TEAMYAKIMA

Ok .... here's the other interior It's not designed to be viewed from this angle ...... that's why the figure painting looks poor..... And from the outside ......

Ok .... it's about 4pm and time to review progress ..... Two interiors have been made, lighted and fitted ............ Here's # 1 And from the outside ............ Getting good photos of #2 has proved difficult ... Will try again and report back!

I guess what I'm saying is that many visitors to a show will like 'average' layouts based on their favourite prototype/region/era rather than 'good' layouts based on something they like/know very little. I remember one old club member who liked anything GWR no matter how average it was and ignored anything else no matter how good. Therefore, something as 'left-field' as a Chinese layout needs to be entertaining in order to hold the attention of the 'average' show attendee...... the trick will be to be entertaining and 'scale' at the same time.... ie no 'giraffe cars' or wedding groups or blazing buildings with fire engines attending. Time will tell if I can get the 'right balance'. Have set a target of two more completed interiors by end of business tomorrow.... will report back on how close I get to achieving that.

OK........ the full answer is YES, but it's slightly more complicated than that! I start with the premise that 99% of those visiting a model railway show know nothing of Chinese railways ... and care even less! So to attract and keep their interest the layout must be 'interesting' and must have 'gimmicks'. So as a (very) serious modeller I want very serious 'stuff' , but to attract the general public the layout must have 'gimmicks'. And so one 'gimmick' will be lighted interiors in which over a period of time the lights will 'randomly' go on and off. So visitors will be encouraged to look out for the woman ironing or the woman reading a book on the sofa or whatever ...each scene will be lit for a period and then go out and another will be lit via some electronic gizmo made by one of my fellow club members. The next scene may be a mother holding her young son and looking out of the window .... keep watching!

The quick answer is YES

It's very enjoyable making these interiors . There are five faces on the three blocks ..... maybe one or two per face ........enjoyable, but time consuming ! Am working on #2 ... watch this space!

Here's a better photo of the current state of play ... might add a Preiser chair or two when Gaugemaster send them through And here it is fitted to the building with lights on .... they need adjusting, but you get the idea......

Some of the hundreds of rooms in these tenements will be lit .... and a very few will have interiors .... have been working on one this morning

I have dinner guests coming tomorrow night and so have mocked up the l/h end of the scenic section to give them something to look at. The white foamboard represents the backscene hiding the curves to the fiddle yard. The buildings at the back are circa 1950 ...... very dirty and run down in this dirty industrial city. The buildings at the front are circa 1985 ... much cleaner. At the back of the layout, the station for the industrial steelworks system is off to the right on boards 2 and 3 and so you might be able (just) to see that the tenements nearest the station have shops/restaurants on the ground floor whilst the one furthest from the station (building #1) has apartments on the ground floor. Building # 1 is about 40% finished, building # 2 is 75% finished and building # 3 is 99.9% finished.

Last Friday (Jan 9th) was the first club meeting for a while due to Xmas and New Year.............. but it seems members of this very active group had been very active over the break .... Keith had been building signal mechanism controls................ And preparing the baseboard to take the signals ... Whilst Pat had been making pulleys and balance weights for one of his signals........ Don't forget that Peter and Grant are giving a talk tomorrow Jan 15th at The MRC, Keen House, London - ALL welcome.

Last weekend (Jan 10/11) I had the pleasure of demonstrating at St Albans show..... I made some progress, but the star of the day was my fellow Chinese enthusiast Peter Morgan. Over the two days Peter made this skyscraper under construction .... This is a kit-bash of two Kibri kits to make a larger more impressive building as the original kit has a ridiculously small footprint - many thanks Peter! More later about St Albans and in particular Al's new bridge.

The weekend of January 10th/11th saw TDMRC represented at the CMRA show at St Albans. The club had a demo/display stand with club member Paul Stapleton making modern blocks of flats for his private HO project ... whilst visitors viewed the club publicity display

Just to let you know that I will have a demo/display at the St Albans exhibition on Jan 10/11 ......... probably building tenements or the hotel. The big news is that my main 'helper' .... Al of Remagen fame .... will be in attendance on the Sunday. Al will bring the motorway bridge for display.... maybe even Saturday if we can manage a meet beforehand. Al's motorway bridge is worth a visit to the show in its own right ............ can't wait to see it myself!

