ParkeNd

I would guess it's just an agency photo which emphasises the toy aspect of Hornby - the hand on the roof is more important to the context than the loco being Hornby's latest issue.

Central Management Charges - a common practice.

What I mean is that you have to picture a train, in your head, moving on your track. You have a two car DMU in your train set. Even this DMU is 10" long and as such is an example of a very short train - my loco plus 5 coach trains are 34"long and even a loco plus three coaches is 22" long. Thus a 3 coach train would set off from your station and it could not travel far enough for the back end ever to leave the platform. . Your DMU would be a bit better but the train would travel such a short distance it would look unusual to say the least. DavidjC Broad has the right idea in my opinion for 4 ft x 2 ft layout. Unless you use say a Class 08 shunting diesel and a few short 4 wheel goods wagons and turn you layout into say a diesel depot with shunting yard only - then what I am saying is that you will find your 4 ft x 1 ft shelf is simply too small.

APA Park which first caught your attention has a fiddle yard added onto it's end when in use. A two car Class 101 DMU is 10" long - so it will need the first 22" of the layout before it's tail clears even a 12" platform. After this it can only move 26" before it's nose hit's the far end of the layout. You are going to find out that 48" is not enough without a 24" fiddle yard out of sight added to it's other end. Anyway - best of fortune. Post some photos sometime.

Yes - thread on this very forum. http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/95699-parkend-in-forest-of-dean-n-gauge/

Hi Jerry. Then I would be tempted to go wider to get yourself a fiddle yard at the front accessed by a curve - it can be a second station. Minories in OO is 8 ft X 2 ft (thus 4 X 1 in N) but was designed to give the impression of not requiring much scenery - the additional length required for a fiddle yard is missed off its dimension claims but is shown ghosted on the track plans - so the dimensions quoted are a cheat - see Wikipedia below. In N at least another 2 ft would be required to make it 6 ft X 1 ft even for a two coach DMU - and maybe even 7ft X 1 ft for a loco and two coaches. Whilst you have only one train at the moment they are well known to multiply over time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minories_(model_railway)#Model

Hmm. 4 x 1. My own N gauge layout (seen in Railway Modeller Oct 2015) is 6 ft 6 ins X 2 ft 4 ins and measuring up a 4 ft X 1 ft slice doesn't leave much of it left - the whole thing is shown below and 4 X 1 would leave about 9 inches before and after the platform ends lengthwise and width wise would just about include the goods shed. Now is the time to renogotiate your space allocation. The 1 ft width is what is limiting. If you had 2 ft in width for just 2 ft even of the length and 1 ft for the remainder you could shape it like a walking stick by having a 10" radius curve bringing your track round in front of you. There would then be space for a scenic fiddle yard so your trains could leave from somewhere and arrive somewhere. This is what fits in 6 ft 6 X 2 ft 4

I agree - they are not GWR colours. Parkend is the grey/green end of cream. In Humbrol acrylics I can match this with 103 Cream Matt and a touch of 224 Dark Grey. About 2/3 cream and 1/3 grey. The greenish hue comes out of the grey.

Two travellers in the Aussie outback stopped at a pub which was no more than a shack, and asked to use the toilet. The publican pointed at a path outside and said "It's down there a few yards". One of the travellers was more desperate than the other and took off down the path with a handful of paper. But after an hour he didn't come back so his friend went looking for him with the publican. They found him sitting on a plank with a hole in it balanced over a large hole in the ground - stone dead - suffocated. "That's an old mine shaft said the publican". "Oh no said the dead travellers friend - how deep is that shaft?" "5000 ft said the publican". That'll be the problem then" said his friend "he always holds his breath until he hears the splash"

Thanks for the comments guys. Believe it or not the hardest part was the front steps and the handrail. Not exactly in Pixie's league but it made me go boss eyed.

I had plans to visit parked on a monday when the support group has their working day - to get some photos in these trainless months. But the weather has made it fairly unpalatable - so what have I been doing? The Parkend goods shed and the station building were my first two scratch built model buildings so I have continued after the rebuild of Railway Cottages to tackle the goods shed. This is now built and work is started on the station building. Early on I chickened out of detail I thought I couldn't handle but I am having a bash at it now. A few photos below of the goods shed - I will photograph it "planted" when the station building is done. I wanted to see it with the doors open and John at the museum was good enough to let me have some photos of the interior to help.

For people who can remember the disappeared shops since about mid 1960s. A man went into Timothy White's and after hunting around for a while was approached by a staff member who asked if she could help. "I'm looking for a packet of Durex but don't seem to be able to find anything like that". The girl smiled helpfully and said "Have you tried Boots?" The man looked a bit surprised and said "But wouldn't it leak through the lace holes?"

The Berry Wiggins bitumen tankers would be interesting.

