londonbus

Very interesting thread as i've stumbled on a new subject and wasn't aware so many non British wagons ran in the UK throughout the country. A little bit of research particularly into the Italian vans (some mentioned earlier in the thread) Below is a current production Piko of a ferry wagon. Piko 54720. Also ACME seem to produce some very similar vans with product number 40141. Likewise Roco 47526 and 56066. Electrotren 1310 is the blue Spanish Transfesa ferry vans which carried onions.

This sparked off a memory from the 1970's of a similar steam loco somewhere in a park in Chelmsford! Even the colour seems right. But I could be very wrong.

Hi Markus, not yet it's still in the box - but I'll post a video when it can do a lap of honour.

Long time no post, mostly spurred on by the arrival of the Locomotion APT-E Sound which luckily was delivered to the UK while I was there and brought straight back to Germany I have been rushing to get the first full loop of track (approx 60 feet in total) and wired up with DCC so I can try it out! Points and track are down and the rotten job of fitting the point motors lots of working under the baseboards, but the work is getting quicker. Gave up with the German glue and brought lots of Copydex back from England, smells pretty awful, but the smell doesn't last long and does the job really well. I missed one set of points completely and glued that today so will have to wait for one evening next week to fit the final point motor then we're one step closer to the first train. I still have several electronics boards wired up from my experimental layout, so getting the Digitrax BDL168, PM42 and the CML point decoders working won't take too long, then try to get the Cobalts wired up the right way so they don't short over the frogs. So next post will have this working with Traincontroller software. I had a lot of problems and had to install separate drivers on the old laptop when I last got it all running, so i'm hoping that with the new Microsoft 10 OS it will still work. But of course I don't need this to at least get something moving. The work project that has stopped me from making progress is settling in now, but still eating time, however I have been a bit distracted too. Once I can watch trains running round at least one track it'll be quicker just adding more.

Just found your thread and enjoyed reading through it. Looking forward to seeing continued progress and more pictures of the shed "in use" with the various paraphernalia.

Hello Farren, It was also (just) before I was born, and I used to walk the trackbed in the 1970's south of Woodford Halse - Helmdon. Like many of us fascinated by this railway I have browsed the books many times, however as a belated Xmas present just bought George Dow's "Great Central" - well one of the volumes at least. Keeping an eye out for the other two! I too hope to see trains running soon. Now I'm happy with baseboards I'm focussing on getting track down and organising the Power districts, detection zones, point motors etc.

Well it's been a while, New Year now out of the way I set about redoing the baseboard supports on the main station section. Hadn't wanted to do it but i'd noticed that cross bracing on which the 8mm plywood trackbed rested had created a rolling road in the sense that coaches did a 1:76 scale Mexican Wave as they rolled along. My free wheeling Roco coaches which I always use to check track just wouldn't stay still. Anyway not acceptable. So I decided some while ago to redo it, not a job I was looking forward to as getting it level was a pain the first time round. So as to smooth out the roller coaster ride the plan was to lay two long supports lengthways (parallel to the track) rather than crossways. Lesson one learnt was that as i'd originally screwed the baseboards to the supports from the top, then laid cork on top I had to find the location of the screws cut out squares of cork and then unscrew everything. This time i've screwed everything from below. I lowered the cross supports and laid the lengthway supports on top. Also placing several other pieces of the same wood on the cross bracing in places to provide ample supports for the baseboards. Checking alignment with my long and short spirit levels took all afternoon, until the Roco coaches stayed where they put and all the bubbles were in the middle. Very pleased I did it. It was stopping me getting on. Hopefully now a bit more progress to report and track laying and electrics can recommence. Lesson Two was that i'd reused some 8mm ply brought over from my old layout. It's not quite the same 8mm as the german stuff, so I had some little adjustments to do to get the top surface to be as smooth as I wanted. Maybe I was just unlucky, but in future I shall always use wood from the same batch for jobs where I need exactly the same thickness. I've just also noticed one of the supports still needs to be screwed home! I left the clamp on. That'll have to wait for tomorrow now.

Back here after a few months - basically i've not posted due to not having done anything. Simple as that - however with a few days of R&R due I shall be having a crack at it all again - notwithstanding a new year's party looming with seven Ethnic German Russians, (or are they ethnic Russian Germans?) long story. Long night, day after the hangover I dare say mojo will be reinstated and work shall recommence. Big stumbling block was that the baseboards in the station area are not really even, despite laying the supports with a spirit level quite accurately when the baseboards were laid on top there are peaks and troughs in the run through the station, I shall relay the supports lengthways rather than crossways. It'll take a bit of doing as i've already stuck cork down etc, however my overriding philosophy is to do things to the best of my ability and not put up with compromises if I can improve something myself. Anyway enough of that. More when it's done. I was in Berlin recently for a work project (the one that has taken all my take up) but managed to find a couple of hours to visit the Technical museum, I was pleasantly surprised to see a HO model of the Anhalter Bahnhof. I have included a few pictures of it here. I aged them in PS just for something to do while the wife was in one of her busy moods . And a couple of photos without me messing about (too much) with them... If you're in Berlin the museum is well worth a few hours, I didn't bother with the printing, jewelry, and other bits. The trains took about 2 hours to go through and they even have a strange collection of railway tickets from around the world... Lots, including a rather large selection of "Dog" Tickets from the "North British Railway"...

