Dave777

8 – Detailing And we arrive at the penultimate entry. To complete parts of the backscene I used the cgtextures website for some warehouse ends and also shop fronts for the street section. I then added some posters and nameboards to the platform. These were all printed out from the interweb after a Google search, with the station nameboards produced in Word using a downloaded BR font. Now what would be a suitable name for the station... This was a bit of an extravagance really – a brand new Corgi Trackside van. I’m not sure about the livery (either from an accuracy or 1970s timeline aspect), but since it would have needed the cost of a spray paint if we were going to change it I’ve left it alone. I haven’t stuck this onto the layout, so don’t be surprised if it moves around a bit or disappears in subsequent photos. Could have done with some weathering actually! One thing that proved surprisingly expensive was populating the layout. Figures don’t come cheap, and I didn’t actually need that many, so in the end I plumped for the absolute cheapest ones I could find which were £1.64 for a pack of 10 off eBay. Now keep in mind that the price included postage and that should give you some idea of the quality of what we were faced with... Gulp. Some tidying up and repaints managed to get them nearer to what I wanted... ...and these were then placed around the layout. This scrap load for one of the mineral wagons was made up from leftover card and straws of different shapes and sizes. A card insert with two 'legs' provided a false floor, and then everything was simply stuck down with PVA in a random fashion. A coating of primer, and then some suitably rusty shades of enamels and watercolour were applied. Really boring photos of some sleepers and some scrap bits (wire offcuts and one of the Hornby buffer stops). The sleepers are of minor interest only because they show just how little track there was left over. The straws I had left over from my oil depot were also used to create this lot of pipes sitting outside the factory. Glue them together and add some card surrounds (would have been better if I’d made them the same thickness!). Primer and enamels/watercolour to complete. These relay cabinets are scratchbuilt from card with tiny pieces of paper added for the hinges. Again, primer plus weathering to complete. Most of the details needed to be glued in place, so some normal polystyrene cement (aka, ‘model kit glue’) was used for this. Spends: Van - £1.25 Figures - £1.64 Polystyrene cement - £1 The last part tomorrow will be a short gallery of the layout in action, followed by the ‘reveal’ of the total cost and some final thoughts & comments.

Hi Stephen, way back on the first post I mentioned that the layout is actually complete, so what we're seeing here isn't strictly a day by day account as such - more of a retrospective

Such kind comments - thanks everyone. 7 - Scenery So it’s time to transform the Martian landscape. There’s an enormous range of scatters, turfs and static grasses out there to help the modeller create the ideal greenery on a layout. I use quite a few of them myself, but my main product I use is the one I’m going to apply here – hanging basket liner. You can buy this in a variety of formats (I use a big roll of the stuff), but the limited amount I need for this layout means a mere £1.49 at Homebase will secure you a suitably sized circle. There’s two ways that modellers use this – some stick it directly to the layout, backing side down, whereas others like me prefer to stick it ‘hairy’ side down with the backing facing up. One problem with PVA glue is that it creates a ‘shine’ when dry, so a tip I leant off a fellow RMwebber (and I can't remember who it was ) is to add ordinary talcum powder. Sounds weird, I know, but trust me – it does work. So here I’ve applied a PVA:water (+ talc) mix to the landscape and stuck the hanging basket down. Next morning, give the backing material a careful but firm tug and away it comes, leaving the hairy grass on the baseboard. Couple of tips – firstly, don’t throw away the liner you removed as typically it’ll have lots of grass still on it. You should definitely be able to get a second application out of it, and I’ve even managed a third on occasion (this is also one advantage over the method of sticking the liner directly to the baseboard, backing side down, as with the method I’ve employed you effectively double the area you can cover). Secondly, improve the finished look by removing any oddities as there’s typically some strange pieces of string, rope and plastic all mixed in there. At this stage it will be really hairy... ...so give it a bit of a trim with some kitchen scissors. You’ll see in these photos that to add some texture to the ground I covered any remaining exposed parts with more PVA:water (with talc) and then sprinkled on some earth from the garden. To obtain this, I simply took a few plastic cupfulls of earth straight out of the flower bed, sieved it, and then washed it in a bowl with soap & water (washing dirt to remove dirt – too weird). Then drain off the water and leave the sludge to dry on newspaper and soon you’ll have free, earthy scatter material. You can use a kitchen bowl and sieve for this, so I’ve not costed either of these up, but it’s probably a better idea purchasing a cheap bowl and sieve specifically for modelling purchases (you may be able to make out my ‘no food’ writing on my only-for-modelling-purposes bowl). I have also read of people microwaving their earth obtained in this way to kill off anything that may be present in it, which sounds sensible. Sprinkle this liberally onto the glue and once dry your ground should have a decent texture and colour to it. Vacuum off any remaining or loose material and you’re done. To add a bit of variety to the embankments I decided to make my own ‘ground foam’ or ‘turf’. I purchased some ‘value’ scourers from the local supermarket for 14p. Taking off the scourer part I cut up the foam underneath into small pieces, continually cutting and cutting again until they were the right size (with hindsight, I should have gone smaller). To colour them I mixed them up with some green enamel from my eBay-purchased collection, left them to dry, and then stuck them in place using PVA. It’s not going to give Woodland Scenics any sleepless nights but for the small outlay it adds some additional texture to the grassy areas. My fuel depot needed to go in next. The fuel tank itself is a toilet paper roll that's had the circumference reduced a bit by cutting it lengthways, rolling it tighter and then gluing. The ends were made from card. I then covered the tank with masking tape and scored some sections into it. The box structure next to it is made from card, with plastic drinking straws and card scraps used for the pipework and pumping controlling box thingy (this is the back, showing how I just shoved the straw through) A coating of primer, weathering and finally some dials printed out from the interweb provided the finishing touches. I've no idea how the entire contraption is meant to work, and there's an air of cliché about it. I’d recommend referencing some prototype photos to anyone else attempting this - there were plenty of straws left over which I could have used to add additional pipework. But like many other aspects of this layout - given the time restraints - this is about suggesting what can be done. Spends: Hanging basket liner - £1.49 Scourers - £0.14 Straws - £0.18 Earth scatter material - free Nearing the end now, next up it’s time to add some details.

