LDM34046

Really impressive! Well done. Love the cab work and detailing. It’s surprising how much difference it makes, especially when fitting a crew in place.

Following this thread with keen eyes!! It was only a few weeks ago I was able to visit Paul’s excellent Tonbridge West Yard. Unfortunately I never saw Maidstone Barracks but look forward to seeing it modelled in N Gauge.

Vans the word. Still on my list of items to weather.

‘Extensive’ testing last night and this afternoon on Lancaster Lane ahead of the exhibition next weekend. Still need to weather a few more items of rolling stock but for now, everything is running smoothly.

A late entry but Lancaster Lane will be exhibiting next weekend at the Party’s Bottom Model Railway Exhibition! 12 layouts on display and usually very well attending. Looking forward to meeting some new faces!

Pleasure to meet you today @mudmagnet Great to finally see Orchard Road TMD after spending years following the progress here on RMweb. A beautifully detailed layout, could watch the locomotives trundle around all day! Thank you for showing me a few of your 3D Printed models, I’ll be placing an order once my layout reaches that stage of detailing! They’ll make great additions to my workshop. All the best Luke

Thanks Rob! Really means a lot. Lancaster Lane was thrown together over about 3 months as a project to keep me busy during lockdown. I felt with ‘Layout Two’ more time should be spent on the planning side and hopefully it’ll pay off. Lancaster Lane didn’t feature any prominent buildings so I’m really looking forward to building some kits, scratch building and creating lots of detailed areas.

That looks excellent. Love the use of having buildings at the front of the layout and then the raised track bed. I always feel that with some layouts the railway is the focal point and the rest of the scenic details work around the track plan. I think it’s good to have the trains disappear between and behind buildings and foliage.

Planning is definitely crucial to get the most out of operating a layout. The use of buildings on your board looks excellent, a great way to cover up the scenic break.

A 1:1 scale print out is a great way to start visualising how the layout is going to look and weather I wanted to make any changes. The first think I did was check the length of the sidings and more importantly the length of the loop. The loop will hold 3-4 wagons or 1 suburban coach which is my intended plan. The lengths of all the sidings are larger than those on Lancaster Lane so no issues there I’ve also made the headshunt much larger as the size of the previous one has been quite restrictive. I’ve also been accumulating the various buildings for the layout. There will be a real mix of Bachmann Scenecraft, wills kits and scratch aid kits. With having the scenecraft buildings, it was also good to visualise the ‘street’ element of the layout. A scratch-aid pub with go to the left of the Peckett to create that narrow corridor for the locomotive to pass through. A small garage will also be built where the two Land Rovers are currently placed. Although there is a lot of buildings in a small space I wanted to create a real sense of a small town with lots of business going on. Lots of scope for plenty of details! The ‘shot’ I’ve been wanting to create since the beginning as the Peckett winds it’s way over crossing through the street. Looking at this angle I will definitely make the street wider, probably by an inch or two just so it frames the locomotive a bit nicer. A mock-up of one of the vehicles travelling down the street. With a wider street as well as good lighting I think this will be a real key area for the layout. With planning done, it’s time to build the boards and make a start on messing around with track work to get the most out of the layout space.

The new baseboards have arrived from Tim Horn. A busy work week has meant I've not had time to build them and acquire a few of the other materials needed to make a good start. With a track plan semi-finalised I thought I'd share my current idea. Arrival from the right through a small street scene, inspired by the Wisbech and Upwell Tramway. I've taken a strong liking to the line and want to create a scene of trains passing through the tight gaps between the buildings. The idea is to look down the street and view the trains crossing with the brewery (not shown) in the background. Following that is a small station halt and good sidings with headshunt. Very similar design to Lancaster Lane however the addition of a loop and passenger services should massively improve the operating potential. To the left is the continuing line to Lancaster Lane, or to be used as the headshunt if the layout is used on its own. Buildings are yet to the finalised and to some extent, the track can be altered slightly. The signals also need to be worked out in terms of placement. I've currently got two Dapol Home signals on order, although I think that one of them should be a distant? I'm sure someone will correct me. Large amounts of space towards the front and rear of the layout should allow lots of scope for scenic work and details, again, yet to be finalised. Similar to Lancaster Lane, its a balancing act of building an enjoyable railway to operate and cramming too much into a small space.

