Flyingscotsmanfan

Looks wonderful like a well used wagon that is taken care of

Knuckles you are a man who like sto have ago himself so how about trying some of those homemade transfers for the tare weights and Return to Tidmouth? I will be trying them out for myself soon, just got to work out what month I can afford to buy some more railway supplies.

It's the same for me as I model LNER 1923 -1948 obviuosly I dont run the later LNER stuff with the earlier (unless no one is looking) and the amount of RTR stuff is quite small and the ones they do are either not available anymore/yet or Limited Editions.

I have always admired your work and these locos are no exception! If only Hornby would release more of the Pacifics in LNER livery as it does suit them better than any other livery (well except Experimental blue)!

I thought rather than talking about the stock for the moment, I would instead talk a bit more about the layout itself. As can been seen in my first blog I designed the trackplan on XtrkCAD, this went through several alterations including a complete redesign until what is seen today. Unfortunatly I didn't keep the other trackplans but I do remeber there was one based loosely on the Rev W. Awdry's Ffarquhar Mk II layout as I was intending to run my Thomas and Friends stock on it as well as my LNER stock. The decison to go DCC changed all that though as I didn't really want to chip all my Thomas stock as it mainly is from the Bachmann American range (they closely resemble the T.V series of which I grew up with), which as they don't have DCC provison on board mean't I would have had to hard wire all the decoders and find space for them( Anyone who has opened a Bachmann Thomas can atest to there not being much room apart from the cabs on the tank engines! don't even get me started on the tender engines!!!). Anyway back to the layout, The boards are a standard flat top with beams to support underneath and once I was 100% happy with it the trackplan was printed out and copydex'd straight on to the 12mm thick MDF baseboards. Now I don't even pretend to be carpenter but I could lay on those boards and not get a single creak, In fact I may have over engineered them! Once the neat Copydex had dried I cut and in the loco yard, goods yard and station area laid 3mm cork on top of that, shouldered cork was laid on the actual branchline leading to the fiddleyard so that a good ballast shoulder could be obtained with ease. Once the copydex had dried another print out form XtrkCAD was laid on top again using Copydex. I use copydex to stick everything down including track and ballast as it dries to a rubber which makes a surprising difference to sound deading (knocking on the plain MDF top and then the cork there was a very noticeable drop in sound!) Starting in the fiddleyard with Peco code 100 flexitrack and electrofrog turn outs I put dropper wires from every piece of track except the turnouts, this was so it could be ready to be attached to the Copperstrip bus underneath. Once the Copydex had dried on the freshly laiden track the fiddleyard was turned over and the easy job of soldering the droppers to the bus started. Once this was completed the board was turned over and throughly tested to ensure everything worked. Iit was at this point that the 3-way turnout used at the throat of the fiddleyard was found out to be causing the Bachmann Dynamis to short so requested some help on RMweb and tried out the alterations that were suggested and still found it was shorting. I was quite disheartened at this point so, I ripped out the 3-way and replaced it with 2 turnouts which have given trouble free running (when I say trouble free I mean non human trouble free running, I used to keep forgetting to set the turnouts!). At the throat of the fiddleyard the track changed to Peco Code 75, thank god for Peco trackage system for being universal! At the baseboard join between the scenery boards and fiddleyard the track sleepers were replaced with PCB sleepers and soldered to the track. As I had built the boards in a modular fashion this was a area that would get a few knocks if I ever needed to transport the layout anywhere. I am quite happy at the ridgity of the joins as this was my first attempt at doing something like this. As with the fiddleyard all the track had droppers added before copydexing down on the board as I could solder to the underside and not have any wires showing on the sides (which is quite the bug bear for me). As laying turnouts I drilled holes in the baseboard directly underneath the tiebar so I could fit motors at a later date (which still have to be done four years later!!!). Again as with the fiddleyard, once all the track was laid and dried and droppers soldered mass testing began. Next step after testing: Painting and Ballasting.The Whole of the track apart for the fiddleyard was sprayed with Railmatch Sleeper Grime and once dry the railheads were cleaned using a Gaugemaster Track Cleaning block (the old style one not the newer smaller one). Now I don't mind ballasting but as with any model railway job I need to be in the right mood to do it, it took a month to get in that mood also the chance to play trains was proving too much and after all I am easily distracted.... Lucky for me there isn't mich running line for tidy ballast so it only took me a couple of short sessions to ballast the single track and loop. Once satisified I used Diluted copydex (50/50 with water and a drop of washing up liquid) to secure in place. As you can probably tell by now I'm a big advocate of Copydex, it really is wonderful stuff! Instead of using Granite ballast I used Jarvis Senics fine Brown ballast which actually looks quite good once sprayed lighty with Railmatch Sleeper Grime and Track Dirt! After normal ballasting I could then work on the yard areas, for this I originally used Carrs Ash ballast but I didn't find this realistic enough when in situ so when at Peterborourgh Festival of Railway Modelling one year I spotted on one of the stands real locomotive ash and purchased it for the mighty sum of £1.99. this was sprinkled on top of the Carrs ballast and rubbed in slightly which looked quite good so I put more on and this was the result (not the wagon this is the only picture I can find that shows the ash ballast up close!): Once all that had dried (after being copydex'd!) I painted the rails a dark brown acrylic using a rusty rails painting tool which is an extremly useful tool and I highly recommend it to everyone. That about wraps this blog up for construction and track laying, I will do a blog about some scenic work soon but I must admit I haven't done much of that at this time! Happy Modelling!!!

