Skinnylinny

Having obtained my stupidly-tight curves for my N gauge shelf layout, I realised that my Farish 94xx (crudely repainted in maroon) wouldn't navigate them, with its too-long (!) fixed wheelbase. This is not going to be a layout where I can run 9Fs and Pacifics (although to see a Pacific navigate a 1-chain radius curve would be fun!). As such, I decided that I would attempt to modify my 94xx to allow it through the curves. How? Flangeless centre drivers, of course! Being a poor student, I don't have a mini-drill at present, so the flanges on the Farish drivers are currently being filed off by hand, using a needle file. One wheel is already done, and allows me to test the running qualities in one direction. More information tomorrow after test running has occurred, but some photos of the work so far: The bottom centre driver is the one that I have attacked. View along the chassis to allow you to compare the flanged and flangeless wheel profiles. Inside of curve, with flangeless wheel overhanging the inner rail. Outside of curve, with centre driver quite definitely moved sideways over the rail.

I received a parcel in the post from Japan, containing an oval of Tomix "Mini Fine Rail", and, following some experiments, have discovered that it *should* be possible to build a roundy-roundy-style layout in N scale within a 1-foot width board. Experiments with a Farish 04 shunter and some Peco SWB wagon kits show that they will run around the 140mm radius curves (admittedly with some grinding noises from the wheels of the 04), although the Rapido couplers will not work reliably on the curves. However, I have an idea for a modification which may work, but more of that later. The other issue with such sharp curves should be obvious to anyone who's ever built a setrack layout: the number of wagons required to take up a given arc on a curve. Obviously, on your "average" prototype curve, you would need a great many vehicles to take up a few degrees. On these curves (which scale up to about 1 chain radius - half the official minimum operational radius of the class 04!) five 10' wheelbase wagons appear to take up 90 degrees... This leads to some wonderful views from above, such as: This also leads to a slightly ridiculous appearance when running bogie coaches, as three mark ones take up an entire 180 degree curve by themselves. I think I might have to use four-wheelers. However, in terms of appearance, the track isn't that bad, being pre-ballasted, but with a lower ballast shoulder than Kato Unitrack. Sleepers appear to be slightly under scale length for UK track, but this may be to do with the overscale rail clips: There are two small gaps moulded into the ballast in each track section, for the neat power clip. Also, Tomix produce their smaller-radius curves (at least, I am not aware if they do this for larger-radius ones like this) with infill between the rails and outside them, because the smaller curves (known as "Mini Fine Rail") were originally designed for modelling tram lines. Therefore, they may be of use to modellers looking to reproduce dockyard track on their layouts. However, Tomix's products are not widely known of outside of Japan, and are almost impossible to obtain outside the country.

After some playing around with the shelf layout, the track plan has evolved somewhat, following the purchase of a Metcalfe brewery kit to add some operating interest. At present, the projected layout is looking somewhat like this: However, the Tomix Mini Fine Rail track system (primarily intended for trams) has come to my attention, and using it, it should be possible to fit an oval onto my 1-foot-wide shelf. I'm not sure quite how well it would work, but I have done some rudimentary experiments with some (protesting!) 009 flexitrack I had lying around, bending it to approximately 140mm radius (the second(!) smallest radius Tomix offer), and my Farish 04 shunter will just about grind through it with a short-wheelbase 4-wheeler. Bearing in mind that 009 flexitrack has a habit of kinking and therefore forming straight sections linked by tighter curves than the nominal radius, I bit the bullet and ordered enough Tomix track from a well-known auction site to try out an oval. If it works, the plan is to build a roundy-roundy slightly more train-set styled layout, while possibly retaining the BLT. However, I would be gaining a continuous run at the expense of severely limiting what stock I can run; while my 04 will negotiate 140mm radius (scaling up to 68 feet radius (1.03 chains!) or just under 21m) my steam-outline pannier will not. Any ideas of seriously-short-wheelbase locos would be gratefully received! If the 140mm radius experiment works out, the basic layout plan is something along these lines (all curves and points 140mm radius unless otherwise shown, and I am seriously rethinking that 103mm rad siding!: Any thoughts or comments?

