Fishplate

Hi @Booking Hall. I have read right through your topic over the last few days and have enjoyed it very much. Your use of materials and the creation on the wall lights put me in mind of the Westerham layout by @westerhamstation. I am also a child of the Blue Peter era (John Noakes, Valerie Singleton & Peter Purvis) . I will look forward to reading more updates on your layout. Best regards John

What @chuffinghell said ! John

Very well said @Bogie. I entirely agree and wish the same. John

Looks really nice. IoW atmosphere already. John ps Hope those two Terriers are on a lead. You know what happens when they get in amongst the sheep . . . . .

Hi @Graham T, noting Rule 1 applies to bridges as well as trains, just a suggestion : looking back at your plan on April 29th, the road on the LH side only serves the station as a dead end. Could you convert the bridge to a road that perhaps then turns to run parallel to the river and passes under the railway ? Have read through all your excellent layout topic and will continue to follow progress with interest. John

Hi George, I have read through your topic and find your layout, buildings and back scene really inspirational. I look forward to following further developments. Best regards John

Wouldn't you just then inadvertently have created the prototype Pacer unit? This could mean having a bus on the bridge and one under it . . . . . . . . . . exits stage right and descends steps into Anderson Shelter. . . . . John

Hi Kevin @KNP Those and the following street and track level pictures are just so inspiring. I need to get this 12":1ft house finished so I can free up the time to get my layout installed in its new location and get back some 4mm:1ft modelling. John

Personally I like the first one as there is more interest in the picture with the sheep in the background. Interesting comments on picture 2 though about the train running out of track. Doesn't the human brain just fill in the gaps and, based on previous experience, assume there is more track off the picture? Or is that a difference between an 'art wired' brain compared to one wired for engineering ? If you saw a bus going over a bridge, your brain would assume there was more road on the other side. Noted though that some people do seem to see Stukas in that situation. . .. . Discuss . . . . .

I think your bog standard is excellent @MrWolf, John

One could say that takes the biscuit . . . . Love this level of detail. John

Hi @MrWolf. I 've been away from RMWeb for several months and have enjoyed catching up on your layout and the great modelling. I look forward to following your progress from now on. Also been enjoying the tangential "off topics". John

Hi @Mick Bonwick . I have built an island platform on a curve. I have got as far as a cardboard mock-up . I've described how I did it step by step on page 1 of my layout topic in my signature (2nd June 2018). I can't claim its perfect as I haven't been able to build the permanent version as yet. Hope you crack it ok. Back to LM . . . . .

Hi Chris, I've been away doing other stuff for several months. I have had a pleasant time catching up on Warren Branch and particularly the Goods Shed build. Great stuff. Love the finished article. Looking forward to following your progress again on a more regular basis. Best regards John

Hi @KNP. I have been away from Little Muddle on other business for too long. It has been very pleasant to return and catch up with things over the last few weeks / hundred or so pages. Catching up at LM speed! The standard of modelling is something to aspire to. The pub and garage look like they have been there forever. Some things change on LM , but part of its charm is most things don't. It is like going back to your childhood home town to find you recognise everything. Thank you for continuing to inspire. John

Not a lot has happened on the model railway in the last few months. Work has been concentrated on the new (old) house to get it how we want it. We have had builders in and work will start soon with a rewire of most of the house. This will also include the removal of the two old style fuse boards and their replacement with a modern panel with circuit breakers. We knew this (and much else besides) needed doing before we bought the house. But we get to position and add sockets at a nice height to suit our current and future needs for all the gizmos that 21st Century living that require power. The railway room power socket provision is currently suitable to power up the railway (in fact currently 50% more than the old railway room). But it will be fitted out with a number of new sockets. These will initially feed my work computer, monitor, home computer and printer etc. This will enable working from home to continue without the need for multiple extension leads. Sufficient additional sockets added to feed these, an LED magnifying glass, a soldering iron, my silhouette cutter and a rolling road, together with some spare capacity. So my desk will serve a day job function associated with 12 inch:1ft railways and an evening/ weekend/ planned retirement function of working on 4mm:1ft model railways. It is also part of the delay in getting the railway back up. I didn't want to put the desk in its final position where extension leads would need to trail right across the room for several months. The new room is a reverse "P" compared to the old room. It is also significantly (to me) bigger. Looking back at some of the earlier photos, the dock and left hand side of the railway with the island platform (Boards 1, 2 and 3) will fit along what is now the "short" side of the "P". There is an extra 100mm spare to play with. The picture below shows this "short" 3000mm wall. My initial thoughts for this extra length is to create a return on the dock board for the Thames barge shown on an earlier post (still awaits construction). I was worried that positioning it in front of the dock would lead to inadvertent damage to masts. Putting a return in will position it in a relatively safe location and get rid of the need for the low relief dock building featured in earlier posts. My only issue is that this short wall is not square to the external wall, just off the picture on the right. There is a 40mm difference in the room width between the left hand side and right hand side of the photo from the external window wall where the picture is taken. As before, the wall above boards 1, 2 and 3 will be used for cassette storage (except it will get built in this room). Moving clockwise around the room, and looking at the photo below, what was the top of the old "P" with boards 3, 4 and 5 across the window, is much wider. The old width was 2160mm. The red pencil on the crated up railway shows where 2160mm comes too in this room from the left hand wall. That represents the old room wall and the back edge of boards 5 and 6 . Now I have 2830mm to play with. However, I am not planning to widen the railway. We will need access to the window and radiator to the right. My initial thoughts are therefore turning to a larger urban street scene below the arches. This would previously have been confined just to the corners of boards 5 and 6. The short, left hand, side of the "P" in the old room was 2060mm. On the trackwork in the picture below, 2060mm extends from the far wall to roughly where the straights join the curve on the double track main line. Continuing clockwise, the picture below shows the long side of the new "reverse P". The alcove is the future location for my desk with all those lovely sockets. The door is being rehung to swing towards the wall on the right and Board 1. This will give access to the duck-under on Board 6 and will also give unhindered access into the alcove. As part of the electrical work, we are also getting a light switch put in the room, rather than on the wall on the opposite side of the landing. The current pendant lamp is being replaced by an LED batten identical to the previous railway room. A similar LED will be positioned over the desk, so I'm not working in shadow. After electrics have been sorted I then have some decorating to do around the house. The plan then is to erect Boards 1, 2 and 3 with access on both sides so I can start wiring up, and making, the two control panels and laying the carriage sidings and scenic cassette handling area.

