kirmies

Thanks, all, for the kind words and for all the positive comments from everyone else over the weekend. I was extremely pleased with the way it was looking and working even in the extreme heat - for those who weren't there, despite the staff's best efforts, it was well over 30 degrees in the hall on BOTH days even though it was somewhat cooler than that outside on Sunday so we were definitely wilting a bit by the end. There were good numbers at the show although the crowds round the front of the layout were not quite as deep as at York Show at Easter: The next chance to see YORK close up and personal is at the MANCHESTER show in early December - see you there!

YORK will be making only its second ever public appearance next weekend at the Steam Museum, Swindon Railway Festival. Details can be found here: https://www.steam-museum.org.uk/event/swindon-railway-festival/. Hope to see you there! There has been some progress on the layout since the York Show at Easter though mostly what's happened since then is me catching up with all the things I didn't do in the earlier part of the year when I was spending pretty much every waking hour getting YORK ready for York. The main visible improvements are the awnings on the open air sections of the platforms (viewable through the ends of the overall roof: And W.H.Smiths, which was well stocked at the York Show at Easter but rather lacked customers and staff now has both:

Just got back from the great success that was York Show 2023. Thank you SO much for all the kind remarks about the layout both in person and online. It meant a GREAT deal. The Lord Mayor of York liked it so much he came back for a second look! The layout was so popular that, for large parts of the weekend, there was quite a crowd around it: Apologies of this meant you weren't able to get as good a view as you have liked. YORK will be at STEAM in Swindon on 9th & 10th September and Leeds Model Railway Exhibition on 28th & 29th October and at 3 or 4 shows a year around the country after that. We had nine trains on the layout for most of the 3 days of the show and, considering this was the first show almost all of the stock had attended, everything ran really well with remarkable few problems. This was a massive relief for me as it was the first time I've ever exhibited a 2mm finescale layout: I've been having nightmares for weeks about everything failing by Monday. As the number of trains increases, the return curves get quite interesting to watch: There's room for around 18 trains so, once I have that many, there'll be trains going in all directions!! Now that YORK for York Show 2023 has been achieved, I'll keep posting stuff about the layout here every so often but will mostly be getting the website fully running and up to date: www.this-is-york.com. Once again thanks for all your encouragement that has helped get me this far and for all the kind words about the layout.

Two weeks today and YORK will be at York! Final testing is under way and, by way of a taster, here are the latest two trains passing through: The Silver Jubilee is John Aldrick's work (apart from the loco) and the eleven coach trough train is mostly mine with a couple of John's coaches thrown in for good measure. Hope to see you in a couple of weeks!

Thanks Ian, I was thinking the same, something like this: I can feel a Photoshop session coming on!

The very observant will have spotted that the September 1937 issue of The Model Railway News is available at W.H.Smiths on YORK so no time travel devices needed: The model is now nearing completion and is installed on the layout. Not quite sure would have been on the back wall of the kiosk so that has been left blank for now (and the clock is still at the repairers!):

Avid and prompt readers of Railway Modeller will have already seen that YORK is April's Railway of the Month: This is largely to promote the return of the much missed York Show but also shows the layout in quite a favourable light. I'm pretty pleased with the way the article has turned out and I hope it encourages a few more people to come along to the show. Even the unobservant will notice that W H Smiths is looking a bit understocked: The text of the article explains that this is a job yet to be done. Well, it was at the time I took the photos but, being right 'up front and centre' on the layout, it has been a priority task to complete before Easter. The last few weeks have seen a considerable improvement in stock levels: These are all custom decals drawn on CAD or images of contemporary newspapers, magazines and books manipulated in Photoshop etc. The piles of these on the counter were built up from numerous tiny offcuts of 10 thou plastikard: With decals of the front covers applied one by one: I know everything in 2mm is tiny and fiddly but this was borderline ridiculous! Decals for the actual W.H.Smith's signage are still awaited and toning down of the sheen and bedding down onto the platform surface will happen once they've been applied. The clock on this side of the signal box is still at the repairers!