Well the 9 day Xmas break is coming to an end with not as much progress as I had hoped. Some progress on related topics like tidying the model room and the shed and selling redundant OO items on ebay, but not as much progress on the layout as I had planned. However, the three main foreground blocks of flats are basically finished........... maybe some air conditioners, some weathering and even some interiors and lighting to follow but basically finished.... From an angle (up the layout) the three buildings (hopefully) form a sight blocker ............. And yet when viewed side on you can see the layout through the buildings.............. I have always tried to do things on layouts that no-one else has ever done before with an exhibition layout ........... but often in attempting this I have discovered why no-one has ever done such a thing before! So it is with my idea to extend the scenery onto the first FY board ...... I just couldn't hide the fact that the track curved off into the back FY. So now the backscene comes at the edge of baseboard # 1 as mocked up here.....

So, as you may have gathered by now I have a bit of a grasshopper mind and I'm jumping around a bit between projects. Here is the railway hotel ...... now (mostly) glued together ...... I wanted to vary the height to give variety ...... I cutting and knitting more than ever with this and I've come a bit to an impasse with the ground floor .....the centre section is temporary and will eventually include the hotel foyer.

Track re-aligned! I'm trying to get as much variation as I can from the same kits. Here is the start of the station hotel. It will be only 5 stories rather than 7 and it won't have the staircases.

Worked out the alignment by trial and error ........... I hope I can remember which line to follow!

You may have noticed that I didn't post at midnight on Boxing Day ..... not much visible progress to show ........... and even less yesterday! Have tidied the shed - all of yesterday!! And am now re-aligning the industrial track as it enters the curves into the FY ... this is to allow the removable tenement to go on that board without the track being visible ... This is noon on Sunday 28th Dec ... before re-alignment ... note how the track would be visible. Hopefully will get this changed later today.

Have a total of 9 days off over Xmas and New Year, so hoping to make some significant progress... Boxing Day (day#3) and have been concentrating on the three tenements at the l/h front of the layout - scenic board #1. Noon on Boxing Day and I have tried a mock up of how things might look ..... The whiteboard represents the backscene separating the scenic section from the FY. The backscene is 'stepped' ..... the unpainted baseboard represents the first of the fiddle yard boards and so the buiing and backscene will be removable. The purpose of the tenements is to hide the fact that the trains are curving away into the FY at the back of the oval ..... I hope that makes sense. How much more progress today? Will post again at the end of the day.

Twickenham & District MRC's O gauge layout accurately reproducing ADDISON ROAD (now known as Kensington Olympia ) has its own thread on RMweb in the 7mm+ section. This is by far the club's biggest and most ambitious layout ever with the group learning and developing new skills to tackle building an accurate model of a major prototype as it was in 1923. THe layout has been in development for some years and is probably 12-18 months away from being complete, but that does not stop the AR group taking its 'roadshow' around the country. The group gave a 30 minute illustrated talk at RMweblive back in October and now they will be out again on Thursday January 15th at The MRC in Keen House, London. The talk will be a greatly expanded version of their talk at RMweblive and will deal with many of the groundbreaking computer driven techniques the group have used building the layout. Why not come along and meet the group? All welcome!

The Twickenham & District MRC Addison Road group are giving a talk on the 'new techniques' used to build the layout at The MRC (Keen House) in North London on January 15th. This will be a greatly enlarged version of what they produced at RWweblive in October .... to include analysis of aerial photos to produce accurate models and converting photos into scale plans .... and MORE! Come and meet the team on January 15th at the MRC ... then maybe come and see the layout in person one Friday at our clubrooms in Whitton.

Thinking of joining TDMRC? We're closed now until Jan 9th, but why not come and speak to us at the St. Albans show on Jan 10th/11th? We're doing some demos and we're taking our promo stand; members will be on hand to talk about the club and what it has to offer. Remember we have active members as far afield as Watford, Staines, Woking and even Boston (USA)! So wherever you live we could be YOUR local club!!

Last week 11 more Piko 61146 kits arrived ........ good job that I've got 11 days off over Xmas! I've spent today making up 'panels' ............. this will be the next building ....... This will be a new design with the ground floor being apartments not retail units............. doorways still to be made full size!

First of all, apologies for a 'rogue' photo that appeared in our posting earlier today - it was a photo I took yesterday of a new scenic feature on the club's OO layout..... oops! What I meant to feature was our new LNWR pattern platform seats along with the ADDISON ROAD nameplates...... Some of you may remember that when we started this thread the first thing we mentioned was that we were searching for a discontinued kit for LNWR station seats. That search was fruitless and so we've produced our own 'kit'. Details have not been forthcoming yet but I think it's laser-cut. More details later.

Here are some photos from yesterday's work session ............ the last of 2014. Pat building signals....... The signal mechanism........... Keith preparing the layout to take the signal .......... The add-on scenery boards being fitted to the central spine of track boards ....