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Having manage to get myself to a DIY shed and find what I needed after a couple of abortive attempts I have finally got some modelling underway again! First I built the trestles to hold the board and these were simple cheap 3×1 and actually not to bad in quality than the usual knot ridden, twisted and warped stuff I have normally found at these places. Then next up was the cutting the blocks for the spacers. This was a doodle with my chop saw and I just set up a jig and shot through about 20 of them in less than a minute. Following on with ply cutting on my table saw. I have to say that it is a great disappointment and most of it can be thrown away and when I get time I am going to rebuild it. However after some trial and error I managed to get the required lengths. I only have enough clamps to do one side at a time so progress is slow at the moment but hope to have all sections completed by the weekend. Then I will be able to lay the road bed and start layout to track plan. More to come..

Having from the beginning thought that the plank was no more than a plank and a exercise in ballasting some Kato track it has moved on from there and now after some discussion has the idea for a turntable as a holding storage area. At first I seemed as though a cassette system would be ok then I moved onto a sector plate and finally ended up with a turntable. This is somewhat ballooning for the original idea but I guess it can’t harm right? Measuring the Kato Unitrack two 413mm radii curves and a straight sandwiched between them takes up pretty much dead on 10″ and this is pretty much how much space I have on the plank. When not in use the turntable can be stored elsewhere as it is easily removed and it will aligned by baseboard jointing dowels.

So then the fact of how is this integrated into current track bed, the only option is to raise the whole road base up by 9mm so that the trains can transfer from yard to station. So out with the circular saw and cut some more chunks of ply not too difficult but it just means the back scene height is lowered by 9mm. Having just had plumbers in, who kindly left behind a bunch of stuff amongst which was some 9mm ply I have enough off cut to easily create raised trackbed and turntable. When I get back from vaunt down South I will attempt to get this completed before heading off to another weekend of fun!

New improved fiddle yard option

Imagineering the what ifs

This afternoon was spent adding a bit more to the test plank but not adding the tunnel back scene as not sure where the tunnel is actually going to go at the moment. It has evolved a bit as I am now going to have a traverser that will swing from front to back so that the DCC programming track can be used as a storage road. Although the primary goal for this test plank is to test out scenery task like ballasting and building structures etc I have hedged my bets and gone with something I can switch ‘something’ backwards and forwards on. I have gone with this plan as it gives me a bit more space in the station area and as you can see there is enough room for loco and two. It is envisaged that train pulls in and stops second loco removes coaches and disappears. first loco disappears. Second loco returns and waits then pulls away.

If in the future some wagons come out then I will use it to shut them around a bit. This will however not going to take the place of the main modular layout and is really there to test out locos, run them in and maybe a photo back drop. But it gets the juices flowing for planning on the “big” layout. In fact this is the first time in a long time that I can see it all before I have built it which is promising. And the progress shown is more than in the last decade. But a start is a start!

Tomorrow will be spent working out the tunnel location, the transfer table and the electric feed locations. I then need to work out what track I need and this will be really simple as it will mainly be straights and maybe one or two curves but another #4 point is needed so will hopefully be able to pick one of those up. Unfortunately there are no modelshops in the local area anymore and so it is quite a trek to be able to pick up just the basics so most of my model related shopping is done online. Of course shows are an option but again getting to them can be expensive and time consuming, but I digress. So far I have kept up a 3 day streak of modelling, lets see how long it can carry on!

Well just a quick post before I go to bed as a full and fun packed day ahead at York Show very much a favourite of mine and so far has never disappointed. But back to tonights fifteen minute effort. As you can see from the picture be below I have managed to overcome the inertia and start something constructive. I came to the conclusion that it is better to fail than never try at all and so I got the craft knife and hot glue gun out and made some mess. The beauty of foam board is that it docent make mess and is very quick to build something. I had a basic idea and just went with that, very rudimentary measurements were made and the cutting was done on a professional mount cutter that my dad use to use which in theory should have made it an accurately produced cutting list however they hadn’t reckoned on me using it! However I thought that practice makes perfect and no task can be completed with perfection on the first run however much I think it can. I do suffer somewhat from perfectionist tendencies and have to wrestle with this pretty much every time I pick up a tool. But I am learning to overcome these thoughts and in the words of Nike ‘just do it.

