stivesnick

Hi Andrew The overall effect of the finished layout looks great - the photos with the real background show how effective and realistic the colouring is. Regards Nick

Some more progress with the Swan Hotel. The dormer windows that came with the kit were a bit on the small side, so I have added a much larger continious dormer. This is the second attempt, the first used the smaller windows that were supplied with the kit, but they were too small. This version uses some left over windws from some Kestrel kits. Having completed the build, I noticed that the third window from the left is a newer design from Kestrel, although the same size overall, the frames are much thinner and this shows in some of the photos. I am not going to chnage them! I did a mock up of the hotel on the layout with some trees taken from a previous layout to judge the overall effect and to see of much of a view block was created by the trees. The final trees to be used will need to be slightly bigger. Work has now started on the Hotel grounds. The patio in from the hotel is OO gauge brickwork to represent paving slabs. I have also created the paths using 0.75 x 0.75mm platsic strip to create the edgeing. The curved path is one continous length. The first line was added, then I used a off-cut of plastic sheet to act as a pat gauge to mark out the line of the other edge. A line of UHU glue was added along the marking at and the second line stucjk down. That part worked much better than expected. However, I realised I had made the trade entrance gate too narrow for the delivery vans so this had to be corrected ( 10 seconds work with some snips) and a wider path provided. The first lot of scatter has been added. Progress photos below: Nick

Hi Looks a great plan and I like the urban setting. Look forward to seeing progress. What rolling stock is planned? Nick

A happy new year to everyone. Over the Christmas period, I managed to get finish the basic landform on most of the layout and paint these areas, The main road now has a tarmac surface thanks to some fine wet and dry paper, with a dusting of grey and brown car spray. Next task is to add the pvements. Paving slabs in the town itself, with tarmac out on the main road - I am think of a 4 foot pavement on one side of the road only - does that feel right? After that, its wall and fence time - there is already around 8 foot of wall on the layout with around another 16 feet to go! Some general progress photos enclosed. Comments and suggestions always welcome. Nick

Hi Kris Thanks for the comment. It was the height of the roof, that made me think twice about including it. The kit includes some dormer windows which helps explain the height. I will add these to see what the effect is. If still not happy, I will have to design my own lower pitched roof. I guess this is the problem in using kits, the buildings are never exactly what you want. For example with the kit, the building is too narrow. if you imagine, each window represents the room, the rooms will be a bit small for hotel rooms. However the thought of having to cut out and create all those windows, made the kit too tempting to ignore. Regards Nick

Some more worK done on the hotel and an opportunity to see how it will look in its final posituion. Having stuck the sides together, the building shell was placed on the layout. I also put taped the roof sections in place to see how it looked. Not a bad as I had feared, the roof will go in rather than have a flat roof building. With the building in place, more work can take place to develp the hotel grounds. Although the basic scenery is mad up of 12mm and 25mm blocks of polystyrene, I also have a roll of 1mm polystyrene liner which is useful to create more subtle changes in the level. This has been used to create a gentle slope up to the hotel. The hotel walls have been added and the final part to to start constructing the steps up from the road. To speed up this process, I have used 2mm scribed plastic sheet and used the lines to save on whole load of marking out and to help line up the treads. The whole process only took a few minutes. Photos show work in progress, the steps are not stuck into position yet. Nick

The last of the major buildings to be constructed is the large hotel behind the station. I am using the Faller school building kits (#232382) as a starting point. The Faller kit is 9 windows wide and includes some basement windows. As the hotel is being built in a rocky area, I felt the building woudl not have had a basement, so these were cut off from the kit sides. I have then spliced two kits together to creater a larger 15 window wide building. Others feature of the kit is a rather large roof including dormer windows and printed detail on the wall sections. As a roof of this size would dominate the scene, I am going for a flat roof so a parapet was added to the front. The colour scheme did not look very british so this is being painted out. Photos below show the original front section and the revised front pieces. the second photo shows the current state of affairs with the front and side walls with a first coat of car spray. Next step is to build a portico to provide a more interesting entrance. Nick