Latest addition to the fleet. I actually picked this model up at Alexandra Palace a few weeks ago for a bargain price but yet to have time to take photos of it til today! Subtly weathered by the previous owners and fitted with real coal and etched cab details. A lovely smooth runner having tweaked a few CVs. I'm not sure what decoder is in it but tempted to change it to Zimo having had great success with some of the other locos. Although slightly too big for Lancaster Lane it looks rather at home running light engine. I had actually bought this loco with the next layout in mind but couldn't resist running it. The cab features some gorgeous details, just need to find a suitable Modelu crew to pilot it!

Even better! Good luck!

Have a speak with Dan from Tunnel Lane Model Railways, he’s on Facebook and Instagram. He’s a professional layout builder and is brilliant. Anything from baseboards and trackwork right through to finishing scenic detail. If there’s anyone that could engineer a solution to help you, especially with model railways in mind, it’ll be him!

A busy afternoon at Lancaster Lane with both resident Pecketts in steam.

Normality has resumed…

Loving the photography Graham! Layout is progressing nicely and scenic work is phenomenal. As for image stacking, I use my iPhone and Photoshop but most software does the same thing. The more photos you take, the easier it is for the software to create an image completely in focus. Most of my photos are at least 2 photos but some are made up for 6-10 images! Hopefully that’ll help eliminate the band in the middle of your last photo! Happy modelling & photography!

After a two month hiatus from Lancaster Lane due to a dodgy point and unreliable point motors I finally got round to getting the issue resolved thanks to the swift delivery of some new point motors. Super easy to fit, about 15 minutes to install once you’ve got all the soldering on the switch ends out the way. Also meant I could get the control panel neatened up with the new toggle switches. A quick clean on the rails and trains are finally running again! Ashamed to have left the layout for so long. Don’t think the rails have ever been this dirty! Learnt a lot about electrics the last few months. What seemed like a simple fix turned into a marathon job. From what I learnt for the new layout, do it properly from the start and don’t cut corners!

Thank you Rob! It’ll be a change of pace from Lancaster Lane but really looking forward to learning some new skills and processes!

