Will Vale

 I've used the 3mm S&W couplings with staples as James recommends above and I also think they can look very discreet, especially if you use the "lower" mounting style so the wire runs across at the bottom of the buffers rather than the middle. I had some problems with buffer locking taking LWB wagons (OCA and up, TTAs and down are fine) through Peco medium radius which I've "solved" by using a yard pilot to take stock through the diverging route - cheating, but good for operational interest and I can still run my long locos. Uncoupling is very neat, although I needn't have bothered with the delay action I think - easier just to add more permanent magnets (if you use rare earth ones all you need is a 3mm hole between sleepers). I haven't had any problems with trains parting over the magnets even at slow speeds. If you fit couplings at both ends of wagons you only need the loops on locos. This makes it very easy to run guest stuff at shows - you can just twist a bit of jeweller's wire around the buffer shanks and tweak it to the right height. My one caveat is that all the parts (wire, etched paddle, dropper) are a bit thin and bendy, so you may need to tweak them after packing/unpacking stock if you accidentally bump anything. Will

Likewise - looks good! I wouldn't go out of your way to get the entire frame perfectly crisp though - depending on the shot, a little lack of foreground focus adds verisimilitude over the "every pixel must be crisp" look you see in some stacked shots. It should give much better results than stopping down too, since you'll be able to use the lens near its sweet spot - most lenses are sharper at certain F stops, and you can get general blurriness when stopped all the way down.

Thanks for all the kind comments! I started Micky off with a train and the instruction to press "DIRECTION" when it got near to either end of the board Obviously she got bored in about 30 seconds and wanted something more interesting to do other than hoot the horn, so she then had two trains to bring in and out on different roads. So that meant learning macro routes, dialling up loco numbers, and basic driving. Talking about it afterwards, she said that it was frustrating not to know more because if something went wrong she didn't have many options - fair point. It didn't help that her first operating experience was with the dicky slip so it was easier than it should have been to short out the track bus entering the slip the wrong way. We talked about it before and she offered on the day - I didn't get breakfast until one o'clock on Sunday so I was glad of any help which came my way I kind of doubt that she'll be making a habit of this, and there's only so much you can teach in two minutes (stopping over the uncouplers and doing the shuffle to release them takes a bit of practice, for example) but I'm still smiling thinking about it! Thanks Andy, I'm just sorry I didn't manage to promote the forum a bit more - I did mention it to people, but I only remembered title cards on the morning of the show and had about 2 minutes to make them. If I take it back next year I'll try and have a more coordinated presentation. Very much - the packing/unpacking and setup went quite smoothly after I'd managed to find a couple of tables the same height and make wedges for the rest. I got gradually better at talking while operating - some of it is possible by touch, but I have to look down to enter the loco numbers which feels rude since you have to break eye contact. Given that talking is my favourite bit I missed not being able to do more, but it was good fun to actually play trains for two whole days! The sound adds a lot, although only the 66 and 37 were easily audible over the background noise - possibly boxing the layout in would help this too? It was also flattering to have several of the other exhibitors come and stand and watch quietly for a long time - I hope they enjoyed it. I'm still in two minds about the backscene - I think it would work, but it would mean raising the layout to much nearer eye height to help mask problems with the flat landscape abutting it. I can look at e.g. Tanis and be perfectly happy with its lack of backscene - I like the idea that a layout is sort of a "core sample" of the miniature world and so edges are something to accept - but with Tanis it really helps that the terrain rises and provides framing by itself. I also think there's a difference between shows (where you can see everything) and posed photos (where you can control the view) - I'm not sure if a layout in a proscenium arch is more 'realistic' than one on a table but I guess I have to try it out and decide for myself! One thing which would push me in the direction of backscenes is the ability to do night and day lighting a la Chittle and Hendre Lane - which would require boxing in to make it work. I already have the working streetlamps, and I'm building lighting into the fuelling point.

