bmthtrains - David

Thanks! My thoughts today have turned to the opposite end of the layout. This is where it turns from drawing inspiration from Rugby to drawing from Nuneaton - in particular the bridge to the south of the station. Printing the OS map of the area the roads fit perfectly where I wanted them so this can be true to scale, although the buildings around the one way system will be completely different to help it merge with the Rugby-inspired ROC further to the left. David

I’ve been experimenting with the far left end today, and have settled on having a row of new build homes behind an overgrown and tree-lined embankment. There is a similar housing development actually not far from the real ROC at Rugby so it keeps the feeling of the real place even though this is a fictional location. The mock-up card buildings give a loose impression. David

A little more track went down today. A couple of pieces are just placeholders and the return curves on the lower board are incomplete, but it’s starting to feel like a main line now. David

Thanks for flagging that, I hadn’t noticed. About time it was updated anyway! David

A minor complication has arisen when ordering my next couple of points. It looks like Peco no longer make electrofrog medium points in code 55, having replaced them with unifrog only. This is annoying as unifrog basically works as a dead frog out of the box. As I want as good a running as possible I presume this now means lots of fiddly soldering to make the frog live. David.

A little further today, and the most difficult part is finished - rail joins on the tight hidden curves! I always hate doing this bit but as the outer curves are fairly generous I’ve been able to keep the joints straight and then pull the curve back with a tighter radius each time so I’m actually pleased with the result, nice smooth joins. Next step is to switch to the other board and get the track there to a similar stage. After that, it’s getting points for the storage yard so I can run the loops over the baseboard joint as I did on the front. David

And all four tracks are in on one half of one board now David

Track laying has commenced! Having been nocked out by booster jab side effects since Tuesday I’ve felt well enough to start on the track. I’ve been using a jig to ensure parallel track spacing on the scenic section, then laying the track across the baseboard joint, glueing and pinning as I go and then slicing the rails with a Dremel. This seems to have worked a treat and was a lot quicker to get right than expected. David

Congratulations! Though with a new baby you can now expect progress on the layout to grind to a halt for about 10 years! David

And so it begins… Today I collected the baseboards from Model Railway Solutions in Poole. Very pleased with them, lightweight and easy to move around. There is a bit of torsional movement so a couple of diagonal braces will be added but having them made has saved me a lot of time. Next task is to make a start on the fast tracks - these have no points so a cheap place to start. With 17 points in total this is going to be expensive! David

I don’t know if this is helpful or not but I generally only access the site on Safari on my iPhone and today I have no adverts at all anywhere. The only annoyance of late has been a pop up that appeared whenever I clicked the view new content button but I just clicked back then forwards and it vanished so it wasn’t a big issue. This has now gone but I see no ads on the top of threads either now. David

Oops! I hadn’t intended my post to hijack your threat thus, but to cap it off I think running the principle express of each layout’s era would be best - Pendolino turning into an 87 in IC livery, then to BR blue etc… I wonder if everyone’s layouts are oriented the same way to do it ‘correctly’, as in South on the right North on the left or vice versa! David

Looks superb! At some point we will have to get all of us modelling the WCML in N to run the same train and stitch a video together - from London to Glasgow! David

Progress at last! The requirement for a home office has meant a rethink regarding where the layout will live and is now going to be 2 portable boards instead of being permanently up. It will be set up in the second bedroom unless someone is staying and will just get propped against the wall. The design is the same just 6 inches shorter. Baseboards have been ordered and so finally construction is imminent! Before I start laying track I’m experimenting with painting Peco points to represent concrete. The layout will use code 55 track but as I have some code 80 points what won’t be used in testing with these. The hard part to know is which bits can be painted without fouling their operation. So far I’ve done a single coat of enamel (2nd to follow) on a few patches of 2 points - 1 has had a puff of plastic primer first. I am also going to try airbrushing the sleepers as this should get a thinner and more even coat around the mechanisms. David

I stopped shopping at the Bournemouth Model Centre for precisely this reason. The owner would size up a customer and pretend to look it up and basically pluck a random amount based on what he thought you would pay. If someone else was behind the counter you would often get a different and much lower price for the same item. He regularly sold items over RRP as well. David

