Peter & Seth

Where does the time go? Been far too busy with other things, e.g., work, children, DIY, etc., to make much progress, but in an attempt to build and maintain momentum I have joined the Farnham & District Model Railway Club! F&DMRC have a great N-gauge group and a fantastic exhibition layout in the form of Basingstoke. Looking forward to learning lots, meeting nice like-minded people and hopefully contributing something to the new N-gauge layout, Warwick. Other than that I have finally cut, fitted and pinned all the track in place. Next job is to solder dropper wires onto the straight sections (I've already done the DCC dropper-link conversions on all 10 points) and then straight connecting things up to some sort of bus main. Whilst I await delivery of my Octopus III from Tam Valley Depot in San Diego, CA., I started thinking about where I'm going to put all the buttons and indicators for controlling the points. This naturally lead to some armchair modelling on the laptop to create a control panel overlay. As I know next to nothing about how real railways work it's guesswork coupled with artistic licence. Well, it makes sense to me!

Interesting that you said you used Games Workshop/Citadel paints. I've noticed a few people on here saying they've used them. Are you into GW too? I link Ultramarines from the Warhammer 40k universe. I don't play, just model. They Citadel paints are fantastic for washes, layers and highlights so I've always found it a little surprising that there isn't more discussion of those techniques in the railway modelling world? And it's great trying to decide if one should use Bestial or Bubonic Brown as a match for Sleeper Grime Nice work on the signal box BTW!

Thanks, Will. Very kind of you to say so. I've really no idea what I'm doing. I do like all the points though and looking along the tracks down at eye level is very pleasing for some reason!

Really enjoying getting back into modelling and making good progress on Harpers Road. I thought I'd just post an overview photo showing the layout standing on it's relatively new mini-legs. These are made from eased-edge construction timber (100mm x 47mm I think) and are attached with a 10mm carriage bolt. The idea is that different size legs for different uses: shorties whilst modelling at home, long ones if I ever get to a club or exhibition. Because my house is a tiddly little Victorian terrace (no complaints, it's beautiful, I love it and will probably never leave it) I have to keep my "workshop" compact. By lucky hap' the layout fits exactly over the hearth of the unused fireplace in the dining room and all my tools and modelling bits'n'bobs fit neatly underneath

I'm using 10x SG90 micro-servos on my n-gauge MPD layout. I've decided to go for an Octopus II controller from Tam Valley Depot. It's yet to arrive but I'll post my findings as I use it. I'll be keeping an eye on what you're up to as well - it seems using servos is gaining interest/popularity. Regards, Peter

Just put together the main structure of an N-gauge R002c Inspection Pit from Scalescenes.com. I used unbleached grease-proof paper for the lighting cutouts rather than tracing paper as it is already a nice grubby brown. Yet to add rail and top paving.

The history of the Aventime is all a bit weird involving company politics. It was built my Matra but Renault released the Vel Satis at the same time in almost direct competition with itself. Building the Avantime and then being cr*pped on by Renault was the straw that broke Matra's back leading to exit car manufacture altogether. I remember that IT company too! Taylor Made Computer Solutions

It's been so long since my last post. All hope of entering, let alone winning, the Challenge 2010 competition has been lost! Still, I've managed to get back into modelling again now that family life has settled down a bit. By leaving my layout and tools neatly to the side of the dining room I've been able to do the odd hour or two most evenings recently. I'm really pleased with the trackwork so far. Taking my time to get it neat and doing it properly, such as modify points with frog-switching. I even bought a Dremel clone to cut, grind and file rails! All that's left is the odd looking long road at the back of the layout (this is to be my main hidden re-railing / fiddle-yard / DCC-programming track) and the two short roads into the shed but these will have to wait till I've built a pair of Scalescenes.com R002c Inspection Pits.

Back-tracking a little to the Nissan Figaro: it was only made for the Japanese market and is based on the Micra! I see them quite regularly tootling around the City of London and yes, mostly owned/driven by women. They've become somewhat collectible in the UK 'cos we seem to love small quirky cars and the Micra is a cheap and reliable platform. I think they're fab. If I could fit my wife, two children and model railway in it I'd have one, they're very cool! I'd have one of those Renault Aventime's too but they were very badly received and production was short-lived.

Work on the Harpers Road baseboard continues apace. I'm quite into it now and feel motivated after successfully overcoming the first hurdle of building a decent baseboard. Yesterday I set to work by filling the screw heads, sanding and applying a coat of Japlac Primer & Undercoat in Off-White: Today I managed to do both coats of Rustins Matt Black: Not quite sure what I should next? Probably using more plywood to create the foundation of the dividing walls between scene and fiddle yard. I'm also debating whether or not to install a cork trackbed underlay?

Wow! What a fantastic idea! Only minor drawback I can see see is if you want all the windows to be lit. But with some clever brickwork using thinner blocks I'm sure this could be accomplished for most structures. I'm certainly going to try this method on my next scratchbuild. Two other thoughts come to mind: Car boots are a great place to find bags of old LEGO cheaply. You can use http://ldd.lego.com/]Lego Digital Designer to mockup your design even before buying any bricks. PS. Great looking layout. Is it N-gauge?

Hi Trebor, Well spotted but I have a plan! Because I've got rather a lot of points (which I will hopefully be upgrading to electrical switching) and bus wiring for DCC I'm going to fit cross-braces after the trackwork is done. But thanks for the tip - it's this sort of community advice that helps beginners like me avoid the usual pitfalls. Regards, Peter & Seth

After a 5 month hiatus post Banana Terror and as indicated in #7 Rethink I am back in construction mode having completed the new baseboard. Probably a weird way of going about it but I have used a simple glued'n'screwed butt joint because I wanted to have a 3mm "lip" all the way around the edge. I've seen this on other layouts and think it looks very neat. I bet it's a great way to stop ballast and grass from falling off during construction. Lots and lots and lots of "Stronger Than The Wood Itself" applied along the seam as well as inbetween the joint. One of the side plates. Bomb-proof screwing! Close-up of the 3mm "lip". The complete baseboard. Current state of the baseboard. This shot was taken just after I finished glueing the life-size XTrkCad plans on using a 50:50 mix of EVO-STIK Wood Adhesive and water. The next TO-DO items are to fill-in the screw heads, sand and paint. Can't make my mind up between common black or some very nice Country Cream self-undercoating exterior matt?

After my disaster with the Mk.I baseboard I've had time to reflect upon the plans for my layout. It's really difficult deciding what to model when a) you've never done it before, B) don't want to make expensive mistakes and c) are conscious of the fact that you don't really know that much about trains. I'm still going to stick with the idea of basing my layout on something that has gone before me so I know at least I'm heading in the roughly the right direction. But the layouts I like the most are those with plenty of scenery, particularly industrial and city. To that end I've decided to widen my N-gauge layout from 9" to 1' and rotate the whole track-plan as much as possible. This has created plenty of space along the front-side and left-hand rear. I may even enclose the rear behind the wall and model a full upper-level scene too.