Bloodnok

Most elegant articulated loco, and we're allowed to go worldwide? I'm going to have to cheat and nominate two -- one Garratt and one Mallet. First choice: QR Beyer-Garratt 4-8-2+2-8-4: Second choice: UP Challenger 4-6-6-4:

One step forward, two steps backward. First, the forward step: There's something about seeing track on a board for the first time (even if it's not laid properly) that's quite impressive. Also that my curves through the junction appear to work. Two steps back though -- the ply at the other end of the layout has warped, producing a very ... undulating board surface around the far corner. I apparently either need to add some longitudinal bracing to that corner or re-cut that piece in better ply. ... And I found I had already used the last of the 2x1. None of the offcuts that remain are suitable.

The linked thread did say it was abandoned after a house move and reduction in space, so somehow I doubt it.

See this is what I mean. I go looking for pictures of LNWR Class A or LNWR Class B, and the best looking examples that turn up happen to be Google misdirecting me to LNWR Class E or F locos, which appear to be broadly similar only someone shoved a front axle on them and turned them into 2-8-0s...

As to a Pre-75 overhead EMUs (I see no mention of "British" being specified), then ... the Victorian 'Tait' sets. An honourable mention for the PRR MP54. If it really does have to be British, then as nice as those AM1s are, they are 4 rail units converted as a test, so kinda cheating. I'm going to have to go with the LB&SCR, probably the SL stock in it's original 3 car formation.

An elegant British 0-8-0 tender locomotive? I don't think there is one. They would all universally look better as either a 2-6-0 or a 2-8-0. Tank locos? Maunsell Z class. Honourable mention for the YEC Taurus though...

I was talking to my Dad earlier in the week, and apparently, I came up with a couple of fictional names many, many years ago, as a very small child. I do remember the fictional place "Dongits" appearing repeatedly in my childhood in a meme like fashion -- I didn't remember that I was the one who created it, but apparently I did... (We got lost somewhere, Mum asked Dad where we were, and I answered from the back seat of the car). I was almost convinced that would have to be the name of the layout -- but it feels ... awkward somehow when written down. I'm not even sure that'd be the correct spelling for how it's pronounced. However, Dad had a second placename that I didn't remember -- "Barlow". According to Google there are several roads called "Barlow Road" or "Barlow Street" in various towns and cities in the target area, but no actual towns named that -- so that looks like a plausible candidate. Of course, there is more than one thing on the layout that will need naming, there's a bridge, a junction, a yard, at least three locations where signal boxes would have been located and would therefore be named. I suspect a lot of what's been discussed in this thread is going to get used somewhere on this layout...

For a 2-8-0, I'm going to have to give it to Stanier with his 8F, but an honorable mention does need to go to the S-160.

Got busy with the jigsaw today. First up, this piece, the exit from the storage yard: Then the start of the gradient up around this horseshoe curve: And finally the missing bit, the entrance to the storage yard. I also cut a piece to extend the gradient as far as the beginning of the triangle, but haven't photographed this bit. The triangle won't be installed yet as I want to get the track laid and tested underneath it before I put that bit in. So ... track. I now have all the track I need for the boards I have made so far. I might have bought the last box of Peco flextrack in the country (or at least, the last box available for online order). It certainly took a lot of trawling the model shop directory to find somewhere that still had it in stock... But before track, I should probably put some underlay down. Hmmm, let me revise that. I should probably get some underlay...

There are a great many 0-6-0Ts. Gronk. Hunslet Austerity. BR363. USA Dock Tank. YEC Janus. Fowler 3F. Class 14. GWR Pannier Tank. Vossloh G6. All very useful locomotives shifting wagons about in yards and running trip freight. But ... "Attractive" or "Graceful"? Those aren't adjectives typically associated with 0-6-0Ts. Oh, and "British" was specified, too. To get "attractive" or "graceful", you need to go much further back. Back to when they might have been seen on passenger trains. I think my choice is going to have to be ... the LB&SCR E2.

