Sturminster_Newton

"A very simple design that is two modules that fit into 77ltr Christmas Tree storage boxes but carefully read the link as SMS modules are too narrow." XxxxX Turn the storage box on its side then a 330wide SMS baseboard would fit BUT the layout surface can have nothing taller than 225mm which might not suit many. The most Really Useful Box suited for modellers to hide a layout module within is the 84 litre size as that is Internal: 605 x 370 x 355 mm. Might be a problem under the bed though... A photobox as produced by Tim Horn is probably the best way forward, unless you really must stow the model under a bed or on top of a cupboard.

Peco do also supply their smerty-two at tighter radius (R1 and R0) perhaps the smerty-two set track points 30" radius are what is needed worked down to suit O gauge rail. They would be about R1.25 in O-gauge set-track terms, and possibly too tight for all but dock or tramway use until you read the track standards for 32mm tramways when 6"-9" radii are banded about as freely as mainline muddlers declare that 60-80" is the ruling radius for 32mm motive power. The wish lists for production needs modellers to buy large numbers of their specific day-dream, but the small number of units sold annually and the return on the investment on tooling means not much will change for many years. It would be nice to have a diamond crossing to match the R2 geometry, but that is probably as dead in the water as a R2 3-way or a single/double slip. Would anyone settle for a 'barry' slip? Which would possibly be more easily produced as the majority of the machined rail parts are stock items. But it's £100ks of moulding cost to recover from a unit sale of £95 to the end customer. I doubt very much that there is a 2-300,000 annual market for a R2 'barry' slip. But that is always a consequence of cheque book muddling and the endless wish list, not the preserve of track builders who will wonder why all the fuss. I will declare that I am sited in the former camp and can only admire the later.

As relevant here as any other O-16.5 discussion. Don't forget you need to work to a 21" grid otherwise you all your chosen O gauge structures won't fit onto your OO scaled baseboard... It is easy to think that working in 7mm will cure the eyesight and space restrictions of OO9, but this not the case It should be obvious but it can take a while for the scale/gauge penny to clatter on the bottom of the box... Thus a OO9 plan on 4 x 2 nominal will when scaled to suit O-16,5 need a space of 8'0 x 3'6. Scaling the plan grid (normally 12") works in all scales. O-gauge is 1.75 larger dimensionally larger than OO. G1 which will need a multiplier of 2.38 or around 30" to indicate the amount of room to contain a 1:32scale model of the original OO9 4x2 layout. It is the structures that dictate the space needed. You may of course reduce the station used in OO9 to a garden shed and a few paving slabs in G1... and it will not look a too cramped on 4x2 but operating interest may be easily exhausted. So you have to add more detail and perhaps make working features that you may not have considered in OO. Less in many cases is more - scenic detailing work. Of course you may have a O-16.5 shunting plank on a 1000 x 450 baseboard, but scenically development may not be more than a ground frame and some weeds with possibly a ditch and section of hedge. Proportionately low-profile O scale buildings occupy a reasonable foot print and you can soon find your ideal track plan runs parallel to the baseboard edge and is no more than a few pieces of straight track and a set of points.

My first train-set was on an 8x4 sheet of gloss green painted 1/4"plywood. with only a minimal bracing and built by a well meaning parent who never attended a woodwork class... Two circuits of track Tri-ang Super Four R3 and R2. R3 was always clutching at the baseboard edge. It ran faultlessly for hours and hours with few trains over the edge. The B12 ran until the smoke fluid was used then ran for hours more after the wadding was well soaked. Or Nellie hauled a freight train with motion a grey blur for hours on end. I did install a diamond crossing in lieu of the facing cross over on the R2 circuit allowing me to store a train off the loop. Being 10 and trying to span 4' usually had all my Tri-ang houses sliding to the abut the inner loop at some point during operations. XxxxX What we have here is basically a tail chaser on a big sheet of base material with an access cut out at one end. Sometimes we look at plans from the wrong end of our telescope of experience, and biased towards the Hornby Baseboard Full of Track plans. Seem that if you set a wide design brief you end up with a camel. Some aspects have to go. I think you can only have a either a tail chaser or a freight yard but I don't think you can have both if you wish to have two loops of OO. My thought would be build an intermediate station and scenic effect on one edge of the board. Say a length of about 18-1900mm. Think Corrour for a basis. Split the line in the non scenic area into a fan of storage lines. Possibly sub-divide to get two DMU into one of the four car plus loco storage roads. The small additional baseboard can be a small non-scenic loco store. You can then have your roundy roundy, plus a space for a small freight service also operated roundy roundy. That way you get the best from the least. Modelled in N it would be possible to run scale length passenger trains and a possibly a few more freight cars. You can have continuous running. Or passing passenger cross-over. I'm suggesting you strip out all the wadding and concentrate the essence of mainline allied with a round roundy requirements

