craigwelsh

Any closeups possible of the bogie spring mount would be great too for my Mitchell Castle in the cupboard. I'd thought Philip Hall had been doing something with a Hornby Castle in P4 on the Scalefour Forum Mike? Interesting about clearance issues as I hadn't checked.

I'll pretend i was reading from a 1919 rulebook then . Um, yes, well at least I spurred some discussion and didn't pretend i was being definitive! The provision of multiple distants makes perfect sense now you explain it in terms of braking distances and block section lengths. I think i'd always assumed only one from those nice diagrams of the perfect signalling installation you get in some books that show the one.

If you were wondering why the distants moved then remember they give an indicator of what is coming in the next sections hence they are on the last post the drivers see in your section. The others will hopefully confirm i've described that correctly. Thankfully distant signals were fixed at danger on lots of branches which saves having to operate them .

I've updated the bottom of the post to reflect the info, i've also discovered its sculptamold not mould! £6.50 for a bag and we only used 6 handfuls so far so I don't think its that expensive as a means and even if plaster bandage were cheaper this is much lighter for an exhibition. It does make a difference to visualising the layout I think.

Photo 1 just shows the test piece I did posed on unfinished embankment. That embankment will need another layer adding before sculpting and covering with sculptamould. The foam was landscaped before the covering shown in the other photos was added. HTH

I'd read a couple of threads on here about using Sculptamold as a scenic cover and a bag was duly ordered by someone in the group for a trial. Previously tile cement had been used on the layout in rather industrial qualities. Not only was that very heavy but it had cracked when put over white polystyrene and wasn't providing the robust basic scenery the layout wanted for exhibition travel as well as sitting in the club room in prime 'leaning on' position! Sculptamold has been a revelation once we got some out of the bag to trial on a small offcut of spaceboard as shown below. Following advice on rmweb we added PVA to the basic mix so it was 2 part sculptamold, 1 water and one PVA, later covering added some black powder paint hence the grey hillside! It is much lighter than the tile adhesive when applied and even lighter once the moisture has evaporated out. The test piece was hit against a table a couple of times with no damage and it takes a bit of real effort to pierce the surface, the PVA does make a slight difference here. Now that the initial corner has been done our centre board is having spaceboard cut to fit around the canal bridge for what will form a removable section at the moment. It will make the front of the layout much more presentable though by hiding all of the wiring from viewers at least. A signal box will sit on the embankment to the left of the bridge controlling the junction. The canal bridge has now gained a nice finish to the brickwork and the completed wing walls. The previous attempt at the layout had the water level under the track much lower, land height will be built up to the bottom of the new bridge though there will be locks in the foreground. An overview along the trackwork showing how it will be elevated on the embankment. The goods yard will probably have a retaining wall behind it for a length before it meets the goods warehouse. Further scenic tests on the far board will be to determine the correct cess to embankment relationship while point motors still have to be installed on the main board. The yard is also being finalised as a warehouse will sit over the one siding with wagons visible through arches in its front. The running lines disappearing around the back of the warehouse will help hide the trainset curve into the fiddleyard from the front boards to a degree. Note the terraces being experimented with, there will also allow a nice viewpoint up to the warehouse and hide the edge of the layout from front viewing. Sculptamold is available on Amazon for £6.50 (as of 12-2011) and if used as thinly as we used it should provide good coverage. Spaceboard was bought from B&Q for £7 a sheet though is now in short supply as it was gov't subsidised insulation. Other types of extruded poly are available though.

A nice overview of the system. Mike was working on the production booster last week; Slattocks is powered by two of the 5A booster prototypes. The new throttle firmware to deal with loco handoffs is going to be useful, our throttles were upgraded to that firmware last Monday. Control through WiiThrottle is very responsive with the system though the more useful aspects of CANUSB are DecoderPro programming and the ability to have a nice JMRI panel for pointwork. The forthcoming CAN Servo board is being used by us for signals - 4 servos per board. We think we'll need to run a separate 5V bus for those though to avoid any power on twitches if powering from CBUS 12v. Good to see another implementation of this system.

