Savoyard

Thanks Rod for the invite and I should be able to take you up on the offer as my girlfriends mum lives in Ottery Saint Mary and we will no doubt be visiting once things ease so I will sneak off for a couple of hours or so and look forward to seeing it.

Rod and Craig, I think I'm slowly coming to the same conclusion, at least in the shed and just having the O gauge. I have a couple of OO gauge layouts at our club rooms so I could just keep the stock I need for those layouts. I am also thinking about just doing something similar to what you have done Rod with Ramchester, in essence I will have a U shaped layout as two lots of curves would take up too much room even in 20'. My latest thinking is to have the layout plan under the current shelf layout then on the opposite side a small fiddle yard of three roads hidden behind then a scenic break like a wall so I could either have a goods yard/engine shed or another small station in front to maximise the scenery. This will no doubt change after I've hit the send button! Rod I have started looking again at your Ramchester pages, it looks very interesting and has inspired me to do something similar. I need to put aside some time to have a good read through it. I don't think I will pursue the idea of it going outside the shed as the space is too restricted at the back of the shed and it would also be at a height that is too obvious, but I've just had someone round about landscaping the garden and I may just do a simpler end to end at about a foot or so off the ground which would easily blend in to the garden. Again this will no doubt keep changing, but separating the garden and shed will simplify things. I should have just stuck to the shelf layout!

Hi John, I am thinking the same but I have a lot of OO stuff I want to keep so I thought if I had a 12" shelf all the way around I could have a reasonable OO layout with some scenery to give me something to run it on.

I haven't done anything on the layout for a couple of weeks or more as I have been sorting out all my stock and get them chipped. I am considering a major rethink on the shed and having the O Gauge on the lower level and putting the OO on a shelf instead. It has a lot of advantages as it would be a lot easier to have the layout going round the shed, also I could eventually run it out of the shed in to the garden at that level. I am not rushing into it whilst I weigh up the pro's and con's.

Hi John, Thanks for your post and if I was building an exhibition layout I would be doing the same. What I plan to do with this rebuild is have a baton of 2" x 2" on all the walls, then some 2" x 2" to make in effect shelf brackets. The rest of the wood will be 2" x 1" and so reduced the weight and also the amount of wood as I will be having 2 x 6' sections, one at each end being 2" against the wall coming down to probably 16" in the middle, this will require 1.75 x 4' section. The current one is has a real mismatch of wood so I am hoping it will be a lot neater - depending on my cutting skills! LOL! I've just had a Heljan O Gauge Prairie delivered from Rails of Sheffield via EBay, it is sound fitted and weathered for £395. I thought that was a bargain. I have be working on my Fowler 3F, an very old white metal kit. I've replaced the motor, put new Slater wheels on and using a Dapol Jinty's valve gear. Still needs some work as it is not running too well, so I've been investigating that.

No activity on the layout as I've been sorting my stock out, taking longer than I thought. There are a few problems with some of the wood being warped, so I've bit the bullet so to speak and got some decent wood and I am going to completely rebuild now I know the concept works. It will be same track plan with the option for a single track around the shed. Knott Rederring rebooted - coming soon!

For the last week or so I haven't really done anything on the layout except for chipping some locos, but this has had it's moments. I have chipped both OO and N gauge with speakers in the past and I thought O gauge should be a doddle compared with the other two, how wrong I was. I have mainly chipped so far those locos which use a standard size decoder and except for the Dapol Sentinel which in the end I ended up hard wiring so I could use a better sized speaker next to it. Yesterday I decided to chip my Hymek and it has been a nightmare, Heljan certainly didn't make it easy, nor do they still, considering they have a fairly big market in the UK some English on their website would be useful. The loco must be over 10 years old and never been run, when I wired it up there was a short, one of the motors was the cause and as the contacts are hidden it can't be easily fixed so I will have to get a replacement motor. I have stripped one of the power cars on the Derby Lightweight and the paint stripper revealed the truth, I've not anything else with it yet so hopefully this week I will start painting it. I have also ordered a 3 way point and a short cross over from Marcways and when they arrive I am going to redo the boards now I can get some wood as it is sagging in one or two places and I will take the opportunity to widen it a little to put on some scenery items. I have also been experimenting with doing my own backdrop. I have a cracking piece of software called 'Panorama Studio 3 Pro' which I bought years ago. You can easily take a series of photos and it will stitch them together as a panorama shot which you can then print out at whatever size or width you want and it prints them on the appropriate number of sheets needed. I have taken a number of photos on a near by country lane and the should work better together than the current Gaugemaster ones which are all totally different scenes on each section.

Derby Lightweight or Class 110? I have been looking at the DMU I bought a couple of years ago. It turns out to be a shaped metal body with white metal cab ends. in fact the rear body ends are proper cab ends modified. (see photos below) The fronts look like a Derby Lightweight but not totally, the windows don't look long enough and there is a missing centre light. They look more like a Class 110 but without the roof box. The body sides are more accurate as a Lightweight, though I believe they never operated as 3 car sets. I've stripped one so far.

Whilst on the rolling road the wheels stopped moving but the motor was still going, I presume the gears had got out of sync as the wheels would move freely. I phoned Hattons and was told to return it, which I did yesterday quite painlessly with Collect+ at my local Spar. I kept the tender as I had modified it for the speaker and Zimo sound chip.

Hi Julian, No it's just a piece of brass. I am looking at adding a LED rather than using the pen torch. More of that later!

