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I like the way Timebond is controllable and doesn't creep under a tiebar when you lay a turnout. Also you get an almost instant bond, so you can add track to what you have just laid quite quickly. I would try the "Barry Norman method" for plain track if I was using track as supplied by the manufacturer, but I think it would be hard work and too difficult if I was gapping the sleepers. For "Shelf Marshes" I imagine much of the ballast and the ground surface nearby being a homogeneous grime. Only the "main line" through the layout and the tram spur being ballasted to anything approaching a decent standard. I have a feeling, the ballasting will pretty much define the layout; apart from the roads there won't be much other ground needing a different scenic treatment. There will be hardly anything growing here. - Richard.

Steve, do you possibly have a link to this ballasting method? All of my searches for Barry Norman are returning the late film critic. - Richard.

As far as I can see, I must have one accessible and unmodified return loop so I can connect the final link in the chain. I also need an gap (an oversize hole in the baseboard) beside the motor drive assembly so I can extract the entire chain if I ever want to rebuild it with a different sequence of links. Does this sound correct? Many thanks, - Richard.

I have done 1 hr 10 min of digging and my body is saying it is time to stop this until another day. I sealed the top of the track bed (6.3 mm birch ply) after I built the baseboard but before I laid any track. I used dilute PVA, but of course this is clear and so invisible in the photos. I left the underneath of the ply bare. Incidentally, I put the fair face underneath and the "no.2" face upwards, because at the end of the day only the underneath will show. I laid the turnouts on Evo-Stik Timebond. In the end I got this down to quite a fine art. Strips of masking tape around the outline of the turnout and under the tiebar, then spread on a layer of the glue. Without waiting, peel off the tape, lay the turnout on the glue and leave under some weights for a while. This is the turnout where the servo ripped out the hole in the end of the tiebar. I was thinking about taking the photos so much, I forgot about the wire for the frog. Timebond is a neoprene adhesive, and neoprene is synthetic rubber. Peco track base is rigid polythene, and this resists just about all adhesives. I can only guess, the Timebond moulds itself to make a perfect fit around the track base, and the track is held by static friction (stiction). The bond is certainly strong enough to hold until the ballast is there. PVA is working in much the same way - it is forming a close layer around the track base. Most likely, where the length of plain line came loose, I didn't use enough PVA. - Richard.

No doorway of course, but I reckon the off-cut would suit a gun cupboard :-) - Richard.

I am supposed to be digging the garden today. It is probably a sensible time to mention the main corrective actions so far: Early on, I reduced the width of the baseboard by 30 mm so it would go through the doorway without tipping. For the baseboard framing, I gave up on 2 mm thick aluminium box section and went for traditional softwood. I went through too many iterations on too many servo mounts, but I think they are all good now. One length of plain line kept on coming adrift, I have no idea why. In desperation I roughly ballasted it, and when I vacuumed up the loose bits most of the ballast came up too! This was my first go with "Ballast Magic" powdered glue and clearly this needs some experimentation and practice. I have given the layout a mains lead with a right-angled connector, so the mains lead isn't heading straight into the wall bracket. The little strips of obechi on the lighting rig split very quickly, and I've pared these off. This whole assembly is a nice neat fit between the two wings and really I am better off without them. So really, I'm in quite a happy place. The next stages are to connect this railway to the rest of the layout; and then probably try to firm up on the arrangement of the roads, kerbs and fences. - Richard.

I sent this to my manager and she replied, "that's it!" - Richard.

I wonder if someone can use this for a simple layout project? Dimensions are 62 inches long; and maximum 15 and minimum 4 inches wide. This is the "lock" side of the door so there is some reinforcement in there somewhere along the straight edge. Collection from CM3 2DT - Hatfield Peverel, near the station. - Richard.

John, It would be interesting to know the dimensions you found. If the width across the cylinders turns out to be much too much for the British outline, there is often still an option to remove them to make a chassis for an engine with inside cylinders. I can add potentially useful chassis to the table in the first post. - Richard.

Thanks Steve. It was almost too perfect! I left a gap of 30 mm, but forgot about a light switch on the wall to the right of the layout. So the free space is really about 15 mm - just enough to slip the layout into the space. I have removed the display cabinet seen in my last post. It got in the way, and somehow the style is now wrong. - Richard.

