Black Sheep

Looking good! wish I had that amount of space! Was wondering what turntable you were using and how you were planning on powering it?

Nationalisation was in 1948? The first morris minor (the MM) emerged in 1948 so it is possible to have a couple on a 1948 layout as it could be a brand new car, a little thin line of paint on the windscreen to make it a split screen would make it look like a MM instead of a minor. To get away with a few 'brand new' cars, you could have a dealership on the layout - I only have space for the station and thats about it! unfortunately my 'brittish railways' Minor van has to be a 1952 series 2 since the MM only came in 2 door, 4 door and convertable. all other variants were 1952 or later. As you say, It's probably easier to distract from the small detail of dates for car's being launched by having rolling stock being correct - no question in mind, nothing else to question kind of thing instead of questioning the year due to a mix of liveries may cause questions of something else. I'm thinking that, given my black five, ivatt and 4F are all LMS livery I could get away with one or two larger locos, such as a royal scott in early BR claiming that the LMS locos are more local in the remote part of the Dales and so haven't been re-liveried yet but the longer distance locos from out of the locality have been. although some DMU's in an LMS livery would be both interesting and amusing to watch purists get up in arms about - Similar to my friend Jamie running a US big boy round Long Preston while I ran Bill and Ben on the narrow gauge

Ok, the viaduct is built and going to be set slightly lower into the layout than first planned (basically, sit the legs of the viaduct under water instead of on the tow path) and have curved the canal the other way making a longer siding giving both a longer distance to set the gradient on but also slightly less vertical distance to cope with.

Anyone following my blog will probably be expecting an update on baseboard construction. That's downstairs in the form of a pile of timber - just taken a break to post some pics. I've just finished building the viaduct and a bit of weathering applied to it (photos attached) but mainly I'm wondering what to do regarding vehicles. Mum got me a series 1 landrover (1948) and a caravan (two tone, very 1950's) along with the morris minor van from last christmas. I do appreciate that she's showing an interest and has gone to the trouble of getting vehicles i'll like and in the correct scale but she does know from my dad's many years of building railways that you have to be true to time - or do you? Do they go on the layout and claim that BR hasn't got around to applying the livery to the locomotives (I'm assuming it'd take a couple of years to actually re-livery everything) Or should I just claim the layout is 1950's and that nationalisation never happened? Thus allowing me to run the Deltic prototype I quite fancy getting What do people think? I'm also claiming that somewhere in the Yorkshire Dales there is a place called Milliedale (try and keep my wife happy with the construction of the layout) which has a canal used to ferry coal from the coal face to meet with the railway. The viaduct with the Ivatt and the black 5 on it.

I agree, so progress is on hold until I have the viaduct built so that I have reference of how high it is. The plan is to put the viaduct actually at water level on the layout, the wharf siding will be about platform height above the waterline (possibly more so, as I have to do something about modeling water) which will reduce the vertical distance needed to descend. I can also look into making the main line climb slightly, but not much as there is only a short stretch between the station and the viaduct. It'll all be figured out tomorrow when I have the viaduct built the back up plan is, instead of having the canal come round the end of the wharf siding and the boats coming along the front of the wharf to load / unload I could make the canal turn alongside the back of the wharf siding allowing it to be longer without moving the viaduct.

Unfortunately the loco for the job is wrapped up and under the tree leaving only my black five available for a job which it will never do, along with the viaduct that sets the height from which I have to decend to the wharf. Guess I'll just have to wait for chistmas afternoon to do some haulage tests. The transition from top to bottom is going to be done with a single piece of track to keep it smooth the reason for the steep slope is to keep my viaduct and tunnel mouth a reasonable distance away from each other, although I'm sure there are places, such as settle and carlisle where a tunnel ends and a moment later the train is on a viaduct or bridge. I'm also trying to figure out if there was any coal mining in the Yorkshire Dales (wanting to call the layout 'Milliedale') I'm just trying to blag the fact that i have a coal wharf to transfer from canal to rail but could claim it the other way round, that a canal only accessible industry is taking on coal via the canal.