Experimenting with Granite Setts I have used an offcut of plywood and some 2 x 1 timber to make a roughly A3 size board to experiment creating granite setts for the quay side, the general dock area and the road under the high level main line. I've pinned a short length of track to the baseboard so I can also experiment with ash ballast later. I then mixed up the plaster formula my friend gave me. Having got a roughly level surface I let it set (sett?) for 24 hours. I've been looking at doing this for a while, so had a fair idea of what I wanted to do. I have taken prototype pictures and, as mentioned in an earlier post, had been inspired by a layout at an exhibition a few years ago. Many of the pictures I have taken are of the fan arrangement of setts. Whilst I would like this arrangement, I don't think it would have been prototypical for an area in a dock, or for the type of road that will exist on my layout. I haven't seen any old black and white photographs from the Southern Railway eastern area where these feature. Consequently I have gone for normal straight rows. Full size setts are nominally 6 inches (150mm) square, or 2mm of course, in 4mm scale. I initially set out some lines in pencil on the plaster at 2mm intervals and then experimented with three different types of tools. A double ended dental pick was the first choice but I found this dug furrows rather than the thin shallow joints I needed. You can see these furrows running parallel to the track in the photo further below. The opposite end also dug into my hand, so was abandoned . . . . . The second tool, a scriber, didn't work at all. I finally settled on a scalpel blade. Without using too much pressure this created a nice fine line that 4mm people wouldn't fall into. The rows were marked out in pencil at 2mm intervals on opposite sides along the 'street' and then lines scribed across using the scalpel. I then started to mark out parallel lines along the road. Remembering that each row is offset by half a sett from the one above, this meant marking out at 1mm intervals. This didn't work well as trying to spot rows 1, 3, 5, 7 and missing rows 2, 4, 6, 8 etc worked fine for only a short while as the plaster that was taken out obscured the lines. I then settled on doing individual rows by hand and brushing away the debris with an old toothbrush. This also gave a more random effect. Having worked along the street, I experimented with an HB pencil, just rubbing it across the setts to create quite a nice dark effect on the surface of the setts. This can be seen on the two or three rows that represent the drainage channel towards the top of the picture. The effect in the rest of the photo was created by running a damp cloth across the surface, which has filled the cracks with pencil graphite. Not perfect, but I am quite pleased with the result of an hour or so spent scribing and brushing away plaster. Next step will be to try some acrylic washes to see what happens next.

Thank you to both @Schooner and @LBSC123 for your kind comments. To answer @Schooners question, the Lighters have come from Anyscale models and can be found on this link: https://anyscalemodels.com/shop/railways/twin-hold-dumb-barge.html A Thames Sailing barge will also go into the dock. The hull features on my post of 31/12/18 (so long ago!!) . It can be found on the manufacturers website here: https://www.vintageminiaturemodels.co.uk/sail-barge/4594561851 . Usual disclaimer in that I have no personal connection with either company. Just a satisfied customer of both. I hope this helps. John

With this section of the layout put on the dining room table at the new ancestral home, here are some pictures of the Lighters in the dock, as promised. With a close up of the tarpaulin creases. The wagons on the dockside are some examples of those that were built by my Father. Next job is to experiment with a plaster formula my friend has given me. This will enable me to produce an area of the dock, and the road heading under the main lines to the Goods Yards, in granite setts. I think that will be a bit of a challenge in 4mm, but I was inspired by a 4mm exhibition layout a few years ago to 'have a go'.

