MrDobilina

2 minutes ago, dhjgreen said:

This is a DIY job.  Click on Activity, My activity streams, Create new activity stream.

Interesting,  a do love a bit of customisability thanks for pointing that out to me. Would still be nice to have a default option there  

Morning mods,

Just a quick request: when we click on our profile drop down on the top right of the page can we please have a 'My Topics' option under content to take us directly to our own topics please? 

52 minutes ago, great northern said:

Wall to wall sunshine yet again, not that I'm complaining. As of now, it looks as though this lockdown will exist in some form or another until a vaccine is available, and that seems to be a long time away. Very important then for me and many others in the same position to have a strategy for occupying a lot of time for the foreseeable future.  So, what can I do to improve and/or enhance Peterborough North? It may have to be things I can do myself, which will put a limit on ambitions. but I'm still interested in perceptions of how I could move forward.

 

Here are our morning images. W P Allen progressed under the roof, but for some reason it was darker than usual under there, and he can't be seen too well.

 

 

He was folowed by fish empties.

 

 

and I didn't get the balance right on this one either, so we will have a third, featuring our only Heaton visitor of the day, Book Law on the 7.43 Up Sunderland.

 

 

I can't find much to grumble about with this one, other than the number of lattices I had to photoshop.

Quit making me jealous! Love these shots. particularly love the long goods rakes.

I'm having to restart my layout (again) due to damage during a move and storage.

1 hour ago, KNP said:

Standing at the side of the potato field looking across to the station.

 

 

Wish my allotment looked that tidy

Afternoon all, It's been a long old while since I have looked at my layout. Things went a bit squiffy for me last year but I'm working well now

I would like to say there's been progress but honestly there hasn't. It's been stored in the cellar or loft space and has taken a bit of damage over the course of time.

The top board is a bit warped and I'm not happy with various bits of it. I'm going to try to remove and save as much as possible and use what I can in a new build that I'll keep going in here. 

So on to what I've been thinking about. 

I've moved in the past 12 months out of a little 2 up 2 down into a lovely little house and my gf has joined me (along with a border collie puppy in the last month!).

I have a good loft space now, but it's only insulated in the floor and not boarded up yet to walk around in. 

I do have a lot of excess laminate floor that I've pulled up from a room in the house that I've knocked through into the kitchen to create a kitchen diner (so tiled the floor to make it match the kitchen).

I need to insulate and put the laminate down to get a good base to work with, then look at putting insulation in the rafters. it's one of those annoying  /w\ shaped loft spaces so there is a lack of room to manoeuvre. 

There are a couple places I'm looking into to get some laser cut base boards and I'd like to have a shunting area when I get around to making it. so same era, same concept but a much larger MGR style layout as well. Not going all out on the fiddle yard. single entrance exit for now with a couple storage bays either side. 

I am hoping the shunt area will be with a little station area similar to a certain mr nevards work in the past, and on one side of the layout, a carriage siding similar to the amazing work done by everard junction in his tutorials on how to.

Well this has been a wall of text, not sure many will read this all. I'll look into track planning (including a stage by stage concept as this will take a long time to do) in the coming week.

On 26/04/2019 at 14:21, great northern said:

Hornby haven't done Tottenham Hotspur, so mine has been Timmed to get it. I did point out to Simon Kohler some years ago when I was making the case for a new B17 tooling that 61630 was the only footballer which had a GE tender, and might make a good limited edition for that reason, but as they have saturated the market with B17s recently, it may be a long time coming, if at all.

Ah I see thank you! I’ve seen the brass plates for 61630 available. 

What does timmed mean? 

I think I could make do with renumbering  and replacing the brass plate of a decent ‘near enough’ one. Not a rivet counter here  

which variant did you use? Is 61665 a good match for colour?

On 11/04/2019 at 09:16, great northern said:

Early golf today, so off we go. B17 Tottenham Hotspur has sneaked into Platform 6 with a local from March. As always, a B17 merits a close look.

