richard.h

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7ZmxIH-3eI

Continuing our look around the layout we now arrive at the Old Town. Hill Top Road and Memorial Gardens Unsafe Building - Keep Out! Byford Old Town

Buildings and Scenery The one type of building I no longer use are the card kits, nothing against them they are very good and I have used them a lot in the past but out here the summer temperature can be 40+ in the underbuild (can’t afford air-con in a railway room) and I found that after a couple of years they were coming apart as the glue had gone brittle and the card was distorting. So my buildings now are a mixture of scratchbuilt i.e. plasticard sheeting on a thin ply framework, ready to plant, plus a variety of kits including strengthened American HO which I try to make look more British by adding sloping roofs and other features. I am also a big fan of Townstreet kits, if I’m allowed to say that, I really like the texture and definition you get on them which allows you to work in lots of colouring and weathering. The pages of RMweb are constantly scoured for tips on scenery as there are some wonderful layouts out there and there are a lot of new materials and techniques now but most of the scenery is built up from shaped foam blocks covered in whatever material is locally available. Once I have the basic outline static grass is added and then gradually further materials so as to try and obtain a natural look without overdoing it. Most of the trees used to be seafoam but since I found out about Sage Bush trees from the Little Muddle site these are now appearing in prominent positions as they really do look first class.

Very good video with plenty of train movements but as others have said with a layout of that quality you don't just go to watch the trains. I have watched your layout develop over the years and am just amazed at the amount of detail you have put into it, if its ever being exhibited when I'm in the UK it would be at the top of my must see list. On the video the suburban set appears to have a triplet unit in it, I havn't seen these before on an LMS layout, could you tell me where these were used and for how long as it could make an interesting model

That's a really nice story for Xmas with a happy ending for all concerned.

Here we follow the progress of Jubilee 45715 Invincible as it crosses Fell Dale viaduct with the Thames-Clyde Express and heads for town Before finally easing into the Station

A Merry Christmas to you and please watch your finances next year, with twenty empty cassettes to fill it could get expensive. Richard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nagsQoNLlgs

Here are a couple of photos of Byford Town and Station just to give an idea of the overall setup

A Little bit of Technical Info on Byford Track Code 75 track has been used in the display section with switched and wired electrofrog points used to give better performance. Older code 100 was used in the storage yards and cassette trays. The new Bullhead rail was fitted in the countryside section which is the last section to be built and is still under construction (just waiting for a single slip to be released). It looks very good, just a pity it wasn’t available earlier. Control The layout is DCC using the NCE system and their Macro route setup, so each area, Station, Goods Yard etc has its own set of macro routes and by entering three or four macros I can set up a route between any two points on the layout. I have been very happy with this system over the years and it certainly works well for me but new control systems are always appearing as technology improves so I am now in the process of installing and testing the RocRail system. The advantages for me are that it works through the NCE system so if I turn it off nothing has changed and I am back to the old system. The big plus though is control, routes can be set from a touch screen monitor and the trains can be operated from any device with Wi-Fi so I am now able to run my trains cable free from my mobile phone or a tablet device. Another plus with this system is that with sound equipped locos you can record what all the function buttons do so if F3 is a long whistle your device will show this, no more trying to remember what all the buttons are for. All points and frog switching are operated by Tortoise motors and their internal spare switches are used to also control the coloured light signals which then show and confirm the route set.

Thanks, we originally lived Camposol but moved down to the port a few years ago. Mazarron is actually in two sections, the town which is a few miles inland and very spanish and the port which used to be a traditional spanish resort but is now quite modern with its new Marina

Having seen some of your layouts over the years I can't wait to see how all this comes together, one things not in doubt however, it will be to the highest standard. Take it steady. Richard

Just to add to my previous post I have a circular layout and a cassette system which I first saw on your thread, so you only ever see one side of a rake of coaches. With that in mind I now tend to put destination boards on one side only so if you load from cassettes, one way you have a named train and if you load with the rake reversed you have got a standard express.

It might depend on what type they are and how long you want them on for, mine are the pre-printed type you cut from card. At first I used Tacky Wax but they either curled or came loose fairly quickly, now I use a water based PVA type glue so they stick down cleanly and can be removed fairly easily, if necessary use a cloth dampened with warm water to soften the glue. I am sure there must be a similar product in the UK

Following on from the video previously posted here are some photos of the Black 5 as it approaches And then eases into The Station

Just to show a little bit more of the layout here is a video link which follows the progress of a Black 5 calling at Byford with a Parcels Train.

Here is a video http://youtu.be/nagsQoNLlgs

http://youtu.be/nagsQoNLlgs

Here we see the 9f as it slowly wends its way through Byford with a heavy train of mineral wagons

These are pictures of the Robinson J11 shunting in the Station Yard. This has had the usual treatment of weathering by airbrush and then finer details such as oil spills and grease brushed on. Lamps, crew and other details have also been added but in this case the imitation coal has not been replaced by real coal because the tender has pick-ups installed and its a nice heavy weight which helps performance

After quite a few years of using RMWeb as a source of information I thought it might be a suitable time to post some details of my own small efforts. Byford This has been under construction for about the past four years in the store room under the house and measures about 7.00m by 3.50m and is designed for my own preferences in a layout, i.e. seeing the trains that I remember running around in the late 50s. Since I grew up in a mainly LMS(BR) region of Yorkshire but spent every summer holiday at my grandparents who lived in a village adjacent to an LNER mainline south of York it was impossible to separate the two regions, so Byford is not based on a real location but is a compromise which allows me to run both region’s stock . Having built a few layouts over the years there were a couple of rules learnt from previous experience:- 1:- No mainline inclines; steam outline locos don’t like them. 2:-No hidden underboard sidings, if something is going to go wrong it will be there. With this in mind I have finished up with a circular layout, large station on one side and country station on the other. Ten storage sidings behind the small station capable of holding about twenty trains. A large island in the middle for the steam and diesel sheds in order to display and use the locomotive collection. A spur where I can load up the spare rolling stock from cassettes which are kept in a storage trolley under the layout. The basic layout plan is now just about finished so the intention is begin to start adding the finer details to bring the layout up to a better standard.

I didn’t really want to be an engine driver, it looked too much like hard work, but train spotting certainly began a lifelong interest in railways of all sizes. It was just seeing those marvelous machines simmering and waiting to burst into life and whisk you away to some far off destination, London, Leeds, Llandudno, there were no foreign holidays in those days!

The updates to your Engine Shed section are first class and as usual your little cameos of figures and machinery add even more interest, Can I ask where you get your research information from as I don't suppose that there will be sources available locally.

That really is a superb piece of modelling