6 - Rolling stock Understandably given the price constraints we’re working under here the rolling stock was never going to be top notch. We’re not going to be able to afford the latest Bachmann Blue Riband wagons or top-spec Hornby coaches, so the rolling stock was inevitably going to be a mix of 1970s and 80s vintage when RTR standards were a bit lower compared with today. Of all the things connected with this project, rolling stock was the aspect that challenged me the most. For the passenger traffic I purchased this Airfix MK IId brake for £6 including postage. I’ll leave others to comment on the accuracy of the model itself, but the quality of the moulding is decent and perhaps only the livery indicates the 1970s parentage with some noticeable fuzziness around the ends of the white window band. Freight stock requires a bit more imagination. These two Lima box vans came in at £3 each, with the garish private owner liveries soon lost under a primer coating followed by enamels. Say what you like about the quality of Lima drive mechanisms, but few modellers would argue with the crisp quality of their mouldings, and the the planking and door detail on these two is perfectly acceptable by modern standards. The vents at either end are a little lightweight, and the underframe is a trifle chunky, but what the heck. Ah yes... the numbering. Well a posting in the ‘Weathering & Painting’ forum for some suitable transfers came up trumps, but I then mucked the kind gentlemen around a bit by changing my mind. The reason? I’d need to also purchase some matt varnish to seal the transfers - precious funds. So in the end I took the slightly bonkers step of renumbering these by typing out the number in Word on a PC, printing it out, and then gluing the number to the side. Okay, not as neat as a proper transfer, and a bit of a bodge if we’re being honest, but just about acceptable at ‘normal viewing distance’. The same techniques were applied on these Hornby 20t mineral wagons. The underframe on these is nothing like the prototype, but for £2.20 each (including postage) perhaps this is to be expected. Frankly, this is where having a little bit more money would have come in handy as some proper 21 tonners or 16 ton minerals would have been a better option. Try as I might however I just could not secure any for a decent price, despite looking at Triang, Hornby, Bachmann, Mainline and Airfix kits (made and unmade). It seems the humble mineral wagon is much in demand. After a brief time examining the chassis to see if it could be made more prototypical – a job that would require cutting off all the underframe detail, sawing a portion out of the chassis, gluing it back together again and then reassembling the underframe detail into something more prototypical – I decided to just leave the thing alone. Given that I was trying to get the whole project finished within a reasonable timeframe and I had no guarantee that I actually could manage to modify the wagon to look better, this seemed the best option. Instead I’ve tried to at least make them look a bit more realistic via some weathering. Again a primer undercoat was applied to remove the PO livery, except in this case that also formed the body colour. Weathering was applied using enamels and watercolour. The best thing about watercolours is that if you get it wrong, simply wet the whole thing and wipe it all off to start again. The photo below shows the colour I tend to favour, burnt umber. This isn’t actually the correct size of tube for the price I’ve totalled up – you’ll only get a 14ml tube for that price. However, you only need a tiny bit to do a lot of weathering so 14mls will be easily enough. I’m just using the tube I already had. As I mentioned, burnt umber is a general, all-round colour to use, but burnt siena will also do the trick. The final freight wagon was a ladderless Hornby TTA wagon. On a rounded, smooth-sided wagon like this my paper numbering was going to be a challenge, and so it proved. This is probably the least successful of the wagons as not only do I personally find tankers a tricky thing to weather anyway, but the paper ‘decals’ are fairly noticeable. I was also lacking a suitable black colour for fuel spillage down the sides. Perhaps some grey might have suffice, now I think about it (or perhaps I should have just left the original livery where it was and just applied the 'decals'). One thing I did manage was to secure a free ladder from fellow RMwebber Mallard60022 who was upgrading his Bachmann models with a detailing kit. So not the best, but it provides further shunting/traffic options if nothing else. On the end of any freight movement we’ll have this, a £2.99 Hornby brake van. Some metal staples from my workplace provided the handrails (and nope, I’m not costing up 4 staples!), and new paper numbers were again applied. What started as some weathering eventually morphed into a full repaint really. And that’s the rolling stock. For £21.59 we've managed to get 7 items of rolling stock which are at least nearer to being prototypical than if we'd just put some private owner coal wagons down. One other disappointing aspect is that they are all running on plastic wheels, a sure fire way to attract (and keep) dirt on the rails. However, given the overall size of the layout it’s not going to be a chore to keep it all clean, so we can easily live with that. Spends: Lima box van – £3 Lima box van – £3 Hornby 21 ton mineral – £2.20 Hornby 21 ton mineral – £2.20 Hornby TTA tanker - £2.20 Hornby brake van – £2.99 Airfix Mk II coach - £6 Primer – £3 Watercolour - £1.70 It’s back to the layout tomorrow when we complete the scenery.