 

 

Oh lord, I know what my girlfiend (whose entire family are spurs fans including one train enthusiast) will actually WANT me to find next! Not that I can actualyl find any of tottenham hotspur for sale anywhere....

Will keep my eye out! 

Beautiful shot as always.

On 24/03/2019 at 12:09, KNP said:

The town of Little muddle seen from the roof of the Goods Shed..

 

 

Sometimes I look and think should I have added that extra decoupage layer at the back.

Don't know why the roof is blurred as some of the shots it was in focus.! 

The first instance of privacy blurrying of a building on google street view at the bottom there! Love the town!

Hey guys. I’ve been working with the das modelling clay and I’m finding it a lot easier to use than I had anticipated

not quite perfect results but it’s a work in progress. 

Only other news is that I’ve hooked up the last point motor I own and it works well so I have a couple of routes open now. 

4 hours ago, doilum said:

. A walk round a heritage museum like Beamish with a camera and a note book is a good start.

Thanks for justifying my want to go to beamish haha

Both tracks now clayed up. Hoping this works!

I have been experimenting with clay on a throwaway piece of track. 

I quite like the look of the embedded track so will be using the clay on my layout more. This is based on the workings of chris nevard, examples here http://nevardmedia.blogspot.com/2011/08/creating-effect-of-ash-ballast.html and here 

Here I have worked the clay into the area between the tracks on the left side as a road bed and run a rule over it to create the effect of tyre tracks. not sure how effective it looks but it's a start.

On 09/03/2019 at 16:27, KNP said:

Right then.

It's no good leaning on this fence that 8700 won't convert itself.

 

 

Hope none of these chips explode in this field, that'll give a whole new meaning to bangers and mash!

Just come across this thread in my daily travels and I am definitely subscribing after seeing this! 

How did you make the leaves for the taters? Love the build and look forward to seeing more.

On 07/03/2019 at 09:30, doilum said:

Cutting mat. 30x20 cms will do.

Make your own modelling board. Take an off cut of flat ply. (6mm will do) measuring about 40x30 cms. Glue a thin batten of straight hard wood to one long side. Place cutting mat on top. If you take the flat set square and put it up against the batten every cut will be square.

Hey @doilum just wondering what you thought to this offer currently available from RMWeb:

https://www.world-of-railways.co.uk/brm/store/reader-offers/laser-cut-work-station-cutting-mat-her-first-edition/#FullDescription

Would this be sufficient or would those sides be too flexible? I realise it is a bit more expensive than making your own.

Can I just say that I am so thrilled to see so many responses to this topic! Some great details and pointers and I do like the suggestions of what kit I should get and where to look for more inspiration!

11 hours ago, Philou said:

As Edwardian suggested above, you could try the Scalescenes series of papers - downloadable and they're yours for ever.

I do like scalescenes and other printables, but I have no printer currently and works printer is only black and white. (Also not for personal use)

1 hour ago, Charlie586 said:

Is your first name Bob? I've got that song running round my head now.

Haha no it's not, but you're not the first to ask that

I think I will buy some styrene sheets as I've worked with plastic model kits before and see where I get with that. I'll update this topic with some bits as I experiment.

Here's a ratio N gauge one I put together a couple years ago:

Afternoon all,

I have recently decided that as part of my new layout I would like to start scratchbuilding some line side buildings, houses, huts, platforms and other things such as coalstaiths and fencing.

This all sounds great but I am an absolute beginner. I have had some pointers as to where to get some supplies, but am still rather daunted as to what the supplies suggested are on a website (as the naming and sizes seem to be different depending where you look).

Ideally I'd like to model something along these lines:

And alot of my inspiration for buildings and bits come from the legendary Chris Nevard.

And this scene is an inspiration for what I would like to accomplish at one end of my layout.

Quote

 

It's very difficult to advise you on that without a better idea of what you want to build. I would suggest you get in a stock of 10thou, 20thou, 40thou and 80thou plain styrene sheet to use for the basic structures, along with stocks of styrene strip in 10thou thickness and 20thou thickness in 10, 20, 40, 60 and 80thou widths. This will give you the ability to build a basic shell, and window and door frames, and various detail pieces.  Slaters, Evergreen and Plastruct all have ranges of these sorts of items.