Thames Lighters (Part 2) Following on from the post above, the cardboard covers then needed tarpaulins. These were cut from tissue paper. Each lighter has four separate tarpaulins. Each overlaps the adjacent one, with the two end tarpaulins overlapping the ends of the hold cover by varying amounts. PVA was applied to the cover and each tarpaulin laid on. It was then soaked in more PVA diluted by dipping the brush in the PVA and then in water. This caused the tissue to crease up in a nice prototypical way (in my view!). This was all then left to dry overnight. The tarpaulins were then painted with varying shades to show the individual panels. The third lighter has had the holds infilled with Norwegian Pine. This is shown partly unloaded. There will be a stack on the Dock which a wagon or two will be shunted in to pick up. I’m going to leave it there for the time being and come back to them at a later date to add further detail. At the moment they are going to go in a box until the railway is back up and running. Finally a shot of the models in front of one of the prototype images I have based them on, and which shows a lot of additional detail that can be added. I'll put some photos of the lighters in the dock next time.

Thames Lighters (Part 1) Now we are in the new house, the railway is still in its frames, apart from the dock (Board 1). That has been taken out of the frame to work on. I am planning to go through all the boards to do those jobs that were awkward to do whilst it was fully assembled and had cupboards, bookcases and general modelling 'stuff' underneath it. I've spent a few evenings working on three model Thames Lighters that I purchased from Anyscale Models a few years ago. Part of the enjoyment is to undertake some research to see what these looked like. As would be expected, all the pictures are in black and white, so I have interpreted the shades of grey as I think fit, and from my general knowledge of what things might have looked like. The three Lighters are cast in resin. Two are shown below in their 'as bought' condition and after a wash in warm soapy water to remove any grease or remnants of releasing agent. I had decided that two of them would be fully covered and a third would be unloading timber (as Faversham had a large timber yard on the Creek). All three are based on prototype photos. All three are steel Lighters and have received a 'muddy' black acrylic paint which I mixed myself using artists acrylics. The height of the apex on the covered boats was worked out from measuring the width and height of a boat that was virtually end on to the photographer. Measuring the width of the model then enabled the height of the covering to be determined. The next photo shows the supports for the cover and the cover itself. These were cut and scored from stiff cardboard, with the supports being an 'interference' fit with the sides of the hold. This tight fit enabled fine adjustment up and down to get the peaks all in line. They were then glued in using UHU and left to dry whilst the same was done for the other Lighter. After the supports were dry, the cover was similarly attached with UHU using some stip wood to clamp the cover to the supports and the sides of the hold, as shown below. (Part 2 to follow)

Hohum :-(

The layout was built with moving house in mind. We have been fortunate to be able to find a new (old) house close to our daughters, their husbands (one x current and one x future) and grandchildren. One of the criteria was, of course, that there should be a suitable room to house the railway. Consequently the layout has been taken down and transported to its new location in purpose built frames. 2/7ths of it came with me on moving day and 5/7ths was temporarily housed at one of our daughters homes. How people do exhibitions I do not know! Some pics following of the empty boards, room and the transportation arrangements. The new room is slightly bigger than the layout. There is an alcove to enable me to work (permanently) from home. My only concern is that I could keep the railway in the dark, but I will have to expose it to daylight whilst I am working. The room faces north west, so I only get full sun in here late in the afternoon at the moment. And probably none at all in deepest, darkest winter. There are a few jobs that I can more easily undertake with the layout in pieces. Scrabbling about under boards is not so easy nowadays. Hopefully there will be no more house moves now and more progress can be made, particularly after I retire. Grandaughters first question when she saw our new house was 'Where is your railway Grandad?' So the pressure is on to get power points where I need them, get the under board work completed and the layout rebuilt to entertain the next generation. . .

Hi Dave I came across this route learning video for Grosmont to Battersea Junction on YouTube. See 12 mins 56 secs. I knew there was a bridge like that on the line. Hope this helps solve your question. Best Regards John

Hi @gz3xzf Thank you very much for the link. It gives a much greater breakdown on dates than the book I have, showing the loco was allocated to a number of other sheds, including Dover. It would be great to find some pictures of her in the Faversham area. A job for my retirement. Yes, it is the 1982 Hornby model with tender drive. She joins my other Hornby model of Westminster, purchased a few years ago and my Fathers kit built model of Tonbridge, which he constructed in the 1980's. I now have all of my Fathers kit built locomotives, of which there are quite a few. Some are on display in a cabinet in my railway room, with the others kept carefully in their boxes. I've put a picture of Tonbridge below. It is my intention that my Fathers models will all receive a full service in due course so they can stretch their legs on Canterbury Road.