pirouets

Faries who went

and a bad

of the huge

The Alarm - Electric Folklore Live

Forget your City of Truro, or that DCC controller, how much do we spend on all the stuff that we never see on the layout? I ran out of blades again this weekend whilst attempting yet another go at the shops for the market square on my layout. I couldn't make it out to get some proper blades but did pick up a cheap craft knife which has one of those blades that you snap off the end of the blade and use the next bit as the point with the theory that its sharp, because surely a blade is a blade. WRONG!!!!! Ok it cuts card OK but it cannot do fine work even with lots of light scoring, and this got me thinking. How much have I spent on all the Odds and Sods over the years used to make the kits, so I a quick look round the shed came up with 2 decent craft knives (I lost one, bought another and then found the missing one a day later) Lord knows how many packs of blades I have bought and I need another. Cheap craft knife this weekend. OHP to print windows on Various types of glue - PVA, Super glue, UHU, Scotch mounting glue....... Metpack glue. (Gone through loads of this as I have knocked a couple of full bottles over whilst working) A pair of tweasers which I barely use. A glue thinner which has never been used. So with all the fun we have debating pricing policies of stock, I'm going to try and keep track of what I spend on Odds N Sods whilst building Alevscot, and see what I come up with outside of the ??100 budget I have for the its construction.

Best of Blondie

After seeing the Captains work on the new houses for Callow Lane it got me thinking about how to create windows. Up till now I have used black frames by printing out on OHP. Whilst it works, its not perfect AND its always black as I can't print in white. So along comes the Captain with his window method and it got me thinking how else can I do this, especially if the 2010 callange layout starts. Can I improve on what I have done, so using a few off cuts of pasticard I knocked this up. The base is a piece of .75mm. The brickwork is scale scenes "pasted" on by soaking in metpack The window frame is .5mm (To think in reality) The cross piece in the window is just an off cut off .5mm glued in The glazing is something I actually cannot remember where it came from but I have a small pile of it in one corner of the shed. I have to say that this is far better than the old method. I think I will try this on a new building I am working on for my layout, but using a thinner piece for the frame. The walls for that will be card with brick paper instead which will give a better wall thickness. Oh, and Captain - Thank you AND damn you in the same breath as this will keep me very quite for hours and drive me insane.

Thanks for posting this. It has sparked a question about the gaps involved. I have used 9mm MDF for my board, so if I put these runners under a piece of MDF, what is the gap between the MDF and the other board that the runners are mounted to? I was thinking of building a sector plate, but this looks a whole load simpler.

Thanks for posting this. It has sparked a question about the gaps involved. I have used 9mm MDF for my board, so if I put these runners under a piece of MDF, what is the gap between the MDF and the other board that the runners are mounted to? I was thinking of building a sector plate, but this looks a whole load simpler.

I would suggest you look at My layout topic but it turns out that has very few pictures of trains on the layout. I may have to do something about that. As far as the steps go, the steps are at one end of the station with the main building which sits on the road above.

This made me chuckle as I had written a blog along similar lines and posted a few mins before you did. I'm glad its not just me that had the same thought about not having achieved anything.

So as I sit here at the end of another modelling I find myself asking the question, what on earth did I actually do? Back in January my layout looked like this Some 12 months later and after numerous restarts I have finally build the terraced houses but am still no where near finishing the shops, so it now looks like this The wierd thing is I feel I have spent ages in the shed this year but do not have loads to show for it. Could this be because for the first time I have challenged my ineptitude and started on things like "detail". I have a spreadsheet about the layout from items such as the wiring plan, stock list for insurance, time table, etc. It also has a list of tasks that either need to be done or have been done. In that list since the layout started there are 140 things I have done and 32 jobs I still need to do that I can see. When I look at that list I find I have done things such as Laid the grass for the park area by the station Laid the paths Added the steps Added the wall Made the flower beds on the station Added some ground signals for the branchline Made the fence by the station Made 7 terraced houses Fixed the cows and sheep in place Started to replace the "bog brush" trees (I have plans for them) Added gutters and drain pipes to my buildings for the first time. Started creating a timetable Built my first building that was not simply a variation on a square box, but had angled corners. And finally I ran some trains So actually it may not have covered vast swathes of the layout as the 1st 2 years of this layout did, but it does seem I have taken some steps in to new area's of ineptitude that I have not done before. I have a feeling 2010 will be more of the same.

What ever Planet Rock throws at me this morning on my last morning of work this year. Last track was Iron Maiden - Aces High

I asked Peco about the 3 way point at the Warley exhibition and he said it is most likely to be available in Q4 2010 but they were not yet ready to commit to a month. Its a piece which interests me as it is likely to cause me to kill my current layout as I can use it design a much better fiddle yard. I'll be interested to see how you get on building with your son as I also have a 6 year old and we have a piece of 4*2 with set track and we are both thinking that we need to make it much better.

