Harlequin

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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

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.

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?

Robin's plan looks good but it's squashed into the space. Can the main board be made any wider? What about the fillet in the corner? Could that be bigger? (Cross-posted.) If the fillet and the main board were a bit wider then it might be possible to use one or more curved turnouts in the entry curve to make the lengths of everything longer and splay out the goods yard a bit more like Delph. The other great thing about Delph station is the massive woollen mill building as a low-relief backscene.

Report the first post in the thread by clicking the three dots in the top right corner and then clicking "Report". Thanks.

There’s a dedicated area of the forum for layout and track planning. https://www.rmweb.co.uk/forums/forum/66-layout-track-design/

Have you got any reference photos? Cast iron lettering was not really standardised in that period so you probably won't find a "correct" font, just something that's close enough. The lettering would have been based on some outlines in a book and then patterns made by a craftsman and adapted to meet the needs of the casting process. BTW: You might find that the scale depth of relief of the lettering is so small that it makes it really difficult to paint the letters neatly. I know - I tried.

Yes, but it was within warranty so I got a direct replacement. The first motors were superior but they were in a flawed body. The later ones with the body corrections have these smaller motors with a plastic cradle to make them up to the right shape to fit in the casting. I avoid "Sam's Trains" as far as possible but he does have a video showing how to make a new cradle and fit a new motor to the Dean Goods. This model has had a chequered history. It's a shame because it could have been so good!

Could be that one of the coils has burnt out. That happened to one of mine with similar symptoms.

I've been building up the texture of the roof with reference to a photo in Amyas Crump's book, "Great Western Architecture in colour", including adding lichen growth: In this photo you can barely see the slate texture that I painstakingly built up in 4 stages - but it does show up better in real life. I might be able to get a better photo. What does show up, though, is the grain of the ply crossing the slates. This is the biggest problem with this laser-cut ply kit and it shows up in other places. If I was starting again I think i might try to fill in some of the grain before assembling the parts. The "lichen" looks OK at the near end but three-quarters of the way back there are some big bright slodges that don't look right. I'm going to have to do something about them.

"What are you looking at?" "You didn't want to use this warm damp compost you just put here, did you?"