F-UnitMad's Content - Page 121 (2024)

Annual State of the Layouts Address, part two.

My UK outline O layouts have made little or no progress this year, and have only been run occasionally. In fact the smallest, "Lyddlow Goods", is a bit of a dumping ground at the moment...

On Withyn Reach, I did make a start with some point rodding and a ground frame. The frame was scratchbuilt with balsa, and Skytrex whitemetal levers, the rodding is adapted from the Wills 4mm scale kit, which is closer to 7mm scale, alledgedly!!

....which got as far as here, and the mojo died a death - that plastic rodding is fiddly stuff to work with!!!

Over on Mr Northroader's "Washbourne" thread, he gave a State of the Layouts Address, which went down very well, & Mr Nearholmer stated it was an idea he would steal. Well, so shall I....

Portway Terminal RR, Annual State of the Layouts Address 2020.

I am pleased to report some progress on the Portway Terminal High Line Sub-division this past year.

As well as the ceremonial Golden Spike Day on March 20th (page 13 of this Thread) scenic work has started in various areas and the mortal remains of the original HO layout are more or less hidden now. There has been - and still is - much faffing with DCC for various locos, and lots of playing trains er, um, I mean Operating Sessions, carried out with the main aim of Having a Good Time.

A general view southwards of the layout & it's environs...

And northwards...

Just this week a proper start has been made on the Chemical Supplies building, with a foamboard carcass taking shape, ready to be clad with corrugated paper. This is the first time I've used foamboard, it's nice to work with!

The two other layouts I have are British outline, and can be glimpsed in the overall views. Due to photo download limits, and the fact I don't think I have threads for them on RMweb, Part 2 of my State of the Layouts Address will follow shortly....

Thankyou.

2 hours ago, Dr Gerbil-Fritters said:

Thankfully not! I did have the 4F with solid wheels and a tender drive. I say 'drive', it mostly just made noise and spun the wheels uselessly. I removed it and had a very nice push-along train instead.

I also had the 'Clayton', a class 31 and the legendary Deltic. The best thing about the Deltic was the blue colour - spot on for BR drab. Each one seemed to be to a different scale, and the Mk1s were to a different scale again. It's a wonder that my interest in model trains survived. Actually, thinking about it 0 it didn't. it went dormant for about 30 years...

The Deltic looked great in the Railway Modeller review, and so I asked for one for Christmas 1978. What the RM didn't mention was that the Lima Mk1 carriages just about came up to the bonnet top on the Deltic. I was so disappointed. My parents must have sensed my disappointment too, I feel sad for them now.

Thanks for that horror show - I'd quite forgotten just how awful Lima N gauge was.

On 20/12/2020 at 15:02, HillsideDepot said:

The wonderful Allied Marine & Locomotive Company layout by Allan Sibley and Brian Dorman which featured in the November 1978 issue of Railway Modeller made a lasting impression on an 8-year old as to the possibilities of the industrial railway world.

I still have my copy of that article and a second one they did a bit later that focused on some of the cameo detail scenes on the layout.

No probs!!

Why notjust renumber it?* Apologies for a photo of a photo, and I have no idea of the exact date I took this at B'ham New Street, but it would have been late '80s, possibly very early '90s....

*Edit - andpaint the window surrounds white as well

*Edit again!! and add the nose jumper cables, and high-intensity headlight.... and probably more details I haven't spotted yet!!! D'oh!!

1 hour ago, Northroader said:

It struck me,when I popped into the loft for a brief session this afternoon, that the view when you enter through the door might help pad up what I was describing last night, so:

All you need to do is link all those little layouts together, and you'd have one great big one....

Hat, coat etc....

On 18/12/2020 at 23:47, Dr Gerbil-Fritters said:

I got one of these for Christmas 1975,in N gauge and painted green with a BR emblem. I think it was meant to be a Clayton.

Was it made by Lima, perchance?

