PeterStiles

Gasworks Corner. Here's a confession. I love the Liddle End buildings. Lora liked them too - she always thought that resin buildings have a heft that makes you think of Quality (she watched Snatch enough times to understand Boris' maxim "Weight is quality"). Its possible that there have been some Liddle End buildings offered on eBay in the past year that I've not bid on but not many, So I realised I had the whole Gasworks set and also a Gasometer (I always call them that as that's what my Mum & Dad called them, no matter how silly the name sounds). The gasometer is actually an OO-scale one, but with n-scale ladders and fencing added. I bought it for the Coffee Table layouts, the idea being originally that I could use it to hold our water-jug, however one look at the water-jug sitting six inches up in mid-air brought to mind how clumsy I am and I admitted defeat and put it back on the table; but it did mean I had a nice large gasometer ready for a gasworks. Some "Gaugemaster" factory walling around it and we're in business! No buildings are being fixed down as yet, even the roundhouse is removable. I want to leave myself the option of lighting the houses. Not sure how now that I've pinned the bottom on the base, but my wife was very fond of lights in buildings. I'll have to read up to see if there is a proper way to arrange the various gasworkage items. YES I know that there should be a siding leading to the gasworks, but as we're pretending that this isn't just a loop of track on a table we can pretend that there's a siding out of sight behind there somewhere... I considered adding a siding at the rear of the layout, but I thought that would dig into the scenic areas too much, and as this is designed to play with Passenger Trains rather than Goods Trains I settled for the layout as shown. I want this layout to be (a) possible to 'complete' (b) be movable by a man with a frequently-bad back, so limiting the size is quite important. Lora bought into my railway modelling hobby, it was something she felt she could contribute to and that the end result was something *nice* to look at, far removed from her opinion of Games Workshop's models. Lora was always interested in how the buildings were arranged on a layout and was she enjoyed trawling eBay for buildings, people and railway detritus that would look nice on the railways. Our honeymoon included a trip on the RH&D, so she knew that I was a "fan" of railways, she was just finally pleased when I got down to building some. Lockdown was actually good for us, I could work from home and so we could actually spend more time together doing stuff together and her interest in the railway modelling helped make these last years a bonding experience. I hear such horror stories of people's relationships breaking down over the lockdowns, whereas for us the time together brought us closer.

First I tried out various pieces of scenery to see what would work well. Should I attempt to hide the back-straights behind a retaining wall or row-of low-relief houses... My first pack of Concrete Fencing on the corner there. I don't have room for much in the way of platforms, which could stress some people out, as the platforms and station building really should be positioned where the controllers are. Maybe if this finds a permanent position at some stage I'll extend the board. For now its a case of some Peco platform-edging, some 4mm stone-embossed plasticard and paint, in the run-round loop. It's quite a thin platform but I'm sure the passengers won't complain that loudly. Obviously an overbridge for the passengers would be nonsensical so I've added subway entrances to each end of the platform. I decide that I can actually fully-scenic one of the corners without causing me problems. There we go, a road and some roadside hedging, and some of the concrete fencing laid. The road edging is a <1mm strip cut from the same embossed plasticard I used for the platforms, then a little filler (using WS' Foam Putty) before painting brown and applying some grassage (and some foliage on the other side). I'm going to have to find a way to make the white lines better next time I do a road.

As I've done all the track wiring, I can complete the base board construction I pin more 3.6mm ply to the underside. Its another 6' long piece but split into three pieces, two short ones at each end and then third one turned 90 degrees to give me a small shelf to fit the controllers on. It just fits the three controllers (two power, one for turntable). Small holes in the shelf allow me to feed the power-cables to the controllers from beneath. At this point I'm running FS and a garter-blue Union of South Africa. As my wife hailed from that vicinity she had a strong affection for blue trains, and having one named UoSA quickly put it on the top of the list. It's possible I've got multiple models of UoSA in three gauges... Wiring for the turntable: The Kato turntable comes with its own controller that gives you control over the direction of the table as it turns (as you would expect) and perfectly stops only when rails are aligned. It also routes power to the table rails and has a back-off-forwards switch to control the polarity. You get some insulating unitrack connectors with it, so that you can arrange the wiring however you want; I went for the simple way of isolating the track that leads to the rest of the layout after 6". I then feed both the inner circuit and the turntable from the same power controller. This means I have to ensure I've matched polarity between the turntable and the rest of the layout to actually run a train off it successfully. Because I know its easy to get confused I've added a pairs of LEDs, one pair fed from the turntable and one from the main circuit, if they both light up the same colour then I've matched polarity, if not I need to swap the polarity of the turntable. I'm sure after operating this for a couple of years I won't need to look at the LEDs, but then with the march of time I just might need to look at them more often.