On the little hut, Carl? It's just enamels. The rest use brickpaper from the Scalescenes website.

Hi Paul, no special name on the sand I'm afraid, it came from a local pet shop (not one of the larger chain ones like Pets At Home) and I suspect they just buy a sack of it and then dispense it into smaller bags. I've used sand on a couple of layouts now for ballasting - it's 'silver sand' or I think it's also called 'play pit sand'. The pet shop stuff seemed pretty similar, perhaps a little more chunky. As for painting, the emulsion is watered down a bit (maybe 30% water) and then just paint it on. It runs down into the sand and colours it. I started cleaning it off the sleepers at first but decided to just leave it on after a while. You can apply further washes with emulsions and watercolours. The only comment I'd make is that it's fairly light, so it does tend to move around a bit during application of the glue/water. But equally there's ample 'adjustment time' - measured in hours - to even things out before the glue dries. I had assumed it was a 70s model, but when it arrived I noticed that the '054' on the '25 054' running number was a little out of line, which suggested a re-numbering at some point. And the performance seemed just a little too good. I did some research and it appears it's this model here: http://www.hornbygui....asp?itemid=665 In the 'model information' paragraph it mentions that it was supplied with a sheet of alternative numbers, and '25 054' is listed. So I think it's a late-80s model. I have been surprised by the performance, and understand why people are cautious - despite the 'good runner' eBay listing, I confess I was expecting a bit of a clunker that needed a bit of work, but it really does run beautifully. I've no great advice to pass on really - it was the third one I bid on, having been outbid on the previous two, and I may well have simply got lucky in finding a good one. I have a future OO parcels layout planned and had already purchased a couple of locos and told myself that the planned layout really didn't need any more motive power, but I've been so impressed with the way this one runs that I'm going to do a detailing job on it at some point so it can make an appearance.

