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Beautifully done mate Pete.

Nice selection of trees, I wish I could get mine to look as good. Just a suggestion. The little black specks on the seagrass are seeds, if you shake them off into a container, you can grow your own trees, sow them around March time on your window cill or green house in a seed tray, then plant them out into the garden once they've started growing and the risk of frosts have passed. When they've died off you can harvest them with loads of seed for the next crop. Cheers, Pete.

I use drawing pins between the sleepers with the track glued down with pva. Once dry, I remove the drawing pins and ballast in the normal way. For your layout I'd go for an ash type ballast. Cheers, Pete.

This company was right along side the Midland main line at Chesterfield in Derbyshire, I remember going there as a schoolboy, late 60's when they were dismantling London underground stock with explosives, I nearly cra$$ed myself when they set them off!! Cheers, Pete.

As mentioned before, there is a supplier of textured aged brick papers, I have used and intend using them again though in 7mm scale. They do them in several scales and you have to buy several sheets but they are a reasonable price. Now the down side, it is an Ebay supplier and I don't know how to post a link, sorry. He is based in Greece, or Cyprus, I forget which, and has an extremely large range so you will need to get settled down and start scrolling, there is a lot of dolls house products on there but in my opinion, it's worth the effort. If you Google brick papers and ebay it should get you on the way. I've just had a look and he's called starboc1 16 sheets HO scale £16.75. (just an example), go to his shop and you will find 00, 1.76. Cheers, Pete.

I'm going to follow this build with interest as I'm also building a layout with an Elsenham and Thaxted branch in O gauge. It's loosely based on Thaxted and I've called it Thaxham. This is the station building. Still some work to do. This is the grounded coach body, a pair of Slaters 6 wheel coach sides, the rest scratch built. Cheers, Pete.

The late Allen Downes built a steel works layout some years ago, I reckon it would be great inspiration if you could find it. No doubt someone will be able to steer you to it, whether here or on the interweb somewhere. I started building one in 7mm a few years ago, it is very much a still a work in progress and not a real representation of a steel works, I'd need a barn to get anywhere near! Lots of luck mate, Pete.

And here's mine, scratch built in 7mm from the drawings in Railway Modeller from 1974. Took me absolutely ages to make and I used a lot of photos to get the details something like. It doesn't represent a specific loco, more a lash up of several different ones. It has DCC sound installed, and despite being 7mm it was still a to get everything inside! Cheers, Pete.

Hi Gary, regarding your Lima shunter, I have two and am having similar problems. When I brought it up on the GOG forum it was suggested that I widen the wheel back to backs slightly, but not on the gear side as it will cause the gears to stop meshing, I haven't tried it yet as I'm in the middle of a huge reshape of my modelling shed, ie, a new one. Cheers, Pete.

Nearly 2 months later I suppose I should post an update though to be fair I haven't got a lot further. The only noticeable thing is I have glued down some sieved soil as ground cover between the track work, still more to do as I ran out of soil halfway through . I also painted some of the cork with black enamel as the pva I fixed the first load of soil down with lifted the cork, hopefully it should help. I have also made up a cassette for it as an experiment to see if it will work for me. Quite pleased with it, still a work in progress though. Cheers, Pete.

This looks like a Westdale kit. The body is more or less the same as the Thompson coaches I built some years ago. They made up into some nice coaches though I did have to chuck some of the under frame parts. Cheers, Pete.

Sheffield O gauge group used a smoke generator on their layout, they had some problems with getting an even flow of smoke if I remember correctly. They overcame this by having the smoke go into a largish plastic storage box, drilling holes into it and running small bore piping to the various chimneys and having a small blower into the box to get an even pressure for all the outlets. They charged the box with smoke, and it gave smoke for around 10 minutes before recharging. It would also be possible to fit valves into the pipe lines so not all the chimneys are smoking all the time. Cheers, Pete.

Personally I would like to see a l/r specific section. I've always had a soft spot for Col' Stephens type lines. Also agree that some of the big company's built some bucolic branch lines, my own 7mm layout Thaxham is based on the Elsenham and Thaxted light railway that was built by the GER and lasted into BR ownership. It was never intended to be a major line but has many interesting parts that would be rewarding to build. Cheers, Pete.

