10800

Re DCC on large layouts, Ouse Valley Viaduct & Balcombe is DCC (NCE) operated and P4 - but no sound or other features. The discussion here seems to be mostly on top speed in DC vs DCC rather than the size of the layout per se. The former may be true, but then is top speed in DC really authentic (i.e. too fast)? On Balcombe I've tried to minimise voltage loss by use of high gauge bus wires (hi-fi copper speaker cable) which bypasses the daisy-chained individual boards and all the dropper connections, and I get the same track voltage all round the layout. Nevertheless you will notice on the video that the Brighton Belle slows down on the first part of the curve - I wasn't driving it so I don't know if that was the operator or some other reason - although that wasn't typical through the exhibition.

No, and it would be difficult to replace what's there now! I might sometime try to paint out some of the trees with a rocky surface ...

Thanks Ian! The backscene is a modified version of this https://www.boismodelisme.com/product/montagnes-du-jura - I've cut the sky out because it wasn't tall enough, and (literally) cut and pasted bits to remove grassy areas. What I really wanted was something like this from the area in question, but I haven't been since 2017 to take some proper photos so the backscene I got was, like many things on the layout*, a compromise. * like electrification west of Bedarieux (to come), street siding etc. So it evolved from 'based on' to 'inspired by'!

Board 1 is now scenically finished - well, not finished but finished enough to justify moving on to Board 2 (of 3)!

In case you're interested, the bases are cut from old kitchen counter tops, the legs are cheap IKEA desk legs upside down and the rope is from a boat chandler. We did have members of the team wandering up and down between the rope and the layout from time to time to answer questions, and the drivers would keep an eye out as they followed their train around the layout. Yes, they did move - next time we will screw them to the floor might put non-slip pads on them. The vast majority of visitors are well behaved. Having a 'spare' operator to talk to the public and having their radar sensitivity turned up to 11 deals with most potential miscreants.

A neglected orchard has appeared behind the wall. Those gates haven't been opened for a while. The shuttered-up half relief building needs toning down. I need to touch in the scrap of extra backscene behind (to cover a grassland area). The apple trees are hanging over too much to fit a railing in, but it looks OK.

Another building based on a real one, and made from Architecture & Passion leftovers and Redutex surfaces. The quoins are from a Scalescenes download printed onto heavyweight paper. It's been shuttered up for a while and the roof is sagging. The wall is also from Scalescenes glued to A&P carcass leftovers - there will be a French style railing on the top of it, otherwise it's starting to look more like Derbyshire but with more trees 🙄 Painting of details and weathering will come eventually. This is the building that inspired it, with its tiny door and ground floor window at street level. It's in Minerve, near Carcassonne. Meanwhile the station has acquired a new building. The toilet/lampisterie was a bit isolated, but there wasn't enough room for another building without making it looked cramped (you can't win). So I added a bit to the platform and now have this, another A&P kit sold as a 'bureau du chef de district'. It's a PO rather than a Midi building, but it can be a small goods/parcels office or something similar. There will be some trees in the gaps.

An X2800 autorail stops at St. Martin-sur-Orb, whose station building has acquired nameboards. There is also a backscene, by Bois Modelisme but bought from Jura Modelisme. It's the closest I could get to the hills behind Mons La Trivalle. There will be trees and bushes along the rear of the layout to avoid the impression that the ground falls into a valley before rising again. Some boundary fencing has appeared along the edge of the nearer platform, as has a pedestrian walkway - yet to be painted (together with the platform edges).

There's a building in Mons La Trivalle (the inspiration for St. Martin) that is ideal for use as a view blocker for the exit of the back siding. It's trapezoidal in shape and the kind of structure that you would never invent - there has to be a real one. On St. Martin the siding would run past the front of the building, and the station is to the right. For the model I've just used leftovers from the Architecture & Passion half-relief buildings for the carcass, and the door and windows (huisseries) from A&P accessory sets. There are no quoins so the corner seen will be masked by a downpipe. The walling and roof is from Redutex textured sheets. I will paint the door and windows - what you see is otherwise how they come. It would be nice to find something for the lantern, both here and elsewhere (they don't need to work). I've also been preparing some typical railway fencing, also from A&P who do a wide variety of designs - this is a PO one. The laser cut 'fret' also includes posts that you glue each side to give it some 3D 'presence'.

Oui, c'est ça!

Je crois que l’ambiance qu'on veut se développe

Thanks for that Vinedusk 😀 It's coming along ... Needs to be because I'm showing it at the RMWeb Taunton do in April! My Midi and generic buildings are from 'Architecture & Passion'. 'Bois Modelisme' and 'Decapod' also do useful kits and bits. I didn't know about PN Sud Modelisme, thanks for the link, I will look through what they have. Similar appearance and prices to A&P and Bois Modelisme, which in my experience are very good. REE and LS - oh yes, very familiar. Prices once seemed very high, but these days they are not much more than Bachmann/Hornby products. Nonetheless my wallet just gave a sharp intake of breath ... My locos are all Roco and Piko, simply for quality of running. I also have three static model autorails which I'm going to motorise at some point with High Level/Mashima mechanisms.

Ouse Valley Viaduct & Balcombe is about 14m x 5m (round-roundy) and we (John Re6/6 and me) can only put it up at an exhibition or in our local village hall. Logistically both are quite complicated! Much of it can be worked on at home, but to test major developments or in the run-up to a show there's no choice but to hire the hall for 2-3 days. I like operating whether it's just me or in front of an audience - that's a viewpoint for any size of exhibition layout though. I don't think I've ever built a layout that I can easily put up at home, despite all good intentions. I have a French layout under construction that is 8ft scenic with 5ft fiddle yards each end. Most of it will go up in the shed/office, but only with one fiddle yard poking out of the door (I had to buy that additional 2ft centre board from Tim Horn to get a plausible track plan!). At a pinch I could put it up in the house but I'd have to make it cat proof ...