We had a good show at the weekend, although operating Whitemarsh meant I didn't have much time to do anything else - quite a shock after showing roundy-roundy layouts the last couple of years. First of all, let me offer thanks to my dad for operating Igelfeld and Tanis, and Micky for bringing us lunch on both days, and giving me a quick break from Whitemarsh to eat it. Also thanks to Kev and Rich for making trips to the coffee room on my behalf! I was pretty panicky the week before the show, especially since I couldn't start the fiddle yard until Wednesday night owing to lack of supplies. As usual, I painted the fascias (primer + 2 coats) late at night on the Thursday so they aren't all that neat close up. They look nice in the pictures here though - the semi-gloss black definitely adds a professional touch, although it's a shame you can see the white primer on the feet-come-gusset plates under the layout. The scenics came together quite well on the Friday morning and afternoon - lots of bushes, some more grass, and various bits of fairing in around things like the bridge. Some of it will have to come out again and get reworked, especially where the bridge joins the retaining wall. I tried to get things up to a similar level of finish all over, leaving off anything which didn't look ready, such as the Ipswich offices and the pretty much the entire fuelling point. This did make the right-hand end of the layout rather bare-looking, but keeping locos on one or other of the sidings on the concrete pad helped. I'm really glad I bought the Turners truck too It filled a space where the office should be quite nicely, and added a bit of colour and verticality to an otherwise plain spot. It was also a magnet for sticky fingers which acted as a sacrificial anode to protect the rest of the layout - even my fragile depot sign survived intact. Operation was simple - with a short rake of MKAs (instanter couplings) and a rake of MOAs (Sprat and Winkle) I was able to bring a train in to the yard with 60014, uncouple and head to the fuelling point or the headshunt while the 08871 took the rake into the yard proper (rear road of fiddle yard). This was then reversed, and mixed up with various light engine movements, or 37510 taking the MKAs to and from the yard by itself. The pilot is only needed for the MOAs to avoid buffer lock on the slip, but that didn't quite work out in practice and I needed to help it a bit despite inserting an OCA at the front of the rake. There weren't too many problems - electrically things were solid - no soldering iron required - but the drive pin dropped out of the tie bar on the slip putting it out of action for the last hour on Saturday. I worked around it since fixing it would have meant turning the layout over - the downside of using the supplied tables. After the show closed it was a matter of five minutes to re-insert the pin, hook the Tortoise wire back over the other end, and reprogram the decoder's address for that motor - it turned out to have lost the address, so it was really a two-fold problem. On Sunday the motors were bulletproof and I stopped checking the routes visually since they were behaving so well. So thumbs up for hands-off uncoupling and turnout motors. On the loco front, 60014, 66722, 08871 and 37510 did sterling service. Great slow running, no stalls or stutters from continuity (I cleaned the track and applied a tiny smear of graphite) but the board join was a bit lumpy and occasionally the 08 would stall against it with wheels turning - I need to address this. I did have to reset the 66 (thank goodness for Howes sound decoders) to defaults on the Saturday when it got confused and did odd things like have the headlights come on at both ends! The Powercab also worked well - the layout rarely drew more than half an amp, and it was great to operate with one hand. I programmed all the routes I thought I'd need as macros so it was quick to set up for moves, but the somewhat arbitrary numbering occasionally confused me (and Micky). I think next time I'll number the lines and sidings from front to back at the left and right of the board, and set up the macros such that 13 means "route from track one at the left to track three at the right" - assuming there are enough macro slots. We were in a block of smaller layouts, and I didn't get time to take many pictures so they're mostly of our neighbours. I like these more anyway - the NZ club scene seems to prefer large freelance layouts which don't really do it for me. There are a couple of others I should really have got pictures of and didn't, but time was pressing. Rich and Kev did good business with Bad Horn across the aisle, and didn't make good on the promise of thrown peanuts, for which I'm suitably grateful I had some nice comments on the layout, and was surprised at how many people mentioned the autoballasters! I didn't know there was much interest in UK modern image here, but I guess it's more popular than I thought. I also got a chance to explain the "hairy cigar" grass to a few people who asked about it, so hopefully that'll start to get used a bit more. Kids were generally OK, but a bit less parentally-restrained than the other locations Railex cycles between, with a bit more reaching and touching. No real problems though, and no damage. I did have one middle-aged father explain at length to his son about how all the feed wires and point motors worked, his finger stabbing out waaay too far into "layout airspace". I didn't feel very guilty at all when I explained that the point motors and orange pipes were actually cosmetic details and all the real wires were underneath So... lots of jobs to do on the layout, or new layouts to build, but no pressure for a while since I didn't get any invites. I leave you with an "RMWeb special" picture of my dad's new stock on Whitemarsh:

It all looked *very* professional from where I was across the aisle - sorry I couldn't come and see what you were up to properly

Congratulations James - I had a photo of Tanis appear in a "convention roundup" kind of article and I was soo proud, I can only imagine what it's like to get a whole article I'll have to see if I can track down a copy over here.