I have 2 J69 kits. One is a Connoisseur that I have yet to start but have built an identical kit some years ago, it was a delight to build and would highly recommend it. The other is I believe an Ace kit. I am around half way to finishing it and to be fair some of the etchings have gone missing so I am scratch building some of the (smaller) parts. It is not a kit I would recommend to a novice builder but if you have had some experience then you should be ok. I bought both kits secondhand last year and there are no instructions with the Ace kit so I've been using the other for guidance but its gone together fairly easily. Still along way to go. Now I reckon the chassis and rods are from Premier components and were included with the Ace kit as they are of a much superior standard. But I even had to modify the front spacer to be able to fasten the front of the body to the chassis. Hope this has helped mate. Cheers, Pete.

A little more done, first up I've given the trackwork a whaft over with some Railmatch sleeper grime. And knocked up a fiddle yard for cassettes which will be built later after laying some connecting track and wiring it up. Thats it for now. Cheers, Pete.

Thank you Mannix, please feel free to use any of its design. Dimension wise it is 4ft x 16in. Cheers, Pete.

At the beginning of March I bought a small 4mm shunting layout on a whim (hence the title) off Ebay. The seller told me it was a work in progress and needed some wiring etc, however once I got it home I realised it needed more than recommissioning so I finished up stripping the track and points and starting over. It was at this moment I had a thought, I hadn't paid very much for it so I wondered if I could build a layout using stuff I already had and not buy much else. I have had to buy a few switches but for the most part I have used electrical stuff I already had in stock. This is what I started with. The dowels sticking out of the front were connected to the points. Some were connected to their point in the middle of a support under the board, lord knows how he did it! Anyway, I ripped them all out with the intention of fitting wire in tube above board. At this time I asked via facebook for ideas for the scenicifying of it and a friend from Australia sent me this photo. I want to Anglify it for my own use as I can't afford to buy loads of US outline stock! With the basics in mind I set about stripping it. I decided to try and upgrade the points to make them more reliable. The points are Hornby insulfrogs bar one Peco insulfrog. I joined the switch and stock rails, isolated the crossing V and wired them as an electrofrog, the above photo is of the first one I did to see if it would work. It did, very well! So I have done all 6 and isolated them from the rest of the track and given them a dedicated power supply. Track and points relayed. All wired up and switches for point polarity fitted, control panel made, wired and connected, I also put a changeover switch in for switching between DC and DCC. And that at the moment is it. I need to make a fiddle stick next so that trains can be run off scene. I will post up progress as and when things happen. Cheers for now, Pete.

Just tried looking on line to be told permission denied??

Hi Dan, I read somewhere how it had been done with a mixture of black and brown dry tile grout, sprayed with a water pva mix from a plant sprayer, I reckon some ipa in the mix would help too. I worked on the chemicals side and when the wind is in the right (or wrong, depending on your opinion) direction I get all nostalgic . Cheers, Pete.

It looks a cracking little shunter! Doe's anyone know if the wheels turn/are metal? If so, maybe couple it to a motorised van wagon perhaps? Cheers, Pete.

As Andrew P says Seep motors can be problematic, I've never got on with them but a friend swears by them. When he fits them, if I remember right, he puts a thin layer of foam underneath and doesn't tighten the screws too tightly, leaving a little movement in the switch. Pete.

Hi, yes mine came with 4 wires, positive and negative in and two white outputs. The white ones had a carbon brush on the ends, I cut those off , stripped the covering back and twisted the exposed wires together and soldered the ends and the wire to the sieve together. I've had mine around 2 years without issue and it works a treat. Pete.

Just catching this thread, very impressed with your plan though I think 6 ft is excessive . This is mine, about 3ft x 9-10 inches, I didn't measure it! The board is from a fire surround we had fitted, it held the bottom of the legs in place. Pete.

I've used cereal box card cut into strips and interwoven then covered in kitchen roll with watered down pva slopped on, followed by a sloppy filler/pva mix then painted green. I've used static grass on mine but flock could be used too. I mixed in some black poster paint with my filler mix. Cheer's, Pete.

Few more photos. A start made on the station building using foam board for the core and cereal box for the cladding and framing. The windows I made from plasticard on clear glazing, it took some doing as the clear didn't like welding to the strip! This is the prototype building at Thaxted. It also shows the ballast platform covering. Building all but finished, the LNER repainted all their buildings in 1937 so as mine is set in roughly that time period I won't be doing much weathering to it. More soon, cheer's, Pete.