stivesnick

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

Thanks I spent a lot of time looking at various photos trying to get the idea of a city terminal, so glad it reminds you of something. Nick

Hi The layout was due to attend the Spalding Model Railway Exhibition this weekend. The Club has put on a Virtual Exhibition - I have contributed some pictures of the layout plus a description of how the layout was built. Link is here: https://www.spaldingmodelrailwayclub.org.uk/virtual-exhib-2020/ There are 3 other American layouts featured. Do virtual exhibitions work for you? I found the short video clips without any explaination a bit limiting. Regards Nick

Thanks Gordon Good point, will gave that some thought. Nick

3 weeks since the last update. The wiring has been completed, and after the usual swoping a few wires over, it all works! The Dapol magnets (10 of them) for the automatic uncoupling have been fitted. I have knuckle couplers, both the Dapol and the Microtrains versions on layouts before, so I know they can work extremely well. However this has been with American or UK modern stock. Not tried using the magnets with 10 foot wheelbase stock before. I was thinking of using the wagons in groups of 2 or 3. Given there are only two sidings for freght traffic, so should not be too much of a limitation. What do people think? Scenery wise, the parcels dock has gone in and the retaining walls and cliff faces at the town end have been embeded in. At present it looks like a sow storm has hit the town, so very much work in progress. Not 100% convinced by the interface between the cliff and the stone wall in the last photo, so any comments welcome. Progress photos below. Nick

My experience of Wimbledon Staff Halt from many years ago, was that any train could stop there to drop off/pick up staff. Staff would contact the signal box and then wait on the platform at Wimbledon for the next stopping train which would then get diverted onto the fast line to stop at the halt. Would it have been used by train crew working the Wimbledon - West Croydon service, before it was converted to tram operation to get to/from the depot? Nick

Hi I would be tempted to put the additional siding on the other side of the passing loop so you avoid the diamond crossing. A continous run is useful sometimes, for running in as you say or just sitting back a watching the trains go by. Assuming that model railway exhibitions return, were you intending to exhibit the layout? If so the continious run might come in handy to keep something moving whilst you sort out some stock in the staging yard. Nick

Model Junction have a range of kits - but hurry the shop may close at the end of the month. https://www.modeljunction.info/42-kits-plastic Nick

Hi Steve The new buildings look great, and are part of an impressive set of modern buildings. Have you got any ideas for how to model that mechanical ventilation and cooling plant that would be on the roof of these buildings? On the final grey building, perhaps the top floor that you have clad in brick would be the plant space - so areas of louvres would be suitable.

Thanks Nick Now that you mention it, the use of lower case letters at that time make sense. The Local Town Council has demanded the sign be changed and the sign writers have been contacted, Nick

Work has started on two more buildings. The first building are the homes part way up the cliff - its a standard Gaugemaster / Kestrel house kit - the old change to the kits is to replace the rainwater down pipe with a thinner unit. Looking at the photo, there is a bit of paint touching up to be done. The second kit is a Petite Properties Harpers Yard card kit. Green Scene textured paint finish and a Redutex sheet roof. Rainwater goods to be added. Not sure about the sign, looks a bit too modern. What do people think? Nick

The same approach would apply to the back of the layout. Lots of layouts have a row of shop fronts. The rear of shops and offices would be more common, with storage, parking and delivery areas. Nick