Harlequin

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.

1 hour ago, Izzy said:

Actually that’s not strictly true in relative terms in that most fixed lens small sensor cameras have native DOF that even at wide-open apertures is greater than most larger sensor cameras such as DSLR’s can produce even with their lenses stopped right down. It’s a sliding scale with such as large plate view cameras having very shallow DOF and very small sensors basically giving back-to-front DOF. In the old days of film use this was used to advantage to produce cheap fixed focus/focus free/fixed aperture cameras simply because everything captured at any focused distance would be in relative sharp focus within the DOF.  This continues these days with most small sensor cameras. It’s all to do with the relationship with focal length and sensor size. Where the larger sensor cameras gain is with far better image collection information thanks to larger pixels. Their downside is the need for a far greater amount of light falling on a subject to fill/saturate those pixels and the much longer shutter speeds thus required to capture one and provide a sharp and blur free result, meaning using a tripod is almost a given. With small sensors and thus very short focal lengths this isn’t needed and they can be hand-held down to very slow speeds with sharp images being produced. Sharp is of course a relative term to be considered in relation to the overall image quality. In other words whether the image is viewed at distance, down at pixel level, or something between the two. 
 

With the images taken with the 24mm I think the most impressive part is the apparent distortion free result. Usually with any DSLR wider-angle lens much below 35mm you expect to see hints of barrel distortion even with the best examples. However in these digital days in-camera processing can offset this and maybe this is what has helped here. 

 

Bob

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.

3 hours ago, Barclay said:

These excellent shots really do show that there is simply no need to mess about with focus stacking to make an image look good. 

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.

21 hours ago, The Nottingham Extension said:

Sorry, I have been quite busy the past few days but I really like @Harlequin's plan and it's use of space and so have built on it......I present Stanley v7

 

 

• Moved the engine shed to the inside to open up the outside for the village
• Switched the goods shed and non-goods shed sidings round, aesthetically it seems to look better in 3d
• Added a small one pen cattle dock to the short siding (I have one at the junction station so would offer good excuse to run cattle wagons between the two!)
• Yes the level crossing (I have too many cars and a soft spot for a LC) has stuck although it is now the main road not the yard access as I think this would be down the right hand end of the station
• Added an access road where the shed was for the creamery at the back
• I imagine a small coal stained gravel surface would surround the shed (no need for parking as I imagine the crew for the local locomotive would live in the village)
• I am aware the engine shed point is a setrack curved point but I have one lying around and only 0-6-0T will use the shed (maybe the odd 0-6-0 or 2-6-0!) I'll smooth the track when laying so there isn't small straight before it bends but scarm doesn't let you put points on the gradient so it's been squished up a bit

 

Many thanks to everyone's input so far, getting close now! Thoughts?

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.

5 hours ago, Tim Dubya said:

My personal favourite is Dunster, but it's in the middle of nowhere.  It's our nearest station when we stay at Dunster Beach in the out-laws beach chalet but isn't near anywhere in particular.

 

 

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.

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?

2 minutes ago, RailWest said:

'dagger' suffix (sorry, don't have that symbol!)

Windows: Alt+0134

MacOS: ⌥ Option+T

† 

2 hours ago, Andy Keane said:

Phil @Harlequin did you ever get the 8'6" Dean bogies into CAD that could be used with the Worsley Works etches of the E40 coaches?

Andy

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

2 hours ago, PMP said:

Vallejo Resin filler 70400 will work well for that, and Sankey do signage that’s worth considering https://www.sankeyscenics.co.uk/oo-4mm-grouping-railways?lightbox=dataItem-kxc8cjmb

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.

2 hours ago, Tony Wright said:

Model railway photography can be a hobby within a hobby (though I made it part of my later career). Though I no longer earn a great deal from taking model railway pictures, I still try to 'push the boundaries' with regard to the images I take. Such an opportunity occurred a few days ago........

 

Our younger son is moving house, and to make the whole process easier, he's been dropping items off with us in the interim. One of those items was a large metal camera case full of cameras and lenses. I'd given these to him some years ago, their being surplus/superseded, but he no longer has use for them (any pictures he needs for his work he now takes on a phone!). Rummaging through the box, I found two lenses of possible use to me; a Nikon prime 24mm lens and a Sigma 18-50 zoom (normally, I'd only use Nikon's own lenses - those made in Japan - but I think the latter was a 'cheap' purchase which he made). 

 

So, I've tried a few 'experiments'...................

 

 

This is the Nikon 24mm on the front of my Nikon Df. With a minimum aperture of only F22, I thought depth of field might be an issue.

 

However.............

