Grasslands

I'm curious to know when we will see a finished example of the grey and bordered version (the actual livery it carried under test). The photos above appear to be the first not-quite-finished versions of this livery. It will likely be silvery aluminium grey (as per the non-bordered version already seen) with red borders, if so. 

at the moment this is all quite retrospective, but hopefully useful anyway. I am still mulling how I am going to go about feeding power to it when the structure is completed (including the shed). At the moment I want a 'big red button' that kills the power for when I hear the doorbell or some such, haha.

I have some armoured cable to run between my shed and the main house RCA. It isn't a particularly appealing job for winter, though.

Trying to plan a layout (while not planning out a layout) is an entertaining business, but it makes sense in my head, at least. As soon as I start drawing out plans of my garden railway, then I start hyper-focussing on meeting those plans/expectations rather than just adapting pragmatically as I go.

Brewery Pit was built in a similar manner, but I remember thinking through how to conceal off-scene areas and stuff was quite challenging. I think, to date only, one rather sh**e plan view of my garden railway 'Grass Heart Vale' exists, which is overlayed from a photo I took from my drone.

My original plan in my head was to have a fairly modest garden railway which ran through or in front of the shed and formed an oval around the south half of my garden (mostly avoiding the lawn) and would then run along the side of my house and into my garage for safe storage.

After messing around with the lengths of track I ordered, I decided that I would stick to OO Gauge Code 100 track, as I thought the garden wasn’t really the time to mess about with finescale fidelity. The thicker rail heads and sturdier sleeper joints of Code 100 track will be needed to cope with the new climate change-infused variability we will be getting as the years tick by.

As mentioned previously, I also wanted to dabble in some larger scales so I was considering adding some O gauge track, or maybe some 16mm gauge (SM32) track. My original plan for this was to have half of the larger scale loop as O gauge track and switching to 16mm track for the other half, but I wasn’t really prepared for how different the size and scale of the rail heads are (despite being the same gauge). SM32 track has bigger rail making it fairly impossible to link up without some special fishplates and raising up the O gauge track. I asked on some garden railway groups about the running qualities of O gauge locos and 16mm locos on these different types of track and it seems it all comes down to the flanges! O gauge will run just fine on 16mm/SM32 track, but 16mm stock will likely run aground on O gauge track as the flanges are much deeper.

So that was the O gauge track out of the window! I then pondered on how bothered I was about running standard gauge locomotives on what is made to look like narrow gauge track. Others who do this don’t seem to care and I guess, scale accuracy is somewhat of a secondary concern, as I’m in the garden. You will see massive wheelbarrows and brooms and fences in the background. The fun will be in the running. So that matter is settled. I also dabbled with the thought of running a OO track inside the SM32 track. I guess that is still an option, but I might keep that in my mind until the track loops are complete.

So I was now armed with the number of tracks I wanted (x2 OO gauge lines and x1 16mm line) and had an idea of what type of surface area would be required for that, so I could now take some construction material and measurement notes from the New Junction video and have a crack at making a ‘proof of concept’ section.

I opted for making a straight section against the southern fence, as this is the longest straight and a section I will most certainly need irrespective of how my thoughts on the general layout work out later.

The materials needed were:

• 75mm x 75mm Treated Timber (fence posts) - for vertical supports
• 47mm x 47mm Treated Timber - for horizontal supports
• 75mm x 22mm Treated Timber - for side lengths of the frame
• 18mm thick (pre cut to top width) non-treated ply - for the top surface of the model
• Waterproof PVA - for sealing the ply
• Sledge Hammer - for driving posts into the ground
• Meta posts (75mm x 75mm) - for driving into the ground
• Wood paint
• and some long wood screws (approx 10cm)

It was a fairly simple bit of woodwork, really. I used the full 2.4m length of the side frames (as it saved me from having to make too many woodcuts and kept everything accurate). I then cut the bracing supports to the width I wanted to account for my three lines of track. When combined these pieces essentially act as the support frame and then it is topped with a thick surface panel on which the track will be laid. Because of this, the top surface of the ladder frame must be as straight and square as possible so the top board sits on it properly. To sort this out I fixed the inner frame together with its side and braces upside down, while it was lying on a flat piece of board.