Another vote for foam boards here - I've had mine for nearly two years in a somewhat damp (in winter) house and they're still pretty stable. I used a skin of 3mm MDF instead of ply, which gives good longitudinal stiffness and hasn't swollen so far.

I tidied up, it's much better. But the above comments about a modelling room remind that I should paraphrase a wonderful quote from Cooking in a Bedsit: "You misunderstand - I'm not modelling in the dining room, we're dining in the modelling room!"

I know, I feel bad about it. I thought it was better than last year, but I think I was wrong: I'm off to tidy up now, then maybe paint some animals if I feel particularly heroic... Will

Looking good John, I like the down low shots very much. Can I ask what the leafy plants are? I didn't see them in earlier pictures but they look really convincing.

Whitemarsh goes to war in about half an hour, then I need to come back, tidy up and curry favour with Mrs. V. - who to her eternal credit didn't bat an eyelid when I started building a fiddle yard on the living room carpet. This post brought to you by coffee and paracetamol.

Looks very nice James, you have good reason to be proud. I like the wide streaks from between the grilles, I don't know how you keep them so dead vertical - I find my hand tends to wander. From the chronology, it looks like you did the paint fade before getting an airbrush - in which case how did you achieve it? It's very even and doesn't show any evidence of brushwork.

I think the mirror works really well - is it a special front surface one, or a normal one?

Caveat - other people will probably know more about this than I do. That said, if I understand it right, you want to wire A, B and C * 2 ends to separate function outputs (and the interior lights to yet another). Then use the decoder's CVs to map function keys to directions and lights - usually you get something like F0F, F0R (lights button forward and reverse) F1F, F1R (F1 ditto) etc. and you can set each entry to activate a combination of outputs. However, that would need seven outputs and you've got six Also, from the TCS manual you linked to only F0 has separate forward and reverse. I think they expect you to wire the forward and reverse lights for opposite ends to the yellow and white wires, which would give e.g B forward/C reverse and vice-versa. You could then run the A marker lights and interior lights on separate functions, but that wouldn't switch A when changing directions. I *think* that to get what you want, you either need a decoder with more flexible forward/reverse function mappings, or perhaps some kind of transistor switch activated by another function to switch between A and B groups. That would give red and white markers on the headlights button, a button to turn on the interior lights, and a button to switch the kind of white marker light you're using. [edit: reading what Tony posted again, I think that's close to what you want, it uses 6 of the eight functions. Perhaps you could set your decoder up like that, and run the interior lights off both tail lamp functions so they'd be on whenever the running lights were on?] HTH, Will

I was thinking more of breaking up areas of plain greenery, like the foreground grass. Or would that have been nicely gardened?

The track colour looks really good - well worth doing. Next mission, should you choose to accept it, is probably more weeds and shrubs? I saw you added some grass tufts, and the Woodland Scenics clumpy stuff is pretty good for general purpose weeds.

Thanks Pete! I have another blog for the layout, plus various bits in the challenge thread. I haven't said much about the stream because I wasn't sure it would work - it took up to a week for each layer to stop being cloudy In brief, it's Liquitex acrylic pouring medium, which can be poured in ~1mm layers and self-levels. It's cheaper than the "for modellers" versions as well. It's applied over a flat base I built into the layout from the start, painted dark green/brown/black. The wide culvert has one layer, the field drain has three since there's a small weir and I didn't think to deal with the levels at construction time. There's also a bit of dead grass set in below the water level, but I'm not sure that worked very well - the grass on the banks tends to hide it. There are some WIP pictures here which might help.

Fox, since they were really easy to get sent out here. They were about 2mm too short.

Ah, that's what they are - I've been learning a lot from the "writing on sleepers" thread but I half-assumed they were some kind of "install it here" guide. The other lubricator doesn't appear to have any countdowns.

Looking good Rich - the backscene seems much more natural now, and I agree the fence is a good addition. I found my Ratio hair-net so I need to follow suit If you have time/inclination, I think toning down the black sleepers would make a big difference. [edit: multiple posts - I didn't press multiple buttons, so I'm not sure what happened. I've removed the text in lieu of deleting the comments.Sorry!]