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Taigatrommel

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Blog Entries posted by Taigatrommel

  1. Taigatrommel
    It had started as a sector era Southern Region layout. Inspired by Weymouth, I'd got as far as having laid the track and put platforms in. I was plugging away at building a small fleet of EMUs, and ordered myself some Peco insulator chairs and conductor rail from my local model shop.
     
    I think it was two months into the wait for the chairs that something clicked in my mind. Tidying my playroom railway room I was sorting through my German outline models, seperating the mid 1980s (Epoch IV) models from the late 1990s ones (Epoch V), the realisation hit that I had enough of an Epoch IV collection to operate a layout. "Blow it" I thought, and I think I even said words to that effect out loud. For some reason I'd pinned the track down on the layout (I normally glue it), and with the aid of some wire cutters I was soon pulling them out. The copperclad sleepers I used at the baseboard join needed a little chisel work, but it wasn't many minutes before I had myself a new blank canvas. Well, plywood top. 8' x 1' of it.
     
    After a little playing with the track (Piko A Track, code 100 but with a narrow rail profile), I found a nice plan. Basically a terminus with a run round and two sidings and a small headshunt. One siding was turned into a bay platform, and the other was just loooooooong. Throwing caution to the wind, I drilled a few holes for the point actuating rods, and secured the track. I even reused most of the original pins- good sturdy Hornby ones!
     
    Deciding to get on with things before disillusionment set in (and also making use of some fine weather- I like doing messy jobs outside), I cut some platforms out of 9mm MDF, and cracked straight on with ballasting. I'd never used Scenic Textures ballast before, and I doubt I will again- it smells like cat litter and even with a very thorough wetting still clumped when dilute PVA was applied. Once this had set enough, I made some edging stones for the platform from card- card from Tillig flexi track boxes. As an experiment I tried using fine ballast as a platform surface. It clumped. Once it dried, I chiselled it off and tried a similar technique to applying grass. I painted PVA onto the platform, then sprinkled the ballast on. Success! A smoother surface.
     
    I haven't done much scratchbuilding before, so I decided to have a shot with the station building. Not that it's rocket science, I'm just a bit ham fisted at times. So far it looks OK, but I now need to add details such as guttering, which leaves plenty of scope to make a farce of matters.
     
    Anyway, here's the early stages out in the garden...
     

     
    There's a representative sample of stock there, showing the layout at its busiest. A 212 works push-pull with Silberlings on a peak time service, while the off-peak provision of a BR798 Schienenbus with 998 trailer is tucked in the bay. A 218 is overprovision for the pick up freight, normally a 360 or similar would handle this.
     
    I made the backscenes such that the layout can box up for transport, which will be completed with the addition of plywood ends screwing on into T nuts in the baseboard ends. Hopefully this will be secure for lugging around.
     

     
     
    And that was the beginnings. Having got this far, I promptly b***ered off on holiday for a month, and came back to find a new, shiny RMWeb...
  2. Taigatrommel

    Setting the scene

    By Taigatrommel,

    It's difficult not having a firm vision in my mind, as I really want to get on with things. There are at least two areas I can develope, being the station itself and the hardstanding.
     
    The station is fairly easy. There are certain things which need to be there, such as lighting, train information, benches and ticket machines. A recent find in Mack's Track takes care of much of this, although it's not as fine as some more recent models.
     

     
    Yes, it really was $48. Unfortunately the shipping costs from the only shops online I could find selling the Rietze ticket machines was Eur33- rather more than NZ$48.
     
    I've already indulged in a bit of kit-bashing. The waiting shelter was a double sided affair for an island platform. I cut the roof in half and removed a set of legs from the supports, and now it seems much more in keeping. It does look quite modern, possibly too modern for the 1980s. That's a push towards Epoch V then! I've already mentioned the main problem, namely that the printing on the sheet of signs and posters is out of register. I'm happy enough with the ticket machines though, so that's an important feature that can be put on the layout soon.
     

     
    I'm not too sure what to do with the area to the left of the station building. There's a wide expanse of platform greater than that really needed for the traffic. My current ideas are trees (if doing Westphalia/Saxony), a car park, the back or side of an industrial or commercial building, or part of a ferry terminal (if doing a Lower Saxony/Schleswig-Holstein secene). A car park would give some purpose to the collection of H0 cars I have been slowly amassing. It's one joy of H0, everyday cars are readily available for most eras. See what you recognise here... there shouldn't be anything particularly exotic.
     

