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The Nutley, Crowborough and Groombridge Light Railway - Fictional Narrow Gauge in East Sussex


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  • 2 weeks later...
  • RMweb Gold

Thanks Annie,

 

I'm really happy with how it's coming along, these last couple of weeks work on the layout have made a huge difference to how it looks, and I cannot wait to get on with more of it, suppose I had best buy some scenic materials!

 

The magnets idea came to me while I was working on a loco, as the magnets used came with some I had got for replacing X.04 magnets, I'm really glad it worked as well as it did!

 

Gary

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • RMweb Gold

I've been playing with the narrow gauge again, and this time we have been working on the trackbed and been ballasting, along with building a proper bridge for the front of the layout!

 

Not long after my last post here I got some Carr's sandstone ballast, this is my first use of Carr's ballast, and I must say I am very impressed with it

1715469430_2020-09-0414_15_58.jpg.671b98505f814c52165b2f82f52cf2ec.jpg

 

It is finer than what I am used to with Woodland Scenics that I am used to using, and looks good once down

69263168_2020-09-1215_12_50.jpg.75c69d1b1892561cb911470267ada35a.jpg

 

952514664_2020-09-1215_12_57.jpg.727d27dfadfa7cfc916331224497e5c9.jpg

 

I also had to decide on what I wanted to do for the bridge at the front of the layout, I had a rough idea of what I wanted, but no idea on the specifics, so I called on the help of my YouTube viewers, and members of my Discord chat server. They proved to be very helpful with pictures I could use for inspiration for a wooden plank bridge, which I decided to attempt to make from sleepers from some old Peco 00 gauge track

 

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This was painted with Humbrol 186, and then dry brushed with sleeper grime, and once in place, gives exactly the sort of look I was after. It's not stuck in place yet, and won't be until after I have done the retaining walls around it. Once it is in place I will add more ballast to break up the clean lines at the end.

 

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and finally a picture of my Bachmann Baldwin heading across the bridge

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There was a video to go with this, but it was filmed before I started working on the bridge, so is slightly out of date.

 

Thanks for looking! Hope you enjoyed!!

 

Gary

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • RMweb Gold

I have got some more work done on the 009 layout!! We now have a scenic base, and will be doing some work on scenic items on my livestream this weekend! I have a video to show how the layout is currently looking

 

Hope you enjoy!

 

Gary

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • RMweb Gold

With the scenic base done I started looking at how I was going to do the actual scenics on the layout, starting with the buildings of the camp itself, I decided some time ago that these would be army issue bell tents, so spent some time looking for 4mm models of these, the cheapest I could find was a resin model that cost £22 for a single tent!! Clearly I was not going to pay this much per tent, so I started looking for specs on them, discovering that early in the war they were 10ft wide and 10ft tall in the middle, and before 1916 they were white, changing to olive drab at some point during that year, and the photos showed a heavy canvas, with the texture of the weaving still visible. With that information to hand I started coming up with ways to make them myself, settling on a brass frame, with a covering made from offcuts of the skirt from Oak Hill. You can see this being built on one of my previous livestream,s however I have a video of the finished product for you to see, please let me know what you think.

 

Gary

 

 

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  • RMweb Gold

Gary,

I do like your tents, you really seem to have captured their essence. 

 

Would they have pitched them on the gravel, and would they have the flaps open?  If you are going to put in camp beds, and where will the cookhouse/campfire and toilet/bushes be?  How many men will be working there?  You could probably get more in in 1914 than would be allowed in all three nowadays.

 

Just think, if you went somewhere Glamping you would get one of those, and my son and his wife have one but theirs is candy pink and white sections.

 

Edit:  Would the tents be so close to the action, I mean where the logs will be loaded?  Should they be a bit further back near the hill, with the cookhouse?  (I think Preiser do one for WW2 Germans which is on a wagon.  It is completely useless for you as it is H0 and therefore will only give out small meals, but I am sure that there might be something similar for WW1.

Edited by ChrisN
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  • RMweb Gold

Chris,

 

Thanks, I am really happy with how the tents have turned out, and am enjoying playing with scenic stuff again!

 

I have placed them at the edge of the gavel, as to be next to the working area, I envision them being the only shelter on the site, and as such used during the day for any work that can be done in them, much like a dug out would be on the front. I expect cooking and toilets to be open air, along with equipment for the actual logging, I have been sent links to a few things to help on this front, but so far nothing has been purchased, I haven't yet stuck anything down, and won't until I have more of a plan of the whole site, but there will be plenty of trees around once it is done.

 

Gary

 

PS, not sure candy pink would go down well with the officers :jester:

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  • 2 years later...

Resurrecting this thread about Gary’s excellent layout, just to post this, which is the outline route plan from the copy held at the County Record Office:


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The early photos in the thread have evaporated, but anyone with a long memory will see that it’s pretty much exactly as I postulated from the sketch map that my father drew and a knowledge of the lie of the land.

 

How fares the layout these days?

 

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  • RMweb Gold
7 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

How fares the layout these days?

 

Good to see this thread pop up again, although I haven't done any more work to the layout (still working up the nerve to make my own trees) it has been my most used layout recently, because my modelling has had a brief move over the pond

 

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I don't think any of my American modelling has been seen on RMWeb before, but having been inspired by some online play sessions of Railroads Online I got an H0n30 model of a Porter 0-4-0 to model the starting loco from the game, and the collection has expanded from there, this is the loco collection I now have, but I also have quite a bit of 3D printed rolling stock for them to pull.

 

Modelling is moving back to the UK with the progress on Oak Hill 2 now though, so back on with the layout again soon, hopefully.

 

Gary

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Interesting stuff.
 

My last 009/H0e/H0n30 layout had periodic bouts of American-ness too, and I even scratchbuilt a Porter 0-4-0ST around a Bachmann N gauge chassis (i think; it was 30+ years ago) and had a couple of Joe Works US locos.

 

Can I pass on my box car recipe? Take one piece of wood, 1” square section, 3” long. Screw two bogies at appropriate centres to one face using tiny wood screws. Decorate to taste using  scribed styrene for the sides and ends 9including the peak shape), styrene sheet for the roof and walkways, styrene strip or wire for the ladders, , bits of wire  for the truss-rods etc. Paint. Job done.

 

American bogie freight stock must be the easiest stuff ever to scratchbuild!

 

Given that clear-cut logging looks the same anywhere, the layout could easily become inter-continental.

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  • RMweb Gold

I like the sound of that recipe, I've got a few boxcars 3D printed, but I think I'll have to give that a try, I'll have to see what sizes of wood we have in stock at the shop tomorrow.

 

The layout will definitely find itself being inter-continental in the future, probably not both sides at once though!

 

Gary

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Having forgotten about that Porter 0-4-0ST for 30+ years, I stumbled on a photo of it today, too left in the set of four:

 

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If you’ll excuse incipient thread-Jack, here are a couple more of that tiny layout. Three green loco is Joe Works, and the orange one is an adaptation of an eggerbahn model.  Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have snapped any of the bogie vehicles.

 

308A2B3D-A9B6-4F47-9477-43AAD55D97B0.jpeg.8a3dc61a14d29452fce31833d79d2ee0.jpeg
 

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