Thank you Peter, The track plan was designed to be interesting to operate and it is. I would love to model O gauge but have neither the money or the space for it I struggle enough with OO. Paul

Though not a picture a taken at the genesis of my layout which has the working title of Halstead Sidings, this picture has nothing to do with the actual building of my layout but is in fact one of the earliest pictures I have, as I didn't think about writing a blog Halstead Sidings had an unnamed predecessor which was a a fairly big double track loop which was roughly 8ft by 10ft, had a decent sized goods yard and a roundhouse loco shed. This was all on analougue using a Hornby HM2000 plus the two add on controllers and all the turnouts were operated by Peco point motors controlled by an electronic pencil. the track was a mixtue of Peco and Hornby settrack with the use of some Peco flexitrack. This was fairly reliable but the wiring was a mess (I have never pretended to be a tidy person) and when things did go wrong it took a while to find the source of the problem. Eventually it proved it was too big for what I could handle at the time, my youthfulness allowed me to bite off more than I could chew, so my 21 year old brain got to planning and came up with a branchline terminus with would be based somewhere on the LNER between 1930 and 1947, which would give me quite a scope with what I could run as I tend to buy a lot of LNER liveried locos as there is something I can't resist about the LNER (though I do have some locos from BR and other companies, these get run on the club layout) This is what I came up with: It would give me lot of operating potential, as there plenty of movements I can make, as there is a runaround loop in the platform from which you can access the shed, to enable a change of loco, coaling and watering etc. There is also the goods yard with three decent sized (for a small layout) sidings one of which ends in a goods shed. I decided at this point that I would go DCC, and in an attempt to actually make it look like a model more than a cross breed between model and trainset I elected to go for Peco code 75 track and electrofrog points which have been quite reliable in service, that was until I ballasted them, but a bit of fiddling and cleaning and they all work faultlessly again. The fiddle yard could do with being a bit longer as a simple three coach train plus loco has to be taken off if I wish to use the other two tracks. As on the plan I used a Peco 3-way turnout which proved unreliable so I ripped it out and used 2 normal Peco small radius turnouts which are much better. As mentioned before I decided to go DCC and after looking at various systems, finally decided on a Bachmann Dynamis thankfully I haven't any problems with it so far (touch wood). I thought about operating the points with analouge again mostly due to the cost of all the decoders for the points but I really like the idea of running everything form just one console so I an currently experimenting with different point motors to see what I find most suitable (which reminds me once I get the layout out of storage I must get round to trying that ZTC point motor with built in decoder they do seem a wonderful idea!). So for now that is the ramblings about my layout over with. I must say it really does look quite different now as I mention it was started four years ago, though for most of the last year it has been in storage due to housing difficulties but it should be up and running again within a couple of months! Until next time where I might talk about some of the stock!

Having been to Barrow Hill last year, this model is oozing the same atmosphere already, imagine what'll it be like when you have done futher work to it! Keep it up!