Getting this bit installed in the back corner turned out to be a bit more tricky than I thought it was going to be, as the entire thing is on a gradient and thus none of the supports end up being flat / horizontal. The entire piece needs a twist in it. Hopefully I've got this correct. The spirit level is giving me pretty much the same angle no matter where I put it lined up with the track-bed, but I won't really find out for sure until it's track-laying time...

Originally a custom designed multi-stage pantograph which wasn't entirely successful, later fitted with a Brecknell-Willis High Speed.

Today's progress is this piece nearest the camera (now fully installed) plus a piece to go in the far back corner which still needs a minor trim - it turns out the walls are not as straight/square as I thought they were, so in following the diagram exactly I haven't ended up with a piece that fits. Never mind -- at least it's too big, not too small... It's quite interesting working out how to get the most from a sheet of ply when you don't need solid tops. All four of these pieces have come from the same sheet of ply so far, and there's a fifth piece yet to come. I'll need to cut into the second sheet for both ends of the fiddle yard and for the horseshoe curve at the start of the gradient. Train for scale: This highly improbable formation would be approaching the west curve, beyond which is the entrance to the six-road fiddleyard.

Here we see a milestone -- the first piece of running surface is installed. This is the central section of the storage yard, and will have six parallel tracks on it.

Many months ago I "acquired" (re-acquired?) a bunch of stuff that was in my parents loft. This was stored when we moved house, and I no longer had the space to set up my previous OO gauge layout. As we've had a bit of time on our hands recently, I went through it to see what I could find. As well as many Hornby train-set platform pieces, the typical Hornby small platform building, engine shed and goods shed (all in faux "large stone" print, and containing about half the number of printed windows they should have) and about two-thirds of a very sad looking girder bridge, I found some stuff that might still pass muster. Do bear in mind here that this stuff hasn't seen the light of day since 1992, and I wasn't yet a teenager at the time. My level of kitbuilding success wasn't so much measured as "Does this look presentable to exhibition standard?", but more "Are any of the bits that fell off and got stuck to the carpet actually critical?" and "Did I manage to avoid making my fingers an integral part of the model?" Anyway, first I encountered these two huts. I don't recall anything about them at all. I highly doubt I built them. Does anyone know what they are? I then encountered this signal box, which I definitely remember building. I remember it being quite intricate and struggling with initially, but once I'd got the basic shape together the rest all went on pretty straightforwardly: It seems to have had the finials and the chimney broken in the intervening 28 years in storage, as the bottom half of all of them are firmly glued into the roof and the top half nowhere to be seen. I'm not convinced the rest of the railings ever actually existed, as there is no evidence of glue in any of the places I'd expect had they broken off. Finally I encountered this footbridge: I think this is Airfix, as I also found the box for it (which contained the pieces for a level crossing kit, all separated from the sprues, but not assembled). There are in the box the two object deflectors to put under the footbridge -- apparently I had the foresight not to glue these on as they'd need to be positioned over the track later, and I hadn't decided where the footbridge would go. Little did I know /how much/ later, or /on which layout/ it might be...

Today has mostly cursing the sudden but inevitable shortage of layout building materials. I have nowhere near enough ply in stock. The stuff I do have turns out not to be particularly good, being the kind of "3 ply" where two of the three are surface veneers, and all the actual thickness is just a single layer. Given I'm well short of the amount of ply I need for even just the storage yard, let alone the gradient up to the main layout level, I think I'll avoid using that stuff for roadbed and go with one consistent (and better) type throughout. So instead I've been installing some risers where I happen to have offcuts of the right size ready to go, and prepping the points I have managed to acquire so far for DCC and servo operation. Most of the points are the current Peco type, which are relatively easy converts. They need the bridging wires between the blades and the frog removed, and new wires soldered on to bridge the stock rails and blades. Everything other than short points has a convenient pre-planned gap to do this in. Short points don't have the convenient gap, but I've managed to solder onto the bottom of the rails without too much trouble. I leave nice long tails on the new wires -- these then become droppers and will be connected to the block feeds when under the board. The only real challenge is working out which side is red and which is black, and then not mixing the points up afterwards, so it stays correct. I've only had to re-do one of them so far... Some of the points I have are the older type of Peco Electrofrog points. These are much more of a challenge to convert. There are no existing breaks between the blades and the frog, so I have to make some. The rails don't seem very well secured after cutting, either. Finding places to solder the wires is difficult as there's not a lot of space. I have to solder three, as they don't have a pre-fitted dropper from the frog. I have a suspicion I might end up replacing these with newer style ones once Peco are up and running and stock is readily available again.