Next, I needed to decide on what height the railway would be from the ground and then cut the support posts accordingly. I must admit, that I didn’t give a massive amount of thought to this, other than having the ability to step over it. One challenge with my garden is that is far from flat!! My garden is pretty funny actually at how graded it is in different places. I was worried about having to work out complicated grading calculations. Still, I think I roughly worked out that if this section was fairly equal to the top of the brick wall, then it ‘should’ be near ground level when I eventually built it closer to the house. So I just went with that for now, as surely the builders of the wall that sits beneath my fence knew what they were doing better than me.

So I cut the fence posts and drove them into the meta post spikes with a mallet, the first of which dived into the soil and clay fairly easily and the second smacked into the root of an old conifer tree. I had a crack at trying to get it out, but it wouldn’t come back, so I just concluded to leave it as is with part of the spike above the surface and I reduced the post accordingly. A bit annoying from a symmetry point of view, but I’ll live.

Then I fixed the ladder-like support frame to the posts and used a spirit level to make sure it was as flat as I could get it and drove some quite long woodscrews through the bracers into the post. This often meant that I had to fix the frame bracings at half the width of a fence post to the end of a frame so I could easily fix two sections together around a fence post (if that makes sense). As time went by, this often became a job of making sure bracings were planned for fitting where fence posts were going in, which I think I have done in advance and also after posts have been driven into the ground (so take your pick!)

At this point, I mostly admired my work and also went through a fun ritual of bringing out my BR maroon warship to do some visual checks and to see how it would look in photos and videos and the like, which was also its job when I built my Quarry Transfer diorama many years ago, which I wrote up for BRM magazine.

So that was day one!

Thanks all for the responses. I'll watch some chuffing videos later!

Is there any likelihood of a non DCC-sound and non-steam generator version of the Earl with big ears appearing or is this the only option we will have to get it? I know Bachmann offer up DCC and non DCC variants of models, but I'm not sure on Hornby's typical approach. 

If this is the only version, it is slightly disappointing as I would have happily pre ordered a DC one. I think I would prefer to wait to see how the steam chuff works in demonstration before taking a punt. 

Hi all, I thought I'd post up some stuff about my current garden railway project which has progressed well across the summer and autumn. I'm covering it in my blog, but it would be nice to get some thoughts about the next steps as I progress. 

So this is the first chronicle of my time designing and making a garden railway, which is now christened 'Grass Heart Vale Railway' (GHVR), I can imagine a 'Grass Heart Vale Express' headboard already and I thought I'd just cover some of the reasoning behind why I've had a crack at this.

I have some really nice OO gauge stock and I now have some rather lengthy consists including: x2 APTs and the western-modified Midland Pullman. All of these I love, but none of my future plans for a model railway build could realistically accommodate for running these. They are too long and I’d need to commit too much house real estate to the effort. So my options were simple; I either don’t buy them (or sell the ones I have); or I commit to designing something that can accommodate them to run. And so, I took the latter route and turned to my garden…

I’ve never really thought a garden railway was that viable of an option in OO gauge, as I thought it risked damage to the locos a bit too much. My youth growing up with visits to Don Jones’ 'Miniature New Street' in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands are very fond memories of mine, though. I used to love looking at the big coal power station miniature (not something easily made indoors) and watching the 'peaks' running around the various patios and along the ponds in Don's surprisingly large back garden. A lot of the stock did look damaged and tired in my later teens, though, which I guess is the risk of running at ground level and in foot swinging distance. Don’s railway also did see a lot of running and visitors of all ages, which no doubt added to some of its rougher edges. So generally, ground-level garden 'railwaying', was not part of my plan.