Best wishes for New Year - hope the weather has eased up a bit at Inverlael! Enjoyed all the YouTube videos

Great photos Dom, coincidentally without knowing the content of your entry, I have just got off an ICE train heading to Leipzig but am in Magdeburg. The tram on the far left on the Museum photo is similar to the trams in Yevpatoria in Crimea. I travelled there frequently, and only after a few years did I notice that there was a small sign that had been revealed under peeling paintwork that mentioned Zwickau.

Just read the whole thread, drawn in by spotting this backdrop over my first coffee of the day. Overall standard is very high, really set off by this backscene. Shouldn't there be some sheep?

Very timely, i've just unpacked about 50 of the old Hornby MGR wagons from storage today ready to bring back home with me. Improving them is a job on the ever longer to do list.

What a shame, here in Germany everything is not allowed unless specifically allowed, the government has banned Google Earth because the data is stored on a server in the USA and if there were Noch models of people sunbathing naked then it would probably get the go-ahead anyway. You could always go on strike.

Good job they haven't invented DCC smell. That pig pen looks ripe and the signalman is probably holding his breath. Very nice layout.

Hello Julie, Sounds like THIS is what you're referring to. Reading the description it sounds like something I should get hold of. I certainly need some time saving techniques. as it's quite laborious work. I suppose i'll achieve the sleepers being closer on points anyway as i'm not cutting the joins on sleepers, only on plain track. I'll look at some prototype pictures to see how it transitions.

Thanks for the information, I did have a look behind it at the time and noticed it was exactly as you described. All fascinating stuff.

A long time ago I experimented with making PECO Code 100 track look better. At the time I ordered lots of it (at least 6 years ago) so i'm sticking with it. Back then I cut the webbing out from between each sleeper and spaced them out. I tried the same thing again today - it takes ages to do this, but it's only in the scenic part of the layout. I think the extra time will pay off. Out of the box the sleeper the gap between sleepers is 4mm. I did a little research and found that a more appropriate gap would be 6mm. So I build a small jig for making the spacing a bit easier. Of course this does nothing for the other out of scale dimensions of the sleepers, but it's an improvement and I don't want to go to the expense of new track or putting on new scale sleepers that I know are available. I suppose OO is a compromise in itself, so no point getting too fussy. Next mini-project was butchering PECO large radius points so that the centrepoint to centrepoint measurement was 47mm (which i've read is closer to the real thing) rather than the standard PECO Streamline geometry 55mm. I have never done this before, but as with most of what i'm doing, i've read about it. Many of the points in the scenic section will need to be similarly treated, and the big test will be the double crossover on the north bay. I didn't bother to put rail joiners on as i'll need to isolate the frogs anyway. I think the overall effect more than justifies the time spent. I have tried to match up the sleeper spacing too. I am pleased with the overall effect - even if because of the experimenting I didn't get any real momentum going today.

After a lot of searching I found the 3mm cork online in a continuous roll 15m long from a carpet underlay supplier in Bremen. 15m x 1m was about

Thanks Markus! Well i've still got a steep learning curve with the electrics, Traincontroller software, automation, building semaphore signals and getting them to work manually and also through the software and the scenics (experiments with resin casts, soldering brass, lots of buildings and all those viaducts.... it may be finished by the end of the year, the question is which year

After waiting for the 15m x 1m roll of cork to arrive, running out of my Pattex Classic rubbery glue on a Saturday evening after the shops shut (nothing's open on a Sunday), and getting rather sidetracked building my first modest "shed" out of plasticard and trying out some painting techniques, plus tea, and some work in between, and relaxing after such an exhausting schedule, I finally added some more supports and laid the cork. Now the track baseboards are all complete ready to start laying the track. I suppose before I start laying the tracks I should actually spend a little bit of time sketching out the power districts, detection sections etc for the Loconet and RR&Co software. This will be a lot easier now as I built a test layout to figure it all out in my previous flat. Some of the boards are still all wired up. Although I think now I know what i'm doing I may redo them to make them tidier and more logical. The glue stays tacky long enough to do 50cm sections at a time. I have three ply boards and enough weights to put on them. By the time i've moved the boards along the one at the back has done it's job and everything is nicely flat and secure. A quick run round with a Stanley knive to remove the overlap and it's all done. The cork is only 3mm thick, so care was taken not to bend it too much, I found it easier to cut it into no more than 2m sections, cut with a steel rule the sections glued together nicely with straight lines. Anyway, this picture doesn't do the cork justice, like with every stage I have spent as much time admiring the work as I have doing it. After the obligatory tidy up and hoover (wife stands below the stairs watching the dust) I've finished for the evening. The perspective on the picture has made the station space look slightly odd. Looking forward to getting a few goodies out to run round.

