That's looking really good. I think point rodding would tip me over the edge.  :)

This is the last bit Pete so I am spurred on to finish it.  I have a 5-way angle made which needs fitting in front of the box and then the rods need gluing down.  After that, a bit of tidying sees the job finished.

As promised, here is a picture of my Dapol Class 22 which has now been running in and now takes its place in the storage sidings.  Its train is an unfitted freight comprising all the kit-built and unpainted wagons in the fleet.  I will tackle them as a job lot when I run out of other things to do (!!)



She needs all the front-end paraphenalia added and will be weathered in due time.  She runs really well and copes with the 17 wagon train easily.  There are switches underneath for head and tail lights which, for now, I have turned off.  I will have head lights on if the discs are not fitted  If I were to be uber-critical - no driver - but that really is being picky!!

Those Class 22s are such sad looking locos - the turned down eyes and turned down mouth makes them look somewhat ugly to me……….. :hmm

That's a heck of a lot of rolling stock you have sitting behind old misery eyes Barry - are all your trains made up of fixed rakes ?

Hi Peter

They were sad because they spent more time being mended than they did pulling trains  

The trains are made up into fixed rakes with the exception of the Stopping Freight (Pick-up goods), the vans train that trips into Trinity Square, the parcels train and some of the engineers trains.

I rotate my stopping freight consists using blocks of wagons - between 0 and 4 per block - and have posted a video on my YouTube channel (Yarslow Model Railway - Stopping Freight Trains on Yarslow) explaining how its done.  I am sure there are better ways but I like this one.

The vans trip works much the same way using a smaller number of bigger blocks.  The parcels train simply rotates one or two vehicles - the rest remain in the fixed rake.

The engineers trains rotate full and loaded ballast and equipment wagons between the storage sidings and the PW yard at Yarslow.

The above is all done to make sure that every time the timetable is run, the consist of various trains changes - just as it would in real life.  The "Special" trains on the cartridges run by rotation and there are slots in the timetable to allow various routes to be taken.  This may mean that the engineers train might arrive at the yard on Saturday, travel up the branch to do something on Sunday but not have a path to return to storage until the next Weekday.

It all sounds confusing because its easier to show/do than it is to write it down.  Perhaps you have done me a huge favour here by triggering the question - I will do a video for the channel explaining the timetable and showing some of these trains and the variations  :cheers.

Barry

[user=2006]Barry Miltenburg[/user] wrote:

…………………………………………………………… Perhaps you have done me a huge favour here by triggering the question - I will do a video for the channel explaining the timetable and showing some of these trains and the variations  :cheers.

Barry

Always happy to oblige Barry ………………. :cheers

I'll go and have a look at your Yarslow channel where hopefully, everything will become clear ….. :thumbs

Busy week and weekend.  Ballasting at Yarslow South now complete having done the point rodding.  Scenery extended to settle in the overbridge which is now fixed in its final position.  Road and scenic base coat needs to be completed in the corner.



The groundwork has been done although, having done the ballasting, the weathering powders need putting down again - schoolboy error doing them first!!  A backscene is needed across the door.  The MiniArt building mentioned a few posts ago is coming together and will sit in this area behind the grey brake van.



I built some Playcraft signals some time ago and have made them operate although only manually at this stage.  This 3-armed signal controls (l-r) the siding next to the signalbox, the exit from the branch onto the main line [distant and home] and the exit from the branch to the No.3 platform road.  The latter is the usual route for branch passenger trains although the "Boys" train, and others, run onto the main line.  Not sure I will use these but it is good to be able to visualize the signals around the layout.



These ancient "Crescent" signals are probably older than me and won't be used but what lovely things they are!!

Coming together nicely, Barry. I'm looking forward to starting some scenery… when I've finished the electrics and control panels.

A friend of mine has been over to take some photos of Yarslow with a sooper-dooper digital camera that has more buttons than the space shuttle.  The result is here.

Its a decent photo but I am happy to report that it is no better than the results I get with my Sony RX100 pocket digital. (see my efforts below)



Nothing against Guy who is an excellent photographer - more that is shows up how difficult it is to shoot small scale models.  Depth of field is the eternal problem and neither of us is keen to become immersed in photo-stitching using Photoshop Pro.

Its been an interesting excercise and one that has saved me from thinking about buying several thousands of pounds of expensive photography equipment!!!!!

In other news, the "Yarslow South" area has been finished with a scenic base treatment and the groundworks weathered in.  I have left the corner site vacant whilst I decide what building to put there - probably a large pub.  I will investigate my Railway Modeller collection for suitable plans.

Next stop, Trinity Square where the platforms are in although they do not have a surface.  I will start on those and hope to get them done before Xmas - they are almost dead straight so a lot easier than the Yarslow ones which took a couple of days all in.

I have also had a Hornby K1 in pieces after the motor fried itself but helpful advice from a spares supplier in Kent (I will post his details when I can find them) yielded a Hornby D16 motor which is a perfect fit although the flywheel is absent.  I will get the motor wired in today and give it a few test laps.  You can't beat good service from a bloke who knows his stock and the options!!