You can already compare your outside photos with a micro 4/3 outside photo. I don't deliberately take photos with less than the best kit I have - unless there is a risk of it being taken off me and then I take the Panasonic. Here is micro 4/3 in RAW taken inside in low light with absolutely no additional photographic lighting. And picking up your point aimed at the inadequacy of DSLR's for layout photos. This is a DSLR shot from last week of part of my N gauge layout. Single flash bounced off the ceiling. If only depth of field is your requirement then going to the smallest sensor you can find - like an iPhone - will meet this need - but with big limitations elsewhere. This is my final post on the topic - and yes I am opinionated when there are facts and evidence to balance against claims - the £120 you spent on your Sony beats a camera phone and was not much money for any photographic device - but in terms of the absolutes you claim for it, your pictures are neither sharp nor well exposed in comparison with alternatives available at modest cost - but you do need to be open minded to reap the benefits.

Why can you not edit RAW files on your tablet? Photoshop Express is a free app with RAW processing ability. If you look at your photos you have both burned out highlights and heavily blocked shadow details in the same shots. RAW would enable you to recover detail in both rather than this detail being discarded by your JPEGs. A conventional Panasonic micro 4/3 compact with about 25mp and RAW may just surprise you - try this for instance. And this is just a 16mp Panasonic GX1X but shooting RAW and converted in Aperture 3. Usually I use a Nikon D810 but find micro 4/3 can really perform if you shoot RAW. Try to lose the JPEGs as soon as you can.

It is a similar sensor to the RX100 but apparently not the same. The QX100 lens unit is also a JPEG only device and is not capable of RAW exposures unlike the RX100 which limits its resolution and throws away many pixels when it saves its files. Reviews shows it can lock up when presented with a complex image such as tree branches with twigs at the edge of a frame. Most reviews rate it at 2.5 stars out of 5 stars.

It's a brave choice for a novelty alternative to just using the mobile phone sensor on its own. The 1" sensor refers to a sensor the same size as used to be found in what used to be referred to as a 1" TV camera tube - still tiny and only about 13.2mm X 8.8mm I think. Reviews show its edge definition to be below photographic quality in terms of pixel density. At its normal selling price it would be hard to imagine any sales at all but I guess at £120 that compensates for its limitations. Were you to try one you would find a conventional micro 4/3 camera would easily outperform this Sony in terms of resolution, speed of use, and freedom from glitches like locking up on complex scenes.

I thought I might post this here. This is the rebuild of Railway Cottages on my Parkend N gauge layout using the nine colour photos that show them in the new Neil Parkhouse book. Now there is no excuse for showing them in white rendered form as now - and in any case my scratch building skills have improved marginally since I built the originals.

At Annie's funeral the Vicar was summing up her life as the relatives listened. "First she was married to Tom and they had 9 children but sadly Tom died while still young. Then she married Dick and they had 12 children but Dick sadly died in an accident. Then finally she married Harry and had 14 children before Harry died and left her on her own. Now sadly Annie has died herself and now they are finally together". One of the cousins leaned over to his uncle and whispered " I'm confused. Who is she together with? Tom or Dick or Harry?" The uncle smiled kindly and whispered back " I think the Vicar was referring to her legs"

Railway Cottages at Parkend, Forest of Dean. N gauge as shown by the 20p piece.

It is a dangerous book though if you have a model railway layout built based on black and white pictures - and not enough of those either. This has had to be built again so it looks like the second photo. Not finished yet - two months work so far - it's the quantity and colour of the photos that do the damage. See around Page 91.

An old married couple were sitting in front of their solicitor. After a brief chat the solicitor summed up " So you want a divorce". The couple confirmed this immediately. Then the solicitor asked why, hoping there was some chance of reconciliation. "We've both hated each other for the past 60 years and we can't stand to see each other any more" said the man - and the woman nodded her agreement. "The one thing I can't understand" said the solicitor "is that you are both 97 years old, have hated each other for 60 years, and only now you want a divorce - why have you waited so long"? The woman looked him straight in the eye and said "that's simple - we were waiting until the children were dead".

My first visit to Parkend was 1973 and it looked like this. I have several pictures I took on the same day but this one shows the same siding from the other side of the goods shed - minus what Brian says looks like a lawn now.

I'm in the process of building anew the first 4 scratch buildings I made on my Parkend layout. These are Railway Cottages (in their Neil Parkhouse new book configuration), the Goods Shed, Station building, and the old shop that used to stand next to the signal box. So far the first two have got this far - lots more to do. To help myself I went over to Parkend and took loads of detail photos like this :- Whilst there I thought Parkend looked immaculate at end of season so took a few more photos whilst there :-

This is a courier issue. The box has been part of a pallet load - and on the bottom corner of the pallet at that. The abrasion damage looks like it was cause by a fork truck being used to shunt the pallet across the floor during which it hit something else. Your photos should be sent to Hattons - no doubt about it.