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How small? Tiny layout with big ambitions


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And so you should be, particularly for a first time build. Really enjoying watching this develop - and you've given me ideas for a similar 009 version (must resist!).

 

How does the Lego(?) framed traverser work?

So in regards to the traverser, my wood work skills are very rough and inaccurate - not the attitude that is right if you are building something that needs to be precise like a traverser. The entire traverser is actually made out of LEGO with the only non LEGO there the track and the power wires. Here are some more pictures of the traverser (an aerial shot first).post-32204-0-06415300-1520167903_thumb.jpg The frame is built out of long bits of LEGO and the corners are perfect right angles thanks to the design of LEGO - much neater and better than my own creations out of wood. The actual frame consists of studded plates with smooth plates on top. This means that the traverser can smoothly move without much resistance. At each end the Lego is built up higher to stop the traverser from traversing off the baseboard. The actual sliding but of the traverser is made out of Lego but with a groove the middle and end which holds the traverser in place and allows it to move on the smooth plates.post-32204-0-36953900-1520168116_thumb.jpg The next photo shows the traverser in place with the groove on the smooth plates.post-32204-0-39144200-1520168177_thumb.jpg At the side closest to the operator there are some higher bits of Lego which the operated can use to manouvre the traverser. Another advantage of Lego is that I can adapt it at any point and the whole traverser took about 30 minutes to build start to finish including design time. The Lego was just lying about not doing anything so it hasn't cost me anything really and the quality of plastic means that there will be very little wear and tear so no maintenance is really needed. And if something does brake I can just find another standard Lego component that can replace it. The traverser is held down with hot glue on the frame but the sliding bit is not attached only by gravity and the power wires. The Lego is just held together stud to stud at the moment but I intend to super glue it all together in the future to add more strength to it. Hope this answers any questions.
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When I first started looking at planning an OO depot layout (before I built Hendre Lane) I came across this tiny layout "Barber's Bridge"

 

 

 

And who remembers Harchester Stabling Point with all the football fans crossing the bridge over the railway?

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Very cleverly done with the Lego ... with a spot of glue between that will last forever and a day .... and to me a very viable soluation as my wood working skills are abysmal and can not be considered skills in the first place ...

 

Your loading dock relief building looks very generic to me: could be the States, Canada, the UḰ or even most places in continental Europe from any time since the 1920ies up to the 1980ies or so ...

 

A photographic comment: noteworthily (at least to me :onthequiet: ) the last image in post #25 show clearly the barrel lens distortion of the lens/camera used - which is actually to be expected but especially to the track.

 

Best Regards,

Christian

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Very cleverly done with the Lego ... with a spot of glue between that will last forever and a day .... and to me a very viable soluation as my wood working skills are abysmal and can not be considered skills in the first place ...

 

Your loading dock relief building looks very generic to me: could be the States, Canada, the UḰ or even most places in continental Europe from any time since the 1920ies up to the 1980ies or so ...

 

A photographic comment: noteworthily (at least to me :onthequiet: ) the last image in post #25 show clearly the barrel lens distortion of the lens/camera used - which is actually to be expected but especially to the track.

 

Best Regards,

Christian

Thanks Christian. It was an aim of mine that I was quite vague with the setting of the layout so I can run my sentinel and my Hornby pug. I hadn't noticed that on the last picture! For all the photos i'm just using my phone camera (nothing special as I'm still using a Nokia).

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Phone cameras (especially older ones) use very small sensors and thus very short focal-length wide angle lenses designed very much with cost in mind; so barrel lens distortions coupled with the strong wide-angle perspective are common there.

 

But for an older Nokia the pictures are quite nice - just light your subjects well! Photography means painting with light: less the light less to paint with!

 

