TEAMYAKIMA

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 ....

I have been working on tenement # 2 for about 5 weeks. It is 50% longer than # 1. #1 was four flats wide, # 2 is six wide. Eventually there will be two like # 1, two like # 2 and (hopefully) one monster eight flats wide. Here are both just posed on the layout ... # 2 is about 80% finished .... needs interiors and some extra weathering...... and some more air conditioning units!

Last Friday was a semi-social Xmas event at club with the Multi-Gauge Running Track (MGRT) taking centre stage rather than individual club layouts. The MGRT has five circles of track and can accommodate models using 14 different gauges from 'Z' to 'G' ... YES, REALLY! Members brought models to run and there were mince pies and mulled wine .... all part of club life! Meanwhile ..... Eddie delivered a fully painted signalman for the AR box And Keith brought along the latest signal operating device ... using MERG servos.

==================================================================== Addison Road Catch-up 2: Baseboards ==================================================================== Almost all the track-work and associated electrics fit onto five ‘Core' boards (C1 - C5 ). These core boards also carry the up platform, station buildings and the road bridge at the southern end of the layout. There are also eight add-on boards, five at the rear (R1 - R5) and three at the front (F1 - F3). In addition, there are rotating fiddle-yards at each end. The scenic boards overlap the core boards, which helps hide baseboard joins where there are platform faces. This graphic hopefully explains all of the above...... [Diagram created using ‘SketchUp Make’ - free design software from: www.sketchup.com/products/sketchup-make] The core boards are made of ply and use ‘stressed beam’ construction (as used in flush-panelled doors) which gives great rigidity and is reasonably light weight. The sides and ends are 9mm thick and the top and lower surfaces are 6mm thick. The lower face has cut-outs to provide access but these do not significantly reduce the inherent strength. Here are two photos from November 2009........ The first shows some of the team posing with one of their new lightweight ‘Core’ baseboards. The second photo is far more interesting as it shows the underside of the board and the leg arrangement. Notice how the track-plan is drawn on the underneath of the board to help with identifying ‘droppers’, turnout-actuators, etc when wiring starts and avoiding any bracing interfering with tie-bars/point motors - well that's the theory anyway! Just before Easter 2010, the group set up one of the fiddle-yards for the first time. The layout is stored in three open-framed trolleys, two of which are as tall as the erected layout and house a fiddle-yard on the top. We wanted 9ft long yards (to hold trains of five coaches and a loco). As the trolleys are only 6ft long, each yard is hinged in the middle and can slide laterally within a ‘cradle’ which can pivot around the centre of the top of the trolley. In January 2012 a start was made on the front and rear baseboards. As shown below, these boards have a simpler construction than the ‘core’ boards – using 6mm ply with joints reinforced by planed whitewood.

Twickenham & District MRC are a club with a long history and we love to be reminded of past layouts. Some time ago someone contacted us about one of our layouts from the 1960's - 'THE MONSTER' - a privately owned TT layout which was a combination of three individually owned layouts....... a sort of early modular layout. Here is a recently found photo of 'The Monster' probably from the 1960's. The layout was jointly owned by founder members John Christie, Gerry Burt and Joe Hodgson. Whilst the exact date and location of this photo is unknown, it is thought it may have been taken at one of our early exhibitions at All Hallows church hall, Twickenham. We do know that the layout was shown at least once at a combined length of 100ft .... at the Dorking Halls show.... a well known exhibition in the 1960's/70's.

The big news this week is that Pat has completed the Up Advanced Starter.......... This is modelling of the highest quality .... at the start of the project Pat undertook to build ALL the signals ....... did he know what he was letting himself for?

Yes, to be honest that was my plan .... it's the interiors that take the time. However I will still limit the number of interiors as otherwise there would be a lot of similar ones ... very often (back in the day) many Chinese shops sold exactly the same items.

Hello Al I am (quite seriously) thinking on setting the layout at about 6.30am to 8am .... so most of the shops haven't opened yet ! And so I can model them with the shutters down!!And it also make sense for the industrial passenger train ... probably only runs at shift change. Joking aside ( was I joking ?!? ) there will be dozens of retail units and I can't afford the time or money to fit them all out as per the ones I've done already .... here's my justification for lots of closed shutters ....

Two weeks later here is the state of play with the new building ............. I have decided to extend it by 50% compared to the first one..