Regularity

I stopped making baseboards a few years ago, when the eleventh set (of 12 - yes, only one made it) was taken to the tip and a friend commented that I had built more baseboards that most people build layouts... Trouble is, since then, I haven’t done anything other than put up a backscene and a support structure for baseboards that have yet to appear. And that was in 2010.

PS. If surface wiring is good enough for Trevor Nunn on Trowland, it’s good enough for me.

If you lay them on the surface, you do what all good electricians do, and only run wires along the edge of the board, and then across it. That way you know where the wires are. As for radio control being simple, I thought so too until the most recent thread in that area of the forum: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/128590-deltang-rx61-22-w-please-help/

Any problems you may get with wiring are likely to be due to soldered joints, either to the rail or a switch/feed, so whether you run them underneath or above won’t make for a lot of difference. Wiring on top means you don’t have to keep lifting up and putting back the baseboard.

The problem with Rush’s work is that he seemed to be in a rush, and not prepared to take time to check things. I will have to check with McGowan-Gradon, to see if they are mentioned there.

And what is it that we are always told by such as Essery and Jenkinson? Do what the railway did, not as a modeller interprets it.

I always thought it interesting that the Furness simply bought from Sharp, Stewart whatever was appropriate for their needs until Pettigrew arrived from the LSWR (where he had been chief draftsman) and all of a sudden the external look was altered, to a smoother, more Edwardian line. Obviously he had some opinions on how things should look!

Most railways treated the power bogie as a locomotive (which it is, a locomotive engine) and the rest as a carriage.

Interest, though, in that most of the North American railways specified their particular requirements or detailed the small components and bought from a major supplier, such as Baldwin, Alco, Lima, etc. What about the power units for the steam railmotors?

10 tons of coal = 1 private owner wagon’s worth...

I would like to know which professional painted it. So that I can avoid using him.

I think you strike an important point(sorry!) there: because of the finer tolerances, jigs and gauges become essential, and ironically they can (when properly used) make construction a lot easier and most importantly, consistent. But everything else needs to be built to the same tolerances, which is why springing/beam compensation needs to be considered: it actually increases the ability of the rolling stock to cope with imperfect track and track bed, effectively creating a dynamic extension of the tolerances. I think of that as “carefully controlled slop” rather than “a bit of slop never hurt”. 6 It’s ultimately about a trade-off between the extra time in construction and maintenance versus what you want to do with the models and the space available for them. Trevor Marshall, over in Ontario, is building an S Scale Model of a rural Canadian National Railway branch. His trackwork uses various construction jigs from Fast Tracks and what may be described as “P4 gauge with EM clearances”, as the track gauge is correct (as it always is for S, even for the tinplate stuff) but he is using the NASG/NMRA “Scale” standards for track with “code 88” wheels - a slightly bigger flange than Scale. He aims for, and usually gets, zero derailments. Jigs and gauges help with this, and it looks great, too. And it doesn’t matter how many thousandths of an inch, or decimal places of a millimetre on works to. It is all about a balanced set of tolerances, and the gauges to assist this.

I always think that it is down to a genuine love of the subject, rather than a simple technical appreciation. Someone who is truly immersed in what they are trying to create will outshine a technical perfectionist when it comes down to generate a warmth from within the modelling. Good grief, waxing pretentious or what?

If you don’t mind the suggestion, the coupling hooks would look finer and work even better if you file them to provide a rounded an inverted V, sort of /\, but not so sharp and with a wider, blunter point. This really is a rather nice Model.

In Cambridge, the cold wind blows in from the east, right across the Baltic and the North Sea, picking up moisture which turns to snow. It starts in the Ural mountains, and in the 30s they used to say the politics came with it...

I think too many times people stick with tried and tested, rather than standing back. The key thing for a Model Railway is a rigid trackbed, and thinking of it as a bridge between supports leads naturally to design it as an inverted U, with fairly deep sides which only need to be thick enough to keep things stable. If the track bed is then the foundation of structural strength, everything else can more or less hang off this, which is what you have realised. Using shelf brackets to support a layout built thus is an inspired idea. I think I may have over engineered some things in my garage. This would work for portable as well as permanent layouts, by the way. When a teenager, I did - following Jas article in Scale Model Trains (1983, possibly June) - use the idea for non-scenicked track, using ¾” block-board (it was to hand!) trackbed with 3” deep 1/8” hardboard either side, arranged as an H section for a removable length of track between two sections. It was ok, but ¼” ply would have been stronger. Peco’s H0 track is 1:87 scale representation of non-UK track. The code 83 range is directly aimed at the North American market with a reasonable degree of fidelity. The other ranges use similar information for the ties (sleepers), 9” square timber spaced at roughly 21”-22”. This came about through using 9” square timber, so workmen didn’t have to worry about which way up it went, with spacing between them derived from a workman putting his boot between each tie, and the rail was spiked directly to the rail. With a barely literate and frequently non-English speaking workforce this was the only way to get track laid rapidly across the continent. Although things like tie-plates cam along later, and rail weights increased an awful lot, the basic tie size and spacing remained, and Peco H0 track reflects this.

You are welcome. On your last point, I think the very best achieve a combination of technical brilliance and ambience: Trerice, Pempoule, East Lynn to name but three - and none of these are recent creations, as I think all started in the 90s.