5 - Buildings & structures So at this point the platform top was added. This is just a couple of pieces of cereal box card painted up with the dark grey ballast emulsion mixed roughly with the sky blue one. I didn’t want a neat, single overall colour, so I’ve stippled and streaked the paint around a bit. Once dry, a strip of masking tape was added along the front, just back from the edge, before again a poorly mixed concoction of the two emulsions was added, this time with a bias towards the lighter shade. A pencil was used to then mark out some individual slabs (pencil not included in cost - household item) When building the bridge pillars I mentioned I’d used brickpaper from the free kits available on the Scalescenes website, and it's the free Scalescenes warehouse that I've used for my industry building on the layout. For starters, the supplied ‘concrete’ base provides the hard standing, with the card we already added raising the level up above the sleepers to rail height. The Scalescenes warehouse is available for download in two brick finishes, so I used one option for the bridge and the alternative finish for the warehouse. I decided to only use parts of the kit to give the layout a bit of individuality, plus I wasn't sure if the size of the kit would dominate the layout too much. I placed the finished building with the siding disappearing into it to suggest a larger loading facility (the red/white clearance warning squares either side of the door were simply created in Windows Paint and printed out). I used cereal box card as the main structure, and some clear food packaging for the window 'glass'. It looks like I've done a poor job on the right hand side of the building, but it's dead straight and square - it's actually the backscene that's on the skew a bit To complete this area I used the cgtextures website for some wall sections and gates. This small hut is scratchbuilt from the quality card leftover from the backscene. Since the back of this won’t be visible, I’ve just made three sides, scored them to represent planks, added a doorframe and doorhandle, and then fitted a roof with some strips to represent the individual roof sections. Offcuts were used to hold the whole thing together, with enamels used to finish it off. Total build time? About 40 minutes. Okay, so there’s a bit of a leap from this to creating a station building, but if you’ve simple huts and the like to add to a layout, you really can make your own for peanuts. At this stage I also needed to put in some signs as the base needed to be buried in further ground coverings. Signs were either from the Scalescenes kit or printed out from the interweb, with the posts being folded card that's then glued with PVA. As you can see, 'extensions' on the posts are glued to the ground to affix the post in place. For the road overbridge that masks the fiddleyard exit, I enlarged and printed out a section of tarmac from cgtextures and PVA-ed it onto a single piece of cardboard box that I’d cut to shape. Printed sections of paving slab from the same website were then stuck onto separate cereal card strips and added along each side. Masking tape and a white enamel were used for the road markings. To add sides to the bridge, some girders were made from the last of the quality card, painted with primer and weathered up, and the walls are just more of the Scalescenes brick papers topped off with card strips. The final job at this stage was to add another printed texture from cgtextures for a road next to the fuel depot, and to also add the two supports for the fuel storage tank (just two pieces of card, painted up with enamels). Regarding those enamel paints, I used a job lot of paints that I secured on eBay. Purchasing single pots will be around £1.25-£1.50 a time, but if you keep a look out on eBay you’ll regularly see lots of partially used pots going cheap (try the ‘model kit’ category). If you’re prepared to wait for the right sort of selection to come along you should be able to secure something sooner or later – avoid the bright gloss colours and instead keep a look out for a military modeller looking to sell some matt greys, browns and greens. I failed to win a few auctions but managed to get these 6 partially used pots for just £3 including postage. All are still at least two-thirds full. Spends: Buildings – all free Enamels - £3 Half time score: Hornby Track Pack E - £22.50, model shop Peco Y point - £2.50, model shop PVA glue - £1.50, Wilkinsons Craft knife - £0.64, art supply shop Pack of A4 card sheets - £1.20, art supply shop Light blue emulsion tester pot for backscene - £1, Wilkinsons Large paintbrush - £0.50, Wilkinsons Gaugemaster flexitrack lengths x 2 - £3.30, exhibition Peco fishplates - £1.50, exhibition Wire - £1, exhibition Hacksaw for track cutting - £1.20, Wilkinsons Insulation tape for wiring - £0.25, Wilkinsons Masking tape - £0.50, Homebase Pack of modelling paintbrushes - £1.30, Wilkinsons Bachmann controller - £5, eBay (theoretical) Hornby Class 25 loco - £18, eBay Brown emulsion tester pot for ground - £1, Wilkinsons Sand for ballasting - £1, pet shop Grey emulsion tester pot for ballasting - £1, Wilkinsons Enamel paint x 6 - £3, eBay Total so far: £67.89 (primer and watercolour not yet added) Part 6 tomorrow covers probably the most challenging aspect of this £100 build – the rolling stock.

No real reason Jon, other than quantity. I got a fair sized bag of sand for my £1, about the same as a 1kg bag of sugar, which I knew would be enough. But you're right, £2 of Javis stuff might well be equivalent.

Oh there's quite a bit of printing to come I used the printer at work, so my printing was free, but yes you could factor in the ink cartridge cost... and purchasing a printer. The problem with a project like this is trying to cost something like that up, and then you start getting into the really bonkers stuff like the cost of petrol to the model shop, or the entrance fee to the exhibition, or the cost of the interweb connection to access the Scalescenes website. Oh, and a car of course. And a PC The cost of specific modelling items is what I kept track of.

