Philou

I understand that it's probably not a good thing to wait that long anyway - something to do with warranties, or somesuch ......... How are you all? Fed up or just fedup? Hope you've had some plum pud - none here unfortunately :( .

Ooh, I forgot to say that Mrs Philou came up trumps as she had got from my fave emporium Lord & Butler, a Rapido 15XX with sound, no less, and without any hints my end! Nice looking loco in lined black and early crest, but I may have to wait until 2157 to run it in (2157 is a date mentioned in the accompanying notes).

Oh the journey's not yet done as in two days time we're off to Porn ic sans dog for New Year's Eve and then back here on the 1st and then home with dog on the 2nd. Stay safe and enjoy Boxing Day, Philip

I'm still about - outskirts of Paris. Made it with the dog in one piece and all the presents plus suitcases - downside is that the dog is car sick! How do I know this 8/ ? Anyway, all is well and the festivities start this evening. Cheers everyone and stay safe. Philip

Hello chums and chumesses and hello to all those that may pop in from time to time. Christmas seems to have arrived as today was gift wrapping and suitcase filling and major angst as to whether 'The Lump' will be able to get into the car - a rather high sill and she isn't quite as agile as she may have been (35kg). I did suggest to Mrs Philou that we could attach the lead to the rear bumper and let her run behind - plenty of exercise I thought over the 200 mile dap. The idea wasn't well received and I can't think why. On a more serious note, all the above meant that there was very little progress on the latest retaining wall, so I'll hold it over until we get back after the New Year. As I shall be unlikely to be in communication with the outside world until early January (c'mon, no tears - it's only 10 days), it just remains for me to wish you all a very Merry Christmas (or Season's Greetings) and very Happy New Year. I sincerely hope that you'll all have reasonable health and a little wealth in 2024. Oh, and the weekend has arrived! Cheers, Philip

When the Met. Office was the Met. Office and they provided the weather forecast I remember Ian MacAskill used to make a point that for a few days after the solstice (winter/summer) there was an imbalance in the gain/loss of daylight and it wasn't evenly spread - to do with the earth's 'wobble' IIRC. The third retaining wall is under way and I'm partway through putting the building papers on it - no photo at the mo', but maybe one later - if not, tomorrow as there will be the pilaster, cappings and corbels to make and attach. Cheers, Philip

I don't suppose it will matter much as I shall be tucked up in bed at that time! I never knew that the leap years affected the solstice - do they also affect the summer ones as well? I note in France that their meteorological service count the start of winter as on the 1st of December - furriners .... mumble mumble ....... Cheers, Philip

I use 5mm fibre underlay (the green stuff) used under laminate flooring - ruins your cutter blades though!

@lezz01 Are you trying to make me spend some money? The right angled driver looks just right especially with a 6mm hex end. I've done what I needed to do so it'll be a straight-forward vertical drive to fix the wall in it's final position. Nice loco - but will the wheels cost more than the loco? Just asking for a friend ;)). Cheers, Philip

Hello chums and chumesses, Finally Mrs Philou decided to go to Big town on her own and I was left to my own devices - so into the barn I went. The latest retaining wall was dusted in dark pastel colours as appropriate then wafted over with a couple of coats of matt varnish. It was all fixed in place before Mrs Philou returned for lunch - and I have a photo of the wall in place: ^ Two shots of the wall in place - I'm quite happy with the result, though the camera is showing it slightly more yellow with the flash than in natural light. It sort of went downhill afterwards as I wanted to set up the retaining wall alongside the branchline parallel to the mainline. Using my way of glue blocks screwed to the retaining wall and the underside of the trackbed, I found there wasn't enough room to get a screwdriver between the wall and the rockface and I wasted an hour looking for a mini ratchet set that I thought I could use at right angles with an adapter for the Torx screws that I use - nada, nyet, nein, nothing. In the end I just unscrewed the trackbed and attached the retaining wall to it to check the glueblock alignments and that was it - 10mins and it was done - should have done it that way in the first instance! I'm underway with the next piece of wall - it'll be of a similar construction and finish to the two others. I'm not sure how much time I'll be allowed tomorrow but hopefully enough to get the card faces cut, papered and glued in place. Cheers everyone - tomorrow is the shortest day and we should then be rushing headlong into summer - yay! More tomorrow, Philip