The first bit of scenic scatter (the term flockage is used elsewhere in the forum) has gone down. It makes a big difference. The main task for the break is the build the large hotel behind the station. I have a couple of Faller kits for this purpose. They will be spliced together to make a longer building. I did consider making it 3 floors but decided that would make te building too dominant. The room lighting and the light from the window, shows that the first few coats of varnish have been added to form the river. 6 months since the start, I am happy with the progress made. Regards Nick

The PD Stirling depot adjacent to Mossend Yard has 3 tracks in classic Inglenook style, although they can take 8-10 wagons each. There is a picture of the sidings dated 1988 in the Freight Only Vol3: Wales and Scotland by Michael Rhodes and Paul Shannon. The text in the book says the sidings handled a wide range of traffics including steel. china clay, coal, lime, liquid nitrogen, food and government stores. Plenty of scope here for a lyout. Nick

I agree, which is why I asked the question in the first place, just in case I had missed a real example. I may well end up doing the American version. but ACME Chemcials (UK) set in the 1980s is still possible. The decider will be; do I treating myself to a new Farish Class 31 or some new american 50 foot box cars? Nick

Thanks for all your suggestions and ideas. I like the idea of a chemical plant - I already have some polybulk, cargowagons and tank containers that could be used. I have an N gauge Society Hunslet shunter on order that would be ideal to use, although the odd mainline locomotive turning up can ot be ruled out. Thanks again Nick

A look on the American pages of this site will reveal a series of Inglenook Plus type layouts. By this I mean, the original Inglenook concept has been expanded to additional and longer sidings to the original idea of a small shunting layout. Mainly in HO but could suit any scale. For followers of American railroads, there are plenty of suitable prototype examples with videos, right up to the present day, of small yards serving multiple companies and a range of wagons. My idea for a N gauge version is shown below. There is no fiddle yard or run around loop. Operation is as follows. 4 wagons areplaced on one of the tracks that represents the "main line". These arethen switched with some of the existing wagons on the layout. The layout has locations for 7 wagons, At the end of the sequence, the outgoing wagons aremanually replaced by 4 new wagons and the process starts again. I also have many modern UK wagons, so would a UK equivalent be feasible or realistic? There is very little wagonload freight left on Network Rail tracks these days, but go back to the Speedlink era and things might work. There were a number of small road/rail distribution centres such as the Potter Group terminals in Ely or Selby and Deanside Transit near Glasgow. Some China Clay sites may also be suitable. Has anybody got any further suggestions of sites or industries that handled small number of different types of wagons? Nick

The signalling department has been in action over the weekend. Two Dapol Signals have been added. Nice and easy to install and connect up, once you ahve spent 30 minutes trying to find the correct size drill! I have also decided to move the signal box to the other side of the goods / run round loop. The model is the Peco kit, and has been salvaged from the previous layout. The move was done for several reasons. Firstlly it was a bit of tight fit between the tracks and the cliff. Given the proximity to the cliff would have to raise the chimney to clear the cliff edge. Finally, I wanted some items to break up the view of a train when the layout is being viewed. The river bank has been made up to create a level base for the signalbox. I will add a water tower at some point and many photos of Looe station show a large tree adjacent to the track. Signal photos enclosed. Nick

Andy One of the advantages of the scalescenes kits is that once downloaded you can print off as many time as you like, so can experiment with different options. Some things to consider. Firstly in future photos, a half releif castle could look odd, unless you paint the rest of it on the backscene. If possible I would go for as deep a castle as possible and yes raise it up on a small hill. Secondly, put yourself in King whoever, that built the castle. Are you are defending against invaders from the sea or inland? This will help decide where you put the main pamparts and the entrace. Regards Nick

