mr magnolia

jings! I'm well behind on this. Been too busy grumbling about all these country folk on the trains to realise that more royalty had been visiting! Donald

Having discovered that there is an update to Anyrail available, I've done some colouring in type stuff to the trainset plan. Quite satisfying, in a non-productive way!

Well hoots mon etc! I can't believe that so long has passed that it actually took me a little while to find my way back to my own little blogette (I have a spurious nil entry blog set up by accident, and its not too easy to navigate beyond that one) any hoo, time has passed and not much has seemingly happened, but its all been great fun. I've wrecked a few settrack points in my search for the elusive 'electro-frog' conversion, and instead, I've changed the parts to code 55 electrofrogs (a lazy mans solution) and reduced the complexity of the points, which gives much-improved running, introduces a difficulty / challenge in the operation of the thing, but helps with the original aim, which was to allow some round and round action while wrestling with the shunting moves in the inside tracks. I was reading the NRM n gauge project writeup in this months mag, and I have to say that I profoundly disagree with the assertion in there that working on the electrics brings no joy and no apparent progress - I can assure you that after a week or two puzzling over an electrofrog wiring puzzle, to actually get some juice through it and some trains running is an absolute joy! Just think, at this rate in another year or so, I'll be able to progress to ballasting the thing. Even more exciting though is the fact that I only have 2 set track points left on the trainset now, so possibly I may get them converted successfully, now I have a good number of spares to practice on... Rolling stock wise, I have to keep telling myself that I WON'T buy a weathered B1... Oh - and I have to solve the seemingly tricky question of 'what year am I?' when the traction efforts on this bit of east-central Scotland line are a Class 4, a Class 37 and a Class 24, all in BR green. It sure as hell isn't December 1958, which was my original aiming point, and it increasingly doesn't feel like east central scotland either. previous plan (constructed); followed by Revised Plan (under construction)

a quiet weekend at magnolia mansions - too windy to go out on the bike for any great length, but not a lot going on, so got hijacked by the girls to get some scenery in on our little layout. Its going to be 'finished' before I've even got my cab-control working at this rate... Had some fun running our Spanish wagons and a Feve carriage around in honour of the looming big event, and sure enough, justice was later done (eventually)! sadly, I was the only one in the house cheering on Spain as the players are apparently' too ugly! Dad', and in any event the girls haven't forgiven us from taking them to Seville last July (TOO HOT! DAD) (I agree - it was brutal) path building and painting: Spanish wagons through the trees... and some cows:

hmm - I yam a member, but not yet investigated!

hmm, ta. I shall investigate

so, over the construction period, I have, like a lot of peeps before me, been both glad of and despairing of, the properties of insulfrog points, particularly the settrack variety. My simple mind had taken me to a point of considering that really, the issue with running n gauge small locos is that there is simply too much dead track as they trundle their way around complex track arrangements. To counter this, thought one was - why not run them with an attendant wagon with extra pickups and a connector to the loco? Thought two was - why not make the plastic bit into a conductive bit, so the gaps are shorter? Thought two won out and on Friday I emerged from Maplins with a small jar of conductive paint. Later, after a wee drink or two, I opened it up and started blathering paint about the place. My assumption was that I would paint the frogs and then have to create a gap between each touching rail to ensure that I wasn't shorting things out. So I merrily made a mess everywhere and after about 2 minutes drying time, I ran a train or two - and everything worked! I've made no gaps and I'm very confused. The result doesn't look great either, but the experiment was about volts and amps, not appearance. My working assumption is that because I have everything running from one controller at present, with no cab wiring, then only one route is needed to be live at any point in time so shorts elsewhere don't matter. But I think I shall have to ask a proper question of the wider bretheren in the proper place! Photo of typical set of points after blathering:

I'm thinking 'plank' in a slightly literal way, as it would give me a chance to see if i could come up with a fancy way of attaching a narrow section of board to the front of the layout in a way that meant it doesn't need to be a permanent fixture. I'll have a thunk round platforms, but that may make thinks a little wider than I'm considering - I'm thinking more along the lines of sidings off the loop, with the 'plank' maybe only about 100mm wide or so. Cab control is my next wiring move so no worries there either! (until I try it...)

all is quiet on the Abercorn Branch. The electrics seem as fully operational as a settrack layout seems to allow, and the chances of my moving things to cab control before the darker days draw in seem , er, 'remote' Scenery is in the hands of the female of the species (both large and small as wot live in this house) and is moving not a jot at present. Operating the thing though seems to me to be a confirmation that the layout will serve us well for the next little while. (ie, all seem agreed its good fun to operate) so thoughts turn to a number of things: shunting plank! I've seen the term, and I'm pondering the possibility of adding a thin slice of extra excitement to the front of the layout. Even though only 600 wide, the sidings at the rear are tricky for the little ones to access, and the passing loop at the front seems to get more than its share of the action. Maybe this is my immediate chance to move from the settrack and code 80(?) stuff to code 55... set track points - just how do you get them to work! I see no consistency in the performace of one loco vs another or against a previous run across the same points. I see now why recommendations point to electrofrogs... I have 4 medium radius points on the layout - 2 electro and 2 insulfrogs. these were for trials, and i think the response to the trials is that I shall replace the insulfrogs with electrofrogs. The settrack points are another matter - perhaps I should see exactly what happens when i rearrange the layout to substitute medium radius points. (I know the answer, but it'll be interesting to see on paper!) Board construction - my starting point was a temporary thing that was constructed within the constraints of the space available to me. These have changed, and I've become aware of how slowly i am likely to move away from what has been established as a working layout. So its time to think again about proper supports for the thing. I think I'll combine those thoughts with some about adding a shunting plank bit at the front of the layout... happy days. I hadn't realised exactly how much 'modelling' time can be taken up with 'pondering'!