I then came across an alternative build method in the ‘trestle’ format of a garden model railway where the entire affair is raised off the ground, around what looks like a ladder frame. Now, this wasn’t far off some of the other options I’d considered for a loop run indoors, which included a fairly minimal scenery loop idea for my garage.

I then started considering a nice loop running through my shed that crossed half the garden as a good start, maybe crossing a pond with a nice railway bridge, possibly terminating in the security of my garage?

This YouTube video by New Junction where Richard spent his covid lockdown making an O gauge garden railway (with the gusto many of us manifested in those strange covid times), was a massive inspiration to this project, as I thought that the design method seemed sound and the build didn’t seem that challenging to tackle. I thought perhaps with a bit less COVID gusto, I could build on/improve a bit on the design concept too.

There were a few basic principles that have come out of these initial thoughts:

• Keep it simple - no complicated track work, no elaborate plans that will take an age to design, this is first and foremost a ‘play with trains track’
• Minimal risk of damage to stock - no overhanging bushes, no risk of running trains off the raised platform into the floor, as safe as a design I can make.
• A temporary (permanent) fixture - a nice contradiction, so I mean this is built to the spec of how long I might live in this house and is meant to be of a temporary design, so I have built it with somewhere between 3-7 years of play potential. Thus, no concrete and no absolute permanency.
• The garden still needs to be usable as a garden - although the garden railway will be a very obvious feature, I don’t want to lose the use of the garden in the process. This includes mowing the lawn, putting out the washing and all that type of normal garden jazz.

Although my thoughts initially focussed on perhaps a double line of OO gauge track, I then started wondering about adding a line of a larger gauge I've never worked in before (perhaps as a taster for something in the future), so I thought maybe a loop of O gauge would also provide some fun opportunities too?

I ordered a few sections of different PECO track types to see how they would look and might work outside.

I also ordered some decking samples as I wondered if I could work out a suitable width of recycled plastic decking to use as the main running surface, but I decided against this in the end as I thought creating curves with it would be a headache and I wasn't sure what would happen to it under heat exposure for long hot summers.

Keeping to principle 1, I didn’t want to spend too much time designing and planning out the garden railway (lining up some track on a bit of decking was enough for me), so I thought the sensible first step was to build a section as a ‘proof of concept’ to see how the build would work and get an idea of how much this will cost and how long it will take.

I’ll cover all of this next time, but for now, I’ll drop somewhat of a spoiler of how far I’ve got with the build by the end of Autumn 2023 and I intend to post some insights into how things progressed in future posts.

I'm looking forward to this one. I was quietly hoping someone would get to making an RTR one eventually. I also have a rather lengthy OO garden railway nearing its final construction stage to haul it over, so happy days!

21 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

The Leader seemed to have been tested with whatever coaching stock was to hand at the time. Looking through Kevin Robertson's 1988 volume, I see SECR 'birdcage' trio sets, SECR 'Continental', Maunsell & Bulleid corridor stock, an LMS 50' brake with ( I think ) SECR non-corridor stock, LSWR 'Ironclad' stock .... take yer pick !

 

Sorry, I forgot to mention the LBSCR Pull & Push set !

 

I have very much enjoyed googling all of the above coaching stock, a rather nice variety of options. Thanks for sharing. 

@Amaziii that is very kind of you to say, thank you very much.

I'm happy to report that my model is also running rather well too.

I noticed under trial 36001 pulled a variety of coaching stock that I am unlikely to be able to identify without some support, can anyone help here? Is any of it available in model form? I know it was frequently coupled up with the LNER Dynamometer Car, but I would love to attempt a relatively accurate formation for some of my model's running sessions.

Hi all, based on my recent post about Heljan Manning Wardle batch variations, I have written up this blog on my findings thus far. Hopefully, it will be useful to those hunting the sales market for different versions. 