So the journey continues… Time to make a start on the next layout! There’s been enough progress this week that I’d thought I’d fill you in on my thoughts behind this next instalment. Originally, Lancaster Lane was built to fill the void during lockdown of 2020 and quash that modelling bug. Never did I think I’d be at a stage where a simple shelf inglenook would be exhibiting at a show and with a few more still booked in for the new year. Although I learnt a lot from building the layout, the whole thing, aside for the continuation of adding details, took no more than six months to build and looking back on it there was a whole list of things I could do better. With Lancaster Lane finding a home under the bed there was the potential to build another layout in its place, this time, taking my time during the construction, developing and improving my skills and ultimately building a better layout. With this new layout there was a large list of criteria I wanted to meet. Wider & longer baseboards to allow for a deeper depth of field and scope for more scenic potential as well as give trains a longer run down the length of the layout. A run around loop. This was my biggest criteria. A run around loop would improve operational interest 10 fold and give me much more enjoyment operating at home. Better back scene. I’m yet to decide whether to paint a back scene or to purchase a printed one, however I feel I could make more of an effort to bend the background in with the layout. Buildings! Trying to avoid the cliche of a ‘church on a hill’ I want to incorporate more buildings into the layout. A mix of pre-made and scratch-aid will help me develop my skills at both kits and scratch building with different materials. I’m aiming for a small street scene to the right hand side of the layouts. Areas I’d like to improve! Track work. On the previous layout I used Peco Code 75 which looked perfectly suitable at the time. With photography being one of my main enjoyments of the hobby I found myself always at the envy of how good finescale track looked and how vastly more photogenic the correctly sized and spaced sleepers looked. I looked at C&L Finescale but as an amateur modeller was very quickly put off by the potential skill required. In the end I settled for the (slowly) growing range of Peco Bullhead track. Having already got my hands on the first sets of points I’m already blown away by the quality, detail and visual appearance compared to regular Code 75. Ballast. Along with the new bullhead points I felt my ballast could be improved. The pre-mixed blend of Gaugemaster ballast looked good however the different colours meant it looked a bit ‘fish bowl’ and the size wasn’t comparative of the sleepers. From advice I’ve received I think a single colour 1mm ballast would look the part next to the Bullhead sleepers. Weathering. Like with everything, I’d like to take more time in weathering the track. The last layout was dealt with a single spray of earth brown over the track which worked a treat. However, this time I’d like to experiment with dry-brushing and weathering powders to bring out the detail. Inspiration… The idea behind ‘Layout 2’ is a continuation of Lancaster Lane, further down the line. The boards and track plan have been designed in a way that the new layout can be operated on its own but should the opportunity arise, either at home or potentially at an exhibition, Lancaster Lane and the new boards can be bolted together form a larger continuous layout. Over the last year I’ve been building rolling stock kits, but to no particular theme, only to improve my modelling skills. For the next build I’d like to focus on one particular industry so I can focus on relevant stock and build prototypical rakes. After a recently holiday to the Scottish highlands my inspiration came from an unlike source, to focus on a Brewery! A tour around the Aberfeldy Brewers Distillery found me captivated by the buildings and the different processes of creating whisky. Although the whisky building would be far too big to model on the new boards, I’d love to model part of it at one end of the layout. It would give me scope to model different rolling stock coming to and from the distillery. Located at the front of the brewery was their own Andrew Barclay 0-4-0 locomotive that used to facilitate the operations. Considering Hattons produced a run of this exact locomotive, I’d love to get hold of one and repaint it to match. A project for later along the line! Also behind it is an example of some the rolling stock that used to leave the brewery. I’ve got a rough track plan which I’ve been altering over the last few months and I’m pretty set on my current plan with the boards ordered and in production and the track on order, I’ll be able to have a play around once everything is together. I need to see if I can find a place for the distillery, even if its a low relief depiction, but I’d love to try my hand at scratch building from scale plans. It’ll be a tricky balance to not try and cram too much into the space! I apologise for the ramblings, but with everything ordered and on it's way I thought I'd give some background to my thoughts and ideas of this next layout! And I still need to think of a layout name…

What's the saying? "The grass is always greener...?" Loving the foliage work as usual Rob, especially around the edge of the water feature. Superb!

We're back... I feel like I'm poking my head above the parapet after the 'Great Outage of 2022'. Firstly a thank you to @AY Mod for his work in restoring the website so quickly. Having worked in IT I know these situations can spiral wildly out of control and turn into a damage limitation situation. Great to see we've moved to a new host, hopefully better than the last! Armed with a nothing more than a new profile picture and a strong coffee I've spent the last two days re-adding all the past years photos back into the thread. Theres still a lot missing, mainly iPhone photos, but 90% have been reinstated to show the development on the layout. It's also been a short while since I've posted a proper modelling update. A much needed holiday happened, followed by two hectic weeks at work. Lancaster Lane has fallen victim to yet another faulty point motor so operating potential has been limited but a new one should be arriving soon! Alexandra Palace hosted the Festival of Railway Modelling, which was a welcome return for a major show with plenty of purchases being made, all of which will be photographed in due course! Although all is quiet on Lancaster Lane, I have been very busy accumulating models and 'bits' for the new layout, along with plenty of research and inspiration on my recent holiday. The new baseboards should be arriving any week now so I'll be able to go full steam ahead into the new project. I'll sit down and explain my intentions and ideas in due course with the layout being a continuation on this thread! Behind the scenes the railway fever has definitely returned! Happy Modelling!

Emailed Peco for more answers. This was the response: “Next items due out shortly will be the diamond crossing, followed by the single and double slips. Medium radius turnouts are due out later this year.” Doesn’t sound promising for modellers like me waiting solely for the turnouts.

In response to the Railway Modeller advert, my local model shop emailed Peco regarding timescales. The response the shop got from Peco was ‘will be around 2-3 months’. Unfortunately that’s the only information Peco gave. But a potential time frame!

A few more 'little people' painted today. They're far from perfect but they're great for creating little cameos around the layout.