betehumane

Interesting to see what you'll do with the smokebox door as I seem to remember it being a bit flat on the Lima model?

I've got one too - I remember at the time just being over the moon to have a small prairie, whatever the shortcomings. I think you could be inspiring a lot of people here...

Lucky you didn't build one of them in P4 ;-)

Any chance that Dave's sketch could be shown here? I've always struggled with the springs vs pickups condundrum and the "leave em out completely" solution shown here was going to be my excuse from now on!

I can't wait to getting round to building one of these. Have you decided on pickups yet? Always interesting to see how people approach this.

This, for me, is what modelling's all about. More power to yer!

Well I've just watched your Youtube clip and I think I might have a roundabout compliment for you here - I've trawled back through your other blog entries to work out if your Y7 was built in S7 or not!!

Now that I know, from one EM gauger to another, well done!

I've been searching round the forums looking at the various threads for and against modelling a preserved railway, with a view to pitching myself in with a long treatise firmly in the "pro" camp. In this one post and with these pics you've totally saved me the bother - far more eloquently than I could ever have managed. Good on you - this layout is really going to be something special. I was volunteer on the MHR back in the 80s, too young to see the end of steam, so for pure nostalgia modelling, this is as pure as it gets in my book.

Wow! Very pleased to have discovered this blog - I've had a model of Ropley on my "to do next" list for a long while, unfortunately a long while is exactly how long it will take to get to the top of the list! I'll be very interested to see how this turns out for you as I think you've hit on the perfect candidate for a "serious" (??) interpretation of the preserved railway theme.

Thanks for the comment - great to know someone else is interested, now I'm just worried that I'll have to produce something sooner or later! As I said before, this train might take some time to arrive...

I don't know about the warehouse yet - my thinking at the moment is that if a branch had actually been built down to the quay then something a bit more substantial than the real-life boathouse might have been built (or replaced it). I've been gathering pictures of some of the quayside building at Looe for ideas of what might have come about. Having said that I was down at the quay a few weeks ago (first time in years!) and took a few snaps, and it inspired me enough to try out some scribings on a pizza base to see if I could replicate that distinctive narrow stonework. We shall see in due course I guess.

The layout plan at least assumes a building in roughly the same position, I'm trying not to take too much licence with the geography (for now).

The board is 4" deep under the track, dropping to 2" for the quayside. The diagonal cross braces are 1" (I think - need to go and measure!) I was very pleasantly surprised with how much rigidity the cross bracing added, certainly in its original 5' 6" form the board went from being completely twistable to something where there was no discernable "flex" when lifted from one corner.

Since cutting it in half I've added the end joining plates and side sheeting, 6mm and 3mm ply respectively. No track laid yet but with repeated assembly/disassembly in preparation it seems to be holding together so far.