Laying the track on the board, at this point I know my wife would have looked at the wires and she'd give me a look and I'd promise they'd be hidden... So time to cut some holes in the board and add some bracing and get the wiring underneath. The gaffer tape (and clampage) is holding the wood whilst the glue sets - I don't consider Gaffer Taoe as being "load bearing" The turntable is now embedded and all wiring out of site. I can feel the warm glow the lack of visible wiring would have impressed in my wife. Check trains can navigate the curves easily. If Queen Elizabeth can get round with a set of Mk 1s then we should be able to manage anything I wish to run round. The controllers are sitting on a wicker-box at the side of the layout at this point; that's not a long-term plan...

Sheet of ply from B&Q. 25mm x 25mm timber along sides and ends, pinned and glued. 12mm holes drilled at 4" spacing along one edge of the 25mm, this is more of a guess than a real idea of where I'll need acces for wires :) From behind: There are going to be more 25mm x 25mm across to give more support to the board. Supported by trestles I got from Homebase (with added green-felt feet so that they can't scratch the floor) Place a loop of track on and see if its going to work or not. At this stage I worked out that I could mix the curvature around the ends to get a widest 180 degrees as possible. you could all them transition curves if you felt posh.

Lora's Park Why This does not pretend to be a perfect Model Railway. It doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a layout with which to Play Trains, but more importantly this is a bereavement layout, its main purpose is to give me purpose, give me something constructive to do instead of spending my time wailing at the injustice of the world. My wife fully supported my Railway Hobby and was a great one for ideas and suggestions, her pride was the Whomping Willow she constructed to go with the Hogwarts end of our Lockdown Layout. As her health deteriorated our time for modelling was reduced, but with some Kato Unitrack and a variety of rolling stock we could set out small temporary layouts on our coffee table. We managed to visit GETS in 2022, I was the man pushing a wheelchair, she was the one in a wheelchair casting critical baseboard-level eyes over the layouts – she came out of the exhibition distressed at the lack of people in the coaches and with a distaste for unlit coaches. So, over the last couple of years our coffee table was home to SR, LNER, LMS, BR and even one GWR scene – she particularly enjoyed the Kato RhB trains and I built a number of (lit) Swiss buildings to grace the table during winter months, the fact that the coffee table has a Glass Top means that it looks absolutely beautiful running a train around in the dark winter months – wishing ourselves inside the Glacier Express as it pootled round. My wife’s pet hate was cables- anytime I could hide away the wires she was so much happier! When she passed away I started work on this layout, to replace the temporary track on the coffee table – having something to keep myself busy, something that I know she would have loved to watch was a very important thing. Yes, I still spend a fair time crying everyday, but what keeps me going is adding more and more so as to make this the bestest layout I’ve done to date. The station is named “Lora’s Park” in her honour, although I don’t have station buildings, we do have some platformage. I said that this is for playing trains, to be accurate it’s for running steam-driven passenger trains round in circles, utilising the turntable to swap locomotives over and around. Nominally I set one train running around the outside loop whilst I run a succession of trains around the inside loop, swapping locomotives over at the drop of a hat. Area The layout is nominally Southern Railway but I can also concoct an LNER set of rolling stock for variety, and a multi-region BR Steam pack too if I so desire. The intention is to keep the scenery and trimmings to suit the 1920s/1930s. Being SR we have a lot of concrete fencing and buildings and luckily the Kato roundhouse is clearly of concrete construction! Construction The layout is 2’ by 6’ – the size that B&Q sell sheets of 3.6mm ply. Kato turnouts having built-in motors, it didn’t need to be deep, so I used 25mm x 25mm bracing and added a second piece of ply to the bottom to give it monocoque-style strength. It sits on two wooden trestles (Homebase this time) and part of the underside ply sticks out 5” to give a shelf for the controllers – standard Kato controllers and switches. I stuck a 5mm deep strip of neoprene along one short edge, so I can pick the layout up and stand it against the wall when hot in use. This means I must endeavour to keep the layout light in weight so as not to budger my back up any more than it is already. Caveat This is not designed to offer prototypical operation. I don't hunt rivets.