Personally I'd sit in the well rather than try to wear the layout as some form of ballerina's tutu...so you may still be thinking this through. Your projected 40 cms (16") operating well is possibly comfortably tight for those entering the mid-life body mass redistribution. Take a look at CJF 60 Plans for small layouts... Plan SP5 on page 4 shows what is feasible in a very small space in this case a 4'6" square. It gives three 'train' capacity clockwise and/or anti clockwise operation and ruling radius is R2, albeit one at a time... Although it more likely to be a DMU centric layout as there is not space for an 8-car express and scant space for a modern 2-car DMU. The CJF plan would, however, extend to 14' x 4'6" with a 600mm operating well, which might work up to a better design. If you used a dumb-bell layout for your track and had your station as a 2 or possibly 4 faced item along one side. It would be possible to produce a 'wraparound console' operating area with the loops at either end but you will be up against reducing the four lines to two for entry and exit to the station from the loops without using a plenitude of curved points. Paul Lunn designed a 'console' layout with end to end plus a nice piece of complex junction pointwork in the middle this was designed to drop onto a nominal 6x3 space your 14' x 5' would open a whole world of possibilities for the original plan and might be workable in O-gauge...although it is not roundy roundy it's worthy of consideration. It would answer most access issues close out the operating well and generally be feasible for two operators May also mean the end of a yard to fiddle about with your stock. It's very swings and roundabouts.

Class 43 being a classic design wears any livery with panache. I have day dreamed of the power cars in Brunswick green with black roof or even Early BR two tone green with small yellow panels with trailers cars in Coffee and cream. The LMS speed whiskers from the days of Streamline Moderne would also be a feasible option from stem to stern. This is of course heresy for those that think that one should only represent what actually existed. Should the Muddlers MPD be free from one's artistic licence fluttering its wings in the joy of personal expression? After all the modern wraps applied to GWR castle class et al must have had someone sitting in a darkened room and think what might we do...

Can be, how accurate doe it need to be? Having read a description of how to get 009 to perform you do see why building small lines on anything other than polished granite foundations is favoured. The writers thoughts were that tracklaying needs to be more than perfect and accurate. OO9 has such tiny current collectors it will give trouble. Whilst laid by eye may well work and never give a moments trouble there are many who slap something down and then lose heart when it all goes wrong. Which is why I am looking closely at O-16,5...

In the CJF 60 Plans For Small Railways on page 20 plan SP35 describes itself as Mynoreese but so does plan SP36 and SP37. CJF pretty much bases every BLT or Mainline Terminal thereafter has features that give it a Minor-ease derivation. This is not a bad thing but one would have thought that a little more variation should have been presented. Which is probably what opened the door to Paul Lunn and others to put together new and promising designs with a wider scope and less reliance on a story told more than once.

How many Latin or Esturine fluent angels would there be on this pin-head? We all know where it is, what it is and all of a sudden it is suddenly imperative to revert back nearly 2000 years to pronounce it properly. Be careful that West super Mare is not subject to Weston Sur La Mer enforcement by those of Norman french lineage although it more likely to have been given a Latin name...given the scribes of the age. Although it may yet kneel to becoming Weston Sous La Mer but universally an somewhat unkindly known currently as Weston On The Mud... Can it be long until the town to Brighton's western edge, becomes Hovactuly? Language is dynamic and English especially so, it has sucked up contorted and absorbed so many other languages and continues to do so, innit?