Today's progress has been limited to sorting this chamfered corner out and attaching a rather lost looking fourth leg. The trick with the chamfered corner is to save the offcuts when making the sawcut, and use them to create a flat spot to attach the angle to. The leg will look a lot less lost when the upper level goes in -- it's at the intersection point for the key long runs on this level, even if the lower level doesn't benefit from it as much. Aside from this, I have been mostly re-arranging things that are stored in the study so I can start to see the entire fiddleyard level in one go. Just the pile of tools and detritus in the foreground to go, and I'll be able to start throwing ply surface at the storage yard. That'll be next weekend's job. I do hope I have enough ply in stock...

It's a fictional terminus connected to the WCML. Think "Liverpool Lime Street" or "Manchester Piccadilly" but less prestigious. Still important enough to have been electrified, and have WCML electrics terminate here. As to how far up the country it is ... I haven't decided yet. Far enough that you'd see InterCity services to London though. Geographically it also can't be right on the coast -- the line does rise to the terminus, after all...

Yes, it'll be Peco Code 100 in the hidden areas. I've got a few bits at the moment, enough to make a start on one end of the storage yard. But I need another box of flex ... and most of the points. It's all out of stock everywhere at the moment, but when things start up again I'll be putting in an order with someone. I'm not entirely sure what I'll use in the visible space. I've planned it with Peco geometry using a mixture of large and medium points, diamonds, and a couple of slips in the station throat. I've had my eye on Peco's new bullhead range, but the option to fall back to the old Code 75 range is there. It does very much depend on Peco making a decent range of the bullhead though -- a large left and a large right don't quite cut it. But the more they make, the more of the layout it can appear on. As for plain line, I definitely want to use bullhead plain line in all the sidings and likely the platform tracks too. Plain line mainlines I'd like to have in proper Code 82 flatbottom, but I'm not sure where to get it from. The "correct answer" appearance wise looks like rail from C&L and track base from Exactoscale -- but you can't just order Exactoscale track base any more, and neither of their suggested sources (EM and P4 societies) would be appropriate for the OO version of the track base, which is what I want. If anyone knows how you can buy 4FT-106A from Exactoscale, do let me know. I want something like 28 metres of it, possibly more if I do the station in it too... It'll be a while before I build up that far, so both Peco and Exactoscale have time to sort themselves out I will be fitting full track circuiting with ABC on the mainlines and through the storage yard -- I'll have feedback for where a train is sat on track by electrical conductivity and trains will stop themselves before they hit anything -- or at least, that's the plan. I may also fit train describers to places trains are commonly parked, to answer the "Exactly which 37 / 47 / 86 / Bog Cart is that, and what ID did I give it?" question when it's 5 rows back and in semi-darkness. Cameras may also be useful for really awkward spots -- I'm expecting a glut of cheapy "lightly used" webcams to appear on the market after lockdown is over and people go back to working in offices. I may try to pick up a few then... "Hidden" siding entrance and exit are visible from the front anyway, they were planned to be at the front of the baseboard for exactly that reason. I'm not planning to close in the storage in at the front with fascia panels. The centre line on the ascent and the far side of the triangle is another matter though as that's right at the back and gets higher (and thus more difficult to see) over time. Additional visibility might well be useful to those areas. It will be DCC. The polarity doesn't change from the bridge round to the right. It also doesn't change on the outer track of the left or straight runs -- the fact it has a balloon loop at the far end makes it effectively a giant straight through loop, even though the ascent and descent are then of different polarities. The only bit that actually needs to change is the centre 3rd track of the ascent/descent, which is big enough to fit a complete train. I believe I can drive this reversing section with just a DPDT relay and the inputs from the signalling system -- there should be no need for a short circuit based "reversing module".