     
    And there's the hardstanding. There are actually a lot of possibilities with this. The Ratio gantry crane was my first thought, as it makes up into an attractive model. This would be good for loading steel wagons onto a waiting flatbed truck. Or, as an even simpler option, a forklift and a curtainsider, with some kind of palleted goods being transferred between modes of transport. Or a grab loader for timber- this would be in keeping with a forest setting. All these ideas come from my present wagon fleet. If looking beyond this, there could be fuel oil for the ferries, beet loading (suggested by mr45144), or a ramp for Autozug (in keeping with a holiday destination). In between typing paragraphs I'm already searching ebay for ideas.
     
    I think my next action will be getting some lining paper and sketching backdrop ideas, to try and get a feel for which settings work best. Once I nail this, then perhaps the rest will follow.
  3. Taigatrommel

    Distractions

    By Taigatrommel,

    Bad Horn is only meant to be a time killing project, to be worked upon while I'm waiting for materials for my larger H0 layout, Steinrücken. I'm too stingy to pay for express delivery from Europe, so I never quite know when things are going to show up. As such, having multiple projects makes me feel able to better use my free time- I'm bound to have something I can work on. Yet somehow, when a parcel containing points for Steinrücken was delivered earlier this week, I felt as if I was being distracted from more important work. Never one to do things by half, I decided that if I'll be having trains running on it soon, I'd give everything a spring clean and fit the alignment dowels I've had waiting in the wings for a while. This meant dismantling the layouts, and suddenly my playroom seems large again. The two H0 layouts, broken down, take up a small proportion of the floor space. Not pictured are the two helices, out of sight about where I stood to take the picture.
     

     
    And this is what it's all about. These little fellows.
     

     
    Thanks to Andi Dell (Dagworth) for advice on fitting them. I'm fitting the male dowels first, and securing with generous quantities of araldite. My drilling isn't very precise, so there is a bit of slop in some holes. Doesn't help that I had the drill running the wrong way for a few. I thought the bit was just getting blunt...
     
    Anyway, once I'm happy that they're set (I'm giving them three days), I will bolt the low level boards together and clamp the upper level as tight as I can get it- according to Andi, this should give me a good pilot hole to drill the hole for the female receptacle. I know these basic "bullet" dowels are not as good as the C&L ones, but I had them to hand and fitting is straightforward- a Good Thing, given my poor joinery skills.
     
    I'd like some input from the readers if that is OK- should I include Steinrücken in this blog, as it too is set "somewhere in Germany", or leave it out to make things easier to follow? If the consensus is that I should include it, I will make the next post a description of the layout's backstory, and work so far.
  4. Taigatrommel

    Temporary wiring

    By Taigatrommel,

    I went to a gig last night at Wellington Town Hall. There were three stage invasions, a high-octane cover of Black Sabbath's Paranoid as an encore, and the ending was a crescendo of feedback. Yes, this is what you get from a Jarvis Cocker concert. Absolutely the best gig I've been to in years, the man is an total pro and gave it everything in spite of jetlag. And he's such a star, women will even jump on stage to kiss his arse. Some of the men in the audience were even desperate to touch him:blink:. He can actually rock pretty hard, it's just a shame that the shoegazers making up the audience didn't know how to mosh. The support, Phoenix Foundation, were very enjoyable, reminiscent of 1990s British indie in the vein of The Weddding Present, or at times James. There must have been something else as well, because today I had a massive urge to play Get over you by the Undertones. I felt like a teenager again.
     
    Gigs aside, I carried on with a bit of wiring on Steinrücken yesterday. I have chosen to try Atlas points in the hidden sidings, as for the same price locally as Peco, you get the point itself with a motor ready fitted, a switch and a small roll of five wire ribbon. I wouldn't use these points on scenic areas, as aside from the sharp radius, they're frankly quite ugly, especially with the motor fitted. However, in the hidden areas, they're a good economic proposition.
     

     
    The switches make up into the nice little bank pictured above, with one input providing power to the whole row. They're not the nicest switches to use, but as an interim control method before I decide on a signalling control system for the layout, they'll do the job fine.
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