GWR South Devon Structures in best laser cut materials https://railmodel.co.uk/ They also do bespoke laser cutting so may be able to cut to order from plans. I have had track templates cut to sizes not usually available. Very satisfied with the speed of turn around... Lcut a good range of generic and prototypical structures plus a raft of new models in 1:43 http://www.lcut.co.uk/ Petite Properties https://www.petite-properties.com/ mainly a dolls house supplied but with N, OO and O gauge buildings listed. A useful range of low profile building types. Fairly basic 'board finish' allowing muddlers to run the full range of decorative surfaces. Those contemplating trying a little perspective modelling there is a range of 1:48 dolls house property which maybe useful. As with many smaller suppliers tweaking of standard models may be an option. Always ask if you want something at variance to the items manufacturers offer in a kit, extra doorway or windows etc are not impossible to plan in if you can supply the source references.

Meldon Quarry produced 'Hornfelsed' a form of mudstone renowned as one of the hardest stones in UK geology. So you ain't going to break it with a hammer or pliers. Remember it was used as mainline track ballast as it needed to support sleepers and rail as well as the passage of loco and trains. There was a small feature on the Meldon Quarry operation in 'Walking Lost Railways' last night, 13 August.

The two power cars would be enough for many with perhaps a single trailer as used on mainline testing of units from Laira. Which would settle prices at something affordable? Make one DVT unpowered and it then could be coupled to the most unlikely of powered units for 'in works' transfers. No doubt there are pictures of broken 43's in company with a host of large mainline diesels in the days before everything went by road...to get fixed. All depends how you market and to whom.

seems almost to good to be true pricewise for Oh! gauge... given that the Y1 is in easy hailing distance or the Dapol offering with dealer discount. You wait years for something interesting and less usual and suddenly they come out the wood work...

Hmmm, Why when compromised by space does everyone think a BLT is the only thing to muddle? A fully freight based yard might just make more sense. The rolling stock can be made up of a myriad of small wagons which look more interesting as they snake through point-work. The soon to be announced/release Heljan CCT Vans would suit newspaper train or parcels operation. As well as departmental maintenance operations. This muddling era 5 - 7 with its multitude of smaller wagons may take some of the sting out of running 40" radius points and curves. Shift everything to a dockside then you limit the locomotion to the Dapol Y1/3 or Class03/4/6/8 which can cope with the tighter radius and will work down to O-gauge R1 (circa 943 radius) without too many compromises. Disguise the tighter radius by a scenic break which could just be a cutting, so in case of the inevitable derailment, you don't need to be armpit deep groping around like a vet calving a cow... Agreed if you have a fiddling yard feeding a scenic fiddling yard there is a sameness to the operations but the same could be levelled at a fiddling yard to BLT. There were a lot of concentration yards so would they be a possible outlet for the creative juices? The basics of the admirable Brierley Canal Road box file micro has much to recommend the kind of layout that might break the strangle hold of BLT. I could postulate that North Woolwich has much to commend it but it was very SLT when the final axe fell... If you must have passenger handling then the Heljan Railbus or the recent Dapol class 122 and 121 would cover that desire. Heljan also have a DVT in development so the 121/2 could have it's peak hour enhancement... We all look at BLT or Minories as the epitome of muddling yet there were so many other railway operations that get minor lip service paid to them but may work better in a smaller space with tight 40" or less ruling radius. And there is always O-16.5...

Which ever of the larger scale you choose to muddle in the road vehicles available never quite match. 16mm/ft = 1:19.3 nearest vehicle scale 1:18 or 1:16 'G' scale 1:22.5 apart from a few specialist items the nearest scale 1:25 O-gauge 1:43.5 limited 1:43, but shelves full of 1:50 G1 1:32 loads of 1:35 military a few Britains Farm models Model vehicles seem to be more of a near miss when developing new models. Other than OO and British N the other choice is Foreign HO and N. Model vehicles are biased against the railway modeller. Fortunately modern computer controlled laser cutters allow models to be carved out of the sheet in all scales, but model vehicles seem as trapped by historic scales ratios in the 21century as they were in the 20th and I personally think this will remain the situation for years to come. There is no demand from collectors to change, just as rail modellers are as unlikely to bin off OO for HO. Or 1:43 to slide down to 1:48...

