TechnicArrow

"Y'know Fred, I can't shake the feeling something's missing from this new engine o' yours..." "Let's compare it with the Barclay over there..." "It's definitely sitting lower to the ground, got a bit of a forwards tilt to it too... odd" What's gone on 'ere then? Clearly, I've bought a new Bachmann 8750 Pannier tank - or rather, the bodyshell for it. For an explanation as to why, look no further than my post from 3 months ago... I've been having a glance at the Bay of Es to see if a new body would ever come up... and last week I hit gold! A new shell in BR livery, in good condition, for a reasonable "buy now" price and free P&P! The only thing is I'd have preferred a plain black example for a freight shunting layout rather than the lined "mixed traffic" version, but it still looks neat and I wasn't about to pass this one up. I'll be going back home for christmas when term ends in two weeks, so provided I remember to take it with me I'll swap it for the GWR shell and we should finally have a more reliable runner for Alexandra Wharf... maybe I'll even gat around to the long-promised video in the new year?

It's great to see this thread alive again (even if it still has very little modelling in it ). I do like browsing the selection of inspiration pictures, it's great food for thought - not that I need any of that... Of the four names suggested I think "Burnstow" is pretty solid as a non-specific place name. "Ipford" and "Midwich" still have too strong a resemblance to Ipswich, and "Seaburgh" just doesn't roll off the tongue as nicely. Or you could do what I've done, and name the layout after the dock/wharf etc rather than the place, keeps it much more generic!

I was mildly surprised when I found them too - there was a demo set on the shelf, so I just turned them on out of interest and as soon as I discovered they were yellow, I bought them! It's also relatively rare to find 3mm domed LEDs, they're usually the 5mm dimpled type. Just in case anyone was particularly interested in finding them, this is the basic packaging they came with - but it's probably easier to find the LEDs, wiring and a battery pack individually - and then you're not restricted to the spacing on the wiring either! Meanwhile, and I'm still surprised I'm saying this, work has *finally* started on the right-hand warehouse! Only 4 months I've been saying I'll do this... I decided to start with the rear low-relief section, since it's less visible and thus I can make mistakes with it and learn for the more prominent full-relief one in the front. This section is also the lower two floors, i.e. the bit that will be fixed to the baseboard; I'll attempt the removable upper floors later, along with the challenge of blending the two together. As you can see the structure is yet more ceral card (I've acrued a rather large pile again!), doubled up to get more thickness out of the piers. Brick paper was then applied, but as sparingly as possible - if it's not visible, it's not brick! But when it's assembled, you'd never know... It does look fairly plain, but then again it's barely going to be seen. It does it's job, and that's all it needs to! I've learnt two lessons so far: one, I'm still not very accurate with my cutting, so lining up the upper secion is going to be a right pain! For the front builting I will more likely build it in one go then split it afterwards. Secondly I get the feeling the brick paper is paler and less saturated than the rest of the layout, but we'll see how it looks when it's all built. It's good to be making progress again though!

Yet another month has passed, and blimey what a busy one that was... I barely had time to breathe, let alone get the railway running! This afternoon however I found myself at a relatively loose end, so I took a break and got around to one of the more exciting jobs on the layout... No, not the right-hand warehouse, do you really think I'd start that yet? About a week ago, browisng my local cheapo-hardware shop I came across a "christmas decoration" consisting of 10 3mm yellow LEDs on a battery pack. I reckon it'd be pretty feeble as a christmas decoration, but for model railway lighting there couldn't be anything better to represent the monochromatic yellow of low-pressure sodium lights. A little digging reveals that sodium lights weren't readily available until 1965, so probably a few years to late for the era of this layout especially given how widely I've used them - but it looks so damn good I don't think anyone will notice! Adding the LEDs to the layout was fairly simple, just a case of poking them through holes cut/drilled in the buildings are appropriate locations. Things were a little restricted by the cable lenths and the fact the LEDs had to be pushed through the walls head-first rather than tail-first, difficult to do without creating a mess. But once they were through I carefully bent them 90 degrees to point downwards. Finally, or rather before they were threaded through, I attacked the clear plastic LEDs with sandpaper to diffuse the light a little more; it was quite directional otherwise. I started on the grain silo at the left-hand end, placing two on the outside of the loading shed and 3 along the platform - the spacing is simply the maximum permitted by the wiring. It's a bit tricky to get good photos of, but there's then one above the access door of the right-hand "tower" (yes, I'm aware it's lost a window, no idea how that happened), and then crosses the loading conveyor where again the spacing on the wiring forced me to put one hanging out over the tracks midway along. Not the most realistic or useful location, but it still looks good. The penultimate LED hangs out of the conveyor behind the loading tower, illuminating the gateway quite atmospherically. Finally the wires duck back through the tower and into the office, to provide a light on the front. That one LED at the front helps to cast shadows backwards as well as forwards; most of the lights are behind the trains, but having these reflective shots was a key goal here! Clearly none of the LEDs are attached to the warehouse building or siding; that's because a) it still doesn't exist yet, and b) the gate across the track implies the warehouse is owned separetely to the grain silo and main yard area, so it would make sense if it has different illumination to the rest of it. That's it for today; a reasonably quick start-to-finish mini-project, but one that adds a whole extra dimension to a small layout, with relatively little effort and the princely sum of £1.25!

