TT-Pete

Leaping Jaguar, sitting cat. (You can tell that it is British summertime by how wet everything is!)

I find a well-aimed pillow launched across the room in the general direction of the miscreant works as a "snooze" function for about 5 minutes until the carpet-clawing starts again.

Exactly as @TT100 Diesels said above, this is why I chose the "Micro Layout & Dioramas" section for my Jubilee Point build, the 3mm area can indeed be a bit "tumbleweed" at times whereas the layout section has a lot more footfall overall, and my 3mm chums still drop by anyway. Either way I look forward to seeing it wherever it ends up. :^) Peter.

Ta-daa. 😁

So the Crompton (a Smetham cast resin body kit on a BTTB chassis) is entering Shed Road 1 from under the overbridge. The cat food cardboard patterns help judge the dimensions of my pillars and abutments imaginings "in the flesh"; they were almost but not quite and a few adjustments are neccessary. I think I slightly overcooked the foreground bothy/office scale when compared to the vehicles (which are both from the range of 3mm cast resin transport models produced by Bruce Smetham) and the Preiser figures, but hopefully it won't be too glaring. The gentlemen with the taxi are a little vignette I put together at the same time as Meeting without coffee, and are entitled Joe with his Advisors I wonder what the Advisors are thinking? (the body language does not look encouraging...) Cheers, Peter :^)

This got me thinking so I went back and had a closer look at the pile of track, it turns out that both Code 75 and Code 100 rail have been used. Both types slide in to the Society sleeper base with no issues:

@Robert Shrives almost, but not quite. :^) I also have a stash of Tri-ang fuel point bits to be able make 2 fueling roads in the centre foreground like you suggest, but the tanks are staying where they are as there will be a little cameo/vignette in the front right corner based around this: Which again will have interior detail and be lit with an LED.

I find it particularly gratifying when the physical object I am assembling actually starts to resemble the idea I started off with in my head, especially when home-brewed cider was involved in the initial inception... ;^) The blank slate consists of a 82cm x 42cm piece of 1cm thick marine ply board with a supporting frame and covered with cork sheet. Why those dimensions? Because it was fished as is out of a huge pile of offcuts in the garage loft left over from our house reconstruction 6 years ago that the builders were about to sling on a bonfire before I salvaged them (I still mourn the massive 70 year-old pitch pine roof beams they burned before I knew what they were up to) and that I thought might come in useful one day - so it seems auspicious to use it as is... The bridge abutments were used to test out my approach for building retaining walls; brick paper stuck to corrugated cardboard sections made out of the dividers found in bulk boxes of Felix cat food. I cut another 2 ladder rungs-worth out of the signal height as it still looked a bit too tall and careful observation on a recent trip to Temple Meads confirmed that the signal head base is roughly at cantrail height. @TT100 Diesels asked what track it is; well, I inherited a load from the late Bruce Smetham a few years back, it's 12mm gauge 3mm Society track base with what looks like code 100 rail, it looks better for TT3 than the 12mm gauge Tillig 1:120 Modellgleis that I usually use as the sleeper spacing is more prototypical, so I may well stick with it from now on. The road vehicles are from various sources (e.g Matchbox, Kyosho) and the closest to 1:100 that I could find, the grounded van body is from a Tri-ang T71 12t van and the lineside hut a cast-resin replica I made from a TT3 Tri-ang original. So all in all something of a typical 3mil scale hodge-podge... Cheers, Peter :^)

Jubilee Point progresses, update planned for the Micro layout forum in a day or two

...and that's before you start getting in to depreciation or obsolete currency conversion! I inherited the contents of my Dad's modelling workshop 14 years ago and am still working my way through prodigious quantities of knife blades and ancient Humbrol tinlets I remember from childhood and so pre-date 1971 and were therefore bought using £sd, let alone the materials he bought in Germany in DM pre-euro days.... 🙂 I did once start a spreadsheet recording what I spent on models and layout construction, but gave up very quickly what with life being too short (especially if I left a written record of my purchases for the wife to find).

...... the look on the dog's face.. 🤣

The rear retaining wall has proven more fiddly and time-consuming than anticipated over the past week and has featured a back to the drawing board, Plan B moment. It started out as several MKB Modelle double-track elevated arches laser-cut card kits, https://www.mkb-modelle.de/gebaudebausatze-h0-tt/bausatze-spur-tt/brucken-und-arkaden-tt considerably butchered and stuck together end-to-end with the parapet added on. Unfortunately Plan A looked simply awful and wasn't acceptable, so with a heavy heart and a scalpel soggy gluey bits had to be carefully prised off again. So to Plan B - as you can't buy additional sheets of brickwork pattern card from MKD I need to find a brick paper for the parapet walls. Closest match on hand is some "ruby red English Bond" inkjet-printed sheets, but they are to 3mm scale and the colour's not quite right. So although the correct scale for the diorama, the bricks are oversize when compared to their MKB cousins as these are to Continental TT 1:120 scale, something like this So it's the wrong size bricks and not quite the right colour, am I bovvered? Not really - I think it works ok as a backdrop and a bit of weathering at a later stage might help tone down the colour mismatch a bit. The signal is also a compromise, it's an Eckon 4mm scale light reduced for 3mm scale by removing 1cm from the height, reducing the spectacle plate width, and adding a 3mm scale etched brass ladder. Et voila, diamond number 6 😀 Job for this weekend is going to be finishing the bridges that cover the running line exits stage left, and stage right: Cheers, Peter :^)

Agree. Something like this Which takes us to 5 😀