Hi Ade, I did some test runs tonight but I think the locos need to have a run in, so I will do that later today and hopefully have some video afterwards, but here is a picture of the speaker location in the tender. I will make a false cover with real coal later. I would like to put a speaker in the loco but with my experience so far of things falling off I am a little reluctant to try at the moment. I was playing around with a couple of suggestions for coupling/uncoupling three links, but found them frustrating so I came up with this for an uncoupler and it seems to work, especially on coaching stock. Here is a You Tube video I've uploaded that hopefully proves it.

Hi Ade, Thanks for the fix, it was so frustrating reversing through a point going on the straight and the pony truck coming off on the check rail. The sound chip in the A3 is an ESU 5XL with sounds from Digitrains, but I am thinking of changing it to a Zimo and reusing the Loksound on a Diesel - not with the A3 sound I may hasten to add! I had a Zimo MX chip with a Britannia sound file on it again from Digitrains, and I've used that and it sounds OK, a cracking chime whistle on it. I will do some video later and upload them to here.

The last couple of days I have been tidying up around the windows and above, so no work on the layout except today I decided to finally put sound chips in my Hattons's '60103 Flying Scotsman' and newly arrived '60012 Commonwealth of Australia'. So a little test run and a couple of photos. Various bits have fallen off the A3 and the pony truck under the cab keeps derailing even on straight track, luckily the A4 doesn't seem to have the same problem. A meeting of the Gresleys!

Or probably wine!

This trolley arrived today and is perfect to use for a movable table for holding the stock boxes in use. It is very sturdy and moves around freely.

Just arrived this lunch time.

A frustrating evening trying to fit another Fairburn, which arrived today, with sound but it wouldn't run properly due to problems with the valve gear, so that will be needing some attention or returning. I did manage to fit sound to this loco prior to that frustrating few hours. And not to waste the sound chip it went into this instead, and after another frustrating hour trying to find out how to get the body off, it seems to work fine.

Hi Julian, The wall sections are all Ten Commandments. I've now cut the stone and girder to size, I have made some slight adjustments to the positioning of the top stone but I am leaving it to dry before taking some more pictures. I am going to out a small extension shelf under the left hand side of the bridge and this will also allow me to put the Ten Commandments coal stage on the sidings. he

The storage has been reduced in the shed, the boxes are now in the loft, out of sight and out of mind!

Jim, I've found the website and the boxes are only £10 each direct.

After tidying up after making the stock boxes I had a look at the Ten Commandments girder bridge and buffer stops that arrived today (Monday), for which I thank Dave for his speedy service. I wanted something realistic as a scenic break and this bridge is excellent for the job. I intended only to look at how it all fits together but I couldn't resist and built the bases. The top bit has only been placed into position as I will be experimenting with the width of the bridge and then how wide to make the actual girder section, but I couldn't resist a trial with a coach.

Jim, I forgot to mention I got mine from this seller on Ebay, as I got quite a few he did them for £11 each. He delivered them personally a week last Saturday as he was in the area but he did give me his website address which I will find somewhere in the shed as it may be cheaper buying direct rather than Ebay,

Jim, For me it will make using the layout more enjoyable than those boxes, knowing I can easily get to any of my stock without any hassle. I am thinking of a small mobile trolley/table which I could use to move a box around and eventually into the garden! I did a recalculation on the 6 bay 90 degree version for goods wagons and for the smaller Dapol wagons I've been able to get 7 bays, it's a snug fit with the felt but is OK, I could probably have got away with an extra 1 mm per bay but perhaps the next one. Here is a pic of the modified wagon box.

Hi Jim, They are strong enough for general use around the shed but as I mentioned earlier I wouldn't use them for general carrying around, it's not so much the strength of the case more the combined weight, but perfect for goods wagons and coaches for taking to exhibitions. I am thinking of adapting some to be stock boxes with lids for general transporting and I suppose there would be no problem having one loco mixed with lighter rolling stock. They would have had to carry some weight with six bottles of wine in each so they have been made to a good strength with good strong wood, but I a few extra nails here and there would do no harm. The majority are about 50 cm long with some going up to 53 cm, so long enough for a Deltic or Class 40. Some of the boxes are only 9 cm high internally so I've increased the height by using either 1x1 cm or .6 x .6 cm pine strip and avoiding any damage to roof detailing. Some of the boxes are nearer 10 cm high so no problem. Overall I have reduced my storage in the shed to about 30% of what it was in the boxes.

Thanks Rod, it's been great fun the only worrying thing now is B&Q and Wickes are open so I could get some more wood for going round the shed! The primer I ordered on Amazon arrives tomorrow so all being well I will be finishing off the 2-6-4t. A couple of years ago a friend bought me some wine and it arrived in a very strong wooden box which I decided to keep as it must have a use at some point, then a couple of weeks ago when I was sorting out my O Gauge locos and wanted a better way of storing them so they would be easy to get out and run. So a couple of weeks ago I made the prototype. So I sourced some used wine boxes on Ebay and ordered some, sadly these didn't come with wine. So today I have been making up some stock boxes. They can hold four locos or Mk 1 size coaches, there are slightly different lengths but the minimum will hold Mk 1 coaches. So here are a couple of pictures of the production versions. I have used pieces of felt to protect the models but they also double up as a way of lifting the loco out of the box. With four locos in a box, it is very heavy and so wouldn't be an ideal way of carrying locos around to exhibitions etc.. but would be OK for the coaches and wagons. What they do is provide a very easy and safer way of storing rolling stock at home, avoiding having to use those boxes which are harder to get in than Fort Knox! Below is a wagon stock box with the dividers at going horizontally. I have decided against this as it is restrictive on mixing wagons they may be slightly larger. I have used foamboard to separate the wagons.