luke the train spotter

I will do.

I'm afraid that due to a lack of money in my modern image budget this project is going to be put on hold and storage for at least 6/12 months whilst I sort out some other modeling bits. Thanks for all you advice and encouraging comments and I will try and post as soon as I can. Thanks once again. : )

Thanks. Glad you like it. It's my first attempt at an 009 steam loco and I pleased with the results.

Thank you very much for your kind feedback. As I am very new to 009 scale i currently have no coaches and only one wagon which I scratch built for a fiver. So the wagon is the closest thing I have to a 009 coach so here is a pic with the new loco (think I might call it dragon?) with my wagon

Thanks again Simon. Looking at those pic I see how serious it can be. I dont think my plastic loco body could survive the expansion at all! Thanks for the tips of the radius curves and I have joined the NGRM forum as well so I will have a look around on that. Just for simplicity and price I plan to stick with n gauge couplings as I plan to scratch build all my rolling stock on n gauge chassis. Here is a quick pic of my new pug bash after a week of modeling work on it. It is pretty much finished with just a few bit of detailing required and a quick coat of varnish. I plan to fit a standing footplate crew in it and I have found some good contenders for the figures from various brands except postage is more than the product!!!! So I think I shall wait till an exhibition before I pick them up. As I mentioned here is a pic of the new loco:

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!! YOU HAVE JUST SAVED MY LOCO. Hats off to you sir for telling me that as I read your post literally the moment I was about to pour pva onto the lead weights. I should have done more research.

Loco body has been completed and has had a coat of primer before heading into the paint shop to get a coat of green. I am still waiting for my lead weights from amazon to arrive then the loco can enter traffic.

You have to get the perfect balance then. If you want a strong light weight baseboard I'd recommend a reinforced foam baseboard with a wooden frame. It makes it a bit thicker and bulky though so not as easy to transport. Would you plan to take this layout to exhibitions?

Sounds like some serious DIY. I like the idea of having an industrial branch - it definitely gives your layout more interesting operation. Maybe keeping structures removable would aid ease of transportation especially if your structures were quite tall like many industrial buildings.

Ahhhhhh. Ok. I will have to be careful then not to make my locos too large for 2' . I will take that into consideration. Thank you for bringing that to my attention otherwise all my trains would hate been out of scale.

It is a concern to me to some extent. My biggest concern is that it will look too wide but I can easily adapt the structures for the loco as I plan to scratch build all the structures.

So I've started my pug bash! Here's a quick sneak peek into my progress so far. Any comments or questions are much appreciated.

Very nice. What did you use to strip the decals off?

I plan to do so. I have never ever had a round round layout so this will be something new for me to operate (for a while) before I build a branch line off it with a small junction or something like that. I've done some research into pug bashing a Dapol kit and the minitrix chassis but I haven't found any dimensions or specific instructions. If you have had any experience kit bashing a pug I would really appreciate it if you posted a picture of your model and gave some basic dimensions (height, width and length) . Thanks

Thanks everyone for your help. I'm glad that the radius curve is large enough for 6 coupled wheels as I have just bought a minitrix chassis for £14.60 (of eBay) to scratch/kit bash a body on to. I am very excited about this and I will update you with any more progress/purchases. This brings the total layout costs up to £41.50 . I will allow half of £100 budget to stock and the other half to baseboards, scenery and electrics etc. So here is a more broken down display of my expenses: Rolling stock: •Mimitrix chassis £14.60 •diesel loco £13.50 •wagon £5 Total £33.10 Left £16.90 Baseboards and electrics: •track £7.20 •fish plates £1.20 Total £8.40 Left £41.60 So the grand total is £41.50 with £58.50 left to spend on the project. Hope this is helpful/interesting to those following my £100 challenge.

Looks good. I will enjoy following your progress.

Thinking about laying some track soon and I was wondering if 12/13/14 inch diameter curves would be alright. I don't intend to run any locos with more than 6 coupled wheels. Would that radius be alright if not which radius would I need to change to?

I find looking at other people's narrow gauge layouts really inspiring. Are there any that you would recommend to me to look at?

Stage one of the respray complete. Both power cars are yellow. Next stage is too mask off and spray the roof then stage 3 is to apply transfers and assemble. Stage 4 is the weathering.

Thanks. Seeing pictures always helps me visualise things. Now I see how the layout can fold up into a box!

Ahhhhhhhhh, thanks. I see now.

Very true. To me countryside modelling has always been more appealing for narrow gauge as I have never been able to replicate certain railway features such as a cutting on my oo gauge layout. I'm not sure how the folding mechanism works, is it possible for someone to explain it to me?

Wow! I remember seeing that layout at the goathland show. If you make an rmweb thread about your build I would love to follow it. That is also what id like to build but I am unsure wether to build a fiddle yard for the potential of taking the layout to an exhibition (a life time goal I've not yet achieved). I will probably increase the baseboard size as you say and also change scenic breaks as I would like to experiment with building a railway cutting and bridge.

Hahaha. That would be funny and confusing at the same time especially if it was in the real full size railway world. I planned to build a cement yard layout and I began to scratch build all the buildings. I built the large silos out of empty hot chocolate tins then wrapped them in paper before painting them grey. Unfortunately I never got round to building the rest of the layout due to a change in interest (though I strongly regret it now) but all the structures were scrapped by myself to clear space for my current oo gauge layout.

Wow! Very cheap, I had a look at some n gauge pantographs (long story) like those but still from Kato from peters spares but the charge you £6 for the product then another £4 postage so I would be spending 1/10 of my complete budget just on pantographs. Those however are half the price including postage! Brilliant value and as you say barely breaking the bank. On the topic of details, I made diesel exhaust pipes out of scrap insulated wire coating.