Tortuga

See, if I’d come onto this thread without seeing the pictures of Rob’s latest acquisition and found you all referring to a “British-Thompson-Houston Type 1”, I’d’ve assumed you were talking about vacuum cleaners or aeroplanes or something other than trains. Referring to a ”Class 14” on the other hand means I’d know Rob had purchased a diesel and I’d know what it exactly what it looked like without seeing the photos. I only know some of the pre-TOPS designations of diesel locos, but I can picture what people are referring to if they use the TOPS classification and I suspect I’m not the only one.

I knew someone would say something like that!

Remember to install your rodding before ballasting! (edit: just seen a much earlier post of yours on the sheep thread where you said you were going to do just this; apologies)

I use my phone to browse the forum. For me this banner “ad” that’s appeared is a blank white strip that advertises nothing and prevents me from accessing my notifications and my personal messages.

What join?

That looks an extremely realistic river. It reminds me of the upper reaches of some of the rivers in the Yorkshire Dales for some reason and I’d say you’ve got the crumbling banks and stoney “beaches” down to a t. Good to see you back posting by the way.

Not going that way they’re not! That’s heading up into the forestry plantation! Wait… Sodor, not Talyllyn!

I just showed my wife this picture and asked her where it was; ”Talyllyn” ”Yes, but where?” ”Oh, at the top end, where we cross back over; the forestry track” Instantly recognisable!

Interesting - the motive power on the C&HPR becomes more varied than I’d realised!

I’m guessing you mean the Kitson 0-4-0 saddle tanks, Nos 47000 and 47007? Lovely little locos.

That looks neat. Remind me; is it DC or DCC?

How does your track cope with expansion in the heat? The loft is the intended destination for my own layout and I’m a touch worried by the variation in temperature, remembering the problems I had with layouts in my parent’s loft.

You can’t see the join… are you sure you didn’t rebuild the whole rock face?

The orangey red of the loco really stands out against that rock face. Excellent work!

Spotted this the other day and thought of you lot:

Loving all the old Land Rover pictures! Sadly I’ve not had experience of any Land Rovers other than the LWB Defenders we use at work and I suspect my experience of old VW wiring is getting a touch too off topic. I can relate to the dubious “help” offered by the Haynes Books of Lies though…

Thanks to the football, I spent most of yesterday on Daddy Duty, so didn’t get much done on Alsop, apart from managing to stick down the Templot plan for the first board to its track base. Fortunately I got more time today and quickly took apart what I’d already done. I quickly turned the old track base into a new spine, trimmed the new track base to size and put the whole thing back together. Next, I cut to size and stuck down the cork track bed using a combination of Carr’s chamfered cork strips and cork. From the prototype photographs the ballast appears to be the same level between the “goods loop” and the down line of the loop, so I used one solid piece of cork sheet to cover this area, but I did use chamfered strips to leave a dip in the ballast between the main line and the blind siding. While the glue was drying, I removed the spine and marked up the positions of the half-width cross beams. There will be three on the higher side of the cutting and four on the viewing side of the line (although I messed up and in a hurry, mistakenly measured up and drilled for five - grrrr). I also cut two cutouts for the base plates for the blades of the tandem point, just in case the point operation mechanism does interfere with the central spine as Al suggested earlier in the thread. Thats all for now. I need to fit blocks to the spine so I’m not securing the track base to the spine from above, but from below - just in case I need to remove the spine for any reason in future - and to make the half-width cross beams.

I think that’s just used with old cars in general. Both my VWs ‘mark their territory’, the camper less than the bug admittedly.

I always took a “shed” to be a structure with a wooden framework clad in either wood or corrugated iron, but without permanent foundations. I’d say a hut is a small single roomed building and a cabin (on land) is a more permanent building.

To add to this: Building that house locomotives are referred to as ‘engine sheds’; are we including those? Locomotive depots are referred to as ‘sheds’ do they count for our purposes? Platelayers huts/cabins; are these ‘huts’ (they don’t sell pizza Mr. Wolf!), ‘cabins’ (they’re not on ships) or sheds?

Surely that’s a garage rather than a shed?

Question: when is a shed a shed and when is it a hut?

Now in that second photo, the sharpness of the curve is more apparent (at least to my mind); just like I found with my experiments printing out different Templot plans of my layout. I’m certain I’ve read somewhere that viewing a curve from the outside makes it appear more curved than it is and less curved when seen from the inside. I could be completely wrong though!

Just worked my way through this thread from Page 1 until I found your the scaled track plan in order to remind myself how much room this scene takes up - if I’m right it’s about 6’. It’s amazing how realistic it is for what is essentially such a small space; it looks so much bigger! From a personal point of view, it’s encouraging that the curves, which I believe to be 2’ to 3’ radius, look so much greater. I hope I have the same success with the main curve on my own layout.

I’m sure anyone reading this thread must be fed up with these Templot plans and desperate to see some proper progress, but I’ll put these up, mainly for completeness sake: First off is the full plan with longer platforms, which I liked better than… …the second option, the larger transition curve. However, I wasn’t 100% happy with either,?so I had another go this evening and got this: By lengthening the straight section of the track in question I’ve managed to get platforms a scale 300’ long (albeit including ramps) and the reverse curve on a curve at the Buxton end of the loop, plus there’s enough room for the small underbridge without looking too cramped. So overall I’m happy with this and aside from some timber shoving of the turnout and end of the loop, this is the final version. Most importantly it fits the space I have and I haven’t had to lose the short straight at the Ashbourne end, so I can start hacking about the board I’ve already started and hopefully show some real progress. (Once my replacement 4-bolt chairs and turnout timbers arrive that is…)