 

Then I suggest you look at embossed styrene sheets for brick, stone, planking (for doors etc) and any other textures you feel you need. Slaters, SE Finecast and Wills all make different scales of these sheets.

 

The advice I've currently had is:
 

Which is great, however how do I get from those thin strips to a whole building. 

I realise this has probably been answered a hundred times before, but I always learn best through example.

Many thanks to any who reply

23 hours ago, Alister_G said:

I have regularly used 2K Technologies (http://www.2ktechnologies.com/ ) Kitlady ( https://www.kitlady.co.uk/ ) Hattons (https://www.hattons.co.uk/ ) and Track-Shack (https://www.track-shack.com/ ) amongst many other 

Thank you very much for the suggestions! I still don’t know what I’d need to specifically buy. 

My goal is a couple of small huts and houses and a pub like building.  I need to do a platform too but I think I need to use wood coated in plasticard for that. 

Love your models there!

On 17/01/2019 at 21:20, Alister_G said:

Thanks to Stubby, I'm now the proud owner of a cornish chad mountain:

 

 

So my evening will mostly be spent doing this:

 

 

And when I've done that one, I've got this to do, now with window and door:

 

 

 

But I thought I'd spend a couple of minutes finding views around the layout, now the ground cover is mostly done:

 

 

 

 

 

Back to tiling now.

 

Thanks for looking,

 

Al.

Where did you get this load of plastic from? Looks very useful! Need to get into scratchbuilding myself, any tips or good places to get supplies or small projects to practice?

Morning guys, 

Still loving the new website, so much easier to read and get to places. 

One little suggestion or perhaps it's around and I'm missing it: Could we have a button under our profile drop down menu (that we can access from anywhere) that will take us to a list of our own created topics?

Nice start there, looking good!

19 hours ago, rob D2 said:

Good start...can I ask what the little black things are keeping your wires in check under the boards please ?

I think what you are seeing there are these kind of cable tie mounts:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stonges-Adhesive-Cable-Mounts-Durable/dp/B01HR45KBA

46 minutes ago, calvin Streeting said:

hi. nice can i ask what manufacture of ballast etc this is (and is it painted) 

 

Many thanks

Morning Calvin,

It's just basing sand at the moment. It will be partly covered in das modelling clay before being painted and weathered.

This is the same kind of stuff that I used:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Macterials-Fine-Model-Basing-Sand-200g-First-Class-Post-Kiln-Dried-Miniatures-/263008093448

Hopefully you guys might agree that this is looking on the right lines 

Evening guys,

There are two little updates today. I have gotten myself a Hornby snap track starter pack (for £20) so I have a test track /programming track for new locos to run in.

I have solved the threeway point issue, it was a poorly soldered rail causing all my issues. Trains are now running correctly and nice and slowly over the threeway point. 

It now falls to me to point out that the gap at one end is of course too tiny to get anything other than one loco on....which means an extension....and possibly putting the whole thing on legs. Which is somewhat exciting!

I've been playing around with designing the left hand side of the board and have come up with a concept for the rail crossing that I like. Around lunch time I'll get an image or two uploaded.

I did try to ballast the sidings but I think I may have used too much water as it feels wet still after 12 hours. Tonight will be a bit of proof to see if it has dried, but I don't know what to do if it hasn't. I've used fine sand so it will be harder to pull back up if it's not settling.

All in all a positive week and I'm looking forward to the future of this endeavour now!

On 25/02/2019 at 00:36, DavidCBroad said:

I really don't understand why people fiddle with elctrofrog points on DC.

 

Have to point out I did state in the original post that I was using NCS power cab, thought that was 'standard' for DCC. But to be clear, I am not using DC I am on DCC.

I have however figured out the issue. The point was fine and the modifications were fine except one rail which the solder contact was a bit poorly done on my behalf. I've resoldered that rail and voila it works perfectly again even at extremely slow speeds.

Thank you all for your help and comments!