DLT

Not sure why this topic has passed me by. but I'm having a good catchup. Giving me lots of ideas, and looks very good in MRJ too. Lovely work, thanks for sharing. Dave.

Hi Graham, There are many outlets via Amazon or Ebay, and they all get a mixture of 5 and 1-star reviews. I THINK I remember getting from B&Q, and there seem to be different thicknesses. I'll dig out the remains of my roll and check it. Even though it looks great on the roll, its very difficult to get it stuck completely flat and you end up with a slightly mottled finish. For this purpose though, that's ok.

Finally, the street disappearing into the backscene at the station end. It's loosely based on the view down Gundry Lane from South Street. The perspective looks a bit odd in the photos, but you don't notice it when you see it in three dimensions. Anyway, I'm not changing it again! Not sure if its obvious, but the end boards are now covered with self-adhesive vinyl mirror. It works very well at the level-crossing end, but not so well here. I've ended up with some very thin-looking buildings.

This fill another gap in the buildings, and another view of Colmers Hill.

The corner board features structures based on bits of the Bridport Industries building, formerly Edwards & Sons Ropeworks. See Here As this is another distinctive building I wanted to feature it in the backscene, and much the same procedure took place with sketches etc, and this was the result. If anything its a bit too high, so I might try and lower it. One of the advantages of Spraymount.

Here's a before and after:

As with everything else, it took a while to develop the sky. Eventually I achieved some cloud formation that didn't look like flying saucers.... Only a small area was available for some background landscape, and Colmers Hill fitted in neatly. Building cutouts were fixed with Spraymount And at long last reunited with the layout:

The plan was to do the painting off the layout, on decent art paper, then cut out the outline of the buildings and stick it to the backscene. I also worked up a bit of view to fill the gap between the buildings on the right. An alleyway, steps, and gate leading to a backyard.

Next job was working up a drawing to full size, and getting the perspective looking right from various angles Painting trials, practice with colour mixing etc took a while, but eventually I got the scene coloured, and tucked in behind the building to see how it looked. To say I was pleased with the result would not cover it!

We exhibited at the Bridport show in this form, and the height made no difference to handling or operation. If anything, packing was easier as there was more clearance between the sections when crated together. Then it was a matter of working up a scene. I photographed the layout and printed a view four times on a sheet of A4, then did some trial sketches on them. I wanted to feature some familiar Bridport landmarks, particularly the tall Westmill and the distant cone-shaped Colmers Hill with it's half-dozen pine trees on the top. The third sketch seemed to have roughly the right proportions.

Development of the backscene has been described over on the NGRMonline Forum, with plenty of advice and suggestions from the folks there, many of them with a lot more experience in this field than me. Having long been dissatisfied with the blank back-screen on Bridport, over the summer I actually did something about it. For a start it was too low, some of the roofs and chimneys almost reached the top of it. I worked out that I could raise it by two inches without: (1) Making uncoupling too awkward (yes I know its high time I investigated some sort of auto-uncoupling) or (2) Making the sections too wide (when packed face to face) to store or transport. I did this by splicing a 2-inch wide strip onto the lower edge of the screens, overlapped with a four-inch strip for strength. This meant that I had to redo all the cutouts, redrill all the screw holes etc 2inches lower, but luckily everything lined up. Even the extra 2-inches made a big difference to the appearance. Here's a Photoshopped version: Original: Raised in Photoshop: The end-screens couldn't be raised so I made new ones, and covered them with self-adhesive mirror-vinyl

I know its a few weeks since, but my huge thanks to everyone involved in organising the Warley Show. It all went very smoothly (from my point of view anyway) even the Voyage access system worked very well. Massive thanks to The Team, Richard Mudmagnet and Ray Norwood (of this forum) and John Cavell (not of this forum) for spending such long periods operating. The layout behaved itself, apart from one or two electrical gremlins creeping in. Thanks as well to everyone who came to watch and said such nice things about the layout, and took so many photos. Its strange how some things just keep on working. When I cleaned the loco wheels on Sunday morning, one of the Baldwins had a Romford driving wheel literally hanging off. Yet it had been running perfectly up until closing on Saturday. Now the dust has settled, its time to get back into shed and get modelling again. The Weston Super Mare show is less than a month away. My thanks again, Dave.

Looks great, have to finish reading the last one.

Do you NEED a full spec meter? If you are crawling around under and over a layout testing or checking, a Circuit Tester like this might be easier to handle. Actually I'm not sure if it tests no voltage continuity

Ahh, the old faithful Avo. Had one permanently on my bench when for years. Sadly none too portable though, not going to bung one in the box for an exhibition. Always used an anologue meter for modelling purposes, guess its time to move on. Beware of some of the cheapest models, I've had experience of very poor test wires, that break inside. Or have things improved?

Lovely job on the Jubilee!

Don't listen to me, I get too obsessive about such things!

Very nice indeed, see you at Weston.

Thank you Sir Humphrey.

I managed it two years ago, exhibited the layout at both. Mind you, I don't have anyone to "negotiate" with....

Looks like a fab day yet again, my thanks to all involved. Most of those layouts I've not seen before, but Laxfield is real old favourite. See you there, if not before. Dave. And no, I haven't built the kits I bought there last time...

Did you find that photo On This Site???

They are indeed a minefield for the modeller, and there is no substitute for a decent photo or three of the actual loco you want to portray. Tenders are another minefield! The U that I built had a Hornby tender supplied. There was only one loco that had that particular type of tender, so choice of loco was made for us. You can't blame the kit manufacturers for wanting to use standard parts, especially with big whitemetal castings, like a footplate. But you can end up with a model that is compromise or hybrid, which doesn't always look right.

Hi Folks, The reason nothings appeared on the DLT SR Loco topic is that nothings happened for a while, I've been concentrating on narrow gauge, Thanks for the comment about the PDK S15. As you say I was a bit concerned about lack of weight. I didn't weight the boiler, but added weight in the chassis, by fixing all sorts of odd-shaped lumps of lead in any cavity I could find. Alternatively, IF you've got the confidence, I'm sure you could bore out the middle of the resin boiler and fill it with lead. Yes, the DJH S15 has a few dimensional issues, notably being too short at the front end making it really awkward to get the bogie in. I think you had a similar issue with one of your DJH kits earlier Richard? I DID like the S15 cylinder arrangement, very positive fit and well thought out. I've not done a U1, but I did a U some years back. It was an amalgam of the DJH loco body and the more recent SEFinecast etched chassis. DJH seemed to be trying to use as many common parts as possible in their U & N kits, but there are a number of differences. In particular the footplate step was correct for the N, which is shallower than the U, leading to issues with the cab and tender. The U is NOT simply an N with bigger wheels. And the original U-class, rebuilt from the River tanks, are totally different. The most reliable source of information is photographs, and the Internet is your friend. Try This One Drawings can be unreliable. If there are recent drawings available, then they should be very good, but some of the older ones are not to be trusted. Always compare with photographs. Anyway, its all looking good Richard, I will be following with interest. All the best, Dave.

All fine here, thanks very much, just nothing to see at the mo. And yes, I have been doing narrow gauge stuff, but it hasn't made it onto RMweb yet.