I feel like a little boy opening his first train set. A box full of parts to build into something mine. The road surface will end up most of 8 mm above the baseboard when the Magnorail track is surface-mounted. The minimum radius of the Magnorail chain is going to be about 55 mm when the chain is running in its track, reducing to about 30 mm in the 180 degree return loop. Both of these radii seem fine to me, and I will be able to fit just over a metre of chain into my rather confined site. For a car turning at a mini roundabout, I'd like to modify the 180 degree turn so it is more like 210 degrees, to follow the splay of the edges of the road. This is looking good. I will have about a metre of chain and track left over to add to another starter kit, to go onto my next layout one day. - Richard.

The layout is in its alcove Yippee! If I remove the lighting rig (the top of the proscenium arch) so I can reach across the baseboard, I can pick up the whole layout on my own and put it into place in the alcove in the hobby room. So here it is: The wide-angle lens makes it look so small! Please excuse the tripods. The big one is a monster of a thing, bought for pennies and so cumbersome I understand why it was so cheap. It holds my studio camera, for when I want to try old-fashioned photography. The layout is sitting on two home-made brackets like this: The spur shelving is simply passing behind it. - Richard.

I was probably inspired by faded memories of Southampton Docks, but there is a prototype with a public road "inside" a turnout a few miles from me. The level crossing taking the A137 road across the railway at Manningtree station goes over a turnout: https://www.google.com/maps/@51.9495919,1.0485755,3a,75y,215.93h,64.54t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s58VrQs0fLt_thPFpw64nnQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 This turnout is connecting the Harwich branch to the main line. Actually, this is quite an interesting location as there is a bridge carrying the railway over the same A137 right beside the level crossing. Network Rail are removing level crossings but this one lets high vehicle cross the railway. The bridge is quite low. The whole scene is really compact. This still doesn't make my suggestion "good" and I agree, I could move my roadway a little to the right, and take it between the turnouts instead of across them. I am rather constrained by including the mini roundabout. This is only here to make a place for Magnorail cars to do a 180 degree turn. When the Magnorail arrives, I'll see if I can turn cars inside a building behind the chemical plant instead of a roundabout. Right now, DHL say the box is at the export centre in Germany :-) My "road" in the foreground is actually a footpath to let twitchers get onto the marshes. I could get rid of this path entirely - I've decided to leave the marshes themselves off the model. I agree entirely. The fences and walls will glue the scene together and help to make it coherent. The treatment of the bottom of the backscene especially needs some thought - no pretty hedgerows here. I need to decide whether the chemical plant should extend beyond the track with the 90 degree curve. That is to say, whether the "main line" runs through the middle of the plant, or the plant is virtually landlocked by railway lines. - Richard.

A mate had a look at the railway yesterday and gave me some fresh ideas. He is the first person to come to see the layout. Here are a couple of photos to compare my mock-up six weeks ago with my new mock-up as we left things yesterday. I have decided a few items, these are unlikely to change: The two Kenco coffee tins bottom right will be storage tanks and they work well as a view blocker for the exit through the mouse hole. The location of the chemical plant is fixed. We discussed quite a lot of other details: The block of flats helps to create a visual balance. The layout will be much better if the tram platform (top left) is a passenger platform, not a maintenance depot. Just forget what the purists say and imagine whatever protection measures the line needs are off-scene. Have an ancient hut here, repurposed for use as the cleaner's store. This needs a pitched roof not a flat one. The platform can have a bus stop style shelter for passengers and not much else. If I have a passenger platform I can have one of those OLED display panels. Just imagine, "Next tram: Fairport *non stop*" or whatever. The chemical plant hides the too-tight curve well, but it is good to be able to watch the trains moving across behind it. You can see they are going around a curve, but not how much their bogies are swinging out. I was thinking of a lagoon behind the chemical plant. Forget this, it will be impossible to see. Possibly a Ratio pump house behind the chemical plant. In the PW depot (top right) add some loose track materials and a mess hut. He likes huts. The refuelling point can be smaller and have a single-sided roof. Possibly a Merit bus shelter. The vehicle restorers needs a high wire fence behind it, to separate it from the railway. The semaphore signal middle-right will be worked by the route setting panel not the local lever frame, to represent access granted by a signal box in the section off-scene to the right. This signal is an LMS design to help reinforce the British setting. The sea wall along the front could be finished with sheet piling. The area in front of this ("the marshes") should stay empty. I quite like having the name of the layout being the one thing I didn't model. Some grass would be good, especially at the bottom left corner below the chemical plant. This grass needs to be rough and patchy. To begin, the backscene will be plain sky with clouds and not much else. I want the scene to look fairly open and desolate, not at all hemmed in. My main interest at the moment is in the roadways. I have drawn these onto white paper. For the time being I have moved the classic vehicle restorers (the Samsung cardboard box) from the top centre to the top right. The idea is to squeeze in a length of Magnorail between here and a mini roundabout (the 10p coin) to let classic cars go on little test drives. I think this would be fun. The cameo presentation seems to make fore/aft compression easy. The mini roundabout is far too close to the tracks, but this doesn't seem to jar visually. So - most of the engineering part of the layout is now done; but fresh ideas for the scenery would be great. - Richard.