No update today as council business ate my time - the only thing I will note is that I forgot to put in some weep-holes along the bottom of the brickwork - and I have a small punch with which I could have done it :( . I'll try and remember next time. Mrs Philou is away tomorrow going to Big town to do some last minute bits and bobs and I might be spared the trip so there's a good chance that the wall will be weathered and fixed in place. More tomorrow, Cheers, Philip

Hello @Cliff M and welcome to the RMWeb collective! You've just asked a question to which you will have a million (OK not quite) answers. Thumbs up for Scalescenes buildings - they take a while to build but you can print off as many copies as you like and alter them too. Another thumbs up for SCARM - my under construction layout was designed with it. If you like computers and can do 3D, SketchUp is quite good too and I created the final layout in that to get a feel of what it should look like. You've asked about DCC - I can only comment on what I bought as I decided that I would go DCC from the off on retirement, despite having amassed a huge amount of stock over the years. I went for the ESU ECoS II, wasnt cheap but not the most expensive (apparently) out there. It has all the bells and whistles and will control two trains at once on individual controls plus all your accessories. Oh and it has a large touch-sensitive screen for ease of control. You can also use hand-held controllers via wiffy but not Bluetooth. However, being a bit of a Luddite AND seeing how big the layout will actually be, I've decided to divide the layout into zones and each area will have a mimic board with good ol' fashioned mini-DPDTs and LEDs for the point control in each zone. Good to see that you're going for Peco streamline (with some set track) and electrofrogs. You haven't as yet posted a plan to show your proposal and I don't know if you've thought of gradients but the shallower the better avoiding anything steeper than 1:50 (if you can) as some locos can hardly pull the skin of a rice pudding once faced with a gradient. You should be fine with Bachmann not the cheapest, but don't discount other makes. There's a whole load of good locos and stock out there (some poor of course), but even Hornby turns out good stuff. Good luck, Cheers, Philip PS: If you want to have a look at the layout (WiP), type 'Dymented' (without the '') in the search bar above.

Hello chaps and chapesses, Good news - Christmas at the Philou household is cancelled! No it isn't, but Santa came twice today. Firstly, a nice parcel arrived by the postlady from the UK. @lezz01 kindly sent me some bridge chairs and six pieces of Exactoscale bullhead rail so I can do the timber baulks on my bridge. What a good chap he is - thanks Lez, it was very much appreciated. Secondly, my BiL called in with my sister and brought me my two pieces of pointwork all the way from Cardiff - another good chap. I did also note that surreptitiously (but ol' eagle eyes saw) a Rapido box changed hands between him and Mrs Philou. I looked away and I haven't tried to find out what it was, so it'll be a big surprise - yay! Buoyed up by all of this, I did some overtime this evening (hence the late update) and completed this bit of retaining wall, and I have a photo: ^ It will need to be weathered and given a waft of varnish - perhaps tomorrow, but I've got council business to attend to - and then fixed into place. The fixing will be done via the tongue under the wall. Two glue blocks are to be screwed to it and then the blocks fixed onto the underside of the trackbed. Bit of a faff, but it'll be secure and I can't glue it as there's nowhere to get any purchase with mini-clamps while it's drying. All being well, it'll be fixed by Wednesday. Definitely more tomorrow. Cheers, Philip

Sanity Clause got waisted! Yeah, I dressed up as Santa and did my Ho! Ho! Ho! bit and gave out the one (symbolic) hamper to the oldest citizen of the village (there wouldn't have been enough room in our tiny council room for them to be given all at once). I got waisted because I had to stuff cushions around my mid-riff to make me look like Santa - I tell you what, he must be a really big fat rotund person! It all went well. I have started on the one retaining wall - half done and it ought to be finished tomorrow - I'll show a picture then. That's it! Sorry, not much more to tell - no joke, nothing, nada. :) Less tomorrow (only joking!). Cheers, Philip

A really small update as I had an hour to spare before getting ready to go to a funeral after lunch. I have measured up for the retaining walls that form the continuation of the rock-face behind the mainline at Dymented and the one that will be the separation between the mainline and the branch back up to Ledbury. Over the next couple of evenings I'll shall have them covered in card and papered as appropriate with some buttresses - can't have a wall without a buttress ;). It's in the bag!! Tomorrow is the giving out of the municipal Christmas hampers to the oldies of the village (over 70s). No prizes, but guess who is having to dress up as Santa? Ho! Bah! Ho! Humbug! Ho! I dunno how I'm going to give a parcel to myself. Perhaps I'll become a Schrödinger's Santa for the day :). More tomorrow, Cheers, Philip