Crying out for a magazine centrefold or poster that . Might help Brian flog some more bits too . The last picture in particular works for me as the brighter nature seems to mix in the body blue and weathered brown a bit more and gives it a natural light tone.

This thread has some suggestions: http://www.rmweb.co....6-cad-software/ Etch companies usually take Autodesk dwg format or the Corel draw format. edit, just noted you already replied in that thread.. DoubleCAD should be alright as long as proper Autocad imports their attempt at dwg correctly or the etcher will have odd results. You might want to talk to Brian Hanson at Shawplan about scale grilles and techniques for etching them as he has done some superb stuff in 4mm and 2mm for the cl37 for example.

Hope you told Brian though, that's normally quite helpful . I was wondering if they were some form of Buoy for the docks but they do look an odd shape, its a pity the picture isn't more side on. It would be interesting to know who the original photographer was as there may be more in the set. From the wrinkles that copy was photographed from paper.

Looks like someone never put the rolling stock into the loop when running round from the state of that side damage!

Did the Tufnol come with the etches? They seem to have gone from the e-shop at the moment so i'll have to ask Jeremy about getting one to test.

Would a type of fishing line or similar be better to avoid going fluffy after a while? I doubt you could make out the makeup of steel cable in 4mm for the one piece solid affair might work better.

Haresnape fleet survey gives the 'A' end on the pilot scheme as being the one with two louvres next to each other and the other end to that with the little handle opening panels.

This Hattons 1000 has been found to have an extra pin too.. http://www.martin.loader.btinternet.co.uk/Witney_Goods.htm its certainly a fun job for the airbrush getting that filth over the yellow correctly, You can see where the colour gently graduates from yellow to filth up the sides and the window pillar. A good windscreen mask would be needed too I think.

All the old WR moulds are with Hornby now I think.

Funnily enough the advanced ticket queue can be longer than the normal one.. The only situation where its clear in the name you get first is 'priority boarding' on a flight. Magazine subscriptions, preorders and the Warley tickets dont give advanced status just convenience and some guarantee of getting something. Dave said he's taking retailers non pre-order stock directly to Warley for them. Kernow models isn't just one bloke is it? Surely you could have spoken to someone who hadn't communicated with Dapol and been aware of the communication? Surely you can see the special circumstance of a new product managing to arrive just before Warley meaning Dapol and retailers are keen to get the stock that isn't guaranteed sold to the show? Its the biggest show of the year!

I'd probably chuck the bogies anyway and go with something you can solder metal footboards to. I was surprised at just how thick the sideframes on that bogie are, it would put a lot of tank armour to shame! Hornby do seem to like thick axleguards though whereas Bachmann use that soapy plastic which seems able to be used thinner. The body is the main thing though and that looks great. Some laserglaze could help with the prismatic effect though...

Talking of the errors could someone post up the pdf of corrections here? I think Rod sent it to me previously but I forgot to save it out of my inbox before ntl switched to using google for mail and I lost it . I was surprised at just how long the sheets of corrections actually were!

Slotting in P4 wheels is a relatively easy fix compared to fiddling with the size of the headcode box if there's an issue there. Im with Pennine in always being confused that people get so defensive when they purchase something and someone else comments that it may have a discrepancy to prototype. Btw if the font is distracting stick the photo in Paint and rub out the numbers before doing a compare..

Depends what's done to get it round curves.. Tbh the Heljan one was fine there, we only want it without the chav cap really..

The finished article is really superb and im glad you've got a bit of trackwork starting to go under it. Hope you have some track gauges though, those pips are very much a general guide. Regarding smaller points, B7s are probably a decent minimum, there are some details about the issues with A switches http://www.clag.org.uk/switch-traverse.html

The dead really have risen if you found a Woolworths... I wonder if this stuff melts the chavs throwing eggs around here? (the air rifle is more fun though)

Its the running plate on the N not the chassis. Is the chassis on Margate Hornby steam locos mazak though or something else? A lot more plastic used by them at the time than we get in more modern releases too (certainly in the diesels).