Excellent photos - the layout is looking great! I especially like what you've done with the Airfix/Dapol crane, although that Colas van is far too clean Maybe try some "eye-level" shots to really show it off? I'd love to see what it looks like!

It's nearly a month since I last posted, although not much railway modelling has been happening. Ok, that's not quite true, I've joined the local society of model engineers and now get to play with 5" and 7.25" gauge trains, but that's not what this topic is about. However now the clocks have gone back and it gets dark, I'm likely to be more in the mood to play trains. I've given the layout a few runs - although running quality is still pretty low, I haven't invested in a new track cleaner yet. Doesn't stop me taking a few pictures though! D2280 positions a wagon on the warehouse siding. No, I still haven't touched the warehouse itself yet... I'm steadily running out of excuses though, maybe it will happen before the year is out! D2280 in the cramped-looking yard, as seen from the loading tower The Coles crane unloading sacks from an open wagon. I do like playing with black-and-white photos - it disguises the models' overly-bright colours and errors, although does highlight some others! I still have a list (actually written down, too) longer than my arm of things to do with this layout - most notably finishing the buildings and quayside, but all manner of other detailing things too, maybe they'll get done one day...

No law against it, I just think most modellers take the opportunity to add a more visually interesting facade. However the building is very well done overall and the plain black does look tidy; the half-relief helps to convince the viewer that the "world" continues forwards beyond the baseboards, rather than abruptly stopping. If the rest of this layout is anything to go by it'll look great when the surrounding details are done, so keep it up!

Very neat ballasting - your trackwork looks excellent now! Although I am left wondering how that British Rail van managed to drive to the area inbetween the two tracks...

Ok, so this is an odd one, but apologies if it's already known, a common problem, or I've missed a thread somewhere. When I click "next unread topic", if I've read some comments in that thread before and thus the button would take me to the "Unread Replies" line, it loads the page most of the way and then suddenly jumps down - sometimes by just a line or two, sometimes an entire post or two. It's especially annoying if the jump happens to line up neatly with the next post and I don't realise it's skipped something, or if there's only one unread post and it just jumps be to the bottom below the actual content. I don't recall having this issue before the recent advert experiments; I was wondering if a potential cause could be a banner ad at the top of the page loading slightly later than the page, thus bumping everything down? But thinking about it, that would shift the page down meaning my field of view would go up the page to before the "unread" line, not down to a post or two after it, so maybe not. For reference, I'm on Win10 and the Firefox version 93.0. Any ideas?

Cheers @col.stephens, I'll have to try that! This morning I attacked the Barclay a little. I scraped/sanded off the printed "705" plates, and very carefully superglued on new etched "1140" plates for Light Railway Stores. I then got the paint out to cover up the mess I'd made, and "weathered" a few other areas whilst I was at it. Finally, inspired by the photo near the bottom of the Swansea Dock's website's page on the low-level railway (http://www.swanseadocks.co.uk/docksnewsite/railwayslowlevel.html), I added a pair of "17" dock reporting headboards. The boards are hole-punch from some white card, with "17" hand-drawn with a gel pen (this took about a dozen attempts until I was happy with it!). The front one is fixed to a small unbent staple, which sits in a small hole drilled in the running plate so it's still removeable; the rear one simply sits between the lamphook and the cab wall. And then it was posing time... That last photo's not really of the loco, but I like it so I included it anyway. The Barclay's still not finished yet - I've just ordered some proper crew figures and an "industiral loco detailing pack" from Modelu, so keep an eye out for those! In the meantime, my first lecture back is tomorrow, I guess I should probably put the layout back on the windowsill since I'll be wanting my desk space...