thanks for the offer, skinny, but I'll let you hang on to them. Kit building wagons still lies ahead as a new skill for me, and I don't want to spoil myself in advance!. You should keep them as a showpiece for the work that you must have put into them.

The last entry here prompted some comment that made me go back and examine what brought me to the layout that we have. (trackplan in previous entry) After all, a railway is a serious thing, and no-one builds one without good reason, surely?... As a father to 3 interested, but small, daughters, and a novice modeller, I thought we needed to come up with something to act as: a medium-term training exercise for me, to cover as many modelling aspects as possible - track/scenics/electronics/kits a round-and-round thing to allow me and the girls to see stuff happening without doing anything a thing with a terminus to allow for some shunting a passing loop to allow for two types of train at the same time something that fitted in the bay window of the bedroom something to allow for reversals I'd always wanted N gauge if I had anything, and girls are so much more controlled and precise (generally) than boys, that I was prepared to take the risk attached to having small bits of stuff in the hands of small children. So all in all, I'm quite happy with what we have, and I'm happy also with the random thoughts I'm developing about 'the next layout' which will now have to be all code 55 streamline, if not 2mmFS! here's a view at the start of proceedings, showing the height constraint offered by the underside of the window shutters: and here's where we were getting to some sunny day a month or two ago:

thanks guys - its definately in N gauge, and its pretty much all due to be scenicked. Its our first layout and I don't want to stray too far from trainset territory as we need to kep things moving to keep the childer (and my inner child) happy. The cross over at the rhs is just a long ramp up the back and over the top with the lower section in tunnel-through-hill. Trainlength is short - a 37 and 3 coaches, which fits within the tunnel section, so doesn't look too bad. Then theres another ramp down again of course... At the moment its wired as a single thing with a polarity switch on the y leg. I'm intending to wire the sections as shown coloured as cab control to allow a train to parade around the outside and some shunting to go on in the middle. That should allow enough action for 2 drivers and a signalwoman/points controller, while the fat controller shouts things from the rear!

So, here's an attempt to show the trackplan that resulted from a good few months of deliberation and discussion, and finally, agreement on location. Its a 1500x600 thing made simply from sundeala board on 3 thin bits of wood saved from an abondoned futon. Its almost exactly everything that is advised against in board construction, as the supports are used on their weak axis and warp and twist a little in the sun and varying temperatures of the bedroom. BUT it was constructed to accommodate a significant height constraint that has now gone away. Hmm, but what project would be complete without a significant constraint that subsequently changes or disappears, leaving the onlooker wondering why such apparently cack-handed decisions had been made! At the time of construction, the thing sat on a table below the front window, and needed to be lower than the window shutter that swings across it at night. I achieved that by about 5mm, and now, with a different table, I've got loads of room - c'est la vie, I guess. I've also made a nice 1500x900 board in the 'approved' manner, and very much better it is too. I just need to find some space to use it later...

hmmm too many Dr Who moments of late. Time to see if i can get a photo up here... . ooh - look! it might be here. If this works, I'm impressed by the not-needing-to faff-about-with-uploading elsewhere first bit. Anyhhoo, this image dates from January of this year, and marked the first connections between two bits of streamline track, with extra faffing to ensure continued use of the majorly set track resource base, as we started to commit to a layout that wouldn't be pulled apart again and put away. Indeed - a giant step in the annals of negotiation and discussion, aided by my 3 girls eager support! I was very proud of the way I'd managed to get the track to be approximately the same as the set track spacing by insertion of a small extra length of track between the points. Said track section was laboriously cut with a junior hacksaw and then filed with a very big file. As soon as I had acomplished this, I thought 'feck that -there has to be an easier way! And of course, there is. For my next experiment, i shall try to get a track plan up here I think. OK, now to hit publish and see if the photo thing works... edit: well, it sort of works then. I shall clearly have to experiment further with the display-picture-all-by-itself commands. edit2: hmm, now it does seem to display-picture-all-by-itself. strange but true.

