Solo

I get the impression Accurascale (and Heljan) are now being a little more conservative (ie realistic) with delivery dates due to over-optimism on almost every new model to date. These things take time to get right, and distance doesn't help. Dapol doesn't seem to have caught on to this yet: N gauge 87s are slated for Q1 2024, but no decorated samples yet – so that's unlikely. I'd be very surprised to see the '66' next year.

You could always just buy the SLW sound bundle for your '25'. It adds cost, I know, but SLW sound locos are sublime. The clarity and playability of the file/speaker setup are streets ahead of anything else on the market, so even if your other locos aren't sound-fitted, you'd have a lot of fun. I've had two sound-fitted '24s' for some years, and they've never missed a beat.

My latest little O gauge experiment (and very much still a work in progress) measures only 90cm ✕ 22.5cm on an old shelf I found; it's a through line with exchange siding and movable fiddle sticks on each end. 29.4cm sounds luxurious by comparison. I think working in small spaces is all about asking what you can leave out (ie pretty much everything) and still have a viable scene. This also keeps the cost down. Granted, a 'Deltic' would look ridiculous in something like this, but an 08 plus some wagons with good sound and a bit of grot is a very different story.

Fantastic news – one of vital the missing links. Looks like it will be to the same standard as the recent 26/27, so promises to be an excellent model.

That's incredible – I was wondering where they'd got to, as I too had my eye on one. Congratulations!

I really hope so; I bought quite a bit of their ballast and 'road stone' a few years back, as it's far more suitable for model railway ballast than the usual products. But my supply is dwindling!

Has anyone got their '25' yet?

Hattons have D5389 for £398 at the moment and had an unnumbered green with FYE for the same price a few months back. I'm very tempted by the unnumbered blue one for £442, but my finances are taking a bit of a pummelling with other things right now...

It's the 'mucky corner' that concerns me most about this dream...

There is indeed a height difference between the two – about 0.7mm if I remember correctly. So you'll have to shim up the SMP track if connecting to PECO. I've used both and prefer the appearance of SMP (assuming it hasn't changed in the last few years). The sleeper grain is less pronounced, and the thinner sleepers make for easier ballasting – particularly for a branch-line look, where you'll be using very fine ballast. That said, the PECO stuff is still a great product, is a bit more robust and is readily available from model shops.

I'd echo the cautionary notes on Copydex above. One of the advantages of PVA is that you get a bit of working time for fine adjustments as it dries. With the latex-based Copydex, if you need to reposition anything after even a few minutes, you'll end up with a horrible stringy mess. I've seen myself having to lift entire track sections for this reason. There's no sound-deadening advantage with Copydex (at least not if you're ballasting), so I'd stick to a high-tack PVA – which will also be cheaper.

Thanks – yeah, thinking too big (or even medium-sized) can often lead to discouragement when those plans either take forever to realise or start to go wrong. Small layouts always seem more authentic to me; in the 'big' world, you're generally only looking at a small slice of railway real estate at any one time and watching a train pass through or potter. The other advantage, of course, is being able to finish a project and move on to one of the other dozen or so settings that I'd love to model.

The halt platform was done on a whim. I had a spare bit of very thin ply (0.8mm, I think) and an offcut of one of the 10mm polystyrene tiles; so as I wanted an excuse for some trains to stop while traversing the diorama, I got to work with a scalpel and glue. I've just scored a piece of the thin ply vertically to represent individual planks of wood along the platform face; when weathered, I think this passes muster.

I often take panoramic photos of just the sky when I'm out and about, with modelling in mind. A while ago, I had a few of these printed onto 1mm foamex; this is the only thickness I've been able to successfully bend around tight radii. I want this little scene to have a very minimalist appearance, so I chose one of my sky pieces with scant cloud detail and cut it to shape. I then shaded on the outline of distant hills using the Mig 'oilbrusher' paint pens that I normally use for weathering. I want the setting to be somewhat flexible but ostensibly in the Borders area of northern England. I've been rather taken with pictures and stories of the old Border Counties Railway recently and am imagining that this soldiered on – for freight, at least – into the 1970s and early '80s.

I bought a large sheet of 5mm foamboard from Hobbycraft and glued this to the back support; this will support the backscene, which I want to be quite high to give a sense of space and a small railway in a large landscape. I like ballasting, but most model railway products sold as ballast are far too coarse, especially for branch lines. I'm using a mix of Attwood Aggregates 'road stone' and a little Woodland Scenics 'fine' ballast here; at the same time, I'm using Tamiya pigments to weather the sleepers in an attempt to disguise the hideous 'wood grain' that track manufacturers seem to think we all want. You simply wouldn't see this from a scale 100ft away, and the fact that it is depicted using raised ridges is all the more grating. I'll aim to use actual wooden sleepers for future projects. I ballasted half of the scene in the morning and the other half in the evening – one of the joys of making very small layouts! I wasn't originally going to bother with lighting for this project – it being very much a test piece – but I'm enjoying its progress, and having found some spare bits of angle in my junk box, I cut these to shape and attached them to the ends. The fascia strip is a spare piece of 3mm foamex; I'll remove the green protective film when I'm ready to paint it.