Best Regards,

Christian

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Ok since you saw the last photo a huge amount of work has been done. Firstly the ballast has been weathered with enamel washes. Normally I airbrush the track and that is quite a quick method but applying the enamel wash by hand with a brush was quite time consuming and something I would change for next time. Once that was dry I stuck on and trimmed the industrial back scene from scale model railway scenery. This was just stuck on with some full strength pva glue applied to the mdf back board with a brush. This was held in place with wooden pegs whilst the pva set off. The buffer stops I made earlier were then stuck onto the backscene with a couple of dots of pva. To cover any flaws in my ballasting wood land scenics bushes were glued down on any 'bald spots' of the layout. The colour I used is a medium green one which I quite like and looks like a good dirty green colour. A lineside hut was glued down in the front left hand corner of the scene. I wanted to incorporate a small hut into the layout and didn't want it in the other corner as it would interfere with uncoupling. I cant be sure if its make but I'm pretty sure its a peco kit. Now here is a bit of an experiment; I wanted to try and add dirt texture to the layout without using real dirt so I masked off the sides, painted the baseboard I wanted textured with full strength pva glue and tipped a load of beach sand on it. After about an hour I tipped the layout upside down to remove the loose sand.post-32204-0-92771200-1520361917_thumb.jpgpost-32204-0-03859100-1520361936_thumb.jpg To paint it I gave it a thick enamel wash of Humbrol enamel number 98 which is quite a dirty brown colour. This works as quite a good dirt substitute though it looks more like rough gravel than smooth to scale dirt which I quite like. Next up to finish the layout will be my favourite stage of building any layout - the detailing stage. I will probably do an indepth post on this when I get round to it. Until then happy modelling! :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for your comment Jerry. This layout wont be going to an exhibition (hopefully it will do at some time) yet but the outing is just to some friends. Non of them are railway modellers but we normally play a few games and since the layout is a fairly easy shunting puzzle I offered to bring it along. It's nothing special really and on a much smaller scale compared to an exhibition (no more than 5 of us there) but never the less it will be a good road test for the layout and it will highlight any faults and problems. Talking about exhibitions I will be help exhibit 'Rumbling Bridge' this weekend at Howden model railway show. I've never been before and it's an excuse to get out of the house for a day and see some great layouts. So I am looking forward to that very much and hopefully all goes smoothly there and you never know I might find a bargain or two. ;) Right now on with some progress of the layout. By the way I am in desperate need of a name (before Tuesday preferably when the layout goes out) as i would rather call it a name than 'the layout'. Last post i said that i would move onto the detailing stage which is what has been done. Firstly, i made up an painted one of these bikes from scale model railway scenery. Very well priced and surprisingly strong. I just painted mine in black with a leather seat so it blends in with rest of the darky brown industrial colours.post-32204-0-64059500-1521136779_thumb.jpg The oil drum is a white metal casting and was left over from a Knightwing kit. The colours are a bit bold but add a nice break in the browns and blacks. It was toned down with a simple dry brush. All the pallets you will see are cheap peco ones (I think) which have just had a simple brown enamel wash applied over the creamy coloured plastic that they are moulded in.post-32204-0-87500400-1521136945_thumb.jpg Bushes are from the woodland scenics range and the colour I used is medium green. The piece of wood is some large bit of match stick which was coloured with the same wash as the pallets.post-32204-0-64021600-1521137025_thumb.jpg Pallets and more pallets now. In total there are only 4 on the layout but they look quite good I think and represent industry quite well.post-32204-0-21961700-1521137091_thumb.jpgpost-32204-0-57737200-1521137108_thumb.jpg I reckon I just need a person to set the scene off nicely but I don't have any at the moment that will look good or right so I will see if there are any for sale at Howden. If not then I'm not to bothered. That last bit of progress I managed to get done is painting the baseboard and back board black. This was done with some cheap black gloss paint from Boyes. It looks alright for now though I might go over it again in the future.post-32204-0-61293100-1521137278_thumb.jpg I just think that it tidies everything up a lot. The paint actually took 3 days to dry. It spent 2 days in the garage and one day indoors. I might try and find a little battery light to illuminate the scene but I'm not in any rush to sort one out. There are a couple of things I need to tweak and sort out before Tuesday when the layout goes out but I will do them then put them on a separate post probably. Thanks for looking everyone. :)

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Great day today exhibiting rumbling bridge at Howden model railway exhibition. Great selection of layouts and well worth a visit to any modeller looking for inspiration and high quality layouts. Here is a pic of rumbling bridge just before the doors were about to open. Apart from a broken point which had to be fixed last minute the layout ran very well and visitors loved the dcc sound that all the locos have (apart from the rail bus).post-32204-0-34981400-1521314648_thumb.jpg

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Thanks everyone for your replies and name suggestions. I think I am going to go with "Pastry Lane" at the moment but it could change. The show at Howden went really well on both days with what looked like quite a good turn out. I didn't get many photos on my phone so I will have to get the other ones of the camera before I can show you them here. Here are my only mobile pics:post-32204-0-83765000-1521486876_thumb.jpgpost-32204-0-57458100-1521486897_thumb.jpg It's not much but I didn't have much time to wander round the layouts. My next exhibition is in 3 weeks time which is the SDRM 40th anniversary exhibition. At the moment I will be on either rumbling bridge or Lomond street which is a dcc sound Scottish blue diesels depot. I have done some prep work today on pastry lane for tomorrows outing but I haven't got any pictures yet so I will take them and get them to you tomorrow hopefully. Once that's over I will be trying a new scale..... Wont say which one yet....