As mentioned in the previous entry, the gradient for my line to my coal transfer wharf is making me wonder if it's a little bit too steep. the traffic that will be using it is about four coal wagons, on the fictional prototype they would go down the slope empty and come back up full, probably dragged up and down by anything from an 0-6-0 to an ivatt 2-6-2 tank and possibly my 4F (0-6-0) my main concern is more about possible damage to the loco than concern about accuracy - although I wouldn't want a slope that is only found on snowdon. I've attached a photo of the proposed slope (length and gradient) with a farish coach sat on the slope. Just wanting people's thoughts on it Thanks

Thanks for the heads up on the setrack - I was considering it due to the shorter length of the point as I don't want the gradient of the line down to the wharf being too steep and looking wrong or worse still, damaging locos on it. I'll get some pics up of things and see what people think Thanks Devondynosoar and Trelvis_Gresley.

'novel' was always your strong point

Courtesy of my Gran, I've been shopping at work and bought the first structures for the layout, the goods shed, to be positioned near the station: and the loco servicing structures, positioned on the road / roads from the turntable: Both are Ratio kits I'm looking at changing the pointwork for entering the goods yard to a Peco setrack, it's a tighter curve, but the largest loco that will be going over it is a 4F 0-6-0 or an Ivatt 2-6-0 or ivatt tank, so should be ok, and makes the length of track I have for the coal line connecting with the canal wharf a little longer giving a better gradient. so, a bit of kit building for over christmas when I'm not working on the baseboards yes Richard, I do know you, I've been annoying you for the last 26 years

At the moment I'm in the planning process of my first N gauge layout, the intent is to create a scenic but interesting backdrop to run my rolling stock, on an, as yet, un-named fictional layout. As I said in my post in layout and track design ( http://www.rmweb.co....d-to-end-ideas/ ) I originally started out in 00 courtesy of my parents (as I'm sure many other people did) until wanting to build a prototype based railway and realising if I switched to N gauge I could build lakeside station, on windermere (chosen mainly for the quayside that makes one side of the platform) However this would take up 8ft x 3ft without fiddle yard, something I don't have space for. Recently I got a job in a model shop, and after selling about 10 N gauge locos and chatting to the customers I'd decided my stock had sat in boxes for long enough, so I set about boring my wife about railways until she responded with "yeh, whatever" So, I'm now building something along these lines: The idea is that it's essentially a cheap to build display run for my locos and rolling stock but also interesting to run. The back story of it is that it's a resort town, hence the large terminus station (giving me an excuse for my black five), the turntable acts as the crossing at the far end of the station, similar to Holmfirth, the blue area on the plan is a canal with wharf for loading coal from barges onto the railway, the reason behind this is the barges can meet the coal almost at the coalface, making it cheaper to bring it out this way than building pit sidings (being from barnsley, pit sidings and pit workings aren't anything special!) so far I've got some lining paper and been slowly acquiring track from work (paid for of course) to start marking things down and a viaduct has been given to my wife to be returned gift wrapped for my birthday in early jan (although I've measured it so I can continue planning) Planned track so far, figuring out how it will fit on the 8x1ft board As you can see, it's not the biggest space living in a rented terrace house, you can just make out the doors leading left, to the stairs and lounge and right, out towards the kitchen. It should fit between the two doorways yet give enough space to get past after coming home from the supermarket. So, that's all for now, I'll update when I've got some more done and been shouted at for not doing the washing up

Has anyone found any damage to the loco from running in the snow? any rust or anything like that? Thinking I might one day build a garden railway in 00 as i'm never going to have enough space to build an indoor layout.

I was reading somewhere on here about coal bins, and generally, they often didn't bother, they would order coal in, based on what they could shift in the time they'd rented the waggon/siding for if they ran out of time they'd dump it on the floor to avoid being fined for keeping the siding blocked / wagon longer than agreed they'd then have a bit more time in which to move the coal before the station / goods yard staff got annoyed. later, when wagon sizes increased with metal sided mineral wagons being used more often, they'd often end up with more coal than they could shift / lower prices in summer to keep coal moving from the pit they might end up over ordering and end up with a fair amount of coal on the ground and not want to keep the wagon and be fined for it.

If its any help to anyone, I've seen a fair few points still in use on wooden sleepered points, the hallam line from sheffield to leeds (via Wakefield Westgate) had some when I last used it a year or two ago.