Over the past three days, more of the frame has appeared. It's almost complete now - there's only a few bits left to do. There's a triangular piece in the upper left corner that needs adding, and an extra leg to go in that corner as well. This should be no problem to get done tomorrow... I also made a thread for it, despite it still needing a name...

There is enough of a height separation between the storage and the main layout level to get a hand in above the stock in the fiddleyard and below the frame for the layer above. However, it is too deep to get an arm in to where the back of the triangle is, as the baseboard is over a metre deep here and there's a wall on the far side. At this location I have designed the frame so I can get underneath (well, provided I move the stuff that's under there first) and pop up inside the layout at that location -- there's a deliberately wide gap in the frame at this location to make this easier to do.

Today's update. Next section of frames have gone in: Still to do -- attach leg 4, which is positioned mostly for the benefit of the upper level and not at a crossing point in the lower level, and attach the chamfered piece in the left hand far corner where the rising gradient starts. Oh, and clean up a bit...

Eventually this will be over -- and the layout will live on. I'd like a name for it that will outlive the events of this month. Perhaps if I elaborate on the setting and the stock, that might get some interest along different lines. The terminus station is intended to represent a significant regional destination, served by a mixture of local, cross country and InterCity trains. The InterCity trains originate on the WCML. Think a service pattern like a scaled down version of Liverpool Lime Street or Manchester Piccadilly, with some trains from the south, some trains from the east, and some trains from the local area. I want to be able to run it anywhere between about 1966 and 1996 convincingly, although the "core" time period that I will represent is the mid-to-late 1980s.

As most of us are no doubt aware, we recently got told to stay inside. For a lot of us, that means lots of lovely extra time with the model railway. However, the layout project I was involved in is ... in a location I can now no longer visit. This is obviously untenable, and ... something had to be done. We did have a tiny bit of advance notice though. Enough for me to look at all my then-current track plans for building a layout in the study, decide they were all awful for one reason or another, cut'n'paste the best bits of them together into another plan, and order a few tools I was used to using but didn't own, and some wood. The decree that we must stay indoors arrived the morning after I'd placed the orders. The current iteration of the plan: What's happening in those tunnels I hear you ask? This: The plan is fundamentally a terminus to fiddleyard, with one and a half laps of the room on the way there. There is a twist though -- by crossing over at the bridge, it becomes a continuous run. And by using the triangle, trains can get between the storage yard and the continuous run in either direction, so I can have trains that would be inappropriate to turn up at the terminus. They can come from storage, circulate, and go back into storage. Only the 3rd central line in the ascent/descent requires polarity reversing. Some of the wood I ordered turned up very quickly, and Phase 1 of construction commenced the following Saturday. At the end of the day, it looked like this: I was sort of expecting this to occupy me for a while during lockdown, but instead I found I had used all the wood on the first Saturday. That was ... a bit of a surprise. (If you are wondering why the legs are taller than the frame, that's the height of the visible surface, whereas the frame is at the level of the storage yard. Tying them in at two levels should mean I don't need to add extensive bracing below the surface so it's easier to put stuff under there for storage). Apparently even the timber yard were subject to panic buying, so a week later the rest of my order still had not shown up yet. All I got done that weekend was completing that corner piece (closest to the camera in the above picture), and shifting stuff around in the study so that a bunch of stuff that was in the way of future construction was out of the way. Another week has passed, and this morning the rest of the wood arrived -- and just in time for the Easter long weekend, too. Phase 2 of frame construction, enough to build the entire storage yard, incline and the triangle is now underway. Pictures to follow when it's not just a pile of wood with notches cut in it. What this layout really really needs, though, is a name. Any suggestions for how to come up with a good one?

I built this baseboard: (This photo is actually from the weekend before last). Last weekend I got the corner bit cut and mounted (the bit nearest the camera). I would have done more but ... I'm still waiting for the next delivery of wood. It's been ... quite a while ... since I ordered it. Apparently even the timber yard has been subject to panic buying and is on extended delivery schedules. I really need a name for this layout, so I can create a thread for it. Design a layout, I can do that. Build it ... I'm working on it. Name it? Apparently that's the thing I simply can't do...