The toast wasn't just cold, it was all gone by the time I got to the table. Thanks for going through the steps of this with photos. Because of this forum and the wealth of experience, and creativity in many aspects of the hobby that's demonstrated here, it's inspired me greatly to start getting out all the kits, paints, plastikard and other stuff gathering dust, stop just reading about it and actually do it. Boiling Plastikard? kettle's on. But fresh tea first. Great stuff and beautiful work.

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions, i'll continue with the experimentation on an off, will try out the acetate route, however I rather like the slightly raised profile of having the paper but if I have more detailed work to do then this may be the only way to go. I also realised that the glue on the window was not all my rather unrefined glueing but was also some residue of the adhesive layer, so should be easy to get rid of with some thinners, or something smelly (i'll pinch some of the wife's nail varnish remover), however my 15m x 1m roll of cork has arrived so my next job will be to get this glued down onto the running baseboards and finally lay a bit of track. Yes there is a real chance of getting some trains running soon.

I heard about this method on the RMWeb just after I read the advice about not making a building until you have sourced the windows so you know the size. Sound advice. However the results here (on my first scratchbuilding and first dry brushing painting effort), although still in need of refinement, have given me some ideas to simplify and improve the process... First I measured the window dimensions and created squares in Adobe Illustrator in the approximate colour required, the result was just a green square to the exact size of the opening . I then drew in a white box (the window pane) and copied it four times to give me what you see below. I printed this onto self adhesive (label) A4 paper using a normal inkjet printer on the highest quality setting. Then cut out the window from the A4 sheet and stuck it onto some plastic sheet (part of the packaging from some LED lamps I bought. As the paper is stuck quite well to the plastic you don't have to cut out the individual panes of glass you can cut through the grilles from top to bottom, they will stay in place. I actual fact what I will do in future is not bother with drawing in the individual panes on the software leaving just a large box of colour with some guidelines outside of the coloured box as a guide for cutting. I found that as the grilles are very fine and after a few attempts at cutting with a steel rule and scalpel I was not able to cut accurately leaving some white on the grilles remaining. Also I will allow a few millimeters either side of the actual window dimensions, a simple error first time around. You could easily do this without a PC and printer by colouring the paper with a pen or paint. Of course I need to work on my gluing and I shall experiment more to see just how thin I can get the grilles. But for a first attempt i'm pretty satisfied. The lintels and sills haven't been painted. Roof and tiles.... I've taken much longer on this building as I suppose is necessery, but just wanted to experiment with the different painting techniques i've read about. I don't have any slate tile sheets, although will be ordering a large supply of various Slaters products on my next trip to the UK. As an interim solution I popped into my local model shop (10 minutes walk) and picked up some Auhagen pantiles. It's thicker than i'm used to and not strictly prototypical, but looks OK. The plastic is a terracotta red and I painted Humbrol Matt 62 slightly thinned to let some of the terracotta come through. I did experiment with cutting out tiles from the self adhesive paper, but far too much work and the result wasn't satisfactory. Plastic sheet gives me the result i'm after to the standard i'm comfortable with. Here are some of my preferences and methods i'll be bringing forward to future models. Mortar goes on first as an only slightly thinned base coat (Humbrol Matt 103) Dry brushing goes on afterwards, (Humbrol 29, 62, 160 and I tried a little bit of Metal 53). After this some of the paint had covered over the mortar so I thinned some more 103 right down (when everything else had all dried) and with a very fine brush dabbed the paint over the required areas, the capillary action took the paint into the mortar course and added the contrast I wanted. I didn't bother cleaning off any excess from the bricks as it was so thin it marginally softened the reds. I highlighted a few bricks with Vallejo 70.818 Luftwaffe Uniform WW2 (I bought this for the blue engineering bricks on the viaducts). The contrast was too much actually so next time i'll try a lighter colour or thin it down a lot more. When it was all dry I brushed on talc to soften it down a bit and then sprayed on some acyrlic varnish. This evening i've added some Evergreen strip as the batons underneath the roof. Next mini-project will be to add some ageing to the pantiles and also work out how to get some moss on there. Drainpipes and then some overall weathering. I'm very pleased with the results and have got a great deal of enjoyment from trying out and working out how best to do things. Not every step in the layout will be covered in this detail! Nothing here is new technique wise but it is for me.

For my first attempt at scratchbuilding i'm quite pleased. The sills and lintels have not yet been painted. The lintels next time will not protude but will be flush with the brickwork. In the end I spent the day experimenting with dry brushing with various colours over the mortar course base. This was painted on, thinned only a little, but then the brick surface cleaned off with a thinners moistened tissue. leaving the mortar where it should be. I wasn't too tidy getting rid of the mortar colour from the bricks in places and this started giving the brickwork some variation from the start. Finally the end result was a little bit bright so I dabbed on some talcum powder which quietened everything down. I shall experiment with some weathering poweders to add some more variation.