taybridge

Photo of part of Sunday's achievement. Let me just say that it was incredibly boring assembling these darn things! Next I will finalise how to install them above the station.

I now have 16 Peco platform canopies to build a roof for Glasgow George Square!

Hi Peter - that's a Wednesday right? What time? It would be great to catch up again. Doug.

Yes Peter, wonderfully mundane. I have been collecting DMUs and have about 5 now of various types and liveries, so my terminus can be DMU only from time to time :-) Great to see your layout again. The attention to detail makes it one of the best ... Where else can you see a carefully placed brick lying on the ground in OO scale!

Thank you for your kind comments. A beautiful day here in sunny Melbourne. Once my son is off to bed for his afternoon snooze, I will aim at getting all these station canopies finished for a photo. Son and I spent this morning zipping around on the Metro trains.. Jolimont to Flinders St, then Flinders St to Southern Cross, then Southern Cross to Caulfield, then Caulfield to Parliament, finally Parliament back to Jolimont. 5 trains in about 90 minutes. Not bad for a Sunday eh?

Oops! I meant REcommissioned!

I also painted the kitchen this Christmas!

It's been a while, but I have now got my layout up and running with DCC, and I am making very good progress this Christmas on the remaining Peco station roof kits. My son is approaching 3 now, and is wanting to "go up to the loft to see trains" :-) so it's all systems go to get the railway decommissioned :-)

The major components for the Glasgow George Square Station bus interchange (on my kitchen bench)

I missed these before, thought they were only N and I didn't realise they were lit.. What a FANTASTIC development and at a good price too. Dave - Dapol deserves huge congratulations for this, and I hope these products continue to sell well with an ever increasing product range. Very well done..

I must admit the Lodekkas look absolutely fantastic. I lived in Dundee when young, and recall the introduction of Routemasters on the Carnoustie/Monifieth-Dundee routes. They were much older than the buses they replaced, but the service was far better.. a much faster service. No less reliable either. It's a shame that the new "Routemasters" to be introduced to London are frankly nothing like the originals. A wasted opportunity.

Heh heh.... my railway generally is viewed through my rose tinted spectacles as well as being upside down. Something to do with photos taken by iphone. They seemed to be the right way up when I loaded them. All my other photos are usually taken with a Nikon that knows which way is up

The "authorities" have ordered some new buses to go alongside the Central Loddekas and Glasgow Corpy buses already in the stable: http://www.ehattons.com/42674/EFE_Diecast_Buses_Vehicles_25811EFE_Daimler_DMS_bus_Western_Scottish_/StockDetail.aspx http://www.ehattons.com/52175/EFE_Diecast_Buses_Vehicles_38301_Alexander_Y_Type_Bus_Western_SMT/StockDetail.aspx Plus a fictional Glasgow George Square station - Glasgow Airport bus: http://www.ehattons.com/51072/EFE_Diecast_Buses_Vehicles_36203_RMA_Routemaster_double_decker_bus_trailer_British_Airways_/StockDetail.aspx and a few black cabs for a cab rank too.

Looks great Peter. Don't know about Wales, but in Scottieland early 80's there was some uniformity. e.g. this block of houses had been upgraded while this block hadn't. Only once Thatcher's revolution of council home buying had taken effect did the uniqueness of each house start to take effect (with horrifying effects like "my window panes should be Elizabethan"). Of course I have no idea if your back scene is privately owned or a council developed area... but looks good to me! Hope you are all well and not getting too cold in your garage!

Heh heh yes I am using modeller's licence. But I did check prior to purchase and Lodekka's were still going in 1980, eg: http://www.centralsmt.co.uk/features/Memories_02.html You are right about the logo though, but logos are easy to change. So I feel very comfortable with having some of them on the layout. Cheers Doug.

These are brilliant Corgi Models by the way. Great stuff!

Whoops the images have come out all topsy turvy!

Thanks SG! I may not have done much modeling this past week or two, but a trio of Central Lodekka's have arrived! Brilliant!

Six more Peco station roof kits have arrived. That's 12 more roof sections... 3 times as many as I have made already. It's going to take a whole day just cutting the parts off the sprues, and another day of airbrushing. When oh when am I going to find the time???

2 kits of the Peco roofs "completed" (making four roof sections in total). Another five or six kits (10 or 12 sections) are on their way from an online store... The final configuration is going to be something like four sections deep by three to four wide. This is going to be fun..

Thanks Peter... though the progress is mostly in my imagination and a pile of unmade kits! Still it's going to be a big step forward.

Heh heh bought another half a dozen Peco station canopy kits to add to the two I bought as a trial! Once they are all here I will spray the girders and assemble the lot. Quite excited about this

While my baby son continues to be the focus of our lives, I managed to take him to a model shop on Saturday where he bought me two Peco station canopy kits. Not bad for an eleven-month old! Semi-assembled one to see what it's like, and will need another few kits to create a more practical and realistic roof for George Square. He also bought me the Bachy decco station building which I have visions of turning into a dual purpose bus station / alternative station entrance on the road bridge over the top of George Square station. Some major re-modelling work is in the air... just need to get another 3 or 4 Peco station canopy kits! I have a feeling this is going to be a very exciting development... the roof of Glasgow George Square has been troubling me right from the beginning. I simply don't have the time to create a spectacular custom-build metal construction of the sort now seen elsewhere on rmweb, but I think the Peco kits could in their own way be quite stunning when put together in multiples. I see waves of glass arches! - another departure from Glasgow Queen Street but then I'm not modeling GQS. Turning up from an online retailer this week - a load of Railfreight wagons for a goods/parcels depot that will be constructed next to the main station - once the main station has a roof!

Yesterday afternoon I rubbed the track down with a track rubber (after more than 12 months of disuse), snipped all the DC wires that connected the single DC controller to all the various track sections of the layout through a rotary switch, and re-connected all the dangling wires to my DCC controller. Voila! A reasonably well working DCC layout. The only problems are a few turn outs that need some attention (which was true before DCC) and quite a few sidings need to have permanent DCC wiring connected so they remain usable even when the existing insulfrog turnouts are set against them. Not bad for 20 minutes work. I did think it was going to be much more difficult than this. Seen lots of scare stories online. Next step is to recode my small number of DCC locos as they are all still at their default setting which won't do at all, finish the wiring off, buy some decoders and start the conversion of my DC loco fleet. I will start with the "DC ready" locos. It's a joy to navigate the Class 24 and Class 40 across the layout without having to manually switch sectors, and the addition of sound is fantastic... even when the loco is stopped but still whirring away with its red tail lights on it adds so much to the layout. Fantastic! DISCLAIMER: my DCC 4-6-2 kettle is jerky at turnouts and the sound cuts out too. The moral of the story is that a steam era layout may well be more difficult to convert to DCC than a more modern image Glasgow George Square is gradually getting back in business.

dusted off Glasgow George Square after more than 12 months of inactivity (new baby) and getting ready to convert to DCC --- eeek!