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.

Hi Gary, The plans were designed and printed using a free program called XTrkCad. It takes a little getting used to and can be a bit fiddly but you really can't complain for free. It has dozens of ready made track parts, such as all of those made by Peco. The printing can be tricky to setup to make sure it comes out 100% life-size but it well worth the effort. Regards, Peter

I could give it a go, nothing to lose I suppose. Parting the MDF from the frame could be tricky though. I did use plenty of PVA and it's unbelievably tough stuff. Most likely a layer of the MDF will give way rather than the glue breaking.

Mmm... interesting idea. I guess now that I'll most likely be starting from scratch I can do it however I like instead of being constrained by what I happened to have.

I wondered if that was a possibility too. My suspicions lie more with the spruce though rather than the MDF. From experience I suspect that it is the spruce that has expanded more than the MDF due to warming rather than the MDF shrinking due to drying out. Yes, it's cold and cool in my workshop but it's not wet. Unfortunately it looks as though progress will be halted at least until the weekend because the chances of me getting to the timber merchants in the next few days are looking very remote!

Yes, now that I will have to buy a new sheet of wood to start again I'll probably go for a quality piece of Scandinavian marine ply or the like. I don't think this problem was the fault of the MDF though, I've not had this problem before and I used enough of the stuff building cupboards and partitions when I did my own loft conversion. I just forgot to acclimatise the wood first. I bet if I put the baseboard back in the workshop for a few days it'll straighten back out again... especially as it's about -6°C and under a foot of snow at the moment!

Oh, dear! The best-laid plans of mice and men, and all that... My spanking new baseboard has suffered a terrible setback due to a terrible shortfall in planning on my part. The problem? Acclimatisation. Basically, the wood (MDF sheet and spruce) has been sat in my unheated workshop all winter. I made the baseboard out in the workshop in the cold - it only took and hour or two, so no need to put the heater on. After spending a few days tucked up all cosy and warm in my understairs cupboard the MDF and spruce reached room temperature, probably dried out a little and have most definitely expanded or contracted at different rates. The result? I now have a banana shaped baseboard that was originally absolutely, perfectly flat. Oh well, back to square one. For Mk.II I'll bring the wood indoors for a few days and then build the baseboard.

Hi Jim, What happy coincidence! Are you entering the 2010 Challenge too? Regarding the point motors I think this is going to be a manually switched layout. As there are 10 points in Peco Streamline Code 55 the cost of these alone is going to be the better part of ??100 and adding point motors plus wiring, CDU and switches would pretty much double that. I really fancied experimenting with DCC on this layout which would easily be covered by the cost of electrifying the points (Hattons are doing an unboxed Bachmann EZ Command for ??39). If time permits I'll attempt to install some form of mechanical control for the points - I've seen this done on other small layouts that have a series of knobs on the edge to control switching. As for the twisting, that's the least of my worries! See my forthing coming blog post... Regards, Peter

The baseboard is born! We have finally overcome the first, and I'm sure many would agree, hardest hurdle when building a model railway: actually doing something in the real world instead of pouring over magazines, catalogues, the internet or endlessly designing your layout on paper. As Harpers Road is only 48" wide and 9" deep it was never going to take long to do baseboard, around about an hour or two (in-between Seth's constant stream of questions about the tools in my workshop). The top was a straight cut to take 9" off the long edge of a small 1200x600mm sheet of 9mm MDF. The frame is made from two short and two long lengths of 28x44mm round-edged planed spruce. All the wood was surplus to the loft conversion I did at home. I didn't quite have enough to to two full-length strips front and back hence why the joints are the opposite way around on either side. The joints are simple butt joints held together with 50mm chipboard screws (through countersunk pilot holes) and lots of Bostik PVA Wood Glue. The top was glue to the frame with more PVA and held in place with a few panel pins. Once every thing was dry we then printed our revised v3 XTrkCad plans at 1:1, trimmed them down and glued them onto the top using PVA wood glue. Air bubbles were removed using a hard lino cut inking roller. So far, so good. Next step will be to add some MDF strips to provide the foundation of the retaining wall and bridge in front of the fiddle yard. Regards, Peter & Seth

Hi James, I printed it out 1:1 full size again and now that the baseboard has been built (48" x 9" - coming in another blog post soon...) has been tacked in place for testing. I always find it amazing how different it all feels when the plan is taken from the screen into the real world. I think the shed being near the front is going to work well because the entrance is angled towards the front of the layout it will be possible to see inside. A few windows and/or a side door will help with an internal view (I want to kit out the workshop and install inspection pits). Also, there's plenty of space in the front-middle area for workshop detritus (maybe a derelict loco ready to meet its maker) and some permanent way stuff, such as those diggers with the extra wheels so they can drive on the line as well as the road. I've also got to come up with a micro-diorama to make use a beautiful little white-metal kit of a Mercedes Benz Unimog from [url="http://www.pg-models.com/viewdetail.aspx?id=105?

After considering the helpful comments on previous posts we have revised the layout for Harpers Road so that we can include an engine shed without the need for a set of 3-way points. Our first attempt to jiggle things around was a complete disaster in over-complication so the v2 plans were consigned to the bin. Hence the new plan is referred to as v3: The right-hand front siding has been doubled by using an extra left-hand curved point. The two tracks will lead into the engine shed which can now be located on the extreme right-hand front of the layout (marked blue on the plan). As the layout is only 9" wide the hidden fiddle yard has been reduced from 5 lanes to 4 (we don't have that much rolling stock yet). The back-wallon the left half has been pushed back to create a large clear area. After a lazy train journey from Ash to Wokingham last week I noticed all sorts of light industrial scenes that could be modelled in this area including a waterworks, gas towers, industrial units, ISO container self-storage, scrap yard, car dealer, permanent way ballast yard (as seen adjacent to Woking station). The list is almost endless and I really enjoy the modelling part of railway modelling. As a final enhancement just to spice things up the entire layout has been rotated as much as possible to prevent any rails from running parallel to the baseboard. Peter & Seth