As an aside, I also have some stuff about my OO9 L&B project on the blog too. It's a slightly more fantastical version of @Blobrick's plans. I'm leaning towards setting up a topic here for it, but I'll give it a bit more of a mull (typing time vs. modelling time and all that). It would probably help if I knew what I was calling the layout first anyway.

https://grasslandsmodels.wordpress.com/2023/05/04/Heljan-lynton-barnstaple-manning-wardle-oo9-locos-version-woes-and-clarifications/

1 hour ago, Blobrick said:

Not to be out done by the lovely Heljan models, here's my take on the L&B motive power dept.

I like your 'what if' scenario in your other thread. This model looks great on the L&B stock. 

19 minutes ago, Pre Grouping fan said:

 

Without seeing them side by side I wouldn't be able to tell for definite.

 

To me it sounds like your 99501 model is second hand and has been modified by it's previous owner to remove the springs, might also explain the folded up ploughs.

Here are some photos of Yeo alongside Exe and Taw. I'm pretty sure it is a batch 1 version (as I thought my other two are batch 2).

Quick observations of the differences with Yeo (assuming Batch 1):

• Lamps are black (instead of red)
• Springs on pony wheels and pony wheel harness is different
• Brighter shade of green
• Bordering of green areas is much less obvious and not orange
• Underframe is less of a Red brown
• Weak brass colouring to dome, pipes and chimney top (not copper as per batch 2)
• Ploughs folded differently
• Chassis' block is black (brown in batch 2)
• Black whistle and pipes near cab
• Weak brass backing to the maker's plate
• Sand pipes coloured brass (on batch 2 they are brown)

My current suspicion is that I've bought a batch 1 Yeo (9950) version in a batch 2 (99501) box (or I have all this the wrong way around and it is actually batch 2)

Is anyone able to help me identify what Heljan product code a 2nd batch L&B livery Yeo has and whether it is different to a 1st batch product code?

I, perhaps naively, assumed that the code 99501 would signify the 2nd batch (assuming the original batch was 9950), but I picked up a 99501 this week and it is definitely a first batch one without the pony wheels springs.

Interestingly, there are a lot of colour and livery differences with this one compared to my 2nd batch L&B ones (the black lamps on the 1st batch one being the most obvious difference). The ploughs are also folded up weirdly. Is it a matter of getting pictures of one out of the box to check it has red lamps?

On 21/10/2022 at 22:10, zoomer1979 said:

Well friends, despite ordering in good faith in February 2020 and filling in the form as presented and selecting the later version (different to my Dad's), I was told today that due to the selection not being picked up, my order was not processed. After Keith gave me a tracking number that was my Dad's model, he confirmed there are no models left and I was offered a refund or to wait for the next batch.

 

I do want the model still, but who knows when it will come.

 

Neil.

Greetings RMwebbers!

It's seems I have fallen victim to the same issue as @zoomer1979with my early BR Black order with sound. My order seems to have disappeared off the system in the web switch due to some livery related tick box issue. Double frustrating that I queried delivery in early September (when stock would have still been available) but go no response, and my follow up in November has led to this news. I am still awaiting a response about what this means for delivery of my model, but I started with 'yes, I still want it' and the more I have thought about it, and considering that I had an email about the webswitch back in August regarding Fell orders which said 'don't worry, everything is fine', but annoyingly, it clearly wasn't. 

Rather than make this too much of a miserable 'this isn't good enough' post (which it isn't, in fairness, for a model I paid £250 for, about a year ago), I'm interested in how, as modellers, our perceptions change when we are given new information about a prototype.

I reckon I would have been quite happy with the Fell when it arrived, thinking it looked just like it did in photos I've seen of the prototype, but having read in reviews about the decision to have two different styles of body side to cover the life span of the Fell and then show those respective sides (in their appropriate livery) in marketing images for the model, I must admit I frowned while reading it and felt like it was cheating, to be honest. I understand why such a decision would be made, but I don't remember that being mentioned in the original specification. Admiting that may have been a wiser move, but would obviously hurt sales.