Decided that I wasn't going to lose much more of my life painting, so sprayed all over with black then a "highlight" spray with dark-red I've got some "coal" to add into the hopper. I pity any poor n-scale person who has to climb that ladder and then stand on the platform, I'd not trust those railings...

He's not dead, he's just pining for the fiords...

I'm embarrassed to put this here really. I've bodged a hand rail - plastic rodding, brass rodding and super glue. Too much super glue, in fact. I'm not going to be able to fix the railing astride the ladder, I'll ruin it trying to glue the 4mm long posts to it, so obviously my maintenance guys are Really Hard and don't need no stinkin' hand-rail. I used a broken piece of girdering to help attach the two halves of the ladder together. And, erm, let's not talk about the opening at the bottom of the conveyor being fitted 90 degrees out - I was having a bad day, ok... I'll find a reason why... I used Revelle plastic cement because I like the metal tube delivery mechanism, but even delivering the glue one drop at a time was too much for some of the smaller pieces of plastic - many of the girders are warped :( it'll look better when it's painted and planted, I'm sure. 'N' scale... I love it but I often think it doesn't love me. P[

+5 points for pterry reference few people will get :)

.. i wrote a really long and complicate reply and it was no was as funny as your simple counter.

given the fact we're all going to own the Two Princes class 47s, I feel that someone should make an effort and give us proper coaches for them to argue over.

Yes, it is the 2mm Scale version I'm crying over. I can see how it'd be a lot more manageable in 4mm... Maybe it's time to go Senior Scale, if only I had the room.

Has anyone actually managed to build this? I'm not inexperienced in building plastic kits, and I'd probably say I've put together hundreds of plastic kits of various scales and quality throughout the years. But this is the first time a kit has made me cry. All but three of the handrail posts broke either as I cut them ever so carefully from the spru, or as I tried to run the handrail wire through them. The girders that connect the ladder to the main structure are similarly fragile, which brings me into the ladder itself... Two pieces of plastic n-scale ladder which you are supposed to glue together end to end... Is this kit actually impossible or should I just consider myself useless and totally incompetent in a field in which I thought I was actually fairly skilled? I'm not interested in hearing about where I can obtain metal ladders or extra girderage, I'm just interested to hear if anyone has built one as per instructions...

Four.

It's been shown that many of if the older designs of controllers put out a Spike when starting that can dramatically go over 12v, potentially this was on purpose to help rough motors get going in the first place. I'll join the others in recommending the alternative thread listed above and repeat the reminder that many Resistance Mat controllers of that age used asbestos - so don't poke around inside a 50 year old controller...

Looks a lot like a triang big big train to me, what's the problem?

How many times?? Railroad Plus is a Railroad model, there are no technical differences. The _difference_ is that "Plus" get a full paint job, not just the three colours max normal Railroad get.

Actually, As Milton Keynes has a grid of dual-carriageways looping round it, each one connected via a circular chicane(*) to the next you could plan out a pretty fun race circuit on it... And yes, we had the same "British GP to be held here" April first joke in the local paper(**) a few years back. (*) I gather some people call them roundabouts (**) A concert that appears to have disappeared of late for some reason (***) (***) I would have expected to see an article on the internet explaining why..

From what I read, all "plus" means is they paint it in more colours, normal Railroad products having a limit of, I think I read, three colours...

Tch, He came down the hill on (in) his Triumph... The youth of today, eh?

Hornby's website's dealings with Card Expiry are excreble. My card expired last March, and, upon checking the website on how to update details on my pre-orders I was unpleasantly surprised to find it was not possible. On calling Customer Support they said each (pre-)order will need to be dealt with as and when they try the old card and it is declined; they have no way of updating orders, and so every few weeks I've had a "we can't dispatch your order because your card has been declined" email. Luckily they've made it easy to deal with the issue so you don't have to keep ringing customer services up, but it is still a right royal... Every Single One of my

If I got annoyed every time something went down in price after I'd bought one I'd be a bitter old man... Oh, hold on, I am a bitter old man.

I had a try at this with powering a track through a DCC decoder - on a small layout (inglenook) - it didn't work for me. Because you've got The Track (and its imperfections) between you and the motor, rather than direct wires, you add a point of failure that the technology wasn't really designed to cater for - you can't have a "stay alive" for instance, so you can't deal with imperfections in your track laying/cleaning capabilities. it was a pity because I read about how it was the best way to set up Zero-1 modules!