 

 

The depth of field is incredible. Granted, it's more suited to an 'overall' view, but the resolution is tremendous.

 

I can't explain how the ex-NER Dynamometer has ended up in Bytham's loading dock. 

 

Now............

 

 

With the Sigma on the front (set at 50mm), the principal subject matter is further away, and, with an aperture of F36, depth of field should be more than adequate.

 

 

Which it definitely is; definite enough to reveal how 'bendy' Bachmann's Mk.1s have become (this has nothing to do with lens aberrations). 

 

This is a tighter crop, but I think it 'works'. 

 

With the Nikon 24mm lens on the front, I took some more Down fast shots, in some cases quite tightly cropped..........

 

 

60111 (SE Finecast/Wright/Haynes) on a Down express (a tight crop).

 

 

60156 (DJH/Wright/Rathbone) on the Down Flying Scotsman (not as tight a crop).

 

 

60516 (DJH/Wright/Rathbone) on a Down express (almost full-frame). 

 

 

Apart from some horizontal cropping, this is a full-frame image. 

 

 

Seen from the other side, 92042 (Model Loco/Wright/Haynes) heads a Down fast goods (another tight crop).

 

It's a lens I'll certainly use a lot of in future.

 

As I will the Sigma..............

 

 

60014 (Wills/scratch/Wright/Rathbone) dashes through Bytham on the Down Tees-Tyne Pullman (a slight crop).

 

 

And, 60114 (DJH/Geary) on the Down Queen of Scots (a tight crop). 

 

Who needs stacking? 

 

In all the images, I set the parameters, nothing on the camera being used in Auto-mode. 

 

Anyone else tried any photo-experiments on the model railways? 

 

 

 

 

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?

2 minutes ago, Accurascale Fran said:

 

Hi Phil,

 

The first step is from our warehouse to customer, though we're actively looking at other parts of the journey, with the trip from the far east obviously being the worst offender in the delivery chain. 

 

Yes, the plan is to go carbon neutral and we are looking at how this can be achieved. To be frank about it, we are just trying to get ourselves ahead of the curve here, as (and not to go down a political road here) it's obvious that there will be a significant push for all companies to achieve this through legislation in the medium to long term as a business compliance and requirement. It is going to take some working out, but better to be prepared for such things! 

 

Cheers!

 

Fran 

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?

11 hours ago, Railpassion said:

Thank you. So, basically forget steam and run diesels. Lol

It's a lovely model but maybe it has to go?

 

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.

10 hours ago, BWsTrains said:

 

Great, now we can get back to the serious matter of the 8 year saga of the Dean Goods 😈

 

FWIW after much effort and three goes with shipping across the world I finally received a working model (2475) only to read of the various woes of this release from others on this topic. Then after 11 months of good running, the DCC Sound chip was shorted out by a fault, a loose screw left magnetised against the speaker. OR were very good and replaced the entirety of the DCC kit but by then various reports of motor shorts convinced me it was but a matter of time for events to catch up.

 

The DCC Sound was donated as an "organ transplant" to a more deserving recipient, I popped the cheapest DCC I had into the Dean, then consigned it to lightest of duties available at the time.

 

Roll forward 6 years to a new layout, it will make occasional appearances on light duties only. 

 

In my books it's right up there in the annals of small RTR Steam model "disaster" releases. If they ran management courses on Model design and production this would be paired in a Case Study with the infamous 14xx saga (one I ducked). 

 

Meanwhile I content myself with running my core fleet of the reliable Bachmann 57xx, 64xx, 45xx Classes,  and the Collett Goods.   

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

The depot in its current form makes the scene difficult to design because of its sheer size, it will be very difficult to model those large sheds and they are of questionable value anyway because trains disappear into them and become effectively non-existent at that point. (Presumably in the prototype they remain in the shed for weeks at a time...?)

Changing it for the earlier goods yard would be more correct for the 55-70 period, would keep things out in the open and would arguably be a more interesting scene with more interesting stock on display.

I view helices as the spawn of the devil, only to be used as a last resort when there's no other workable alternative. You have plenty of room to avoid them and in fact if you did need to change levels to reach a hidden fiddle yard (not always the best idea either) then you could do it by building long gradients into the main layout itself, without needing to have dedicated helices.

4 hours ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

 

Can the Sam app be programmed to start excoriating the inadequate loco to tender close coupling mechanisms which both Bach and Hornby have ill-advisedly begun to apply?

 

This is getting wildly off-topic (and it might be worth creating a specific topic if this really is a big issue) but what makes these connections inadequate? I don't think I've seen one yet. Are they copying Dapol's click-fit loco-tender connector?