The 55cm 'Mosslandas' are ideal for cassettes in this scale, and each will comfortably hold two tracks.

Wiring for the layout is very simple: I've soldered two wires to a copperclad sleeper at each end of the track, which in turn I've soldered to the rails. This will be DCC, mainly for sound and as I don't possess a DC controller. I've soldered fishplates onto the end of the rails, which will slot into the shorter 'Mosslandas' that I'm using as cassettes.

A few weeks ago, I posted in someone else's topic about a little layout I was building using one of IKEA's 'Mosslanda' shelves. I'm a big fan of anything IKEA and always find something that whispers "build a model railway on me!" while on 'the walk' through its maze of homewares. These little shelves have always seemed ideal, with their raised rear panel perfect for supporting the backscene of a diorama. In addition, all the IKEA products are lighter, more rigid and way cheaper than the laser-cut baseboards that seem to have become all the rage. I've always wanted to try EM; the narrow gauge of OO just doesn't do it for me, especially with the beautifully detailed and otherwise accurate models that we have nowadays. But by way of starting simply, my little snapshot will be just a single stretch of track running through a slice of landscape. This is my favourite type of railway photo to look at, and I continually go back to the wonderful 'Beaten Track' series of books to lose myself in those back-of-beyond branches and freight lines pictured there. I cut one of the longer 115cm (£10) shelves down to 80cm, which left me with a spare section to use as a cassette. I've added a spare bit of stripwood to the front for a little more depth and built up the track bed on 10mm extruded polystyrene flooring tiles. I've used DAS clay to build up the section at the front (a revelation – I'll never use newspapaer balls and plaster cloth again) and left a narrow channel at the back for wiring. The track is one length of the EMGS flexitrack, with webbing removed and cosmetic fishplates added at scale 60ft lengths. The dimensions are 80cm x 13cm. My rule is that it has to be able to live in a box and be lifted easily with one hand.

I think your speaker will sound much better than an EM1. EM1s, in my experience, have a decent amount of bass but are generally very 'muddy' and also tend to vibrate a lot, which can set up unwanted resonance (and distortion) through the body shell. I've always found those Rail Exclusive dual speakers to be excellent.

That is rather exquisite and something I've never seen before. I think it's all the glass on the front end giving that ornate, art-deco look. I've often thought that about the Derby Lightweight DMUs; their cabs are unique in the genre with the large glass area, and I've often thought the single-car version done to modern standards would make a great model in both 4 and 7mm scale.

Didn't DCC Concepts change the spec of the rail on their current flexitrack so that it is no longer stainless steel? I thought the latest stuff was made from nickel silver, and I think the link at the top of this page refers to that. I only mention it because (assuming it's now easier to solder to) the track is very nice indeed. The sleepers are also thinner than Peco, which makes it easier to ballast

This thread, yes, but Accurascale said way back at the start of the year that they'd be announcing an O gauge loco later in the year. What I really meant was by all means make an announcement an event, but in this case maybe just say this week that you'll be announcing the model at this weekend's show. I know Accurascale entered the 7mm market a while back – I have a couple of the Hoppers, and they're great. But this is obviously your first loco.

On a slightly different note: could I appeal to Accurascale not to 'announce' announcements so far in advance in the future? This one has been going on for months and has generated much hype and speculation. I'm sure whatever it is will be lovely, and it's great to see another entrant into O gauge; but many people will also be disappointed on Saturday. I know, it shouldn't be a big deal, but we modellers are like that: we get very emotional when it comes to new releases. We also dare to dream, and for the last six months every O gauge modeller has been thinking 'maybe, just maybe, it'll be the one that I want...'. Knowing this, I think the strategy is a little cruel, and I don't see who benefits. It's akin to telling a class of children: "three of you are going to get a chocolate bar at the end of term, but we won't tell you who until two days before." For the intervening months, every kid in the class is convinced it could be them. Far better to do it the way Bachmann now does (and SLW did with the original 24s) and simply announce things when they're almost ready. That way just seems a lot more dignified. This is not a dig at Accurascale as a manufacturer; I'm truly astounded at the breadth and quality of models brought to the market over the last year or two and applaud them for that. But as I remember it, the Class 37, 55, 92, etc, were simply announced as projects, along with an estimated timescale and therefore avoided the hype, frothing and wish-listing that this one has generated. Roll on Saturday...

The new loco surely has to be something that survives in preservation; Accurascale will want to go all-out on authentic sound in the larger scale, which (as far as I know) rules out a Class 22, as none survived the cutter's torch. Unless an identical engine lives on in something else?

Ah shucks, I have 7552 on order as well, and its little micro-layout is wired and ready to go. With the 24/1s well into next year, that leaves me with something of a dearth of motive power (I'm relying on SLW for all my 4mm stuff). Guess I'll just have to crack on with a bit of O gauge wagon weathering...