started playing around, 50 pieces at a time! In the end I came up with the current plan. I keep looking at it from time to time, making sure it's what I want, making sure it will work. The green sections are the fast lines, blue are the slow lines and red is the depot area. The track will be peco code 75 concrete sleep, with some bullhead in the depot and pointwork. I am planning to use gaugemaster PM-1 point motors with eletro-frog points. Traintech PC200 point controllers and train tech signals so that I can future-proof it for computer automation later on. This project will be very slow as work gets in the way, I have an addiction to cars (I have two Nissan 300zx and they are not cheap!) and I work shifts, so some days I end up wasting because I finish 1-2am, then after one day off, move on to my early shifts starting at 3/4am. It's taken me 6 months to get to this point so far. My total experience is owning an intercity 125 when I was a kid that my dad gave me for christmas, which stupidly I sold to buy a ticket to China! I have spent the past year watching the guys on youtube (Everard Junction, Dean Park Station, Charlie Bishop, etc). I like a challenge, but i suspect as its my first attempt, nothing will work out or look how I imagine it! I currently have a Class 57 that I got for Christmas, one bullhead left hand large point and one Hornby Mixed freight train set with most of the track missing that a friend bought for me last birthday! I am all ears for ideas and input to my plans. The setup of the baseboards can't really change, but I open to ideas about the track plan!
  11. After spending the winter clearing the loft, boarding the floor and celotexing and hardboarding the eves, I now have a workable space. The loft still needs power and lighting and the centre area needs celotex and hardboarding, but progress is being made at last! The plan is to run the layout around the outside of the loft on a 40cm "shelf" that allows me to still access the storage in the eves, have my computers in their current location (the loft is my man cave), but have a large baseboard for a station/town scene at the far end. The baseboards will be 9mm plywood with 2x1" to strengthen them. horizontal support will be placed between the existing house supports and the diagonal beams you see in the pictures to take the weight of the boards. Next step is to get power and lighting to the loft. At the moment it has one double socket in the middle of the floor and LED strip lights running off my PC usb port.
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