Revolution Mike B

Blind as a bat me! All this fiddly modelling has killed my ability to see things......or maybe I'm just stupid? I'll check with the wife as it's my 50th Birthday on the 10th.

When is it?

Thumper looks awesome mate!

Was Darren there then??

I think I'm going to need a bit of help with my bramble making. The Tree Lady made it look so easy too! Oh well, if at first you don't succeed.....get some one else to make it for you

Make sure it's not too loud Ian.....you may get told to be quiet!

I think you should edit that to say 'your OCD needs some medication'!!

As a distraction from bramble, tree and bush making, I thought I'd have a go at some Tarmac. It's not quite there yet but it was surprisingly simple to do. I went to the Range and bought some Mangers lightweight deep gap filler.....it's er.....lightweight.....always a bonus for a portable layout I guess, and plastered it over some of the paving slabs with a paint scraper. It only takes about 20 minutes to dry and then I attacked it with a nail buffer pad (coarse side) until it was sort of smooth. Tarmac has more shades of grey than the best selling book so I mixed up some dark grey and black and literally sploshed it on, followed by stippling on some plain black whilst it was still a bit tacky. I then finished it off with some plain dark grey using the same method. Tonight's job will be to add a weak mix of satin lacquer to see if I can get it to look like the real thing.

It was the station announcements that they got told to turn off! I love them, I think it's great....actually, maybe I might build Clapham Junction and have them going off every 3 seconds...

I can loan you a nice pair of 37s for the weekend Ian ........ oh hang on, you might get told they're too loud like Darren did at New Milton

The suspense is killing me.....can't wait for mine to arrive :-)

Uh Oh!! Here we go again hahahahaha. What station announcements are we going to hear on this one Darren?? I'm gutted I didn't use Tillig points on Oak Road but at least I managed to get the Peco track looking better than it left the factory.... I'll look forward to seeing you out on the road with this one soon then :-)

Sorry to hijack your thread Simon...... Cav.....any chance you could do an OO Gauge version of this? I need about 15 feet of the stuff and it'll cost me a fortune from PH!! Cheers Mike

I've not really done a lot over the past few days due to a) the heat.......nothing wrong with it apart from I'd rather be outside in the sun instead of being stuck indoors and b) I had a wedding to attend and getting drunk seemed a much better proposition than modelling fiddly bits and pieces that only Superman can see.. My next task is to learn how to model trees, bushes, shrubs, plant and weeds. I've armed myself with a load of Woodland Scenics stuff and anything else I could find that I thought would be suitable and I'm going to lock myself away for a few days and watch a few videos..... MODELLING ONES!!! My first effort resembled a swan - not bad if I needed a bit of topiary but I don't! People seem to make all this modelling lark look so easy but in reality it's quite complicated......if you don't have the right stuff.....or the ability to turn your ideas in to reality

Thanks Bill. Trust me, it's the camera that makes it look better than it actually is.

Wow!! Cheers James, I'll take that as a massive compliment coming from you :-)

This is awesome Neil! Photo didn't come out in my post...... I meant the buffer stop and drums.

Here's a few more pictures of the progress made so far. The signals didn't turn up quite as I expected and in hindsight, I should've just asked for a bare signal and fitted the ladder, and safety cage (I made my own as Paul's weren't right for this particular location) myself......although after 4 hours of Tourettes and fuzzy eyes, I'm relatively pleased with the outcome as again, this is something I've never done before! I need to get some decent palisade fencing but I'm not sure what route to go down. I bought some of the Knightwing stuff but I'm not that happy with it - maybe I'll speak to Pete (Harvey) and get some of his etched stuff but I'll be looking at the wrong side of £40 for the amount I'll need! Oh well, best crack on.......

If you squint a bit (and ignore the top left hand cable), this almost looks real......

After removing the existing ballast and relaying it with some Iguana Sand (that was also too big ) I invested in a cheap mini sieve and finally got some ballast that's almost to scale (this is just laid lose to check on size) ..... Now I'll have to do this all over again because the paint got removed when I had to wet the ballast to get it up! I reckon I'd have finished the layout by now if I actually knew what I was doing

Great work here Mick - I've thoroughly enjoyed reading through your thread. I'm sure I've missed it but what's the length of the front scenic section? Cheers Mike

Not much to show picture wise but I've started fitting some of the DDC Concepts Cobalt Digital Point Motors. These things are so simple to wire up and have kept the layout wiring to a bare minimum. There is however.....one down side................... ........... THEY'RE SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO NOISY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Having been used to the relatively quiet micro servos with Dave Fenton's Mega Points system, these are a flippin' nightmare and I'm not sure that the ease of installation outweighs the awful noise. The cost is about the same - I can buy a board from Dave for £50, some servos from Hobby King for less than £1.60 each and by the time I've added micro switches for the frog polarity, piano wire and control switches etc, it all comes in under £90 including postage for 8 points. Ok, it's not DCC but for £25 you can buy a DCC address board (and you need a power supply) and the price came it at £128 for 8 Cobalts (I got them very cheap). I guess it's horses for courses and some people would be happy with something that could be up and running in about 5 minutes per motor....personally, having installed both systems, I'd go back to the Mega Points system in a flash (I'm not knocking DDC Concepts in any way as it works straight away with no issues) purely for the reduction in noise. This morning I ordered some new style 3 aspect searchlight signals from Paul at CR - he's actually making them identical to the down mainline signal at Castle Cary which he's doing at no extra cost (Top Man) and once they turn up I can fit them and work out the best way to control them. Away from the wiring, I'm still trying to get some better info on the location cases used in the somerset area so that I can at least have something that looks right for the region. I've realised that the medium ballast I've used is actually too big (the fine stuff is way too small) but I'm loathed to try and remove it and start again......although watch this space, I have a habit of doing everything TWICE

I'm not really in to steam layouts or steam engines but I can't help but like this John. If I close my eyes slightly, I can imagine (I'm 49 so I can only go by pictures in books etc) actually being there! If the station on my layout ends up anywhere near as good as yours I'll be over the moon and as for the second picture with the train emerging from the bridge....well that's made my day. Well done that man

So, as previously mentioned, whilst at Castle Cary, I saw this..... ...and decided I'd have a go at making the Virtual Quarry sidings look similar.... I can't quite get the rail colour right but maybe I'm being too fussy? At least I had the common sense to paint the sleepers first BEFORE ballasting, unlike my first effort to recreate this.... .....which, after much huffing, puffing and swearing....finally ended up like this Apologies for the poor pictures but I'm using my phone!

I managed to make a start on the other platform at the weekend and it's now beginning to look like a station. Still a long way to go but it's starting to take shape.. Finally got round to adding the virtual quarry sidings too - don't worry about the strange sleeper colour, I'm trying to model something I've seen at Castle Cary where they've used some really odd grey wooden sleepers for a recently relaid piece of track! The next task is to put boards 1 and 2 together and realign the down line as there's a nasty kink in the curve that's playing on my OCD!!!