Somewhere SW of London. Somewhen before today

[user=2170]Colin W[/user] wrote:

Oh yes, I remember now

Peco has made changes to the design of their points and crossings over the years which is entirely reasonable as part of an ongoing product development process.  

The problem I had with strange and untraceable shorts may have come about because the points are of different ages and designs.  Some are of the older style where it is necessary to clip two wires beneath the blades and to employ frog switching.  Some are of a newer style where the electrical switching is achieved via a tiny plastic boss between the fixed and moving parts of the blades.  Some were laid and fixed down almost ten years ago when the original track and boards were intended for a project which never proceeded.  But as they fed dead-end sidings frog switching should not have been necessary or so I thought; the wires were probably not clipped beneath the blades.  Or alternatively some combination of clipping / not clipping and frog-swtiching / not switching was responsible.  All sorted now.    


Feeding dead-end sidings is one thing but when two of those points form a loco-release crossover and are fed from the toe-ends (one of which is by definition at the dead-end of the siding) then problems arise.  Insulating the joint between the two removed a short but introduced a dead section.  


No matter; the layout now works almost as I intended it to.  The "almost" refers to the limitation of only being able to move one train on the main lines at one time.  There is a short section of single track as the two passenger lines merge then part again into the two holding sidings hidden beneath the main goods yard scene.  There is also a double-slip at the entry to the main fiddle yard.  I could arrange even more switching and isolation but frankly I've had enough of that sort of thing.  Electrickery isn't my strong suit and I tried to keep it simple on this layout whilst opting for electrofrog points to assist smooth slow-speed running.  In the end almost everything runs smoothly through the insulfrogs.  

Waiting time ….. 

Nice - Hornby or Bachmann ?

Bachmann. And thank you. 

My work here is done.  Probably.  

The girder bridge has been completed with the addition of white lines along the road (Scale Model Scenery item RX-006 OO) and tiny gratings (a Jim Smith-wright etch) plus a light dusting of weathering powder over everything.  


The next steps are to fix this in place and bring the backscene around behind it thus visually separating the display area from the fiddle yard.  

Rick the detail in that bridge is outstanding. 

[user=2057]TeaselBay[/user] wrote:

Rick the detail in that bridge is outstanding. 

So good that I managed to include the same picture twice :roll: :thud


And thank you :cheers

So good that I managed to include the same picture twice :roll: :thud 

I noticed, but at least it’s not upside down!

[user=2057]TeaselBay[/user] wrote:

at least it’s not upside down!

Ah.  Yes.  Pictures and Macs.  


Most pictures these days are taken on my iPhone 11 largely because the current layout is in a modest London-area flat-sized room which doubles as bedroom, trebles as office and quadruples as library.  There's very little space or scope for the DSLR.


Very recently I noticed that an automatic update to my system stored newly-uploaded images to the desktop Mac as HEIC files instead of JPEG (or JPG).  I had never heard of these and there was no warning nor indication of a change.  


Pictures uploaded to this site directly from the phone are JPEG files but are often displayed sideways for reasons of software incompatibility.  So I first took the images off the phone loading them to "Big Mac" at which point I discovered they were HEIC files which no forum I am a member of accepts.  


So another half-hour was spent sorting out a file converter which will now require all phone images to be run through it before storage taking more time until the cyberverse catches up and HEIC images become the norm.  If they ever do.  Remember TIFF files?  High quality images but almost nowhere accepted them.  TIFF effectively died a death.  Maybe HEIC will go the same way.  


Short story - the images you see above were taken as JPEGs, were converted by default to HEICs upon transfer to "Big Mac" and have been re-converted to JPEG for display here.  Fussy or what?  

A compare and contrast set of the prototype used as a guide and the model.  The model may gain a little green here and there but with the model set in the 1960s when things were kept much tidier than they are now there won't be an outbreak of buddleia!  

Tinkering around in odd moments of spare time. 

All track in the goods yard is now weathered although the final ground weathering has yet to go down. Point levers, odd loads and vehicles placed but not yet fixed. Uncoupling ramps installed which will become parts of board walkways to disguise them. 

Gee. not a very clean place..... :pedal

Not a lot to report as I have been unwell recently and am still not quite right. The good news is that all the tests, PCR and lateral flow, are negative so it’s not that.

I have however collected a four-coach rake of blood & custard Mk1 stock which is a livery not previously represented in my collection other than by a single coach bought a while back. 

Seen here berthed in the yard alongside the Standard 2-6-2T. Behind the carriages the chain-link fence is slowly going in of which more shortly. 


No

About that fence. 

Ancorton security fence offers pre-cut matchwood posts including angled ends for the diagonal supports and holes to accept barbed wire. 

I found that the fence mesh is rather too dense but not unuseable. It will also accept weathering washes to remove the brand-new shiny look. The posts can splinter when cut from their sprue but almost all are useable. The pre-cut holes for the barbed wire are actually blind and require boring out. I tried a 0.5mm bit but found it too small. The 0.7mm is better. 

The wire is not soft enough to straighten nicely and threading it through the holes of the numerous posts required became very difficult.  I tried cotton as an alternative but it looked very wrong

The second wire was harder still and the third really wouldn’t go through at all. 

If there was more wood on the posts I could open the holes a bit more maybe with a 0.8mm bit but as with cutting from the sprue they splinter. 

So I have abandoned the barbed wire toppers which were not universal in the 1950s and 1960s anyway. I have trimmed the angled tops from the posts and - for the most part - have cut the mesh in half lengthways to give a lower fence height. With correspondingly shorter posts.

The posts are painted with “Railmatch” concrete and will receive a top coat later. The fence line is not quite straight because the cut mesh stubbornly adopts a curve. I don’t think it matters. 

That does look good, Rick.

I have some modern security fence to use on my layout eventually, but I want to back-date it a bit. You have given me a few ideas here.

That looks good Rick.  :thumbs

My only comment would be that the posts look slightly over-scale which, I suppose,  is inevitable given that in scale, they'd probably be a bit over 1mm square ……..! :shock:

The curve isn't a problem to the eye at all.  Timder post and rail fencing would be about that height so cutting it in half doesn't detract but does make it easier to keep taught.

It looks plenty high enough in the last shot with the houses in the background - about level with the first floor windows ……. ;-)

Thank you gents,

The full-height fence behind the houses would be prototypical because of residential property bordering the railway.  The half-height along the field also probably prototypical based on a few personal observations of where open space borders the railway.  

Those posts are over-scale but we have to accept some sort of compromise.  To represent posts and chain-link fencing at scale would require, as Peter says, uprights about 1mm square (which could be in white metal), but a mesh something akin to a spider's web in thickness.  How one might create the latter in a sufficiently robust material I don't know.  

I'm told spider's web is stronger than human hair Rick.  Don't you have any cobwebs where you live ….?

Not too many Peter. The cat is quite partial to spiders and keeps the population under control. 

I'd parcel some of ours up and send them over Rick but I think they'd be classed as either livestock or meat products …….  :cheers