All change

29 November, 2008

Following on from the previous entry, I've had to adjust my size. Having the width at eighteen inches has proven to be just a little bit too wide. My base unit is an old Ikea Gorm shelf that is 13 inches wide and there was too much overhang.

The building of the subframe for this is also proving a bit messy. I am not a carpenter, but when the guy at a timber yard cannot follow instructions and cuts stuff wrong, it throws everything off. Plus straight wood does not fit into the mentallity here (UK) so everything is warped, but I've managed to do a bit of fenangling and got the base level. Once I can get the core stuff done I'm off and running, back into my element.

In the meantime I'm looking at other layout designs. I think I'll have a temporary page on the site to cover that, maybe someone else might like one of designs and could use it.

posted on 18:58   link | comments (0)   . . . . .  

Getting a design right

15 November, 2008

Putting a layout together requires first, some sort of design. Model railroading is not much different than corporate or advertising design when it comes to this. I can end up with a couple of hundred different designs and/or aspects when I create a brand. From that 99% of it gets trashed and I'm left with one or two.

Fortunately it only took about 20 different ideas to come up with this:

I wanted a switching layout, shelf based with micro elements as vignettes. It may need a bit more refining, but most of that will be in the construction side of things. Basically it's the butt end of a mining line. There's a mine, various buildings and stuff. The idea is a main line loco brings in and picks up cars, then returns to "somewhere out there" on the left. A small switcher based at the camp handles the routine stuff.

The size is 9 feet by 18 inches (I really do struggle with these little things) and should provide a lot of scope for detail and operations (if I get around to it).

I am stuck with my track, only because I dished out about a hundred bucks on the stuff and don't want to wastefully trash it. It's made by Peco here in England and quite honestly I am not impressed (the nice version). Probably because I'm used to handlaying track and scratch building my own switches, I just got a bit lazy and regret it. Now I'm gonna to have to bury a lot of it in scenary to get rid of the toy look.

posted on 19:22   link | comments (0)   . . . . .  

Rambling concepts

01 November, 2008

The one thing I notice is just how much out of practice I am with this. I suppose it's the different things happening, so I'm sort of keeping this to weekends at the moment (with the odd evening here and there).

I do try to get on with the micro idea, but find it extremely limiting - but then so is the available space. When I had the On30 Hook River, back in the late 1980's, I ran it as a switching layout with full size locomotives and rolling stock. The advent of the micro has brought to the fore a more industrial type form of model railroading. This involves very small locomotives, tight curves, sharp switches and the use of items not normally found in railroading. For instance the traversing table. Oh, there may have been a few, but they were not common. The same goes for a track layout known as an Inglenook.

Putting all that aside and looking at stuff from a more prototypical idea, then stuff begins to make sense. I could have a basic section with full size 0n3 or 0n30, then maybe a couple of small industries coming off that using the micro concept. One idea is a simple runaround track with a spur and something.

The something is then served by a small railroad maybe 20 or 24 inch guage. 18 inch is a bit tight, but feasible and a number of mines had that gauge. Maybe I need to find a specific industry to tack on to and see what can be done.

posted on 19:16   link | comments (0)   . . . . .