Work out the storage fiddling yard space add in length the most compact points to serve the fiddling. Then work out whether your terminus will be dead end with shunting pilot or use a release road working. Will the Terminus have a parcels handling service or just passenger handling? Add in the length of pointwork for the throat hope fully you will end up with a total measurement for the fiddling and operating aspects and it will fit in the space available. Will it fit if you use O-Radius 2, O-Radius 1 or O-Radius 0 and Radius 2 pointwork? If not, would it fit in the space on the diagonal? Often layouts hug a perimeter wall when the longer operating length is across the room... Could the line layout be built as a Circle, 0 or a U? Smerty-Two minium radius is circa 768mm if 7lbs of 0-4-0/0-6-0 16mm live steamer and a collection of 4-wheel wagons will, and I know Dapol 4-wheel wagons and Vans traverse it admittedly with buffers compressed and distended but they go around slowly. So I set my ruling radius as R0 (around 800mm rad). Whilst R2 is Gotham Curve was tight, docks and factories were often tighter. Not ideal but in a non scenic easy access area feasible. As long as you can live with the compromise then everything is to play for. Better to have tried and failed than never have tried at all.

Remarkably affordable for what it is. Which by the usual muddler standards, I could build it at home with tin foil and a small aubergine, too expensive! But it is available down to 6" radius so useful for tramway operations. There are a couple of affordable EuropeaN-scale to go with the track so you can set up a train-set for about £120. So it does have it's attraction and it is possible to disguise the nature of the moulded track with a deep scenic dressing...on a permanent line. Remember many Japanese only have a table top on which to model and no space for dedicating to a full scenic treatment. So everything has to pack into storage boxes. Realistic moulded ballast and 80code rail providing a ready to run set that looks the part.

IF you choose something simple from the Peco 009/HOe track plans book but are going to have a bash at doing it in 7mm scale using 0-16.5 track then you need to use 21" as the grid spacing. So your 4' x 2' OO9 cofffee table top line will inflate to a banquet table covering 84" x 42" although you may always chop an access/operating well into the centre and reduce the amount of scenic coverage required... Then you may be certain that what you plan to include will fit; even if you need to move out to a new garden shed to build it... This little observed and acknowledged fact should be upper most in the Tiro's mind. I won't tell you how this important fact dropped like a penny into the empty cash box of my mind. IF you like BIG stuff but insist on cramming it onto a tiny space then O9 is perhaps the only route. A muddle of the Little Hampton Miniature Railway or Wells and Walsingham Railway amongst others are feasible using adapted N-gauge mainline locos. Open Roofed rolling stock is available to inflict on your model residents. To digress slightly. In my younger years and in the days of Tom Cooper, (the man who picked up and ran with the 16mm scale as the one true gauge for garden railwaying) I postulated that 1:12 was the ideal scale to muddle in. Pretty much every commercial gauge currently on sale would find a place from model engineering lines to mainline although I could see a few fraught moments laying 4.75" gauge down the hall lino to emulate the ECML... With regard to 16mm latterly 45mm gauge and 1:12/13th (12th45) has found a niche and in truth would have been so much better to start with than 32mm... c'est la vie.

"...I had for some time thought in vague terms that I might want either a London suburban/Underground based layout (for intensive operation) or perhaps a Welsh narrow gauge layout (for more relaxed operation). I now realise that I cannot make this choice on the basis of experience running the other railways because of the sequence in which they must be built. One solution, therefore, is to have both. This necessitates a very small narrow gauge layout as might be imagined, but I think that I have just about managed to squeeze in a workable plan and room for a smidgen of scenery, and is only compatible with some of the various designs of London suburban/Underground layouts that I am in the process of considering, but this may well be better than missing out on being able to model the delight that is narrow gauge at all..." Geograhically/operationally this is a very wide brief. In practice to amalgamate LUG and narrow gauge would possibly point to sewage farm/water treatment works for the Narra gauge. Or a leisure line like Ruislip Lido. Any mineral based line would be dealing with regular large quantities of product and any passenger/frieght carriage would be a minor sideline so you should have large transfer sidings at the mainline interchange, see Festiniog Mynffordd Yard. Even lines which were used for agricultural/clay/sand/mineral extraction will be biased to their raison d'etre and operated accordingly such operations would have zero passenger carriage apart perhaps a man rider or two at top and tail of a shift. They would also be worked at a level that few would think possible when they look back at what the passenger intensity is now. So think carefully. In peak production there may be precious little between the operation of a mineral railway and the operation of London Underground...