Hi I have added an extra bit of cliff at the country end of the layout to disguise the exit to the fiddle yard, I am tempted to put a footbridge across the track and have a statue on the cliff top. Perhaps the founder of the original mineral railway that brought wealth to the town. There is not a lot of room, what do people think? Looking at the photos, the new cliff looks a very differnt colout to the original cliffs, although just looking at then they look very similar, may have to repaint them all to get some consistency. I have also started to create the river, using soaked paper to create the bank. Aiming for the low tide look, with a muddy bank and small areas of water. The lockdown meant that a visitto Cornwall was not on this year, but the photos show the river bank at Looe has a pebble effect, is that correct? Nick

Hi Pictures as requested. My removable backscene is for the fiddle yard and allows two boards to be boxed up for transportation. As your backscene is much longer and you appear not to have access to the back of backscene for installation, a slight modification is needed. I would go for a continious wooden strip at the bottom of the backsecne to ease installtion and to stiffen up the backscene to keep it straight. Method as follows. 1. mark line of backscene on layout and install female furniture blocks offset from the line by the depth of the backscene plus the depth of the wodden strip,. (photo 1) 2. With the female part of the furniture block in place, screw the female part of the blocks to the wooden strip. Check that the wooden strip and blocks can be easily plugged in and removed from the block on the baseboard. 3. Glue/screw the wooden strip to the bottom of the backscene. (photo 2) In your case the wooden strip is continious to help line up the blocks. 4. Hopefully you now have a backscene that is rigid but can be removed if required. (photo 3) Hope that makes sense. Nick

Robert Looking good so far. Like the way you have done the catch points, will copy on my own layout, so thanks for the idea. Nick

Hi For removable backscenes, I used plastic 2 part furniture connectors, available at any DIY store. The female unit is fixed to the baseboard and the male part to the backscene. The two parts are a snug fit so you do not need the additional screw to keep them together. Hope that makes sense, can provide some photos of my much smaller backscene units if needed. Nick

Locos ordered - thank you again for pointing this out. Nick

Hi Interesting history, and good luck with building the layout. Quick question: why is there an engine shed at the station? Would it not be at the junction or the terminus station. There were independent railways with sheds in the middle of the route, but ift that place was the railway HQ, it would have also had a carriage shed, PW sidings etc. Just a thought - feel free to ignore, it is your railway afterall. Nick

Claude The layout is looking great! That ED19 would look great on my American Interurban layout - is it a Kato model? Nick

Two new buildings now underway. Both are Petite Properties low relief building kits. The brick cottages has scalescenes brick paper added, whilst the stone cottage uses True Texture self adhesive stone sheets (not sure if they are still around, sheets brought many years ago) with the quoins from York Modelmaking. The cottages go on the eleveated road at the back of the layout, so got the otehr buildings out and some trees saved from the previous layout temporary stuck doen to see what the effect would be. Progress pictures enclosed. Hopefully, will end up looking like a town that the railway would want to serve. Nick

Great video - very informative. The sound was a bit quiet. Regards Nick

Some interesting points being raised here. My understanding is that the tube would not be a complete vacuum, just the pressure would reduce the futher you travelled from the station. This would avoid the issue of having an airlock between the station and the main tunnel. As noted before the issue of such as system is the capacity. Not just the number of passengers in a partcular pod, but how frequently the pods could depart and the seperating distance. On HS2 or a TGV line, you can run 15 trains per hour each carrying 1100 passengers so 16500 passengers per hour in each direction. For a hyperloop, 50 passengers per pod say at 30 second intervals is only 6000 people per hour and that time interval would require people to be strapped in to allow for some very hard braking if the pod in front had a problem. If this requirement prevented the use by say wheelchair users or children, the whole thing could be declared illegal under equality laws. Although people would claim the hyperloop is much cheaper than a high speed line, it does not deliver the same capacity. Nick

There was often an alleyway linking the ends of the houses, which in more modern times allowed cars to do a 3 point turn. So ends of the rows of houses would be right. A wall between the alley and the houses would help disguise the joint between the layout and backscene. Very shallow low relief buildings can often look odd when shown in photos, so you might want to think about other viewblockers such as advertising boards, trees etc somewhere on the layout. Nick