DougN

Well that is looking great. Just sing out when you have finished this layout! I can build you another baseboard section so you can keep busy! May be a southern exhibition layout!

Ok roll onto last friday and I spotted a house in a Youtube video which I quite liked the look of so I did a sketch and approximate size: I looked in my wills box (still out and on the floor) realizing most of the materials were in there so Sunday sat down and cut out all the parts. I cut them out with a few tools standard l, a large break off style box cutter knife, and a Trumpeter... hooky thingy. This seems to work very well taking out a thin curl of plasticard each time. Fast forward to today ( a bit of annual leave for some study and relaxing) Not quite finished - the chimney has only had a coat of brick red and needs a wash tomorrow of mortar colour. Along with painting the chimney pots. after that it is just a couple of lengths of down pipes and guttering to finish off! Ok you will need the following to build this one: 3 sheets of roof tiles 3 sheets of plain brick a number of windows sprues I think it was 2 or 3 I went through along with the window surrounds Painting was all Humbrol colours (brick red 70, Orange, Yellow, Oxford blue, light grey, red, white ) along with the blue grey wash over the roof and wall tiles. My wills box after all these buildings still seems to have more materials than I started with! I have only purchased the wills tiles for the above building and everything else came out of said box. How can I have more materials than I started with? Any how if people like this little building the sketch is there with approximate dimensions so you are more than welcome to build one in a style that you like. I have also thought to do more sketches for using Wills sheets so if I find another building I will. Enjoy building.

Well a few months on and things have been building away happily... I wonder if I have finnally got buildings out of my system. The station as above is and the other side I then went off on a tangent of buiding things a goods shed could be useful Yes a standard brick good shed kit. I will point out this is narrower than the instructions. (I didnt read them and realised it should have been wider. ) The doors on this side are poseable ie can be opened and closed - this is the rail side. I decided I didnt want the loading dock to that is supplied in this kit so its bits are in the spares box. The kit didnt mention them on the photo but they are included the same as the stone version. At this point I had a hankering for a rail connected warehouse/ dairy/ industry.... who knows what they make and then ship out! So I pulled out the spare parts (which is now quite considerable as I seem to be collecting more wills bits) and see what I could build out of the rest of my spares. As you can see this has used the templates from the engine shed, and the good shed... then it needed an office and hard stand. Realising I was doing only rail connected buildings I through to purchase a black swan pub which has the challenges of the 2 gable sections and then the middle run of the roofing so I took on the challenge! I did manage to get the building out of sqare but I think it achieves what I was looking for.... even though it has an extra quirk or 2. These were completed up to Mid May

A form can be built into any shape really. The boot cross section is straight forward to build just extra whalers, studs and props really. as the form would be closed in once the reinforcing had been tied insitu. The main "problem" for older buildings would have been the vibration of concrete into the voids. Now there are vibrators mounted on petrol motors similar to strimmers (OK dont know the UK term as Australia we call them whipper snippers). These are steel with a weight inside them and about 2inch/ 50mm in diameter which spins around and vibrates the concrete into place (my lecturers would carry on about vibrate in place vs into place as the concrete segregates). the old versions were a motor about 2 times the size of mowers mounted on a upturned dish with a frame which could be pulled round onto of the reinforcing again with a similar "probe" Now there is a lot of high plasticity concretes with good workability and high strength 50Mpa which will flow into such forms but this technology is relatively recent. The reinforcing can be in a beam of about 8 inches (200mm) which is the minimum for the ligatures and main bars and to allow the concrete to flow around along with a clearance of 50mm for adequate cover over the reinforcing to stop rusting. Which causes concrete cancer. My understanding of this the carbonisation of the concrete allows for the alkaline concrete structure to be come reduced and allow the reinforcing to rust, expand, spall concrete off the face and generally degrade. A lot of this depended on the architect and structural engineer to design. and for a "visual appeal". Re reading all this you can see why when talking about all this concretors have a rye smile on their faces! I wonder what Andy's checker would have made of all this!!!

I suspect that Hornby may have increased the scale to fit all their rolling stock. Eg their signals are over sized, the bridges have a large clearance. It is the play value rather than being correct to scale. Hence the Hornby would rather fudge the size than have the average modeller complain that their rolling stock won't fit! There is also the issue that the drawing may have been screwed up on the scaling. I have found a building I built 8 years ago was "shrunk" on the drawings compared to the written dimensions. So the estimator had a screwy problem that we were going through too much in materials compared to his take off... which had been scaled!

I have all the instructions etc at home along with my part built I'll see if i can put the scans and photos online tonight.