I am more than happy with Giggs getting the award. Rooney cannot do what he does without Giggs, and to often one player is held up as more that the other 10 players on a football pitch. I think being consistently outstanding for 15 years does earn him this award, rather than waiting for a life time achievement award. By the way I am not a Utd fan, and I think from a sportingpoint of view then David Haye is the man as he litterally did beat Goliath and he has by far the biggest personality.

with a fine

I have recently noticed something about my modelling habits. When I returned in 2001 I used a cold loft which it was not possible to heat, (or was pointless to try because of the drafts) so I simply made sure I had plenty of layers on. I used to have a long sleeve T shirt, then a rugby shirt and then a fleece jumper which was fine and if needed a fleece jacket. Having just got my annual electricity bill and, I am wondering why now that I have a shed which is not draughty, I feel the need to run a heater flat out so I can just wear a T shirt B) . Why don't I just bung the thing on low to take the edge off, and go back to wearing plenty of clothes instead. Stuff new years resolution, I am going to make this one now. I should point out that currently the shed is not insulated. Whilst this has not caused any problems, I do plan to fix this when I feel the current layout has run its course (which will be as soon as peco n gauge 3 way points come out)

Fingers crossed some where in the post is a ticket for this years show, but before I start getting flustered because it has not arrived I find myself with a greater conundrum, how to get there. Living in Reading I can get a train direct to Birmingham International, and it takes about the same time as the drive by the time I have got to the station BUT, the ticket for the train is ??40, where as the petrol will cost me around ??20 plus i'm guessing around ??7 - ??10 for the car park. The train will get me there relaxed, I can snooze, have a drink and some food or watch a film (if I dare take a back pack with my little DVD player in i)) if I want whilst the car costing less, means a little bit more money to spend when I am there. The cheapest train ticket means I have to get a specific train home, whilst the car is there when I want it, so if I get bored or want to stay longer I have the option. Both journey types may get affected and slowed down, so that's not an issue. If my wife or Kids are ill, not doing the car journey costs me ??0, but not using the train will cost me something. All I can say is, its a good thing I bought the ticket before I thought about how I get there, other wise I would be left stuck in "analysis paralysis" trying to work this out and suddenly I would realise its Monday the 23rd and the show is over.

Dog Collar which

Does anyone else experience the issue that you "pop" out to the shed for a quick 5 to 10 mins, and by the time you get back 45 mins has gone by in real time? Is my shed some how travelling some where near the speed of light, or was it just the battery in the clock running out, so the clock was very slow? Amyway, this did lead to one of those moments where I returned to be faced by with my wife and the jobs I should have been doing. Its a scene you never see in Doctor Who!! I some how doubt this will be the last time I make this mistake !! In the mean time I managed a few more 5 min jobs done in the evening. I got some old telegraph poles out and put them on the branch line. Looking at them I will replace them as the molding is not that good, but it did help me work out the spacings and get me removing a few more bog brush trees. I've also started on fixing the buildings in place now that all bar 1 of the houses have their drain pipes fitted. Having use 2 methods to make the house I am finding the card ones easier to attach that the plasticard based ones, so I will pop out on the way home and get some super glue for those. My other conundrum is the fiddle yard and its awful design. I worked out that I could add 2ft to most of the tracks which in turn increase the overall capacity from 12 trains to 16, BUT can I do this reaching over the backscene without killing the layout. Given I am in the lucky position of having some money saved (plus the sale of some unwanted stock) to spend on new stock I think this will be one of the winter challenges, especially with the upcoming release of a peco 3 way point. (This is one of those moments where time travel really would be useful to fix this mistake before I made it)

Today has been a good day. The house is clean, had friends round for lunch and my wife makes a mean cheese cake, London Irish are top of the premiership and my "puffer bottle" does indeed produce grass with a far better texture than scatter, and it took no time what so ever. My test piece consisted of a 15cm by 15cm area of neat PVA on card, some Jarvis static grass and the said puffer bottle. The biggest challenge was actually getting the bag of scatter into the bottle without covering the shed, but once achieved, I spent 30 seconds shaking it like a looney and then the bottle "huffed and puffed and after about 12 puffs the area was covered. I got the hover out to remove the unwanted scatter lying round the edges, and then simply used it to suck in various directions to both get scatter that had not been grabbed, and to create some texture. Looking at my work proudly, and then casting my eye over the rest of the layout I am left with this feeling that I need to find a way to cover/change the flock that has been used, but i'll worry about that another time. I still have to buy the ferns from scalelink yet though as looking at their website I did not trust their payment system so i'll give them a call on Monday instead. I'll make a few of them and stick them into the new grass to see what the effect is like. Apart from today's 5 min job I had a good play with the branchline side of the layout just running a few short freight trains around.

the wifes favorite

in Trafalgar Square

As the last post said, what to do next as I seem to have stalled over the last couple of months, so I have decided on a small plan of action. Rather than work on anything big, over the coming month apart from running the layout I am going to do just those little jobs such as: Add gutters and drain pipes to buildings Get flowers in the flower beds. Look at where people should be and the cameo's etc It will take a couple of days to get through but to help me on my way I have ordered 2 things, a puffer bottle to have a crack at static grass, and some bracken stems from Scalelink to help me create some weedy and overgrown areas. I reckon the beauty of this approach will be I will probably find I have spent 2 hrs in the shed, doing lots of things, rather than getting bogged down in creating yet another building. I've also decided to sell off some of my steam stock with as for the main line side of the layout it is definitly going green & blue diesel, however all my steam stock that suits a branchline scene will be kept as I still swap the branchline back to steam on a resular basis.

would feel no