Progress (or otherwise) on Jeff's new layout

Lovely those old Victorian style loco,s Jeff.
Your railway is coming along a treat with loads of different scenes and of course you have Toby,s valuable assistance.
As its that time of the year,
Have a Merry Christmas.
Derek.

Thanks Derek.
Merry Christmas to you too and your family, and to everyone else in YMR and their familes too. 
:cheers

Lovely looking loco Jeff, the colour and lining is very impressive. :thumbs 

I see that Hornby has announced the S15 Class and a LSWR liveried version of the LSWR class 415 Adams Radial Tank, a replica of the Bluebell Railway’s 488.

Cheers, Gary.

Yes. I'm definitely in the market for an S15 or two (or three or four). Not so sure about the Adams Radial, although I have ridden behind the Bluebell one.

Thankfully, there is time to save up!

The lining on the M7 is quite impressive and, while not quite as elaborate as the Bachmann SECR C, it's the equal in quality and finish.

And now for something completely different …

I now own a Gresley P2 in LNER livery! This one is Hornby but not the TTS one and not the RailRoad one. I bought it off a friend who ended up with two of them. As it had a missing front buffer (easily repaired), I got it for a very reasonable price. It is now fitted with a Lenz Standard+ decoder and runs fairly sweetly with a hint of gear whine that is gradually reducing with use.

I am treating it as a "might have been" preserved example, so it is posed here with a 'raspberry ripple' set of BR mark 1 coaches (Bachmann) and with some Hornby Pullmans.

Oh how I wish I had room for a bigger layout

Nice pictures Jeff.


Ed

Thanks, Ed. I think that no matter how much room we have, we always want a little more! :lol:

I do so like these green locos! I just don't know where to go with New End [a 1940s terminus set around an Inglenook puzzle], I've got a SR Early crest well tank, a GWR cream and choccy diesel railcar and a green GWR pannier, now SWMBO wants a Terrier after seeing this months RM with the new 'O' gauge version…..Agghh!

Doug

Doug, there is always the GWR green liveried Terrier, 'Portishead'… ;-);-)    Now, back to Jeff's thread.., Great looking loco Jeff. Preservation is a wonderful thing and a great excuse for having such locos on the layout. ;-)

Cheers, Gary.

Yes, good idea, Gary, the scenarios would take a bit of concocting though!

Jeff, the P2 has just been reviewed in Hornby magazine (I have an on-line subscription) and I am very tempted, to 'display' next to my Flying Scotsman. A lucky buy indeed.

Doug

The P2 is just one of those rare, iconic locomotives that are a 'must have'!

Doug, Gary is right regarding the GW liveried terrier. Seeing as how you have a mix of early BR(S) and GW stuff, you could invent a fictional line joining the SR 'withered arm' and the GW around the time of nationalisation. 

Alternatively, places like Yeovil were served by both railways/regions for a time. It would not take too much imagination to mix the GW and SR stuff there. The Beattie well tanks were usually limited to the Wadebridge - Wenfordbridge branch but did escape occasionally, particularly when on the way to Eastleigh works.

Thanks for that, Jeff! The idea appeals and anything to keep the Management on-side re railway modelling has to be a good move.

(Iconic was the wordI was thinking of but it's early Sunday morning here..)

Doug

Nothing to actually show for this, but I have spent half the day wiring in the first of the point motors. I have used the old stud and probe method of activation, hooked up to a 16V AC output on my old H & M Duette controller (which also controls trains when switched to DC analogue operation).

It isn't actually difficult wiring these up, just tedious and fiddly.

Anyway, the first one is a success. Only eight more to follow on the Underground circuits. I'm not sure how many will be required on the upper level main lines yet but there are already eight in place for the upper fiddle yard with six or eight more required for the other end of the loops and several more for the loco shed and sidings, for which my plans haven't yet been finalised.

A lighter moment at Newton Broadway: for a bit of fun, I posed a preservation running day. Here we have the Hornby rebuilt Merchant Navy 35005, Canadian Pacific, in BR blue (a livery that suits it well even though it only ever wore it in preservation, at least in its rebuilt form) passing Hornby P2 2001, Cock o' the North in LNER green. 

I just spent most of the afternoon doing a little track laying, made easier because I have been able to clear most of the stock off the upper level since buying the extra Ikea Alex unit. There is now a continuous flow from the fiddle yard right around the curve at the right-hand end of the layout.


The class 166 driving coaches are my spacing gauges - they are the widest and longest items of stock I possess, so are the ones I use to test clearances.


I also cut away a little of the church hill to allow for the future level crossing.

The curves look tight but are actually not too bad, being roughly equivalent to the set track 3rd and 4th radii or slightly larger.

Looking good Jeff. :thumbs 

Would I be correct saying the curves on the lower deck would be the same radii ?

Cheers, Gary.

Hi Gary.
The lower level curves are slightly sharper, so the inner radius is around 3rd radius. The upper level is closer to 4th and 5th radius (in spite of what I said earlier) but tightens slightly in the middle. As it is all done with flexible track by eye, without templates, there is a little bit of variation.

Lovely transition curves there Jeff.

Nice neat track laying Jeff.
I too use eyeball mark 1 when laying curves. Plus given the period I intend to cover the coaches were a lot shorter.
The trick with radius is to get in some transition and ease into the sharper bits.
Regards,
Derek.

Thanks Marty and Derek.

I do try to use transitions. Normally I pin near the joint with the straight track, then pin the middle of the track on the alignment I want while holding the other end loosely on the continued alignment. I then let the track find its own transition from the mid-point to the straight, before pinning that somewhere in the middle of that section.