Sounds like a giant Faller car system... is this a case of the prototype following the model, or the model following the prototype?

Well, the time came for another trip to Harburn Hobbies (usual disclaimer applies - no connection other than satisfied customer, etc. etc.) and departing with a yellow bag that felt much lighter than when full of 00 stuff (although the wallet felt heavier, so that's probably not such a bad thing!). Some more track (almost enough to complete the station and scenic area), a Peco platform kit and one wagon (to test my tracklaying until the rolling stock I made last year turns up in the unpacking!), a roll of scenic mat and a pack of Metcalfe stone "railway cottages", of which more later. It has to be said, I was dreading buying a grass mat, with mental images of those huge mats sold by Hornby et al., with enough grass to cover 6 double-decker buses (or something...) but was delighted to find one nestled in a box at Harburn that was 48" by 12". Excellent, I'll have that! It fitted perfectly, and suddenly, my shelf looked a lot more green! It's amazing what a kick-start that provided to the modelling juices, too, seeing some progress so quickly. I set out the track I'd bought, and the goods shed, and started on a Metcalfe house... (Apologies for the dodgy focussing - a mobile 'phone camera is all I have access to at the moment until I can persuade one of my photographer friends to come around with some decent equipment) That evening, work started on the first of the Metcalfe houses (I have space for three of the four in the box - four sets of semi-detached houses for £6 seemed like a good deal), and then it really started to hit home how tiny N scale is... And, jumping ahead a little: However, the Metcalfe kits are very well designed, and were an absolute pleasure to build, and don't look bad when finished either! On the other hand, those chimney pots! The instructions implore you to try their method of rolling chimney pots from paper, and while they do look pretty good, they took the most time of anything in the entire kit! Still, as a first card kit I'm pretty happy with the way it's turned out. The sheds are quite nice, too. Pity I don't have enough space to fit them at the back of the houses where they belong. (Paper is there to mark the position of roads and buildings) On another note, the goods shed is now painted and finished, and (bar a few glue splodges) I'm quite pleased with it. Still not sure how prototypical it would be to have a goods shed so close to the platform (although I might add another siding), but "it's my train set!"

The way things are looking right now, this layout will either be built on wood offcuts if I can source any locally cheaply, or on corrugated cardboard left over from the moving boxes. As said before, this layout is being built on the cheap, so I'm loath to stick much down because it will make removing buildings etc. in a few years' time complicated. On the other hand, a form of baseboard would make life a lot easier in stopping track moving relative to platforms and so on. Does anyone know if it would be possible to simply glue down the track with PVA? Would that be strong enough? If so, I think I'll head down the cardboard baseboards route, if only because I already have a lot of cardboard here, taking up more space than necessary.

JaymzHatstand: an interesting idea, though at present I quite like the simplicity of what I have, I'll pop down to the local hardware store and see if they have any offcuts going cheap. As a student, of course, this layout is being built very much "on the cheap", with second-hand or kit-built (using the wonderfully cheap Peco wagon kits at £3 something each) rolling stock. Scenery-wise, a roll of grass mat that happened to almost exactly match the dimensions of my scenic section has made a world of difference, and I may well glue scenic items to this (possibly even ballasting *very* carefully to prevent glue soaking through and avoid using track pins) if I can find a way to reliably hold the mat down without marking the shelves...