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Guest ShildonShunter

Luke you have made a fantastic little layout loads of great modeling work and the detailing is spot on. I'm sure you will come up with a fitting name.

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Thanks for your kind words Shildon Shunter. As promised here are some pictures and explanations of the work I did to the layout before taking it out last night. I basically 'people proofed' the layout by adding some more Lego plastic blocks with super glue to the end of the traverser. After that I then wedged in a piece of spongy foam stuff. A couple drops of pva in the corners just helped it to stay in place. Even if I run a train into it at full speed it doesn't even go 3/4 through the foam so it seems to have worked quite well.post-32204-0-86520200-1521618547_thumb.jpg To allow the Lego extension I had to sand down lots of the studs on the base of the traverser. Instead of faffing around with sand paper I just got the dremel out and used that. Much faster!post-32204-0-26095700-1521618653_thumb.jpg To help the operators know where they are moving the wagons I made a simple map and blue tacked it to the fiddle yard. post-32204-0-92382600-1521618775_thumb.jpg I'm thinking of submitting the layout to a website called "Carendt" which is a website entirely dedicated to micro layouts. If you haven't seen it before then it is a must see for micro layout builders. So now something completely different - since this layout is finished in thinking of moving onto a new micro layout but in a new scale, 09. 09 is 15 inch gauge in o scale so it equates to n gauge track in o gauge basically. Fairly compact with much more detail and all the benefits of o gauge (apart from the price :) ) just in a more manageable space. More will come on that but I will probably start a new thread on it. The plan comes from "Carendt" which I will show you all at a later date. Until then, happy modeling:)

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  • 3 weeks later...

What a great little layout. Lots of detail packed into a small space. I hope the running session was a success. I am intrigued by the use of LEGO for the traverser. How have you strengthened it to avoid the whole thing coming apart?

 

I note your original concept - to build a layout small enough to operate on a train as hand luggage. Have you therefore developed some kind of carrying case for it? How would you intend to transport the stock ?

 

Great work.

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What a great little layout. Lots of detail packed into a small space. I hope the running session was a success. I am intrigued by the use of LEGO for the traverser. How have you strengthened it to avoid the whole thing coming apart?

 

I note your original concept - to build a layout small enough to operate on a train as hand luggage. Have you therefore developed some kind of carrying case for it? How would you intend to transport the stock ?

 

Great work.

Thanks Andyram the running session went very well and the layout was enjoyed by everyone. The Lego traverser is hut glue gunned down the baseboard and apart from that there is no other glue involved except some super glue to hold the track down. For the transport on a train I am still to fulfil that goal (hoping to do it in the summer on a heritage railway where it will be more appreciated). I have built no case for the layout as it would just add more weight and space taken up by it so instead I built a very robust baseboard though a handle or two on it would be helpful. For the stock I would just fill my camera bag with bubble wrap then put the stock in. The layout takes a sentinel and 4 wagons so not much at all.

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Thanks Andyram the running session went very well and the layout was enjoyed by everyone. The Lego traverser is hut glue gunned down the baseboard and apart from that there is no other glue involved except some super glue to hold the track down. For the transport on a train I am still to fulfil that goal (hoping to do it in the summer on a heritage railway where it will be more appreciated). I have built no case for the layout as it would just add more weight and space taken up by it so instead I built a very robust baseboard though a handle or two on it would be helpful. For the stock I would just fill my camera bag with bubble wrap then put the stock in. The layout takes a sentinel and 4 wagons so not much at all.

 

 

I wondered if there was space beneath the traverser for storing the stock. Then you could add a hinged section to the front of the layout that would fold over the top. Is that possible?

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I wondered if there was space beneath the traverser for storing the stock. Then you could add a hinged section to the front of the layout that would fold over the top. Is that possible?

Beneath the traverser there is a big piece of wood for stability and strength so that limits the amount if space available. There is room for 2 wagons though. To do that I would need to make a wooden board to be screwed in underneath the layout to stop the stock falling out the bottom. A hinged section is probably possible but I haven't really looked into it. I have some hinges and locks spare so they could be used. The fold over bit would ideally be attached to the back scene.
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