Hi Jerry, Thanks for the kind words about YORK and apologies for the delayed response to your questions: I've spent most if the last week taking my other current layout 'Laramie Engine Terminal' to Model Rail Scotland. Although I have drawings for them the current plan is NOT to include the tea rooms on the layout largely because the footprint of the layout doesn't include where they are, they would act as rather too good a view blocker and the ornate front wouldn't be visible to viewers. That said, I suspect the real tea rooms (currently the York Tap real ale pub) will figure in YORK's trip to the York Show in a few weeks' time but only after hours! St Ives is still part complete: much time and effort has gone into it but much still remains to be done and I keep having other ideas for layouts! So it may get finished one day but no promises. Peter

Looking brilliant!!

Nick, At least one LMS Jubilee is definitely part to the plan but won't make it to the top of the 'to do' list by this Easter, I'm afraid (unless you have a spare I can borrow)

To answer various peoples' queries: The J39 is a Farish model with a milled replacement 2mm finescale chassis. One of the key mods I do to the N-gauge bodies (many of which are excellent) is the handrails. The 6 thou top E steel guitar wire I use makes a huge difference to the appearance. Tim: it's DCC - not sure it would be easy to achieve such excellent slow stopping and starting if there was a fraction of a volt between track and loco wheels, particularly in 2mm. The good slow running is a big part of the plan for YORK (as it was for Laramie). I used Maxon 4:1 in line gearmotors and 25:1 gearboxes in Laramie's Big Boys. For YORK I'm using cheap and cheerful Chinese gearmotors (see page 4 of this blog) and 21:1 or 30:1 gearboxes to give a similar massive reduction. They are quite noisy (though do get quieter when after a few hours' running) but are a couple of quid each whereas Maxon gearmotors are now frighteningly expensive (though much quieter). Also, I have DCC speed set to a maximum of about 20mph and VERY long acceleration and deceleration times so, stopping a train at the station is simply a matter of knocking the 'regulator' from max. to zero as the it enters the roof area and then back to max. when it's time to leave. The coal train would be slightly more representative if it included some NER hoppers: they're definitely on the list of things to do but not particularly near the top of that list at the moment! A Q6 would also be good!

Ah yes, the coal train! This is the daily Gascoigne Woods to Scarborough working. Goods trains heading up or down the ECML would have taken the avoiding line but, as far as I'm aware, at the time the only way onto the Scarborough branch from the south was through the station. They are all South Yorkshire because that's what I've got having made them when I was planning to build Gamston Curve (ECML, same era but approx. 50 miles south of York). Possibly West Yorkshire miners were on a go slow that day, so the coal had to come from further south: who knows! There are two reasons for having this train: I've got the stock and it'll make a nice contrast to all the passenger services.

It's been a while since I last posted a video but I'm now at the stage where things that look something like trains are running through something that looks a bit like a station: What (I hear you say) a Great Western train running through YORK? Two reasons: They actually did: this is the Port to Port (Newcastle to Swansea) train which alternated between GWR and LNER coaching stock. It was pulled by an LNER loco on the LNER and a GW one on the Great Western. Trains by all 4 grouping companies passed through York in the 1930s and they will all be represented on YORK. The second reason is that the coaches are John Aldrick's and have run at several shows on his layout Ivybridge (which uses the same return curves as YORK). This makes it a good first train for testing as, if it derails, it's probably the track rather than the stock. The plan is over the coming weeks gradually to go through all the trains I have put together (and the other one I've borrowed from John) and test and test until I'm as sure as I can be that they'll stand up to the rigours of the 3 days of York Show (around 20 hours of operating) and largely stay on the track!

Much of this week has been spent doing a photoshoot of YORK for the Railway Modeller. Steve Flint has kindly agreed to feature the layout in the April edition (due out in mid-March) as a way of promoting the return of the much missed York Model Railway Show. Here are a few of the out-takes:

Thanks for all the suggestions to solve the 'back wall floating in space' issue. It needs to be removeable for maintenance etc. and, with hindsight, it's now clear that having it extend behind and below the platform surface would have been a good idea. Having looked at what I have already done, I think that's not an option now as it would mean a considerable amount of work and a significant risk of doing damage to what I've already done. This means I'm back with the 'skirting board' solution which will need the roof removing for access which means I'm parking this problem for now: there are too many other things to get on with in the 82 days left before the York Show opens!! I've done some gentle trimming of the underside of the wall so it is now floating at a rather lower altitude and, being at the back, isn't all that obvious.