4a - Scenery basics Foundations for two of the main scenery items needed to go in at this point, namely the overbridge and platform. Some leftovers from the baseboard build provided the bridge foundations and embankment. I’ve used the free warehouse download on the Scalescenes site to provide the brickpaper (fortunately the wonky alignment at the back will be out of sight under the bridge). The embankment then had scrunched up newspaper added and roughly glued in place to increase the supporting framework. The retaining wall at the rear of the embankment has been brickpapered up at this stage as well (it doesn’t look too good, but it’ll be mostly hidden away later). Since this siding is a little short (and to add a bit of variety), I decided to save an extra inch or so by not using one of the Hornby bufferstops but to instead model a basic sleeper-built effort that’s embedded in the embankment. Nothing fancy – just a bit of scored card with an additional piece going across, then a couple of slots for the rails to go through and PVA it in place. The platform sides went in at this stage, being built from the pack of A4 card that was stuck onto the backscene. I’ve used a grey primer as the base colour for this, with some watercolour and enamels used to weather it. I’ll explain about the watercolour and cost it up at a later stage. Kitchen towel provided the ‘ground’ – simply soak sheets in a solution of PVA/water and stick them in place. I’m not including the cost of the kitchen roll – I think we can accept that as a ‘standard’ item you find in most houses (grab a free newspaper and use that instead if we consider it really matters!). I also stuck down some foundations for where the warehouse will reside. With the basic scenery in place, the whole ground was given a coat of earthy brown from another emulsion tester pot. Don’t be alarmed by the colour of this as it’s all going to mostly disappear under further scenery work. This is mainly just a base coat for any bits that may show through. I then completed the platform foundations by adding some scrap card supports. To add a bit of detail, some strips of cardboard were cut and scored in the top to represent a cable run. A piece of concrete hardstanding was also added, using a printout from the cgtextures website. Back to my sleeper built buffer stop for a paint job with our enamels, and to add the pillar to the retaining wall. I then topped this off with a strip of painted card to finish it off (cruel closeup photo here). Last job at this stage was to add the Hornby buffers. I put in a strip of card between the buffer stops and then just weathered them up with enamels. While all these additions are lightweight and don’t trouble the cardboard baseboard at all, I was a little concerned as to what all this emulsion and PVA might do to the structural integrity of the baseboard, but no worries – still as solid as it was before. Spends: Cardboard for scenery – free Newspaper – free Brickpaper - free Emulsion tester paint pot for ground - £1 Enamels, primer and watercolour yet to add to cost. 4b - Ballasting Nothing very exciting to report here – it’s a £1 bag of sand and PVA:water dripped on from a teaspoon to hold it in place. It was then coloured via a dilute grey emulsion tester pot solution applied using one of our modelling paintbrushes (the dilution is just to make it flow easier and cover a larger area). (I've loads more photos of this, but... well... it's just pictures of track and ballast...) Spends: Sand - £1 Emulsion tester paint pot for ballast - £1 Up next are buildings and structures.

Oooh well done, that would have done the trick. Good find!

Bit late with today's update - been out all day and got back much later than expected. 3a - Track Goes Down I didn’t have enough track at this stage to complete the plan so the remaining track was purchased at an exhibition - two lengths of £1.65 cheapo flexitrack (this means we’ve 3 different track manufacturers represented on the layout now!). I also took the opportunity to get some fishplates for £1.50 and some layout wire for £1. The track was stuck down initially (and sparingly) with PVA glue – eventually the ballast will hold it in place. The sides of the rails were painted with enamels, which was a fairly tedious job, but at least I only had to paint the sides of the rails facing the front. I’ll talk about the cost of the enamels in a later post. I then hit upon a bit of a snag - how to fix the wire to the track? I was planning to just solder it, but it dawned on me that then I’d need to include the cost of a soldering iron and solder, and that would have eaten a fair sized hole in the budget (yes I could have argued that a soldering iron is a ‘household toolbox’ item and so outside the scope/cost of the project, but the only thing I use my soldering iron for is modelling). As it happens, the layout only requires two power feeds, so instead I attached some fishplates to the end of the rails, inserted the wiring and then pinched the fishplates together to keep the wires in place. Experienced modellers reading that will wince at the thought of relying on such wiring, and I do too if I’m being honest. But, needs must – I set myself a challenge and I needed to work within the confines of it. I will say that for the price of a couple of Hornby power clips you could do a more robust job, so simply adding around £4 to the overall cost would cover this. And if you remove the kick-back siding and make it two facing sidings instead, the whole layout can actually operate from the one power connection in the fiddleyard, which is just £2. As it is, the method I’ve used is pretty damn solid and the wires aren’t going to be coming out easily. I would recommend however to anyone entering the hobby and conducting a similar build to get a soldering iron. It’ll pay its way via reliable wiring on not only your first layout but also all future builds (I’ve not included the cost of the pliers and wire strippers in the overall layout cost – these I have considered as ‘household toolbox’ items). Very dull photo of the wiring under the baseboard: Spends: 2 x Gaugemaster flexitrack lengths - £3.30 Peco Fishplates - £1.50 Wire - £1 Hacksaw for track cutting - £1.20 Insulation tape for wiring - £0.25 Masking tape - £0.50 Pack of modelling paintbrushes - £1.30 3b - Power... both on and off the track I’ve not actually purchased a new controller for this layout as I’m simply using my existing one – a Bachmann controller that I purchased for £10, split from a set some years back. Checking completed listings on eBay indicates that similar spec, Hornby 'trainset' controllers sell regularly for £5 or just under, including postage: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hornby-OO-R921-Power-Controller-Mains-Lucas-/300739242355?pt=UK_Trains_Railway_Models&hash=item460574a973 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hornby-Railways-SYSTEM-R921-Power-Pack-/330750566535?pt=UK_Trains_Railway_Models&hash=item4d02452087 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hornby-Controller-/170891152936?pt=UK_Trains_Railway_Models&hash=item27c9e80e28 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lot-8-R965-Power-Controller-Supply-/251087666859?pt=UK_Trains_Railway_Models&hash=item3a75fdbeab Although an older design, these are all variable speed controllers that either plug into the mains or have a seperate transformer that's included in the price - they aren't the really cheap, 3-speeds-forward-and-reverse ones. So I think £5 is a fair cost to use as someone can definitely obtain a suitable controller for this price. So that’s the power off the track, but what about on it? Well this is the layout’s motive power – a Hornby Class 25 purchased for £15 (£18 including postage, which is what I’m totalling it up as). Excellent condition, runs faultlessly and I was the only bidder. Again, another check of completed listings just to check I’m being fair & transparent with my prices indicates similar locos having been sold for around the same amount (actually, I think I overpaid!). There’s a variety of locos on offer at this sort of price range actually. Plenty of Hornby Class 37s and 47s, a few Lima Deltics, and a Hornby Railfreight Class 58 popped up at one point. So why the 25? Well the 37 and 47 are pretty ropey in the accuracy stakes, and the Deltic and 58 are either passenger or freight specific which restricts their usage a bit. A Lima or Airfix 31 would have been a decent alternative purchase if one had come up at the right price, but the Hornby Class 25 is still a fairly good representation even today, and many modellers use them as a starting point for detailing up. That’s not something I’ll be doing here (it would eat precious funds & time), but that’s not to stop someone following in my footsteps detailing up their Class 25 into something better as a good introduction to RTR modifying & detailing. Spends: Controller - £5 (theoretical) Hornby Class 25 - £18 It’s basic scenery and ballasting tomorrow in Part 4.

