Chesterton Road sidings and TMD

[Midnight-Freight]

The layout has been driving me mad recently. I guess the normal path is to improve your skills by building a few layouts along the way but I'm unlikely to be building another one anytime soon so the areas I'm not happy with keep getting re-done until (hopefully) I come up with something I am happy with. Currently it's the area near the sidings which is a ballast loading/unloading area. I didn't give much thought to scenics when planning the track and wanted to fit in as much as I could in the space available. I definitely achieved that and as such the areas left for scenic stuff are small and inconveniently shaped making it difficult to come up with anything I am happy with. Hopefully I will get there in the end, but I will have probably 'built' the layout 4 times over by the time I'm finished.

 

On a more promising note I now have 2 fully functioning dcc fitted locos. The lenz standard+ chip which was in the 66 has now been squeezed into the nose of the 08 and this is very happily crawling around. For the 66 I opted for the Hornby TTS 67 sound chip having seen a few videos on Youtube. I must say for the price I am very impressed with the sound. Saying that I will probably swap it out for the proper 66 one when it arrives as you can tell the difference. It's a bit jerky at slow speed, not sure if that could be smoothed out by altering cv's but I can't do that at the moment so will have to live with it for the time being. It definitely adds another dimension having the 66 sitting somewhere idling whilst the 08 shunts some wagons around!

 

Hopefully I will have some pictures with a bit of visible progress soon...

[Midnight-Freight]

Just a few quick phone pics. Some progress has been made. I've re-done the ballast loading area which looks much better. I've also laid a thin layer of Woodland scenics medium brown ballast on the track as I wasn't happy with it how it was and now looks better. The signal box has had a bit more work done to it and is looking good. Lastly I've added a few dirty washes to the concrete hardstanding at the tmd area.

I also purchased a Hornby TTS class 67 decoder for the 66. It sounds pretty good for the price. I'll be interested to see how different the dedicated 66 one sounds when it's released.