Eyyy I'm finally back at it! Cheers @SteveyDee68 - settling in has been pretty busy, but I'm in now. And @Ian Holmes I'd be honoured to share it, but I should probably finish building it first! Today's dismal weather and the lack of anything else pressing to do indoors was the final spark causing a day of railway-ing. I spent the morning cleaning the track, dusting everything down, and getting the uncoupler mechanisms back to working order. I quickly realised I finally need a new track rubber - the one I've got sheds little fluffy sharp bits everywhere which make the running worse until you carefully wipe them all away. Has anyone got any recommendations, especially since I've given myself the extra headache of a load of inset track? The other aim for today was to get the lighting rig set up properly. I attached a couple of meccano plates to the ends of the baseboard; the L-section uprights can then be bolted on to these so they're still removable. These support the diffuse plastic C-channel, which in turn carries the LED strips. Currently I'm still using the IKEA Ledberg strips, but this might change since I've decided to use these elsewhere around my room. It seems to work quite well! In bright light the current LEDs are a little less effective, but they do the job, especially when it's darker around them. I think it's inevitable that once I'd set everything up I was going to start playing, and taking photos... so enjoy the show! D2280 draws a van out of the grain store's siding The Coles Crane sorts tends a stockpile of old sleepers A quiet period on the grain silo's loading dock Watching the shunting through the gates 705 draws a short train onto the wharf 705 glimpsed between van wagons And then I remembered about the "photo editor" in Google Photos... gratuitious black-and-white shots incoming! 705 and it's short train again 705 positions a wagon in front of the warehouse A view down from the loading tower Dammit the forklift's jammed again! What's next? I should *really* get around to building that warehouse - I printed some Scalescenes brown brick before I came, so I just need to build the structure to fix it too! Once I've completed that I'll use any left-overs to do the dock; I'm aware Scalescenes has just released the steel barge as a separate kit, and it looks very tempting - it's just a smidge too big to fit, maybe I'll have to try that extension idea @SteveyDee68 mentioned before... Finally, I've now received my custom "1140" plates from Narrow Planet, to transform 705 into the Swansea Docks engine. Has anyone got any tips for how to remove the factory-printed plates, and affix my shiny new ones?

It has, hasn't it? Sorry about that, summer kind of got in the way as I thought it might! What with being at home, and the layout sitting in it's box on a shelf, the need to unpack it on the table before I can do anything to it has rather stalled progress. There has been something happening though, that I haven't got around to posting yet - I dug around in the garage and found a length of ridged transparent plastic c-channel, which will support either the same Ikea LEDs from Arrow Paints, or an alternative LED strip. It will probably be held aloft by meccano L-strips that can be bolted to the front of the layout - overall a far cleaner and sturdier solution than the cardboard setup I used on Arrow Paints! Here, have a terrible photo: And to make up for that image, here's a better one from when I posed 3705 on the layout: With it's longer wheelbase and extra axle, not to mention being the smoothest of my locos, the pannier has no trouble on the layout - it's just the livery is for the wrong era for this layout. Maybe I could buy a different bodyshell for it. However, I'm moving into my new student house next weekend, so things should start picking up again properly soon - it's high time I sorted out this second warehouse!

Looking good! I always think that night lighting adds another dimension to a layout, and this looks great already. Looking forward to seeing more!

Fair enough! I agree "planted" buildings look much better than "plonked" ones, although I often just hide the joint with weeds or other scatter material.

This little layout keeps getting better - the composition and latest scenic details all seem to work well together. The only comment - and it's really, really minor - is I'd suggest rotating the brick pump building slightly so it's parallel with the track behind it, rather than the baseboard edges, just to break up the "squareness" a little bit. Other than that everything looks great - the warehouses in front of the fiddleyard works well, as does the extra siding under the bridge, and with the small foreground buildings you should be able to get some excellent eye-level shots across the yard to the trains beyond. As usual, I'm looking forward to whatever's next!

Hey, don't blame me, blame...uh... actually, why did I decide to buy one of these? Anyway. Yes, your experience seems to match mine on the whole - straight out of the box the running is quite poor, and running-in to a satisfactory level takes time. I would however disagree that it's "only as good as a Railroad 0-4-0" - my Barclay can manage a lower crawl speed and much better slow-start than my newest Railroad 0-4-0, at least on the main layout. Performance on Alexandra Wharf V2 is a bit lower, but that goes for all locos so it's probably more a fault of dirty trackwork there (not helped by the large amount of insetting). There's one or two ancient curved setrack points on the main layout she understandably doesn't like, but apart from that she doesn't stall more than the rest of my fleet does. When you get back if you have the time/resources to give yours several more bouts of running-in, I'm sure it'll get better.

Thanks @SteveyDee68 for your very kind words, and excellent suggestions. I always had a vague plan to put *something* inside the factory, I just never really thought about it and so it hasn't happened yet! That first picture looks perfect though; I might have to have a dig around to see what I can find. And as for the vans - I might park a refrigerated van on the front siding; if I find a kit one, I could leave off the buffers and one end so it can sit a little further under the bridge. And that ice-cream van is exactly what I need - the hardstanding was added with the intention to pose a road vehicle of some form, but I was so busy looking at milkfloats I managed to skip the ice-cream van!