A little note that it would be referred to as a string course. It would be unlikely to be the edge of the floor slab due to the old problem of water entering the building as the bottom course of brick work directly above would allow water penetration through the mortar bed. This is why above there is a boot profile in the down turn beam of the concrete slab. Allowing water to escape out side the building rather than into a floor area. Facade construction is a specialist area once you get into curtain walling and fire protection with spandrel panels and the such like. Ok I am taking this away from the topic.... any how back to the topic there is a string course on the NER sigñal boxes which I would like to have a closer look at as they appear to be concrete in some cases. Next time I am in the U.K. I am going to seek out and explore this little detail.

looks great SRman. Why did you change from the gaugemaster units to the DCC specialties unit? I have a few frog units to install on my other layout. I already have them and I think they are the Gaugemaster units hence the question.

I'll just wait like this- MRJ will turn up when it turns up.

This is interesting for me. Attempting to resolve some dimensions from photos is a challenge. A couple of things I have noticed. On the gable end there is battens on the weather boards which could have been for signage. The vent on the gable end is not centred. The brickwork appears to be a solution to level up the stone work for the bottom plate of wall on this elevation Corrugated sheet was available in sheet sizes in one foot increments. From 5ft to 10ft. But here in Australia I recall the sheets were 8ft 6. When they were imported. (There is a university CSU booklet on the use of corrugated sheet here in Australia from lysaghts which is interesting but not really relevant) the plan size will probably match a standard dimensions building for the NER. i hope this helps!

Keen on ordering one when the time comes. I have a kit built in P4 and one that is not yet complete. There I should something about them that I find very attractive.

From the latest email over the weekend the eta is August. There was also to be more posts this week with production samples.

Bit late to the party on the fascia Color, have a look at hurricane grey it is a blue grey from dulux. Not quite as dark as monument which is a colourbond colour. (Ok its as close to black as they make) I have found it very good as it focuses the eye in the same way as theatrical blacks do. But is not quite as dead or as difficult to keep looking good. The other thing is it is available from Bunnings as uk and Australian colours seem to use different codes and names.

Yeah Sydney gets double the rain in half the time.... of Melbourne. As we say in melbourne " don't like the weather give it 5minutes it will change..." The only place in the world we're in the morning you leave in shorts and a t shirt and at the end of the day the heating is on! Every season in one day... yes all 8 of them

Took me a bit to realise there was a cat there at all! I'll continue to look forward to the surprise of a MRJ Turing up in the future!

Looking great there Jeff. I am amazed at the difference the back scenes make to photos. they remove all the clutter/ walls rooms from the photos so as per yours above lift the model a lot! It also allows better photos to be taken. The ID backscenes are great as you know it has lifted my layout.

Well yes i would love to see this loco. When it turns up... it turns up. Bigger things in life are out there as i sit here on a Saturday morning... working the second week of 6 days. When i am employed to work 5 (no over time either) ... i would much rather be at home with the family and do some modelling. Working as much as i do makes the appearance of new models such as this so much more enjoyable when they do show up. I understand that Oxford and the people behind it will be working hard to get it all to us and we should all say thank you! Anyhow the later it is the more healthy my modelling fund will be.

Well that looks to be a book I need to get hold of. Will be some time until the bank account recovers enough for me to buy some more modelling gear or books sadly. At only a bit under 6 quid its pretty cheap....I wonder... no must pay SWMBO's study bill. Happily though I have more than enough modelling to get on with at the moment. Thanks for the heads up!

Paul, been an admirer of you layouts for a while. Your new fence can you give us a few details as I am thinking of doing some more work on my P4 NER/LNER layout. Which I need at least some fencing on. The layout is packed away while I do some work on a station building.

The latest Bachmann collectors club 37-2020K as per the post above mine !!!!

Thanks Butler. I did have one from Hattons preowned which I thought I had "won" but for various reasons I was not lucky enough to get it! ... I will continue to watch and at some time I will secure one!!!

Having done a little shipping over the years... I always ask for a copy of the Bill of lading. It defines the container, the ship, the likely docking date. Yes then up to the stevedores and customs to actually release it to Oxford! So I understand it will be I guess in the next few months before everything arrives! Still keen on a sound fitted one... in time! Nice to look forward to these things.

Well this is rather exciting as it has been a while since any new releases have got me excited enough to find my credit card! I am now looking forward to April.

Interesting when looking at Hattons website- the page for the information has a delivery date of Q2 this year. however each of the locos has a eta of jan to March which is Q1. As we are most of the way through Q1 it looks like the info page is a better estimate (Q2) I am rather interested in getting one of these. But the Q2 delivery works well for my bank account! I would have thought that there would have been more info out by now.

Good to see your lot has still been going. It appears all of the BRMA Melbourne group like you have been having small extra local meetings around Melbourne. Must catch up with you in the near future, Peter. Your layout is looking as as good as ever.