Ray Von

5 hours ago, Mikkel said:

Great stuff, very creative art deco. Perhaps some station signs next? 

 

Oh yes, I'd forgotten about that!!!  Where would you place them? I'm thinking quite high up, on the concrete section.... ? Thank you for the reminder! 

24 minutes ago, C126 said:

Good to see you are still creating things, between playing trains.  Just noticed your crane in the scrap-yard.  As they are as rare as hens' teeth now I want a few, may I ask where you got yours?  Thanks, and keep up the good work.

Hello, thanks for the compliment. Funnily enough I found the inlay paper that came with the crane, while I was going through my scrap box earlier today!

This is, of course, an N scale model - made by Langley.

I hope that's of use though.

Remind me, are you working in "OO" or "N" - I find "N" scale much more forgiving of homemade joints and buttresses!  You could break up the lines with strategically placed foliage scatter, representing weeds sprouting from mortar cracks? 

It looks great, I'm not sure what part of the structure you are displeased with? 

Looking good, little people are very thin on the ground at my layout!  I quite like the added feeling of "inevitable demise" it gives though.... 

I have two people in the Wrigley Arms Pub, in Faversham's Scrap Yard - a crane operator, forklift driver and a mechanic (he's barely visible!)

Another inspiring post, thank you! 

Love the split-level feature, are you going to let elf n safety fence it off?  My inner six year old - who thrives on disaster and destruction - would leave it as it is. 

There is a saloon bar at Dent-de-Lion station, it's window is dangerously close to the buffers to satisfy this appetite!!!! (I think there was a scene in one of the "Airport" films where the jumbo crashes into the terminal building....)

I love the little backstory though, I really must get mine down on paper!  Keep up the good work. 

4 hours ago, C126 said:

Hurrah!  Put that juice rail to good use...  Look forward to seeing a '33' next.

They're a bit pricey at the moment, maybe I should ask Father Christmas.... 

Cheers, it seems like the original pic was of a Farish loco with the decal applied and not a RTR product. Doh.  I don't think I'm ready to sacrifice an EMU to the vinyl just yet!  Bl***y hell, nothings ever straightforward is it!? 

Thanks, it seems that you add the vinyl to ordinary MK1 coaches?  This would obviously require adding power and front / rear detailing - I'm not sure where I'd even begin with that sort of project, but I'm looking into it.  Thank you.

Oh, I wish!  Farish do / did make one (Network SE Livery though...) 

10 minutes ago, Strathwood said:

I thank you....

 

He's been a Busy Bee! 

On 10/02/2021 at 05:45, Railtunes said:

Clever, indeed!

And no doubt you know there actually WAS a hotel on the platform at Achnasheen on the Inverness - Kyle of Lochalsh line in Scotland. Sadly, it burnt down in 1995, though the station is still active. And it's about as far as you can get in the UK from the Southern 3rd rail!

Wow, architecturally similar too!

Thanks very much!  As I said, I'd had the thing for years in my bits and bobs drawer - I suppose it could've made a nice garden shed, beach chalet, line-side hut or maybe a dog kennel for a St. Bernard(!) 

Glad you like it in its new incarnation. 

Got a patch growing by the platform ramp! 

50 minutes ago, scottystitch said:

Nice idea re the bolts providing track power.  Have you solder the tops of the bolts to the underside of the rails or are they just making contact?

 

Best

 

Scott.

They're not soldered, I don't own a soldering iron - I might consider doing it if I did.  There doesn't seem to be any problem re: contact though.

Cheers.

2 hours ago, Mikkel said:

That's a clever arrangement. It may the forced perspective, but the traverser looks almost as long as the layout? If so, is that to accommodate trains that will be full length of the layout? Not a critique, just curious as I have considered something similar.

Thanks, it's just forced perspective.  The traverser is 60cm, the layout is over twice that length.

Thanks, you're quite right - they're both Peco kits.  I like the engine shed especially.  I'm trying to find a real world example of the goods shed so I can repaint my model accordingly.  Glad you like the third rails, I enjoy making them - but I wish someone would manufacture track with third rail already attached! :-D

4 hours ago, ikcdab said:

I admire anyone who can do this in 2mm scale. Far too small for me! Well done.

Now that the glue has dried, how easy is it to clean the extraneous ballast from the sleeper tops?

Thanks, I haven't had to do very much as yet, a sharp knife is advisable because latex glue tends to come away in long stringy lumps if you're not careful.  I like leaving some ballast on the sleeper tops anyway, I feel this looks more realistic.  As I mentioned above, I'll be adding layers for a while yet - slow but steady! 

Here's a quick pic, gradually building up the layers:

2 hours ago, Nick Holliday said:

That's looking very promising.  Just one point, the ballast doesn't usually stop at the end of the sleepers, as this cross section shows, albeit for a pre-grouping line.

You may want to extend the ballast a bit when you do the final touching up.

Funny you should say that, that's what I spent yesterday night doing! I'm finding that dividing the ballasting into stages (track centres, then immediate edges then outer edges) and only approaching each stage once glue has dried on the previous job seems to work well - photos to follow.  

46 minutes ago, Ian Morgan said:

I tried Copydex for ballast on 'Freshwater', following various suggestions to use it. It seemed to work OK, until I tried to remove excess ballast from sleeper tops after it had 'set'. It pulled long strings of glue and ballast from the track along with the one piece of ballast I had in the tweezers. I gave up and doused the whole lot in dilute PVA, and removed the excess ballast once that had set.

 

Yes indeed, this was one of the factors that added to my apprehension!  With that in mind I did my utmost to spot and move stray ballast while the glue was still wet - immediately after application in fact - using a Dental probe style instrument to slide the errant grains around.

Wether by luck or judgement, it seems to have worked for me so far...

Thank you.

It's a fantastic idea and it would work, but I have some manual uncouplers that are controlled by rods in the area concerned - I'm definitely going to look at it.  In my mind platforms 1-2 are EMU commuter / goods services and strictly "in and out", platforms 3-4 and the facing sidings are diesel passenger traffic with facility for uncoupling and stabling, plus EMU's. The short siding - front left, is for a (semi fictitious) rail served scrap yard. Phew! 

Thank you so much for the feedback, the station building is just "plonked" for the picture, I will probably trim it down by 1/3 or so, also I've left room to stretch the main platform a bit too.

Would love to join the two lines, but space is limited and that dictates manoeuvrability back and forth over point work.  But, thinking of the future - I see this layout as a good "central section" whereupon I can extend left and right into longer sidings and platforms.

Thanks for the positive feedback!  In answer to your questions, I'll hopefully be aerosol spray painting the track (just a generic brown) this weekend, and also gathering some beach sand - once the trackwork paint is dry I'll do a little weathering.  I'm thinking of spraying the beach sand too (white primer, brown, grey etc...) haven't tried that before but am keen to not go too dark with the ballast as I've done in the past.

With regards to the third rail, I did slightly bend the sections on curves and point work, just by running the rail between thumbnail and edge of index finger, gauged by eye.

In the past when doing larger curves I've used track pins hammered in only halfway, in a sort of staggered line either side along the length of the third rail and then applied glue.  The pins were removed the next day and the track remained nicely in place.

In other news I'm thinking of adding a fourth line, at the rear of the layout completely separate from the rest of the trackwork, but serving the same station - maybe a commuter line or parcels/mail, but at the moment it's just a thought....

Cheers!