cromptonnut

That's not a bad price for a small layout - unfortunately I can't do that with my O gauge project, a length of flexi is £6 on its own let alone wagon kits at £30 a pop minimum! I'm glad you agree with me re the trees, I know it's hard to "criticise" someone else's modelling (especially when you've admitted to stealing their idea for your own and they're going to be watching!) but I just felt that it did stick out rather badly compared to everything else. I'd suggest "go for it" with the trees - after all, what's the worst that can happen apart from binning the attempt and starting it again? I don't know how much you've tried this before but this guide might help allay some of your fears. http://www.armorama....ticle&artid=135 I'll do you a deal. I've never tried it either, so if you have a go at one I will too I seem to have accidently ordered almost half a mile of 0.5mm wire from Ebay so I'm glad I am going to need a few ...

I hate to seem to be critical but I think those "plastic trees" really do grate with me and stand out as out of place against the quality of the rest of the project. Which manufacturer are they from?

Once my Tesco home delivery arrives this evening and I have eaten, I plan to start work on building the baseboards I require for something similar to your idea - although hoping to add in a small station on the left hand side. It may take a while though. Am hoping to be able to put a gentle curve into the track so it doesn't look too straight and obvious. My plan is that this will be "layout 1" which I can then build another layout to "bolt on" to the front of it, which will be the freight facility leading off from the headshunt that truncates mid-layout. However, I do need to finish the wagon as well so I've at least got something to check clearance, and really need to get on with finishing the shunter kit (I notice you found my thread on that) so I've got something to move it as well so I can check the electrics as I go along!

The Heljan "Takeley Station" kit would do the job just nicely ...

Can I ask what you used for the culvert? I'm assuming you're modelling in OO - it looks a bit like an N gauge single tunnel mouth? Or is it one of the Woodland Scenics products? I've discovered that the "standard" for a twin track embankment works out about 8 inches in 7mm and I happen to have some 8 inch wide pieces of MDF that are just the right length. Am thinking of having the embankment perhaps just an inch or two high (less than yours when you scale it), with the back of the embankment dropping slightly towards the backscene which will be quite close to the back track. The rearmost track will be a now singled ex-double line, and the visible part of the second track is a headshunt/siding truncating several feet from the exit of the layout on the left, in a very similar manner to yours, with the rest of where that line would have gone leaving sleeper indents etc. The front part of the layout, on a lower level but above baseboard level (so I can put in the stream/culvert) will have sidings for an industrial unit - which, at present, I'm struggling to fit in - but good plan progress today after months of deliberation so now thanks to your inspiration I've got an idea what I want, it's just a case of how to fit it all in! O gauge is much bigger than I ever expected...

Mind if I steal some of the way these things are looking for my O gauge project?

What trackwork have you used please? If I can achieve half as good a result with my first foray into O gauge I shall be happy!

My biggest problem - and I guess I'm not alone in this - is that I have about a quarter of the space I wish I had, so I'm still trying to squeeze in 12 carriage expresses when I only have room for 4. I'm deliberately making this project an "end to end" which will limit my train length to about 4ft due to using a traverser (to save space) rather than my usual "roundy roundy" as I just don't have the room at the moment for that. Of course, it wouldn't be difficult to update the layout to a roundy-roundy if I get more space in the future but at the moment I just have 12ft x 2ft or thereabouts. I really like the "lifted track" effect you have achieved there, and particularly on an embankment. Scenic breaks will enable me to run longer trains than the visible section. Watch this space!

Paperclips for the culvert railings... very nice, might nick that idea myself. Particularly like the "open" feel of that first siding board, I always seem to cram track into every square inch of board that I can, and it all ends up looking like Clapham Junction on steroids rather than the run-down country feel that I sought to achieve - and you seem to have.

How long would "CAROLYN" in 3mm 'Hunslet' be? I'm not sure whether I have room to fit the plates on! Perhaps you could let me know the same but 2mm (small plates would be fine I'm sure). It's a fairly cheap and easy way to butter up SWMBO to allow me to fund future modelling projects if I named a loco after her... I'm still building the kit so there's no hurry.

What would be the price for a set of O gauge custom nameplates for a Ruston 165 (yes I know my prototype didn't have a name!)

Although I'm already building a layout (a terminus so it won't easily fit in this even if the standards worked), I'd be quite interested in building a module should there ever be some sort of 'get together' that I can get to.

In answer to your questions... 1) Difficult - I plan to go DCC but not everyone will. However, I would suggest the best solution to be stick with "conventional" wiring with isolating sections etc, because then if the choice is to run DCC then you simply turn all power sections on. 2) See above 3) Definitely each section/s (all built by the same people) should be self-contained as far as points, signal etc go, otherwise it's just going to be far too complicated. There may even be scenic sections that contain no points or signals whatsoever, of course. I do quite like the idea of this sectional O gauge - especially as you could just stick a 4ft (or whatever) storage yard, traverser or cassette system on each end of your modules and operate at home (or exhibtions) as a stand-alone layout. Have you thought about a 'forced' scenic break at each end of the layout, so that you don't suddenly get a hilly section scenery turning into a recreation of the sea wall at Dawlish, next to a snow-covered section? Even if it's only 3" each end of a 6" high painted black fascia (or whatever convention is chosen) with an embankment, road bridge or tunnel leading to it, or just some trees or a building, to disguise the fact it's there?

Can't help with the spares but have you tried contacting Bachmann directly? They've been fairly helpful in the past.