Thanks for all the comments folks. I confess I was a little irritated yesterday that, even with the first post, already some folks were calling into question some of the 'validity' of how I was going about this. Calmer today... The photos aren't really good enough to be honest. And as I went through the project I kept seeing bits that I could do better if I had had more time. If I were to do it for a magazine, I'd do it all again but do things a little differently, as I discuss in the very last post... And hey - let's see the final result first before we declare it as 'magazine quality'! Yes, that's a good point. Or seal it with PVA I guess (would that work?). Do please chip in with alternative suggestions as we go through, it all adds to the richness of the thread. Another good suggestion Tim, thanks. I had originally included this, but I took it out as towards the end you could see if I was going to hit or miss the target, which kinda took away the suspense ( ) of the final stages and the final 'big reveal' of the cost. I might give a half-time score though around Post 5. I do stick an extra bit onto the fiddleyard later on as with the constant moving around the house it had started to sag a bit I certainly aimed to not go over £100, but I assume someone else doing the same wouldn't need to apply the limit so rigidly.

We need to get through a couple of boring stages I'm afraid, so brace yourselves 2 - A (very) Basic Baseboard Many people today are turning to materials such as foamboard to create lightweight baseboards for portable layouts. From the very start I’ve needed to keep costs down so I’ve forgone the traditional wooden affair and used cardboard as it was, to all intents and purposes, free. There have been some articles in the printed modelling press demonstrating cardboard being used successfully - see Raymond Young's 'Take a cardboard box...' layout in the January 2008 edition of Railway Modeller, and also Ken Gibbons' Port Pennan layout featured in June 2010. I kept an eye out at my place of work for undamaged, thick cardboard that hadn't had any water damage and within a week I had several boxes that I could cut up, some of which I actually remembered to take a photo of before cutting them up (apologies for the poor photos throughtout this posting). The use of cardboard explains why I went for a 'manual' fiddleyard and not a traverser or sector plate. I’m sure it’s possible to build one from cardboard (I remember seeing Chris Nevard’s Arne Wharf at Railex the other year and I think that used a cardboard traverser), but for simplicity I decided not to bother. Trying to get the whole thing to line up and work reliably just seemed to be adding an extra layer of challenge for the sake of it. So here’s the completed baseboard. The main ‘board’ is a box folded flat (which by pure chance came out at 6 feet exactly), so it’s effectively double thickness cardboard. No it won’t take being bashed about too much, and it would need protecting from damp if kept in a garage or shed (storing it inside a couple of dustbin bags would help that however), but it’s strong, lightweight and best of all it cost a total of just £1.50 for the PVA glue to hold it together. Having constructed the baseboard, I mixed up some diluted PVA (about 2:1 PVA:water) and pasted a folded piece of newspaper into each corner. I then pasted some A4 card sheets all along the background so as to even out any inconsistencies in the cardboard and to remove the 90’ corners. Essentially, a very basic curved backscene. The photo shows the card not even touching the folded newspaper, but this is right at the top and further down it's directly supporting it. The backscene was then painted a suitable sky background colour using an emulsion tester pot. Spends: Cardboard for baseboard – free PVA glue - £1.50 Craft knife - £0.64 Newspaper – free Pack of A4 card sheets - £1.20 Emulsion paint tester pot for backscene - £1 Large paintbrush – 50p Not a very exciting post, I admit. Next up, trackwork and wiring.

