Harlequin

Can you explain exactly what the space constraints are and why the boards have to be thin as a result? Someone may have already dealt with something similar and they could tell you how they solved the problem. A floor plan with dimensions would be great if you could manage it.

These plans look really odd! You've got to rotate the large turntable any time something needs to move from one end of the layout to the other or when you need a headshunt from one end or the other. Fundamentally, what you are struggling with (and have been struggling with in many previous posts about different designs) is that it's very difficult to do what you want to do in the space you have available in 7mm scale. So, making the layout even smaller seems like a very bad move to me - unless you change your expectations. (Have a look at what @7mmin7foot is doing.) I think a cassette based fiddle yard would be much simpler, easier to use and give you more storage capacity if you can be happy with using them.

Hi Ken, You're making repeated changes and compromises for practical reasons that are getting you further and further away from your initial vision! The plan is completely covered by track. There's no room for much scenery now, removable or not. There are no loading docks, no coal staithes, no goods shed, no wagon repair shed and because of the lack of room for any infrastructure there's no real reason to move a wagon to any particular position. So all you're left with is aimless shunting, which will quickly become very boring. I really suggest designing the layout based on what you really want from it, within some basic constraints, and do that holistically thinking about the whole scene, not just the track plan. Then worry about the baseboards and only make minor tweaks to your desired plan as far as possible. If the tweaks start to badly affect the plan then rethink from first principles. And don't get fixed on a particular baseboard supplier if they can't meet your spec for size and weight - look for alternatives.

I think I'm I right to say that smartphones have a relatively small focal length compared to the sensor size and that is why DOF at close distances is a particular problem in smartphones vs. other small sensor devices like compact cameras. Whatever the reasons, the empirical evidence is certainly that they have very limited DOF when photographing models with the aim of producing something similar to a real-world photograph. I.e. concentrating on elements of a scene rather than a landscape or helicopter shot.

If you wrote a simple little bit of Javascript you could run it on any browser on any device, either served from a server or from local storage. Start off with something simple and then improve the UI over time.

That's only true if you're using a proper camera where you can control the aperture in the way that Tony is demonstrating. It's very difficult to justify buying a dedicated camera with a decent lens or lenses if you already have a Smartphone - which most of us do these days. Unfortunately, while smartphones are fantastic devices that can take great pictures, they have fixed apertures and so depth of field is very poor when photographing models. Then focus stacking is a necessity.

The Setrack curved points have been known to cause derailments for many people. The run round loop is long enough to run round three coaches but they can't all stand at the platform face within the loop. That's because the turnout for the factory siding is inside the loop, limiting the platform length.

Yes, I like Dunster too, precisely because it's a quiet backwater. On a hot summer day, there's a bit of bustle when a train arrives but then after the chuffs have faded into the distance you just hear insects, birds, trees rustling and people murmuring to each other as if they're in church. If you've got the energy for a bit of walk then you can get to Dunster village, which is charming but a bit touristy, and then Dunster Castle, which has a great view of the railway in the landscape.

How to tell if your soil is warm enough for sowing seeds: I think that means, yes it is! The time-honoured country ways are always the best. 😄

For what it's worth, here's my updated essay: I didn't have time to do lots of nice drawn details so I've used labels instead. The turnouts are not sleepered properly but you get the idea. Loco release spur projects right into the top corner to maximise the use of the space in this cramped footprint. Engine shed, no problem, with decent room to fit in the associated gubbins. (Remove if you want.) Still room for a village. No level crossing or road access to the yard on scene - there's no need to be that literal. Realistic yard layout with a splay, a crane, room to gets lorries between the back siding and the shed, room for lorries to back up to the shed loading doors and turn, room to push two vans through the shed. Buildings along the back are flat to the backscene to make them easier to model in low relief. Platform is an odd shape on plan, I know, but I don't think it would look bad in real life and not all platforms were regular shapes, especially when existing buildings like the mill/creamery were nearby. Definitely room to run round three coaches. The main board is 15" wide to fit everything in. Too cramped? Maybe but it depends what your priorities are, operation or appearance?

Windows: Alt+0134 MacOS: ⌥ Option+T †

I have done the CAD but I haven't had the time or the mojo to go through it all to make it printable. 😞 Phil

Thanks, I will check out the Vallejo filler. In the meantime I have used this DIY product that I already had to hand: It's like putty in the tub but it sets and dries to a "crusty" texture that can be scraped and sanded. P.S. Some of the gap at the corners shown above was because the framing hadn't been stuck down to the wall surface properly so I fixed that problem before I filled the remaining, tiny gaps.

Thankyou Tony, I will cogitate on what you've said. The depth of field is indeed very impressive without the need to resort to focus stacking.

Hi Tony, To my eye, the full frame shots have a smooth and realistic quality whereas the cropped ones seem to be a bit coarser - the edges of shapes seem to be slightly accentuated. (A bit like looking at a still frame extracted from a video.) Do you see the same thing? Is it because the zoomed images are getting close to the camera's native resolution, or are we seeing compression artefacts in the original image files or is it maybe to do with the way RMweb handles the images?

Kudos!

This is a great initiative. Does the shipping calculation include transport from the factory to the UK? Do you have plans to push carbon neutrality out through the whole business, including manufacturing?

This is the model railway version of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater". The decoder is the problem, not the loco.

I can apply a rails-and-sleepers brush to the centre lines to show something more realistic. I don't know whether it would look cramped or not but one goods siding could be removed - and the private siding too if required. There might be a way to splay out the goods sidings a bit more, which would help with the cramped feeling. That's why I made the baseboard wider but in the end I didn't make best use of the extra width. The platform shape was a quick knock-up and I can extend that a bit into the curves. The engine shed isn't taking up room while it's in the corner, it's just difficult to connect it into the trackwork sensibly. A St Ives type solution would probably work best but if not then maybe it should be removed. The big building at the back could be a dairy/creamery with the covered private siding used for filling milk tankers. I'll adjust my drawing when I get time. Might have to wait until the weekend.

The Heljan 47xx was a comparable disaster. There are a lot of them sitting on shelves in pieces and there used to be a batch of them on Hattons in various sorry states of disrepair.

You could make better use of the fillet and the full width of the main baseboard if you did something like this: I've grabbed an extra 2in for baseboard width and used curved turnouts (green) to start the station pointwork in the curve. The topmost siding is NOT a bay platform - it's small siding for the large factory building behind with a covered loading area. The engine shed kicks back off the factory siding so that it can use up some of the space in the corner. I know that makes access to the shed a bit awkward but needs must and these little oddities did happen in the real world. Two goods sidings with most of the yard surface and lorry access imagined to be in the operating well.

You don't have to slavishly reproduce a prototype track plan. Almost every model railway that represents a real location is a compressed and simplified version of it.

Interesting topic. Here's the Dapol loco-tender coupling on their first batch 00 GWR Mogul (loco on left, tender on right): The camming mechanisms are hidden in the boxes and you can see how the two parts of the connection click together to form a rigid bar. One of the ideas behind this connection is that it also carries electrical connections between the two parts, thus removing the need for those fiddly and fragile little nylon plugs. What do the Bachmann and Hornby versions look like?

Drew, have you given any thought to modelling all the houses around the railway? It would be a mammoth task, comparable to Copenhagen Fields: https://www.themodelrailwayclub.org/layouts/copenhagen-fields/

1:1250 map dated 1954: https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=17.5&lat=51.60161&lon=-0.12242&layers=173&b=1&o=100