Hi Skinny - you need to be careful, there's a couple of us around here as well! I'm going to research how to post pics soon...

trip to Glasgow on the train,did some work(!) (it snowed in Glasgow, briefly) read a bit about progress on the Airdrie-Bathgate line en route; back via the soon-to-be-history East Coast Glasgow to London, off at Motherwell and then continue later from Bellshill via the fantastic (for those like me that travel from Embra to Bellshill frequently) new semi-fast service from Bellshill to Embra to pick up the girls from after school club and away for a little taster tennis lesson for them at the community tennis court. felt good about life. Home and homework, baths, bed for the wee ones, a little shunting for me (04 back on the rails - all I've done is apply the dyson to it very closely in pursuance of the art of coarse railway modelling!) and prepare childrens kit for the morning. Wife arrives home 10 minutes ago bearing tidings of Tory rule. Can't bring myself to check out the real world just yet. Sounds like Mr Clegg has truly shafted Mr Brown. If so, he's truly shafted the Lib Dems in Scotland and taken us here in fortress Scotland (and possibly the Harlech mob too) another giant step towards independence - like it or not. help. I've just looked at the BBC website. Its all true. We ARE doomed. Just looked further at the BBC website and realised its 25 yrs since the Bradford fire. Having recently left Bradford at that point in my life and taken up residence in York, I was still a frequent visitor to Valley Parade and in those pre-mobile days it took my mum 3 or 4 days to get hold of me to check that I wasn't there that day. Even if I hd, i would have been in the opposite stand, watching it. I think I'd been at the last home game against West Brom (cup match?) and gave the ill fated one a miss. I'm beginning to feel as though I need to find a machine to divide me and my nearest and dearest by 148, jump into the grossly over-priced Hornby liddle End tardis I bought the other day and zoom away to a better time and place. Apologies if any offence here, but really, I'm speachless.

I'm always intrigued by articles describing railway modellers early fascinations with (almost invariably) steam engines etc etc. For me it begins differently, as a boy in the early/mid 70s when family magnolia, having fled fortress Scotland and secured economic migrant status in Ingerland, became located on the Bedpan line. Not for me though any fascination with the real thing, but rather many brief periods with my nose pressed against a toyshop window in St Albans as I waited for my bus home from school. In the window was a collection of amazing looking tiny working trains - n gauge stuff, surely? I was fascinated and horrified to find that they cost even more than the big Hornby stuff that we certainly had no room for. Must be like some horrible disease, lying dormant until opportunity rears its head again - in this case, playground chat about what a shame it was that I had 3 daughters and wouldn't I have liked a son to allow me to play scalectrix and trains etc. hmm, trains, equal opportunities, dadly duties; maybe my girls would be interested in model trains? yes they are! And here we are too (wherever that is), following an appropriate birthday and a group present of some of the modern n gauge stuff. So far its been a very slow 15mnth descent (or ascent?) into geekdom, that will either accelerate, decline or stabilise once I have the initial " trainset" layout fully under control. Control will mean having to stop buying every railway modelling mag going and setle down to, perhaps, one or so per month. I suspect that it will also involve a journey into something that might approach 2mm finescale land eventually... First ideas for a layout basis? well, we stay in Portobello, Edinburgh, very close to the root of the Waverely Line (both old, current and proposed). So there's a thought... Work takes me via road or rail to the obscure parts of Inverclyde, wherein lie railways of amazing gradients and retaining walls and proximity of lines, one to another (see Bogston station in particular - an incredible jumble of trains and bridges and roads and housing This Photo does nothing to fairly represent the place, but the platform shown is perched high above the A8 to the left, the Wemyss Bay line is up to the right, the bridge shown is an old road bridge over the top of the glasgow line and then passing immediately under the Wemyss Bay line; just beyond the bridge was a connection to the adjacent docks and another branchline. Its a scene that comes straight out of a trainset! enough, enough! I'm only typing this because the Farish class 04 sitting upstairs seems to have got some large amounts of childrens hair wrapped around its workings and its too late to start to take all that apart without wifely complaint...

Cripes it's only taken me 3 weeks or so to find this chuffing thing again to add an entry - I'm not sure I'll be able to get back again either as i don't really know how I got here. Bit like life, really. Anyhoo, the branch is back out from hiding and is sitting comfortable on the new Ikea £49 table. My back and knees are sore from bending down. Last bit of the first stage wiring is completed and all track sections work, including the reverse polarity bit. Isolating sections all by pointwork at present, and the hunt is on for some decent line-side push switches and some small levers for the pointwork. Operators are all under 10, except of course the fat controller, but luckily are girls, so random violence on the trackside is rare. Now to find some photos and a way of putting them up here...

glad to see that I'm not the only one with IKEA boxes stuffed with railway things! I'm horribly distracted by foreign model trains, even before I've got a 'proper' british layout finished...

Not being familiar with the world of blogs puts me in a similar position to my familiarity with the world of model railways. A year and a bit ago a 'significant' birthday saw delivery of a small train set in british n gauge. Me and my three young daughters (and my young wife!) have spent the intervening period learning a bit about the topic. we're now ready to complete the wiring on our 1500x600 board to give us 4 (maybe 5) cab control sections on our folded loop layout. It struck me that it might be useful (to us, if no one else) to record some key parts of the process, both to date, and as we progress further. I may of course change my mind once I've figured out how to delete blogs! Next step will be to retrieve the layout from where it is currently hiding behind the wardrobe and get it back out on the table. I may have to upload some photos in advance of that, mind, as a trip to ikea seems now to be required to purchase a new table for the layout to sit on.