With several purchases - as we shall see - I have checked that the price I obtained was 'fair'. For example, if I've used eBay, I searched completed listings to see if I had got a 'fluke purchase' or if the price I had paid was typical. I have written all parts out already, so you'll see in later posts me doing this, and it won't be a response to this comment - I had considered it important that the build is achievable by someone else. For my track pack, I walked into a model shop and there it was. There's only one item where I've used a 'theoretical' price since I used an item I already had. I just searched on eBay for completed listings and took a 'typical' selling price to add. The very last post contains a complete list of all items used, the price paid, and where I purchased it from. Here are some completed listings on eBay for the same track pack E, all selling for less than I paid (including postage), and they weren't auctions ending at 4am or anything: http://www.ebay.co.u...=item4168d23a6c http://www.ebay.co.u...=item19d32d536b http://www.ebay.co.u...=item25719d8faa http://www.ebay.co.u...=item20c65ba60e And one ending in 3 hours... http://www.ebay.co.u...&prg=1005&rk=2

Patience...

1 - The Plan… and the first purchase The limited funds meant that inevitably the layout would be fairly simple in nature, but two aims were to get away from anything resembling a train set and to include both passenger and freight operations. Fairly early on I decided I wanted to set the layout in the BR blue period, as this could then further the concept of the £100 layout if we had the premise of an adult in their 30s or 40s wanting to take up the hobby for the first time. Modelling the trains that they remember from their youth may well mean BR blue. Needing to keep the costs down meant I thought we’d probably have to buy a ‘job lot’ of track and then try to design something with what that contained. In the end I purchased this, an old Hornby Track Pack E (not to be confused with the Pack E in the current catalogue which contains different items). At first glance not an obvious thing to buy, but for my £22.50 I got four brand new points, some straights and a curve, and even some buffer stops (and at this level of funding little extras like that can be very useful). Yes the points are Hornby short radius set track, code 100 and insulted frogs, when Peco medium radius streamline code 75 Electrofrog would have been better, but even secondhand that would have been nearer £25+ for just the points alone. While purchasing the trackpack I also decided to grab a secondhand Peco Y point for £2.50. A good inspection revealed that it was a bit grubby but intact, the spring action was fine and the rail tops were shiny & unmarked. So now armed with 3 left hand points, 1 right and a Y point I tried to construct something along terminus-to-fiddleyard lines. The idea is a small terminus, with a rail-served industry/warehouse, and a couple of sidings for a fuel depot and general storage. The platform extends under the road overbridge to suggest the station is longer than what we see on the layout. The fiddleyard will be a ‘manual’ job, in that stock will need to be lifted on and off by hand, but I don’t necessarily see that as a problem (it’s not expensive handbuilt stock we’re going to be manhandling here). I was also keen to not go beyond 6 feet as the overall length, mainly to keep the whole thing reasonably portable. An initial aim to include two coach passenger trains proved feasible (just) within the space, but some long-range costing up of all the likely items required for the layout revealed that the money for the second coach could be better spent elsewhere. So while the aim was to include passenger as well as freight operations, I don’t mind admitting that the passenger side has been reduced to not much more than a token nod with just single coach trains. The idea is that we model the ‘end’ of a much longer train, by having the train arrive and stop with the first coach still half under the bridge. An alternative would be to model parcels operations instead, or a (slightly clichéd) remote Scottish terminus somewhere that might experience genuine one coach trains. I did consider both of these, but parcels stock remained resolutely out of reach on eBay, even old, over-length Lima items, and the Mk I coach needed for a Scottish terminus also remained out of reach - I didn’t expect to be able to secure a Bachmann Mk I coach, but older Hornby or even Triang Mk Is were beyond what I could afford to pay. Suffice to say, it wouldn’t add massively to the overall cost to expand the passenger side of things, either by including a second coach or spending a bit more on a single, decent Mk I or parcels stock. Spends: £22.50 Hornby Track Pack E (4 points, 3 straights, 1 short straight, 1 curve, 4 buffer stops) £2.50 Peco Y point That’s the first post to kick things off. Tomorrow it’s baseboard building time.