It also made me start to yearn for a model that represents accurately what I now know the prototype (and therein this model) 'should' look like. Which is funny, as I wouldn't have even cared or known if it weren't for those reviews that mentioned the body side variation. 

Now looking at the Judith Edge Model kit kindly posted by @Michael Edge, I am thinking 'yes... that's what I want', so I must admit I am tempted to abandon this affair and add that lovely Judith Edge model to my inventory of brass locos (aka my pile of shame). I guess there is a chance I might be able to build it before I get my RTR one too.

I'm building an 88DS from a judith edge kit and my first reaction to the Hornby images were a bit underwhelming with the look of that full-frame chassis block. It doesn't do a lot for the look of the prototype. Is it a final chassis design? 

that sentinel has a lovely finish! I am trying to build a 4mm one at the moment. 

3 hours ago, PenrithBeacon said:

The cost of the kit has risen substantially but there is no mention of the minimum size of the model required. Will it fit into a Ford Transit or does it need something larger?

Cheers

Hi David

The biggest issue (literally) will be the Lipo single cell battery. Mine is laid out across the trailer of the pickup truck. 
 

Something like the NI170 NiMH battery might be easier to squeeze into a transit.

12 hours ago, stovepipe said:

OK, so what do people think of the visibility of the communicating doors on Dapol's class 29?

 

As far as I was aware these were panelled over during conversion, and yes the weld lines did become steadily more visible as withdrawal approached, but surely not when first converted? (Rails photo) It's almost like they have been inspired by Hornby! 

 

 

I was curious and had a look through a few photos of these last night. It does seem that the recesses on the gang doors are more prominent on the two/tone green versions (most shots including a dusting of dirt). Conversely, the doors are very smoothly welded on most BR Blue versions. 

Here are some more BR Blue and yellow comparisons for you (doubling as a bit of NBL porn).

And a Lego robot for no reason. 

2 hours ago, GordonC said:

 

Is the yellow correct on D6129 there where there's a horizontal step between the windscreen yellow coming down and the yellow front? without looking at reference pictures, it looks odd and the style on D6318 looks more what I would have expected

I would agree with Phil for D6129 and it looks like the other Dapol BR Blue one that is imminent has a different iteration of the yellow (I think the 'yet to be released' one has yellow ends that go further up the cab).

Any feedback on my headcode paper query? Was it missing in mine or does the model simply not come with any optional headcodes?

6 hours ago, Daddyman said:

How do the colours on these look in the flesh (the upper green on the two-tone, and the rail blue)? I only ask because of course Dapol have "form" with poor colour choices, and the upper green looks odd in the pre-production photos. 

Funny you mention that... I did do an NBL line up last night. Kernow win for me with that nice satin finish... the Dapol blue of the 29 is a bit flat or matt, but it is much closer to correct than the seaweed colour of the first Class 22. I'll take some more tonight 

My BR Blue 29 arrived today and I am very happy with it. I'm yet to give it a run, but I will do that tomorrow.

I don't see any changeable headcodes in the box, though. Does the model not come with any? 

2 minutes ago, PaulRhB said:

Personally I think they could have relatively cheaply done a more adventurous body shell for the chassis keeping the risk low. Steampunk to me is integrating the exposed and exaggerated mechanism in the design not just gluing it on the outside. 

I might have bought a Gilliamesque design as a bit of fun but this falls a bit flat for me. Ironically the clockwork O gauge feels more Steampunk in its caricature than these  
There are great steampunk designs for trains all over the web that could have been done as a slip on bodyshell and the Rocket coaches or old US streamliners are more in style too. 
These all look more steampunk to me. 
At the very least something based on the Darjeeling 0-4-0

 

or more adventurously

 

 

Indeed, some inspiration from these types of design could be amazing, but I guess all things have to start somewhere.

Off topic, but there is a train in Final Fantasy XV that is clearly based on the loco that is 3rd down in your pictures, by the way. 

I think the 3D printed figures look great!!

If such a range is successful we could see some really interesting fantasy locos in the future!