This is a very useful thread as I’ll be facing the same issue on my new layout. The modeltech system looks good but I’m also considering the ‘solder to brass screw’ approach. I’d planned on laying flexitrack over the baseboard joint then cutting it into two halves using a dremel, each side soldered to the pairs of screws, to get the very best alignment. David

Every thread regarding Farish just seems to become an echo chamber for a very small number of individuals extrapolating their own ideas to an entire market. I am probably just as guilty of this though in a more optimistic manner, but I do think some realism and concession might be in order as 10 noisy voices on here amount to around 0.1% of the market. This has long been a downside of RMWeb’s success - it broadly serves an elite within the hobby that is top-end, knowledgeable, and dedicated modellers. It becomes easy to assume everyone else thinks in the same way and is also demanding on the shelf availability of MK2s in BR blue and grey. A better representative of the wider market is found on things like Facebook and boy is that a different world! From that I would argue that most people just play trains and if it has wheels they will run it. If people want Farish to release certain things, just tell them directly. David

Very sad news. My CJM 92 remains the pride of my collection of rolling stock and is an outstanding model even compared to the RTR Revolution model. Chris was always a pleasure to deal with and a truly central figure in pushing British N gauge forward. The 92 will be running around my Kato test track later today in memory. David

“Maybe because most of it is skewed to make the "white man" out as the baddie?” Oh dear. Time to lock the thread now perhaps? David

My tongue in cheek comment about the daily mail has been taken far too seriously. My point is that faux moral outrage at inclusive research agendas generally stems from a fear that ONLY research to do with under represented groups will now be seen as having value, and that the daily mail loves stories about anything that threatens the comforting level of ignorance and bigotry of much of its readership. The main issue here is that institutionally academia has historically prioritised research perspectives that have been woefully exclusive and not considered race, gender, or sexuality in any meaningful way. This does not mean individual examples of historical research are now in anyway less important because they didn’t address these issues, rather that overall vast gaps have been engrained into the historical narrative and that it is absolutely right that these are being addressed. I have literally just come out of a meeting with Research England and they made the same point - the population of researchers in this country, and the topics of their research, do not reflect the diverse makeup of the UK and is not representative. The decolonisation of history is vitally important and NRM are doing exactly what they should be, addressing important gaps in our understanding of the past and taking a more inclusive stance. How anyone could argue against those aims is beyond me. David

Putting my academic hat on, I’m pleased to see the NRM launching this project. These kind of things tend to rile daily mail readers as they see a deluge of ‘wokeness’ and fear it will replace more traditionally comforting racist and misogynistic research. Fear not, it is simply academia scrambling to make up for several hundred years of under representation in its work. As several have already noted, the past is in the past while history is very much in the present. It is about time the stories of the forgotten, marginalised, and used get told. David

I’m an old fashioned DC man myself with no intention of converting but I certainly think it’s a very sensible plan for Farish to upgrade all their models to DCC. It futureproofs existing releases and keeps them selling. And given how small the N gauge market is, any barriers that would put people off really do need to be removed. David

Fitting DCC in an 03 is certainly an achievement, and suggests how popular DCC presumably now is. Another difficult announcement for Bachmann regarding Farish though, as while again no new major models have been revealed, as they mention in the video there has been a continual stream of previously announced new releases throughout the year. The backlog certainly seems to be behind the lack of further announcements, but they really could do themselves a favour by highlighting the new products that have already arrived or are due as it just plays into the narrative that they don’t care about the scale any more, which is far from true. Those gorgeous OO 90s really do need the shrink ray applied as well - surely they would be a stronger seller in N than the forthcoming class 319? The 150s also look like the chassis block no longer fills half a carriage, another example of the steady upgrade of models to allow for DCC sound I presume? David

Opening doors on multiple units seems a likely next step ‘wow’ feature, but I’m more in the camp that extra ‘working’ features are largely unwanted. Realistic, robust models that are reasonably affordable - shouldn’t these be the 3 Rs for manufacturers to follow? Better moulding or paint effects such as the oily finish on the glazing of some of the new Bachman 47s seem appealing, but I’m wary of more electronic features as it’s just more to go wrong and much higher prices for things I don’t want or need. The problem is most of the big selling prototypes have already had various model versions so to release a new one it has to have some new bells and whistles on it (not literally) to make people upgrade to the new model. David

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there - the imperfections would be identical so would be obviously fake. Although curiously manufacturer-weathered models are run together - wagons etc - without too much issue. David