It’s an expensive hobby, right? If you buy the latest Ready To Run (RTR) items, then yes it can be. However, I’ve always maintained that this hobby can be as cheap or expensive as you want it to be. As much as I might want to model Kings Cross in O gauge, the fact is I don’t have the money to do it, so I model something smaller and cheaper. But what if we took this argument to the next level? What if we actually tried to find out how little money someone can enter the hobby with and still manage to arrive at a completed layout? In short, can a layout be built for £100? Now this is far from the first time that something like this has been attempted, as several of the monthly magazines have published ‘Build a layout for £100’ articles over the years. But what makes this slightly different is that while those projects typically only cover the cost of building the actual layout itself, the £100 used here will be the cost of everything required to complete the layout – so that’s baseboard, track, wiring, controller, rolling stock, scenery, details, paint, glue, paintbrushes and so on. Essentially the project will mirror someone entering the hobby with absolutely nothing in the way of modelling materials and some £100 later arriving at a completed, operating layout. For me, one aspect that never sits very comfortably with some of the existing ‘build a layout for £100’ projects is that frequently the cost isn’t actually the amount that needs to be spent. For example, if the project uses half the trees in a pack that cost £10, it’s added to the total as only £5 spent. All very well, but the fact is you can’t actually buy those trees for £5, you have to spend £10. So here the total cost will actually be what was spent, and that will even include postage costs. The only things I won’t be including are some basic tools such as pliers and scissors, and some general household objects that I expect most people to already have. I tend to find that online projects like this – that aim to show a specific idea or concept in action – work better if the thread progresses along at a decent pace, so this layout has actually been completed before I’ve started this thread. A little unusual, but don’t you get frustrated by those threads that start with a project, show a couple of progress updates, and then disappear for 6 months and fall off the radar? At least here you’re guaranteed to see the final result! I must just quickly mention time, of which there wasn’t much. In certain areas more availability of time would have allowed for a better result, but equally I didn’t want to spend 12 months trying to complete this project. What I’ve done as a demonstration of ‘This is what you can do, but with more time you could do better’. So in 9 separate updates, posted 1 a day, I will be detailing the results of this project. Did I manage to keep it under £100? Hmmmm…

Oh, and regarding Parkside v Bachmann, I always thought the general concensus was that the Bachmann RTR version is about 95% of the way there, and so while you could build a load from Parkside kits, the question becomes one of if the extra effort is worth the improvements or are there more important things in life and/or modelling? Personally I wouldn't touch the Hornby or Mainline ones seeing as the Bachmann one is widely available. The only comment about the Bachmann version is that they appear to be produced in batches, typically twice a year (from my incomplete observations) in Spring and Autumn, and they can sell out reasonably quickly, so grab a handful while you can. The Airfix kit is popular, cheap and perfectly serviceable. I too am not an expert, this is just info I've collated in my brainbox from reading other's views.

I think Kev is right. I'm not so sure about it riding high, I think it's more that the other end is down - if you look at the rail about where the gap is inbetween the wagons and then follow it towards the camera, it goes down noticeably. I think the wagon is just starting to go down this little slope and so the back is pointing up a bit. Good spot though.

Allhallows-on-Sea looks very modellable.

And that is, I feel, an area where Minories gets misunderstood - CJF always had a leaning towards designing layouts with operating interest in mind and it's that 'intensely worked' aspect, with passenger trains arriving and departing near constantly, that he had in mind with Minories. I've probably seen 3 examples at exhibitions (not a lot, I accept) but all were essentially operating with a 'one engine in steam' principle, which I felt kinda missed the point a little. I've always wanted to see more than one train movement at a time - I've never seen a Minories that had a train arriving and departing at the same time. To be honest, it's also that aspect that's made me a little dubious of its suitability for a home layout for myself. The limited scenery means it's a quick build, which ticks a major box for me, but I've never been too sure if the plan is ideal for a single operator. I'm undecided, and happy to listen to experiences of folks who have done this. It just feels that I'd be using a plan designed for intense operation but then not actually operating it intensely! Does that matter? I don't know.

One more in that sequence too: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidwf2009/5549686545/in/faves-45827152@N07/ Colour balance is a bit off, but the right hand one is interesting for the new door and number patch.

Some interesting other details too - the fence with missing slats, the big wheel in the signal box (for operating the LC gates I assume?), couple of lumps of coal on the back of the tender... What's the tall grey post/box thing underneath where the chap is leaning over the stairs? I assume it's a post like the white ones on the gates, but it's smaller and not painted white.

I've far from an expert weatherer, but I find tank wagons to be particularly tricky for some reason. I've seen efforts of other modellers who are superb at box vans, opens or locos, and yet their tank wagons are also the 'worst' of their weathering jobs. Perhaps it's the expanse of smooth sides that cause the problem, but they do seem like one of the harder items to get looking good.