Brinkly

These are a few of my photos taken at Wells last august. This layout was built by members of the Scalefour's Society South London Area Group over the past 6 or so years. More information on http://www.scalefour...p4areasdets.htm

Looks very nice so far Brian, I take it the viaduct will form a style of Pendon Dartmoor Scene forming the centre piece? Regards, Nick

Hi Geoff, Yeah it has been long coming! But I felt the time was right, new year and a new project. Thats a good point Geoff! I had forgotten that, I'll look into that this afternoon! West is best as they say Geoff! Well with the period I like the GWR and BR WR, so thought that this era I can mix and match so to speak and perhaps develop a 1945-1950 period and a 1954-1960 period. As during the late 1950s the 14xx locos and the older autocoaches were replaced with 64xx and Hawksworth carriages. Most of the goods stock can be used within any period, with more of the pre-grouped stock being removed for the later period. But to start with I will concentrate on the earlier period, as a 64xx is not as readily available as a 14xx! Kind regards, Nick

Hi chaps, Thank you all for your comments, it really is very encouraging. Regards, Nick

Hi Nick, To be honest I'm aiming for the late 1940s early 1950s as the main operating time, but I will still have a large number of locos and stock in GWR livery. But the buildings will all be in the old GWR colours, rather than the BR WR chocolate and cream, so it is quite flexible! If however a selection of GWR 4-4-0 locos went into production, similar to the City of Truro model then a 30s sequence might arrive! Kind regards, Nick

Greetings and welcome to my blog. I plan to add to it on a regular basis similar to Geoff (Sparky) with his Penhydd layout and show you fine fellows the progression (or lack of!) that I make. I'm more than happy for people to comment with any advice that they might have as I need to learn! I first started modelling properly when I was 15 years old when I created a basic GWR branch line terminus set in the mid 1930s. The layout used a mixture of old SMP track left over from my late grandfather's layout and Peco code 75 for the fiddle yard. I learnt a huge amount from this layout, one of the main things being wood working skills. Previously all my wood working had been done under the knowledge and supervision of grandpa and his workshop. At this point my dad worked away from home and if I wanted a baseboard built one had to do it one's self or wait for several days or possibly weeks before he would be home to help! I also learnt basic wiring skills along with scenic work and tried carpet felt long with lint as used in Barry Norman's book Landscape Modelling. Well after a break from modelling whilst at university I decided to get back into it again two and a half years ago with a view to continuing working in 00, the plan had been to create Horrabridge with I am sure a number of readers have already seen the old thread on the old version of RMWeb. However I started to feel that I wanted to go beyond 00 as a scale and work towards something finer. I did consider EM, but the lack of a club within the local area put me off. At this point I met the good Captain and the rest is as they say history, I decided to dump the EM idea and go for P4 having attended the local area group and been inspired by P4 as a scale. Right to business. I have decided to start constructing a near to scale model of Horrabridge, which is a small country station in West Devon. The charm of this station really lies with its location. The station site features two goods buildings, a level crossing and a small girder bridge spanning the main Tavistock to Plymouth road. My model will be some 20ft long by 3ft wide, allowing a nice slice of the Devon countryside to be modelled. The layout will be built as a roundy-round and although it will become a permanent feature of the loft, it will built to be as portable as possible so that it can be built in sections down stairs before it is moved upstairs. I also plan to bring some of the boards along to DRAG (P4 area group meeting) for advice once in a while. The fiddle yards will be a mixture of loops and cassettes. The idea being that 8 trains can be made up in four loops (each loop will be about 12foot long) and stock can be easily swapped about using the cassettes which will form one of the loops. To be totally honest I could probably get away with just the loops, but the cassettes will add extra flexibility and will make turning locomotives easier. Originally I was going to use ply and rivet for my track work, but I am now being persuaded to use Exactoscale plastic bases and chairs for speed. Thinking long term it will be easier to weather the side of the rail as the whole track can be sprayed and then painted accordingly. Also having seen the progression on TT2 using fast track bases, I think that for me it is the best opition at this stage. Anyway as a starting point John Farmer very kindly salvaged some of the old boards from TT1; I thought that these could form the foundations for a fiddle yard. I'm still a little unsure at the moment what to do with them, they do require quite a bit of work to get them up to scratch, but I think with a new top surface they should be satisfactory to get something up and running as a temporary solution! The scenic baseboards will be an adaption of the beam method and eventually I will construct new boards for the fiddle yard to keep a standardised system! Anyway enough for now. Thanks for reading. Kind regards, Nick.

Well it isn't ready yet, but to get the whole thing to DRAG meetings we need a trailer as John can only get one set of curved boards and all the straights in his Jeep and rather than investing in a second trailer the money will be used to get TT2 finished. The plan had been to purchase a second larger trailer, although I always felt that this was a bit of a case of false economy as purchasing a second trailer would be damned expensive and with a small amount of modification the current trailer could be made to fit TT2. And to be honest we could transport TT1 in one car with the seats down if we wanted to bring it to DRAG meetings and store the layout in someone??

That takes some beating Jim! In all fairness to TT1 over the past 6 years it has been put up and down well over 130 odd times and stored in a trailer! Talk of its final demise was being discussed last Monday, sad times! Regards Nick

So you can have any colour so long as it's red!

I must say that I don't like one of my Ratio plank wagons as it caused my right index finger to lose nearly the whole pad! Even now it hurts! (I did it back in easter!) My beef if with the stupid raised mouldings, which I was trying to remove quickly! But apart from that I rather like the kit, it goes together much better than some of the Cambrian Wagons, and I stress some as the latest box vans from Cambrian are much better than some of the older plank wagons. Kind regards, Nick

That really is one very impressive structure chaps. Nigel must have been a very talented craftsman. So do you have any idea on a timescale? As ever, Nick

Well now you come to mention it, Mr Cameron had the cheek to use my P4 Western to head his 00 train! Kind regards, Nick

It was quite an event, something that you forgot to mention Rod was how the electrical contacts were made! Nick

Bit of a labour of love Tim! The idea of having a jig to fit the rodding is certainly a good idea. Kind regards, Nick