I have some Herpa Minis and the turning circle of an Austin Mini was about 29 feet / 8.5 metres. This is about 98 mm in 1:87 scale, a bit more than a Magnorail 180 degree curve but not desperately wrong for a driver testing a car to its limits! The roundabout can be a round dot of paint. I have ordered up a "bicycle" starter kit from Germany, this comes with a slower motor than the "cars" version and if it really doesn't fit I will have the bikes for another layout project. - Richard.

Ian, have you thought about moving cars or lorries on your layout? It looks like you have room for almost any kind of street scene, from a country lane to a section of dual carriageway. I've ordered up one of those Magnorail bicycle kits in the hope I can shoe-horn something into "Shelf Marshes". - Richard.

Please, would a Magnorail track fit into this space? The maximum width available is about 150 mm, in front of the 13 inch mark on the rule. I am planning a model of a classic vehicle restorers and it would be fun if one of their cars could go for a test drive. I am thinking of a 75 mm diameter roundabout at one end and the second reversal inside their workshop (the cardboard box). The other exits from the roundabout being purely scenic and static. - Richard.

Well - I have watched Andy's superb tutorial and I think I owe it to myself to have a go. It has got to be best to try to make your backscene if you possibly can. So - I have a ply backscene already in place. I will try to paint this white (I have some white eggshell paint), and then try adding the Ford Olympic Blue paint. I only really need a sky, the setting is supposed to be fairly desolate and I will do my best to make it minimal. - Richard.

Finishing off the initial build (a working layout, no scenics) I have tidied up a few loose ends and quite a lot of loose wires ... This is a switch I feel I need, but not often. It isolates the 12V supply to the circuit of "operating accessories" on the layout, whatever they end up being. I have put it out of the way on the baseboard frame, not on a control panel. I have installed my DIY route setting panel on the layout. I have put it into the right-hand wing: The two crooked bits of wood here are shims wedged in to hold the assembly in place: Finally, I have put the covers onto the cable trunking and all of the wiring now looks respectable, especially around here: I now have a workable layout and I can try putting it into its alcove in the room and connecting it up to the rest of "Shelf Island". - Richard.

Stu, I would hate to break up the flow of your account, but could you tell us a bit about how you painted your backscene? It seems to have just the sort of nondescript air about it I want for my own layout. - Richard.

I have used LED tapes for my last three layouts and they all worked out well. I suggest you put in three parallel tapes: two cool white and one warm white. Put the tapes as far forward as you can, ideally three or four inches in front of the modelled area, to make the lighting effects look natural. Buy a couple of drill speed controller modules to use as dimmers. Connect one controller to the two cool white tapes, and the second controller to the warm white tape. This will be functionally much the same as I have done for my present layout project, but reduced from four sets of LEDs to three for the smaller size of a micro. The LEDs will give you an excellent spread of light - there are numerous light sources, and so buildings and trees near the backscene won't cast peculiar shadows. Hope this helps. -Richard.

The East Anglian Transport Museum is open again and we went along on 24th September. This is at Carlton Coalville, just outside Lowestoft and it really is well worth a visit. It was our second outing to a heritage site this year ... the first was the Middy on New Year's Day! - Richard.

I think it's all-new. I found the instruction leaflet here: https://www.Hornby.com/uk-en/downloads/view/download/item/2249 - Richard.

Hi Steve, I am so glad you have dropped by. The scenic treatment has got to be worth some discussion when I can get it underway. What I want to do first, is simply operate this layout for a while and then build up the scenery to suit the operations. The layout is between 8 and 9 square feet so about double the size of a micro. But the major structure (the chemical plant) is decidedly "micro" in its design and if I can include features I have seen or used in micros then the layout should look bigger than it really is. - Richard.

The platform is manual. It pulls up and turns and you can raise the hand rails along the sides. The most striking thing about the model is its mass - about 330 grams! It feels like it was machined from a solid lump of steel. Running is perfect, and this one whilst second-hand has no visible wear on the wheels. This vehicle really has no place on a layout purporting to represent British practice, but the temptation to have something self-powered, with crew accommodation and a cab at both ends, proved too great. I think there is something in there to prompt a DIY conversion of an Airfix/Dapol railbus into something fictional but more recognisably British. - Richard.