bluestag

I've been failing drastically to point some bricks on an engine shed. I am near despair. I hope to follow your lead here.

Thanks for this. I have settled on two of these girder bridges crossing the layout front to back, on a 65 degree skew, for my 7mm layout. Each span will be about 10" long, each crossing three tracks. It is set in 1900, and was built in about 1885. It will be a bit narrower than yours. It looks to be tough.

I've made inquiries with https://evcd.bigcartel.com/ It's a custom decal printer in Britain. For some LNWR waterslides in 7mm. If anything comes of it, I'll report here.

Thanks! I could certainly use them. I wonder if they are still any good? Decals don't last forever, you know. Kevin

I take your point about the sprayer. I brush as well, but can't seem to get all the ballast where it belongs. I don't use wood glue, but rather acrylic matt medium. Guaranteed to dry matt. I use a dropper to get the medium into the ballast, rather than flooding. So I don't get a lot of it on the tops of the sleepers. Still I get some ballast on the sleepers and chairs. The medium is taking two days to cure. It has been raining here a LOT.

James, How do you keep the ballast off the sleepers as you glue the stuff down? I am having quite the battle. Kevin

Well, there certainly is a lot of TRACK.

Happily, it is not a huge layout. Mine is a little larger. I have started just ahead of the locomotive. Lots to do. I am having trouble not gluing ballast down to the sleepers.

Your coarse stuff does look a little large. If yyou don't mind doing the chore twice, I'd say do over top it. Is that fine or medium Woodland Scenics? I am ballasting now, with medium. It looks right to me, but is a bit bright. (Grey).

You have the disadvantage of being tall. I assume you want your chums to come around and play trains. Low enough for them to see the trains. If you are condemned to 3 links, as opposes to an automatic that does not require that you reach over, even lower. Me? I run Dinghams. They are not as reliable as well fitted kadees, but they demand a LOT less intervention than 3 links.

I'm 5'7". My layout is 42" from the floor. I can JUST get under it to work on it. It is in my garage with a concrete floor. I have a scoot around chair that has my bottom about an inch off the floor. I have two bits of layout that are further than I can reach standing there. I need step stools to reach the back. Not the best plan, but I am greedy for track, you see. My chum John has a very nice layout at 42", and he is a bit taller than me. He seems to like it. I do enjoy sitting down and admiring my trains at eye level. My advice is to be able to fit under it, as you will be spending time down there. And consider how you may prefer to see the sides of the trains rather than the roofs. Some people would build near the average person's eye level. Say 62". But that makes having a deep layout very difficult. Easy to get at from underneath, though!

Nice to see the LNWR depicted. I just can't get enough.

Those are NICE boxes, as long as your supply of ply holds out. My cheap and cheerful boxes (page one) required a table saw. Useful but not essential is a drill press. Likewise, I used a small electric brad stapler. That and a mess of glue. All with ply surplus from the layout build. Particularly the fiddleyard.

Those boxes are fine, as wood work goes. Finger joints are very effective. The top and bottom being 3mm (1/8" in my money) is OK, as long as it has plenty of wood in the sides to glue to. Which it does. I would be careful of the hinges and especially the hasps. I have some fairly cheap hasps on mine (see page one) but I use two. They show no inclination to pop open. The flaw in those boxes is the size, and that is not all that painful. I build boxes that just fit a loco, so I can carry a few at a time. I suppose that is an advantage. If you don't own a table saw, you pretty much want to buy your boxes. Putting better hasps and hinges on them is not tool-demanding. I'd go with those.

Finger joints (what you have there) make for a very nice, sturdy box.

I had a very noisy worm wheel affair on my first 7mm loco. I replaced the steel worm with nylon and it is now nearly silent. From Ultrascale. A cheap solution. Kevin

A pic of the rusty track. And yes, it is tedious. Next up, a test of conductivity, then the ballast.

My word, I have been BLOCKED from working on the second coach. First it was the covid, then promptly after that, a cold that won't go away. Between them I fitted a heater to the ceiling of the garage, I can make it much more habitable in short order. I instead have a bee in my bonnet about scenicing the layout. In this case it means ballast and little more. It is all track. Some buildings, eventually. I got it in my head to paint the rails and chairs rusty. Others I know did not bother; painting the sleepers is enough for many. My good gravy, it takes TIME! I'll post a pic tomorrow. Happy New Years!

With a 3' wide bench, it would be possible to get many tracks on a transverser/sector plate.

Yes, assuming that your fiddleyard is a straight affair like a selector plate, there is a LOT to be said for using 6' curves.

I manage 5 30'1" six wheelers, or four 42' bogie coaches. You can certainly get 2 mk1s in, and possibly three. 25' minus 6 for a transverser is a fair space.

It is more like strathmore board than card, it is relatively thick. The mortar slots were burned out with a laser. They are nearly black compared to the white of the board. I sprayed the card with red primer, oil based. And tried to smear grey into the mortar, Little got into the slots, but did drink into the card and "weather" the bricks. If I persisted, the card began to fall apart as I tried to wipe the grey off the red. http://www.lcut.co.uk/index.php?product=B 70-10&title=B 70-10

See the photos above. It is on two walls of my garage, and has a drop flap that opens out onto the driveway. The long wall is 19'2" long, and the flap extends it by about 40". The adjacent wall is 17' 4", and has the fiddleyard of 6' on the end. So I have a little more layout than you do, but most of the 17' is just the branch line, no turnouts or sidings. All that is on the 22' of the main layout. So if you transition directly from station throat to fiddleyard, you will have only slightly less length than I have.

You will use a LOT of space doing that. I am using a cassette system that takes up 6'. That allows me five six wheeled coaches and a loco, or ten wagons and a loco. Perhaps long for your preferences, if you are going to run only really short stock, set track will work. I would find that limiting. Kevin

My first effort at a building in 7mm for my LNWR layout. Built it, but I can't was mortar grey into the recesses, over the sprayed on brick red. I just either lift the red, or start to tear up the card. LCUT has examples of built buildings, but I just don't have the knack. Kevin