Some some quick details it is 1m long and about 300m wide and the facia will house the light with the electronic mounted at the back of the underside for easy access.at the moment there needs to be a lot more bracing to make more robust and hopefully take some of the kinks out that I have found in cutting the board. I have to say that it was wombled from some friends that had it sitting around. Having looked at the completed work this evening I am wondering if the warp at the eastern end, as I am calling it, will be suitable for laying the tracks. I am going to use a mixture of Easitrac and hand lay and if it is a problem I will have to raise the road bed to be able to level it across the whole board. So we will see.

Even if this a failure in the long run it will certainly help get the momentum going and what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger 😉

Anyway more to follow in next couple of days as I have a hectic social calendar and a couple of trips away. Stay tuned..

Day 2 of Foamboard build

Having finally got through sorting out my boxes from last move I thought I would actually inventory the stock I have and see what if anything could be rationalised. However after a radical purging a number of years ago which after I kinda regretted getting rid of the things I did I now am more careful about what I plan to liquidate and what is to keep in the inventory. I wasn’t so surprised at most of what I found although the biggest was how much N Scale stuff I have accumulated over the years this being both UK and US stock. In my last purge I got rid of a lot of UK N and am now wishing I hadn’t. Although the main thrust of my interest is to be 2mmFS and not some much 2mm. Ok so what you ask is the point of this post, well the thought occurs that maybe hoarding an rubber gauging is fun for looking at the swag but not necessarily a good thing for actually achieving.

With this in mind I am going to downsize (sell actually) the HO and Z US stuff as I see no future for this as I have enough stock for a small N scale New England layout and I like the train moving through the landscape model that 2mm gives you. The other scales and gauges are there for flitting around when my attention wanders and or the mojo wains. Thankfully plans for huge basement filling inventories are not possible due to a) lack of space, b) lack of money and c) lack of desire to have said huge estate. Shunting a few wagons around for an hour or so is my idea of fun and although the idea of watching express trains whizz by might be appealing in order to do it properly you need large amounts of space. I really do realise that in order to actually create something I need to keep it small.

So I really need to concentrate and focus. I have been listening to a tech podcast talking about managing ones time and setting time aside to work on certain things. Right so I’m off to ‘do’ rather than talk 🙂

I have found that Sketchup is an idea tool for not only reacting a virtual model of planed baseboards and layouts but also a great tool for creating the cutting lists for these projects.

So as a template to my ideas for a T-Trac modular layout gives me the dimensions of an 8ft x 4ft sheet of baltic 6mm ply and then I can work out all the cutting lines before I even turn on the saw. As usual more real progress to follow.

The completed boards and then the cutting list

Ok so I haven’t been posting too much but things are moving on in the real world and I have got distracted yet again but as stated before this I think is a good thing as it breeds creativity. Well the new focus is an old idea with a new twist. I have always been interested in the metre gauge railways of Switzerland but had never really ventured out of RhB land, it being the biggest and bestest 🙂 But however seeing some pics on a forum of another small metre gauge line got me cogitating. I thought how can I do something that it not to time consuming but interesting to build. Most of these lines served rural villages and ran through towns, so a nice opportunity to do some street running. Also traffic was light and freight was usually pulled along with passenger trains so a nice mix with the possibility of some either steam or diesel tracktor shunting.

So plan B was hatched, well actually project 7 or is it 8 now.. but the idea came from when I was helping my niece to do her geography project which I can now happily report that she got first prize and contrary to what my family thought I didn’t tell her what to do, she had all the ideas her self, well maybe all. Anyway back to the point of this post and the idea that sprang from helping her. So this idea is to have a Nm scale small roundy layout of around two and a half feet square with a up and over loop with passing loop in country section and a bit of a yard in town section.

The reasoning behind the use of Nm is that the scale is well catered for i.e. N scale buildings and trees etc but on the down side I will need to build the stock, but as this is going to be a very limited project I think that this will be an ideal project for 3D printing and the opportunity to get hands dirty with CAD. No more that 4 units would be used and this would be at the maximum as there would be limited space on the layout. I envisage it being more of a moving diorama although the idea of being able to do a little shunting might ge the better of me.

Work goes on @ 15minmodellingworks, more reports to follow…

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