After a year in university halls, in which I dabbled a little in 009 and N scale (mostly building wagon kits and two Parkside 009 coaches), I moved into my flat for the next three or four years on Monday. Considering that I had the smallest room of any of the bedrooms in the flat, I didn't hold much hope of having any space for modelling. Cue two surprises when I arrived. The first surprise was a shelving unit with shelves 5'6" by 1'. Hmmm... enough space for a small N scale BLT? The second surprise was finding that Lone Star diecast track (in "000" scale) is actually a pretty decent representation of the geometry of Peco N setrack... So, as I had a box full of Lone Star track and some trains, I set out a fairly simple terminus with run-around and three sidings, and then a small fiddle yard at the other end. The result was this: My thinking is something along the lines of using the far supports to hold a scenic break (road overbridge or tunnel, anyone?) to disguise the fiddle yard, which will probably have the controller in the corner kept free by the curved storage roads. I've also started on my first ever N-scale building kit... I have to hand it to those who've been doing it for years; even though I'm young and still have (relatively) good eyesight, I found it a struggle to get all the parts lined up and in the correct place. Here's a photo of the Peco goods shed, prior to fitting gutters and downpipes and bargeboards: As this isn't my shelving unit (it came with the flat) I can't make any permanent alterations to it, so this means all points will be operated by the big hand in the sky, track may well be held down with blu-tac and scenery may well be grass-on-a-roll. It'll be very different from the big permanent 00 layout at home. I've got no idea how well this is going to turn out, but it'll be an interesting experience, both in a new scale and building a scenic (well, as much as possible) "temporary" layout. As it's planned to be a temporary layout, though, I have no intention of trying to get the tiniest details right and perfect, on the basis that things are liable to get damaged or lost quite easily. I'm happy creating a generic station, something that "looks right" and gives me somewhere to run/show off some of my rolling stock and dispel the "playing with a train-set" myth. What do people think?

What I meant to say was, because the Hornby bodyshells are one-piece mouldings, I only applied glue to the compartment walls, not to the edges of the seats, which are pretty floppy (as in, breathe on them too hard and they move). A strip of plasticard under the seats would probably add enough strength though. I'll try that on the next coach I attack...

Only thing is, the seats are made of unsupported card - I'll have a look, but might have to keep this coach empty and figure out a way of making the seats a little stronger... Time to go looking on a certain auction site, methinks...

OK, I'm not quite sure how these blogs work, or if I've got file uploading right... let's try it and see, shall we? Well, it's scary, but somehow I've got through the first year of university in Edinburgh, and returned to sunny Sussex just over a week ago. Having recovered from a nasty stomach bug (it actually was a dodgy curry, ironically enough) and been given a clean bill of health by the doc today, what better than to crouch over some noxious chemicals and sharp blades for a while? No, not the usual student pastimes I got a modelling project I'd been looking at for a while out. Just something gentle to ease me into a hobby that hasn't seen much happen since Easter, on account of exams. I'd been fortunate enough to pick up a couple of the old Hornby "shorty" clerestories in LNER teak (not exactly prototypical, but I like them, and they look good enough behind the Hornby bomb-proof LNER 0-6-0 that I use when younger visitors come around to play trains) and had been looking at them for a while trying to figure out what it was about them that bugged me. The coaches in question. Then suddenly, one of my flatmates hit the nail on the head when they spotted the coaches on my windowsill. "Where do the people sit?" So I sat down today armed with a pair of scissors, some thick, gloopy glue and the brilliant Bill Bedford coach interior kits that can be printed off his website for free (though, having had to trim the non-corridor ones quite substantially, I might try corridor seats in the next coach). The results (apologies for the shoddy handiwork, which is in no way representative of the kit!) ended up looking something like this: I wasn't aiming for a finescale appearance, just a means to stop light travelling diagonally through the windows. As I say, these coaches are mainly for younger visitors, and will have to withstand the occasional sticky fingers, so I'm not putting too much time into them. However, I think that this has made a huge difference to what is otherwise a very basic coach model. What do others think? Worth the time?

I've heard about a model railway club in the area, and am dabbling with the idea of taking a peek after the summer holidays are over (I'm only in Edinburgh for university, living some 400 miles away when on holiday...) Incidentally, you don't happen to want some Peco trucks, do you? Having built them, I've come to terms with N gauge not being right for me - a little too small and fiddly!

Well, welcome to RMWeb, it's nice to see another person in the area (I'm in Brunstane, just a stone's throw away), and have been dabbling in N gauge for the first time (fiddling painting Peco wagon kits). Hope you keep us up to date as the layout progresses, and wish you good luck!