Hi Dave777, thanks for your thoughts. I'm using XTrackCAD for the basis of the plan above, which has the five Peco pieces of O gauge trackwork - but it's not really very helpful for planning long flowing curves in the way that something like Templot will. I do plan on adding gentle curves and whatnot into everything, and the roads etc are just straight because it's easier to draw them in Photoshop - my skills in which are about as good as my conversational Swahili. I'm actually slightly modifying the plan above as I speak, although keeping the same general layout concept. I do know what you mean about the 'general curviness' of good layouts. I wish I had the woodwork skills to make curved boards - see my comments about Photoshop above - but you never know, I might find someone with the skills. I wish I'd paid more attention in maths...

I'll be hopefully going for a Heljan 33 as well - need to pick up a DMU (or two) and a selection of wagons but I'd hope that would be all I need stockwise. This is planned as a minimum space, minimum (as far as you can with O) cost project, and not to end up with a fleet of 30 or 40 locos as my OO stock pile. As much as I like 10 carriage expresses thundering round a layout, I have to be realistic and accept that in my current living environment that just ain't gonna happen, as much as I'd love it to. In the next few years, a house move may well end up with a shed, garage or loft space that will enable me to bring that dream into reality - and then I can keep the O gauge layout in the living room, suitably framed and curtained, as a 'feature' I will most likely be thinning down some of my OO stock to fund the O gauge project, over the next few months. I hope you enjoy following the other aspects of the layout design and construction, and the thinking behind some of it.

Stop this immediately! I've only just gone up from OO to O gauge, and I don't want to be tempted to go up to G already! Seriously though, nice work

I'd have thought some plasticard glued inside would be sufficient - after all it's not like plastic model people are heavy is it?

Looks worth it to me! Next step, people - don't forget Jim S-W's comment elsewhere about only painting the people at the windows, anyone sitting in the middle just spray all over black as you can't see the detail but need the silhouette.

A little more work... and the sound chip installed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsMg2boRRaI

Not sure why - Photobucket or the forum isn't playing ball. Check my thread on http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php/topic/16172-my-first-steps-in-o-gauge/page__view__findpost__p__154616 for a copy

After some deliberation I've finally settled on what I think is a suitable trackplan to capture what I am looking for. The layout is nominally based "early 80's", somewhere in SW England. It draws a lot of inspiration from Chard Junction, although very little of the actual prototype location can be seen! The scenic area is 12ft long x 2ft 6 wide, accommodated on three 4ft x 2ft 6" boards made using standard construction methods that I won't bother to detail. It is essentially a terminus station, with an industrial facility (at this moment a dairy, but that's dependent on being able to source suitable tank wagons or modify existing ones into the "TMV" variant. The trackplan is based on an 'island' arrangement, with a main platform of approx 4ft 6" length, and a "bay" of around 3ft length. Predominantly passenger services (when suitable stock is obtained) will run into the main platform, with DMU's simply reversing out, or a loco-hauled replacement service reversing to drop the carriages into the run-round loop, then pushing the stock back into the platform. Freight services, depending on their length, will generally run into the bay, with the factory's own Ruston shunter dragging the wagons (2 at a time) into the headshunt and into the yard. The uppermost siding in the plan is "inset" into the yard, and the lower siding just plain track, similar to that at Chard Junction. Chard Junction's Ruston was 'main line certified' for the immediate area, and I believe somewhere in the annals of history it ventured about a mile down towards Axminster to rescue a failed train and drag it into Chard Junction's (now disused) station - although I can't find a reference to that at the time. The "front" of the layout is the bottom, and a 4" scenic strip fronts the layout in order to protect stock from falling off. The left side - black - is a road, with small car park facility at the bottom. The grey part is the platform, which will contain the Kittle Hobbies station kit which is currently sat in parts on my kitchen table (and will form a later blog entry). I hope that this all makes sense to you, and I'd love to hear your comments, suggestions and particularly improvements.

This morning, I bought myself the reamer I needed to open up the holes slightly as required to get the "tight fit" needed for the bearings for the axles. This evening I used the reamer, then soldered the bushes to the chassis as per the instructions - and then discovered I shouldn't have soldered bushes to the gearbox, which isn't mentioned in the instructions, as nothing fitted! A few choice words and a little desoldering later, all was well. The wheels were then assembled and put together, with the worm gear screwed in as required, and the whole lot put on a length of flexitrack and power applied. There's a little tweaking still to be done to make the running smoother, but to all intents and purposes, it's running exactly as it should be. My next task will be to wire up the sound chip that I plan to put in there, and find somewhere to hide it. In my OO loco it stayed in the cab, but I reckon there should be plenty of room inbetween the chassis sides to hide the chip and its tiny, but powerful, speaker. If the sound can vent to outside then I don't need to worry about making holes, and as the speaker has its own built in soundbox, no further work needs doing. I've waffled enough. Here's the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmFDNthCXlI

Next part completed this evening... the basic chassis. I can't complete it and put the two parts together this evening as I need to ream out the holes for the wheel bushes, and guess what I can't find. A trip to Maplin in the morning should furnish me with the appropriate tool. All those solder joints are inside so the fact they're a bit messy doesn't really matter as they won't be seen unless the shunter tips over 180 degrees - and if that happens, the dodgy soldering will be the last thing I'll be worrying about

Oakville Kits seem to produce a 48DS kit - http://www.whitehillcementworks.co.uk/page_1578697.html - but I can't find any further details.