I like the height and the elevated "street scene" the industrial buildings create; the only thing is they look a bit odd perched on top of a bridge. You could change it from a bridge to a tunnel, but that raises a bigger question - why would a railway build an expensive tunnel just for a small service yard? Just build the yard somewhere easier! In front of the fiddle yard seems like a better choice, since it increases the scenic length of the layout. And once again, there's no need to keep things square to the baseboard edge...

Thanks @Jerry1975, @Nathaniel, @Karl & @Ian Holmes; I'm glad you've enjoyed it as much as I have building it! As an aside, I've been doing some tidying recently - so rate my shelf! Featuring dioramas Eastnate Diary and Paper Cutting (I really need to fix the wiring on that one, the flashing LED doesn't work), as well as some N-scale static models, a custom LEGO Ivatt 2MT, and plenty of postcards... Looking at Paper Cutting again has reminded me I've got some more present-day figures and vehicles that don't quite "fit" on the main layout, and the tidy-up has resulted in a little more shelf space, so maybe it's about time I built another one...

Looking good, although I'm impressed the 14xx & Autocoach have been turned without a turntable in sight I don't think you need to make excuses for your garden - outdoor photos always look brilliant. I especially enjoy the first photo with the sky and trees over the bridge - just need to edit out the fence somehow. Oh, and the multi-location identity idea is pretty neat too of course! How much needs to be switched between locations, and how long does it take?

Has anything been happening with this layout over the past 3 weeks? No, not really! A week ago when I arrived home, I decided I would "finish" this layout so I could display it upstairs, out of the way. And then nothing happened, until today that is: This morning I finally added a simple left-hand building using some brick paper and a spare scalescenes door. I also added a few pieces of card to represent some inset track within the mysterious end building; mainly to hide the gap under the door that was neccessary to clear the rails! I then added a final card fascia layer to the whole scene, to eliminate the gaps between the layout and the tub walls. Finally I brought the tub upstairs, where it now sits on my bookshelf. Yes I know that's an oil tanker not a milk tanker - the filler cap is so tall it doesn't even fit under the bridge! But it's all I've got for now, so it'll have to do until I get around to buying some proper tankers. My intention is that this is a conclusion "for now"; the layout is more or less scenically complete, so I can divert my attention to other projects. But at some point this summer I still want to add a fiddle stick and automatic shuttle unit, so all is not over yet!

If you haven't sourced the replacement yet you could always modify those two buildings look like the rear rather than the front - maybe access to a small, cluttered storage yard, rusty doors that probably haven't been opened for a while, an old forklift etc. I think they look quite good, the pitched roofs add a little variety to the "skyline". Another possibility to think about is maybe angling them towards the track at the left-hand end a little - things are rarely all perfect right-angles in the real world. Slewing the bridge slightly might also help. But overall your scene is certainly coming together, and it's great watching you build everything up!

It certainly looks the part, especially for a wall that's at the back of the scene anyway. The yard area is definitely shaping up nicely, I'm enjoying watching this layout come together!

Definitely looking good so far - that signal is some superb modelling. My first instinct is the platelayers hut is a little too ramshackle for a permanent coal office, but it could look good - I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

Yesterday was the ultimate proof of the layout-in-a-box concept: moving-out time! Of course, that meant it wasn't just this layout, but all three of the railways I ended up with... The Really Useful Box definitely lived up to it's name. It was rammed full, with both layout, stock (in the stock compartments built into the baseboard, which proved invaluable), and extra items like the loco boxes and tools. In comparison with the rickety stack of shoeboxes that is Arrow Paints when disassembled, there's a stark contrast! Well. Out of the box, the running is, as can be expected, terrible - she could barely move 10mm without stalling. But when you follow the instructions and run it in in both directions, it soon smooths out. Clearly my micro-layouts are unsuitable for running-in, but since I'm at home now I could plonk her on the main layout, couple up a maintenance train, and send her on her merry way... After only about 15 minutes of running she was already crawling much more satisfactorily, even over the track of the main home layout which hasn't been used or cleaned in several months. That said she still tends to stall or drop into the enormous frogs on the old curved points in the yard; I will wait until I've given her some more running in, a light oil and a test back on Alexandra Wharf before I give my final verdict. But I still love how diminutive she looks - barely bigger than the van wagon she's pulling! Given your profile picture I was always under the impression you had one! I can confirm they're stunning little locos. The detail in and around the cab is superb, although on the variant I got the running plate at the front end looks a little smooth and empty. But I have plans to resolve that...