4 hours ago, great central said:

At certain times of year, what started the day as a fairly clean yellow front can be almost black with squashed flies by the end, even despite the attempts of many hungry wasps to get them off at station stops

I remember watching birds picking flies of the front of locos at Birmingham New Street, circa late '70s, especially Class 86 & 87electrics. The fronts were black with insects in the spring & summer, a problem I faced to a lesser degree years later as an HGV driver.

*Insert hated Team of choice*....

19 minutes ago, Reorte said:

The lorry appears to be within them (just), so the question is whether or not the lorry's over 8' 9" tall.

As it got stuck, that'll be a "Yes", then...

1 hour ago, NigeW said:

About time: only been waiting 8 years for them. Hopefully the 8 shoe underframe from the vanwide will lead to a palvan, pluslater vans andconflats.

Agreed about time; but still no mention of the HEAs...

3 hours ago, rab said:

So now I guess the discussion will change from the accuracy of the height indication to the accuracy of the width indicators.

The warning sign is still a height indicator, not width. The white lines are there because it's an arch, and they show where the height indication applies.

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

hence the success of HO and OO, because they were a step change from O, in the desired direction

This does ring true - any new, smaller scale has had to be significantly smaller than the previously 'smallest' scale to prosper. Hence HO/OO took off, and N gauge later on, but the 'in between' scales like S & TT have remained niche scales. Now I for one quite like niche scales, and not being in the mainstream, having had a dabble in British HO at one time. If there was more R-T-R US-outline S available I could be tempted; fortunately US 2-rail O is still niche enough for me, but the recent boom in UK O, whilst providing some wonderful models recently at more affordable prices, has pushed the scale more & more towards the mainstream, and I'm finding my interest in it waning.

Back to the relative size of different scales, I'm sure I saw a comment on RMweb recently about how for UK outline, T scale seems to be making more headway than Z ever did. Maybe the appeal for those who can see such tiny models is partly that it is significantly smaller than N, rather than just slightly smaller?

7 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

We've all had that OOPS ! moment.

I thought it was what trains look like anyway on setrack points.

On 18/12/2020 at 12:58, JDW said:

To be honest, without knowing the full back story & issues involved, some of the comments on here about this video are about as intelligent as one of the comments on the YouTube post itself, asking why they didn't just 'switch on the engine and drive it?'

Certainly no need to stoop to abusive language.

6 hours ago, Dr Gerbil-Fritters said:

What's particularly impressive for me is that these are all vintage mid 80s-90s models.

Yep - those of us who were fed up with the standard UK 00 offerings of thattime either:-

1) looked to the Continent or, 2) if we were poor and/or couldn't be bothered to learn a foreign language, we looked to the USA...

On 14/12/2020 at 10:26, Mike said:

Oh. and you can never have too many locomotives (see photos)

I think it's actually a legal requirement.

4 hours ago, eastwestdivide said:

Are all those ads for beer and fa*gs?!

There really was nothing else to do in the '50s...

14 hours ago, melmerby said:

ΛΛ

Some of my track is like that.

At least it's prototypical

You think that's bad track???

Try this....

Prototype for everything....

8 hours ago, boxbrownie said:

The last time I took off from Newquay......or RAF St Mawgan as it was then, I was layingflat in the observers pit in a Shackleton.........the first time you do that the effect on your stomach of staying low and then the cliff edge just drops away is quite interesting,pilots did it on purpose when they had fresh bodsonboard

I read somewhere once apilot's story of the RAF Shackleton's air display routine at that time; it started with the pilot cutting back the throttles & aiming at the ground on initial approach. The sudden drop in noise & aircraft altitude was designed to grab spectator attention.

One time during the pre-season rehearsal this pilot had a new Bod with him, who was sat up in the nose, and was unaware of howthe display started. This chap was calmly calling out time & distance to the start in his best impersonation of a WW2 bomb aimer, he calls out 'display start now, now now', and suddenly finds himself facing the ground at increasing speed, with ominously quiet engines. His calm patter deserted him, and whatever else he said on the flight was hysterical gibberish...

The pilot made a mental note to brief new crew fully next time.