Rory, It depends on what you want to achieve, and the materials in use. Helpful if you can tell us more! To seal the surface, you could use an all-in-one paint.if you want a smooth surface without brush arms, you will need to prime, rub down, undercoat, rub down, and then go through a cycle of paint and rub down until you are satisfied: ultimately you are not doing this for anyone but yourself. But with hardboard, I found I needed to paint any nail heads with enamel, apply filler once that was dry, rub down. Then apply primer. Rub down, and then two coats applied with a roller, with a rub down with a sanding sponge in between and after, got me the surface I was happy with. That’s the primer. That’s after two coats and two tub downs. Hope that helps, and apologies for the hi-jack. And for making a sensible post.

I think the skill comes with time and practice, and I would say that P4/S7 requires more perseverance and patience, and for most of us more time, too. I am trying really hard to avoid saying anything pejorative, to avoid anything discriminatory. Working to finer tolerances requires more work, but it is not harder work: anyone wanting good running needs to pay attention to “top and line” with baseboard construction and tracklaying, and to ensure that “chassis” are square and true. Yes, and unfortunately the early articles on P4 and S7, in an understandable desire to de-mystify* things, positioned things as little more than a re-wheeling exercise. I have seen the articles: Step 1. Build replacement track and turnouts for your layout. Step 2. Re-wheel a coach and a wagon, to test the new track. Step 3. Remove the existing track. Step 4. Lay the P4 track. Step 5. Test it again. Step 6. Convert a loco. Step 7. Wire up the track and test it under power. Step 8. Convert the rest of the stock. (I may have the order slightly out of kilter, but you get the idea.) As you say, the more important thing is the minset of the modeller: a desire for greater accuracy generally would, one hopes, lead at least to a consideration of the potential benefits of changing gauge/standards, but this has to balanced against available resources of time, money and space. Anyone capable of assembling an etched loco chassis kit to run well can also build their own track: not too difficult a proposition, but if you have 100 engines, and 30” radius curves, then even if you can afford it, P4 isn’t going to be viable. *Not saying that they succeeded at this, merely that is what they were trying to do. Poor construction is poor construction regardless of standards, but finer tolerances do require finer construction. I am more amused when someone re-wheels a Bachmann class 24, and calls it P4. Put it next to an SLW 00 class 24 standing on Peco’s New bullhead track, and tell me which one looks more like the prototype! Back to Poggy’s comment again: the distance between the rails is only part of a great model railway. An adult way to treat the most adult magazine in what increasingly is an adult hobby.(Sadly, one of my neighbours still snickers at me for having a “big boy’s” hobby. And I don’t have a Union Pacific 4-8-8-4...)

Except when it comes to sausages (technically fewer are more) and cake?

If you follow the Eastwood Town thread, you will be aware of my comments about the effect of distance and long lead turnouts helping to disguise the gauge: it’s 00 but could be EM. I wonder though, if we can sometimes confuse scale with proportion, and taking the latter as the starting point, I wonder if British outline 00 track would not look better in itself if modelled to H0 scale in terms of sleeper size and spacing? I certainly think that 32mm long sleepers look better on 00 track. I may be wrong, but I think SMP did this back in the 70s?

Thanks for that. This is, in many ways, quite similar to Jas Millham’s approach to building baseboards on his Yaxbury Branch. The core strength of them comes from the trackbed, which is an inverted U with the width varying according to need, but the depth of the channel remaining constant, with hole cut into it to allow for bridges, etc. This is held off the floor by a lightweight metal frame, set at the lower level of the channels, to which scenic profiles etc are screwed with self-tapping screws. He got the idea, iirc, at a presentation/lecture at the MRC in the 70s given by Leslie Bevis-Smith and Tim Watson: if you look at Copenhagen Fields, the baseboards were also built along these lines, and this also can provide the basis for scenic sections to be added in a “jig saw” manner, possibly using foam board to keep the weight down. But that was all developed using thin, small sections of plywood for portable, exhibition layouts. You are taking this to another level, to create what all layouts need and only home/permanent layouts can achieve: a good, solid, rigid and strong base. In the USA, they typically use ¾” ot 1” ply for the “subroadbed”, placed onto risers from a solid frame of 1”x4” pse, or ply ripped into 4” wide strips. I like the long leads and large crossings on the transition curves. As has been said by Iain Rice in MRJ 259, and discussed in the thread about it, from a distance of 3’ or more, the fact that this is 00 is as unnoticeable as it is irrelevant. It is possible to distinguish it from P4, if you gave an eye for these things (it’s the flangeways) but you have to get closer to work out if it is EM or 00. I am thinking of the photos in post 3176. I suspect the sleepers are 34mm long, I.e. a scale 8’6”, and as such extend beyond the rails in a manner similar to 9’ (pre-grouping length) sleepers, but they look a bit too long in proportion to the track gauge, which is the only “giveaway” in some of the closer photos. Please don’t take that as a criticism: more an observation from someone is a trackwork nerd. I wonder if the best thing to do with improving the “look” of 00 gauge track would be to model the sleepers, timbers, etc to H0 scale, to keep these features in proportion to the gauge? Not suggesting that you rip it up and start again - it looks very good already - but just sharing the thought that the photos provoked, in case it helps someone about to commence a finescale 00 layout wants to do that bit more to fool the eye in everything but a head-on shot? Addendum: Once the ballast is in place, the discrepancy in proportion is probably less noticeable.

Watering down? Is that different to dumbing down?Or were you, as ever, providing a masterclass in understatement?

Isn’t that the point of Jonathan’s post, that people only ever comment of this sort of thing when it isn’t 00, and that he hoped people weren’t going to jump up and down claiming that this provided definitive proof that P4 doesn’t work?

Thank you. I am not totally clear on the levels, etc, but I imagine that this will become apparent soon enough.