Hello chums and chumesses, Unfortunately real life came knocking at the door asking for its day back - so nothing happened in the railway room and there won't be anything much tomorrow either :( . Sunday may be my best day to get on as after that we're heading straight into Christmas and we're going to celebrate at others' this year - so parcels to wrap, cats'n'dog to sort out, suitcases to fill etc., etc! Just hope my mojo won't stay on holiday when I get back. Hopefully an update anyway tomorrow. Cheers, Philip

Hello chaps and chapesses, Work restarted slowly as it was rather cool in the barn and I had a fit of the yawns this afternoon - found it a little hard to concentrate. Nonetheless, having been satisfied that the rest of the bark had stuck to the polystyrene behind the Dymented platforms, I went back to the branchline cutting to try and fathom out what happens at the interface of an embankment and a cutting. I decided that normally there ought to be a retaining wall either at the foot of the cutting rising to max height at the start of the overbridge with the embankment reducing to zero at the bridge abutment, or a wall alongside the mainline increasing in depth on approach to the overbridge, with the cutting below running out at the abutment. In the end I decided on neither because I considered it geologically near-impossible (and even allowing for Rule 1) to have a rock faced cutting one side and no rock the other. So I shall amuse myself with a bit more bark in the cut, but less than on the other side (the rock outcrop is on a tilt, innit) and the lack of depth will be the reason why it's a cutting and not a tunnel. As there was a bit of time, I also backfillled the gaps between the rock face and the plywood trackbed so I'll have a near-level surface right across when it comes to ballasting and doing the cess (won't be any 'mind the gap') and losing material down the black holes. Here's the photo of Tuesday's work: ^ The rock cutting has continued behind the mainline and peters out a little way before the end of the retaining wall. Here I shall continue with a brick or sandstone wall until that too runs out (just about on the edge of the photo). I'm glad I haven't decided to go OTT with the rock faces as you need to give a reasonable reason why it's there in that particular form (outcrop in this instance) - bit like tunnels that appear on layouts - just because ;) . More tomorrow. Cheers, Philip

I use sieved builders' sand - looks similar in colour to the brown parts of your photographs. I 'borrowed' ordinary kitchen sieves of varying mesh sizes to give me the grades I need. I don't know if prototype continental ballast is different to that in the UK, but in the 60s the UK sizes were specified as 1/2" to 2 1/2". This would give you at 4mm scale 0.17mm to 0.84mm and at H0 from 0.15mm to 0.73mm grain sizes - reasonably achieved with different meshes. After sieving I had larger grains that I gave to an 0 gauge modeller, the fine stuff to another modelling in n and the dust I used in the cess and as surfacing for roads - suitably coloured. For UK ballast, I found that it was a bit too brown for my liking (but I'd been used to a uniform grey colour), but it does take paint as mentioned by @shipbadger . I have been advised that ballast does vary with local quarries anyway and it doesn't always have to be grey - so nothing to say 'brown' isn't right and as @roythebus1 has said, whether it was all ballasted at the same time. Cheers, Philip

Boo! Surprised? So am I. Mrs Philou and I did what we had to do and I found I had a spare hour, so into the barn I went! I have now recut where needed the 'styrene in the next module and glued it into place. Having still a moment to spare (a bit more really), I then trimmed and glued all the bark I thought I needed along the face of the now glued 'styrene. I have no picture today to show unfortunately. Whilst that will be drying off, I shall tackle a retaining wall alongside the mainline from where the rockface finishes and the end of that particular module. I wonder whilst I'm in that area if I shouldn't just go in guns blazing and actually complete the Dymented station area. What's going for it is that it'll be one part done - which I think is always a bit of a morale booster - AND I can start re-learning things like scenics, electrics, soldering, ballasting etc. Something for the New Year, eh? No update tomorrow, so speak Thursday. Cheers, Philip

No update tonight due to to-ing and fro-ing to the ozzie and doing some domestic stuff in between. I'd don't think there'll even be a posting tomorrow or Wednesday due to getting the house cleaned up for visitors arriving on Wednesday. One good bit of news was that the 'no-nails, no-screws' has set - I was concerned that due to the low temperatures it wouldn't hold the bark to the 'styrene, but it did. The other thing is that as part of my shopping duties today, I was able to get a small bag of plaster to in-fill and coat the scenery that has been done so far - so not all bad. Maybe more tomorrow. Cheers, Philip