Very sad news, he was always up for a natter at shows and his knowledge (albeit mainly on subjects out of my area) was amazing. I'll miss him. RIP Chris.

Video of nearly the entire coaching stock getting a run-out last week on the test track

Lisanno won't be as big as this! Most of Grahame's locos are DCC-fitted (and some with sound) so we will be keeping the layout DCC operated.

Thanks John - that last image of course from the TV adaptation of Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy, of the town Cittàgazze. Apart from Grahame's collection, I have been buying coaches (Rivarossi, ACME) so we now have quite a selection from Tipo 1928 to Tipo 1959, in either Castano/Isabella or Grigio Ardesia livery.

I have a visitor tomorrow who wants to see the layout, so I tidied up and placed some trees and other bits. The crossings and barrières roulantes are placed but not fixed yet. Starting to look pleasingly French!

Self-fitting the radio control is beyond my ability/dexterity, so I've arranged to have it done by Micron Radio Control http://www.micronradiocontrol.co.uk/index.html, so in the New Year I should have loco, controller etc. done and able to go anywhere on the layout (on or off the track) - or anywhere else come to that 😆 . It also means I can weather the inset track railhead without worry about pickup.

After some clearance tests the platforms are now fixed down, but just with countersunk screws so they could be removed if needed. I still need to fill in the exposed slots, cover the surfaces and weather them in. As you can see from the photos above, there is a back siding that will run along the road on inset track, and then off-scene to an agricultural/wine/commercial facility of some kind. Traffic will be covered vans so your guess is as good as mine anyway! Removal of the pelmets is making it much easier to work on this. Rather than clay/grout of some kind i'm using Evergreen strip and cork to define the roadway, and probably self-adhesive textured cobbles (and textured paint). It then occurred to me that in amongst the buildings, trees and behind the catenary keeping the rails clean will be a nightmare. So ... I thought that with only one dedicated loco (a Roco 030 locotracteur) I could make that loco radio-controlled so I wouldn't need to worry about it. Should be fun, watch this space.

The Tim Horn baseboard modules are great, but it's a pain (literally) to work at the back of the layout. Now that I'm on to ground engineering I was getting fed up with having to bend over and stick my head under the pelmet, and my back was strongly in agreement! So I decided to temporarily remove the pelmet assembly on two of the boards. At the join of two boards I pre-drilled the hole for later reassembly with a bolt and nut, then marked a cut line - the cut on the adjacent board is to the left of the hole so that when reassembled it forms a lap joint of sorts. The end of the board is a bit more of a significant surgery. This involved cutting the pelmet itself, near enough to the end to avoid the LED lighting strips. Here's the result of cutting one of the end boards. I'm hoping not to need to do this at the other end and work from the end of that board when it's disconnected. But I can do the same at that end if needed. The middle board cut, showing the Japanese saw that made easy work of it. The boards reassembled, showing the resulting ease of access. And ease of photography! This is a new station building from Architecture & Passion. The old one from Bois Modelisme was fine, but represented a PLM building rather than a Midi one (the learning curve is still quite steep!). Beyond is the toilet/lamp room building, also a Midi structure from A&P. The slots cut in the ply platforms allow for a slight degree of flexing to fit the trackwork properly. Brass-rubbing the track and then jig-sawing the ply was never going to be totally accurate!

At the moment I'm working on half-relief buildings along the back wall of the layout. These are all laser-cut kits from Architecture & Passion, but I've been modifying them by changing their identities, removing storeys, creating inset balconies and reducing their depth to make them fit better with what I want/need. Believe it or not, the balcony here is laser-cut in card. You can get similarly fine ones in etched brass from Decapod, but it seemed a shame not to use the A&P ones. I've not seen laser-cutting so fine in the UK; in France it seems routine.

A brief respite from the rain (but not the wind) gave me a chance to check out the laser-cut platform templates. One bit of approach track needs to be slewed to the right a bit (middle of first picture) but otherwise it's all looking good. Plain track further down the platforms can be realigned to fit.

Replacement of turnout and diamond now complete, after quite a bit of faffing with check rails and rivet-extenders. This is what it looked like before - not much difference you might think, but in real life the new alignments are much more pleasing. Now waiting for the arrival of some laser-cut platform templates so that I can lay plain track into the station.

A bit more progress today. It's good doing this in short bursts because it gives me time to think about what I've just done and what I've got to do next - for instance, today I remembered that there is additional check railing on the road going into the double-faced platform, so I've prepared for that in the work done, making reference to a suitable photo. So, the crucial upper stock rail is in place, although not all rivets are soldered yet so there's plenty of scope for tweaking. I then gauged in the 1:5 common crossing assembly (left). The gap in the rail to the left of it can be infilled later - I'll probably cut the incoming rail back a bit as well, as I hate dealing with really short bits of rail. The wing rails to the right of the vee will also be trimmed to make for longer point rails, but while they are this length it's easier to curve them slightly to follow the alignments - pre-marked on the timbers. You might be able to see that the flare on the check rail below the vee has been straightened because there will be more check rail coming from the left to join it. At the other end a 1:4 common crossing is loosely in place, held by the triangular gauge. Strictly speaking the gauge is the wrong way round as the clamps on the base of the triangle should be on the outside of the curve to allow for gauge-widening, but I doubt the curvature is significant in this case! The two timbers by the bend in the stock rail have not been replaced yet, but they will go in next to provide rivets for anchoring the point rails. Eyeballing the alignments is encouraging!