Sunday, May 11, 2008

Ulthwaite - more work



The Lake District layout is now known as 'Ulthwaite'. (There may be a real Ulthwaite.. but it's not this one!) Been fettling the track and testing all my stock to make sure there aren't too many needless derailments. It's actually working a lot better than I thought. but I do keep wondering if I'd be better ripping it up and laying some 'proper' track. Started to mock up some buildings etc to get a feel for how things are going to look. I like the fiddle exit between two cottages , rather than under a bridge (which was my first thought). Also been thinking about operating sequences to plan any further purchases.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Lake District 009 project starts to take shape..

For once, I've actually put a bit of planning into a layout. The setting is somewhere in the northern part of the English Lake District..Borrowdale perhaps. A fictitious narrow gauge light railway built to haul ore/slate from the hills to an interchange at Keswick also makes revenue through general traffic. This little village terminus sees coal, goods and sheep being transported, as well as a few passengers and some tourists/walkers. It also is a place for small engines pulling ore skips from up the valley to run around before continuing off down towards the interchange.. The board is recycled from a previous layout. I laid a layer of camping groundmat down, which proved to be a bit of a nuisance once I started to install the GEM wire-in-tube point control, and may well infuriate me further when scenic work starts. The track is a first for me - all hand-built copper clad soldered construction. I've just started testing and fettling to make sure everything is running properly before I start ballasting or painting (a process which will hide the rough appearance of the track at the moment). I kind of wish I had tried this track building lark out in a larger scale to start with.. but why not jump in at the deep end eh?

Monday, May 5, 2008

Something for the weekend?

A diversion the other weekend.. thinking I'd like a quick project, I spotted a spare little pine shelf about 570mm long. A bit of foam core.. a chopped up cereal packet.. some quickly laid track, a scattering of a few scenic bits and within the next couple of days this little N scale 3-2-2 inglenook layout was born. Good fun!