Go and have a look at the 'Hills of the North' project by @LNER4479 of this parish. He and his cow-orkers have a chapel within which to 'play' and they still can't get one of their stations in - a front bit but the rest ends up as an exceedingly tight turn and much reduced similar to that shown by @HillsideDepot above. I'm not trying to put you off, but just so you can see how big a space is needed. You may want to consider something less ambitious, say a smaller station, with perhaps a branch leading off and still have a reasonable layout. I've got an old barn to use and even in a space of about 8.2m x 6.4m, my stations (though of prototypical length) are limited to 1.4m and 2.2m platforms and I still ended up with 1.0m (3') radius curves at the ends, by the time all the pointwork was in place - and just using Peco, not bespoke near-to-scale points. I feel your pain. Cheers, Philip

@lezz01 I didn't have much choice as with having short arms (and deep pockets some might say), I didn't want to struggle working over laid track and getting it mucked up with scenic materials. I've seen layouts where that was done, lovely jobs, but a whole load of flock stuck in the ballast, for example. We'll see how I get on and hopefully this will be in the right order - many a slip and all that! Sorry to hear that you had problems - care to share for the benefit of others? Cheers, Philip

Hello chaps and chapesses, The weekend is nearly over :( , but never mind, there's another one next week :)) ! The pilaster was wafted and glued in place which meant I could get on with the rock faced cutting of the branch as it dives under the main line. As a picture is worth a thousand words, here are some for today - lots to be done yet, but it won't be until Tuesday and even then limited, as we're having a lunchtime bash on Wednesday to celebrate belatedly Mrs Philou's birthday. Nothing meaningful will happen until Thursday most probably: ^ Now things are looking more as they should. The abutment needs toning down a bit as does the new pilaster - powders will do that after the rock face has been undercoated. Talking of rock face, here's one I did earlier: ^ The oak bark was roughly cut to size and then numbered. I trimmed the pieces using a jigsaw blade and stuck them in place, in order, with 'no screws, no nails' (other adhesives available). There's back-filling to be done with PVA dampened kitchen towel and plaster. Thinned plaster will be brushed over all the surfaces and then a coat of white vinyl over that (I will remember to protect the bridgeworks first!). (Apologies for the rockfall - I should have cleaned up before taking the photo). ^ A view looking down the incline of the branch. Crevices in the bark will represent water erosion, I've already had the hot-knife out and cut out the polystyrene to form gullies. They're a bit 'harsh' and need to be softened - the plasterwork will do that. ^ Bird's eye view of the rock face. I really, really want to get on with this as I'll be able to do the other side of the branch line as it drops alongside the mainline and then start on doing a bit of trackwork - yay! Perhaps a little more tomorrow. Cheers, Philip

Hello chums and chumesses, I was pilastered today - enough to drive one to drink. I managed to do all my tasks this morning and despite the very wet and windy weather that arrived unannounced, I managed to get into the barn and check on a couple of measurements and this evening, I had the missing pilaster done. A waft of matt varnish tomorrow and with a bit of luck, glued in place. It wasn't difficult to do, just very fiddly as the pieces of card were small and all had to be glued together and then papered and it just took time to do - s'done. Last night I wandered into the world of the web and I found quite by accident a RAIB report on a derailment that occurred on a section of elevated railway in the Forest Gate/Ilford area of London that destroyed about 8.5miles of track including a section of baulk timbered rail on a rail overbridge. The report was very interesting from how the investigation was undertaken but my greater interest was drawn to the 10 x 8 colour photos that were included in the report - especially as it showed details and measurements of the baulks. Added to that, the railway at that point was on a curve and the bridge skewed and it showed how the 6.0m baulks were laid to the curve, canted and the overlap at each end making a transition between baulk and ballast. There were also some nice pictures on Google Streetview showing the underside of the bridge (built in 1893) with all the rivetted details. I am indeed now very much wiser of how to tackle my model. The one thing that I did also note is the report stated that the curve was of a small radius and when I worked it out the 400m radius (1220' R) worked to be 'only' 5.25mR at 4mm scale - I've got curves greater than that on the layout! I was very surprised! More tomorrow, Cheers, Philip

Didn't Jackson do some at one time - or am I mis-remembering? I have some 'working' ones from the '60s on my whitmetal kit and tarted-up H/D locos in that you can use them to hook to another vehicle but you can't screw 'em up. They were well made and other than enlarging the slot in the buffer-beam, easy to fit. They were provided with a spring for fitting on the shaft behind the 'beam and a split-pin to hold it all in place. Cheers, Philip