Set track is always a good basis for tight radius corners as it is set up on a jig. The next option is track setting templates and you can obtain these laser cut to your desired radius as the normal route N-gauge Tracksetta goes down to about 9" radius. Various laser cutting companies may be able to slice up some mdf or perspex to give you a tighter radius, you should get down to about 6" radius before the strength of the template material is compromised. (Bespoke radius templates are not always a wallet worrying option.) You might use a 90 degree arc of 3mm MDF cut at your desired radius and push the sleepers against the arc to set out the curve which may be problematic on elevated sections or tight against structures etc. Personally I would endeavour to keep the seriously tight corners out of the public eye, use lavish curves of 9" on the scenic developed areas. Have at least one long and one short 'infinity curve' to hand whilst the MK1 eyeball and mirror trick is fairly reliable an infinity curve is useful to lay out baseboard joints on portable layouts...

Ahhh the pleasures of a true roundy-roundy trainset. Can anyone have any more fun, with their clothes on? Small boys will faint from the excitement. Wives lift their eyes to the heavens, and complain about the distraction. All male dinner guests abandon the ladies to go and play trains... Is anything else needed? A passing loop/headshunt so you can run end to end would be good but need a wider 3'x'2' or longer 4' x 1'3 baseboard.

..."For the same price (nearly!) you can get one of the Bachmann TTE locos based on the Tallylyn fleet which can easily be repainted in less garish liveries and are true 00 scale locos." I thought you could just run them as is and have a Thomas day as the Tal-y-Llyn is not above having something in Skarloey Railway livery for such events...and for a good while either side of the event dates. (I will admit to having an attraction to London Bus Red applied as a livery to locomotives even though in my childhood I only ever saw London Country buses in their glorious green...) To hide HO against OO would be to have the OO element to the foreground and HO set back forcing perspective...running the line behind houses and giving glimpses of what is occurring. Once out of the residential the HO can come forward as nature is less "scaleable" than a standard 6'6" door behind an HO scale model... As long as all the stock and motive power are all to the same scale. HO shunting OO don't look too comfortable to the rivet accountants that turn out to nit-pick at shows but for the general public there is more of "Ooo that's nice!" than "scuse me but thatssss alllll wrong!!!" I'm about to start on an O-16.5 and rather like some of the petite properties range of buildings. Some are in 1:48 and some in 1:43.5 so the 1:48 will be behind and above the running line in their own self contained scene whilst the 1:43.5 will be lineside. The only constant will be the rolling stock and locomotion which will be 1:43.5 and only of small four wheeled items. Forcing perspective is I am told 'a good thing'.

Natural stone will also weigh an awful lot especially when laid on fairly generously. As for the layout make sure you have no track further than you can reach a max of 2'9" (other measurement systems are available) from one side to the other UNLESS you can get to both sides. Laying/relaying/re-railing/working accurately anything close to your maximum reach is an utter pain.

What always interests me in using servos is the connection to the servo is made at the end of the servo horn. Which has the greatest arc of travel. Yet most servo horns have several points that could be used closer to the pivot axis which would better suit some of the more delicate items that need a gnats crochet of travel to change state. Semaphore signals in Nscale need far less movement than points in O-gauge. I know that the travel can be restricted/controlled when setting up but as with much in life there are many ways to achieve the same end.

Is not the latest vogue to fix the track to foam mounting board and them gum down the mounting board onto the basifundamold? At least in Chris Nevard Land of micro layouts. A sound practice that allows the track layout to plotted and schemed away from the sometimes restricted space of a boxfile or photo-crate before the track and substrate is stuck in place. Foamboard also provides a degree of sound isolation, plus if you intend to rebuild on the same basifundamold then stripping down is simplified...