Bashing on……

hi Barry,

I found the same with my quite respectable Digital SLR and have been using my iPhone ever since. All the photos I've posted in the last 4 years were taken this way.

Don't ask me how such a tiny lens produces such good sharp images with depth of field and manages a very wide range of light intensity, but it does.

 One of the mysteries of our age.

Hi Colin

I have an older iPhone and have never thought of using it for photos as I have the Sony

Perhaps I should give it a go!

Barry

Hi Barry,
Like Colin, I find a smartphone far better than a SLR camera. I will occasionally get the camera out for close-ups, if I need both the foreground and background in focus.

To give you an idea of my iPhone results, my latest post on Upper Hembury made just now has photos taken with just two central 800 lumen down-lights in the room and another at the end of the room at bottom of stairs , i.e nothing special in the way of lighting. The photo goes out to 3.5m from the camera so great depth of field achieved in only modest light.


PS electrons are nearly free so I guess I can pop in a copy in here, if you'll excuse the intrusion!

Hi Colin

No need to apologise!!  You've started me on something now!  I went to the shed with my iPhone7 and here are the results of the Apple Jury (as they say)



There are 2 key learns here - iPhone pictures always come out sideways, even though I straightened it before posting.  The second is that the depth of field is great!!  Given the harsh angle, I didn't expect the bus to be in sharp focus but the brake van is OK.



Next, another learn.  This picture is also taken with the iPhone but saved as a .png.  Its now the right way up but very large.

Any offers Gentlemen???

Hi Barry,

iPhone orientation is the one annoyance and you'll have to experiment

What I do with those portrait photos I took (see Nov 10) is to open them in Paintshop, crop or select the area you want, copy then paste as a new image, finally rotate. This gets rid of any embedded metadata which may be retaining orientation data.

A bit of a pain but worth it IMO give the photo quality gained for web use.

I use Fast Stone ( free) for editing photos.

Yeah!

Thanks Colin - edited and saved again.  Many thanks

[For those interested, its a photo showing the completed scenery and groundworks at Yarslow South.  This finishes the basic scenic treatment at Yarslow.  I have moved onto a couple of irritating bumps in the storage sidings trackwork and the platforms at Trinity Square.]

Barry

Great stuff, that looks very good.

I must admit that those photo's look really good. I've got an Oppo phone and think I'll try a shot or two to save getting the SLR out. I'm not sure if I can transfer the photo's to my mac without too much trouble though. I do have Photoshop Elements 11.

Interesting comments on cameras. Cell phone vs SLR is chalk and cheese. One of the reason (not the only one) why cell phone photos are "more in focus with depth" is because the lenses are essentially wide angle (focal length of 2-4mm compared to 24-50mm) with electronic manipulation for long distance. Bit like an electronic Kodak Brownie or camera obscura. One of the reasons why new cell cameras have multiple lenses covering a range of focal lengths. Really good digital photos means very large files of course. 

I've noticed that when taking closeups it's better to use as high a resolution as possible and  back off a bit to increase the focal depth and get the edges more in focus Cropping and expansion usually gets the file to a manageable size.


Cell phone for distance (feet/meters), digital SLR for detail (inches/cm) is a good. compromise (unless you use a bells and whistle digital full frame SLR). I use both, neither are as good as my old film full frame SLR with closeup lenses for resolution and control of depth of focus. To get that I think I would be looking at a $2000+ digital camera and probably as much again in lenses.


Nigel

Caveat:  I am definitely not a photographer, I leave that to my wife. I point and shoot, as long as the camera works I don't really care how it works. There is plenty of information on the web covering the differences between cell phone cameras and digital SLRs. 

[user=1632]BCDR[/user] wrote:

Interesting comments on cameras. Cell phone vs SLR is chalk and cheese. One of the reason (not the only one) why cell phone photos are "more in focus with depth" is because the lenses are essentially wide angle (focal length of 2-4mm compared to 24-50mm) with electronic manipulation for long distance. Bit like an electronic Kodak Brownie or camera obscura. One of the reasons why new cell cameras have multiple lenses covering a range of focal lengths. Really good digital photos means very large files of course. 

I've noticed that when taking closeups it's better to use as high a resolution as possible and  back off a bit to increase the focal depth and get the edges more in focus Cropping and expansion usually gets the file to a manageable size.

Cell phone for distance (feet/meters), digital SLR for detail (inches/cm) is a good. compromise (unless you use a bells and whistle digital full frame SLR). I use both, neither are as good as my old film full frame SLR with closeup lenses for resolution and control of depth of focus. To get that I think I would be looking at a $2000+ digital camera and probably as much again in lenses.

Mine is not a high end iPhone, latest release but the lower tier model iPhone SE 3rd Gen.

Link to "Flying Tart" photo

The photo shown there illustrates that in modest light, sharpness and depth of field are perfectly possible in combination. If I'd taken that with my Canon EOS it would be sharper but only with a depth of field of a few centimetres. I've tried often enough to know which I prefer but then likewise I'm not a photographer..