Lacathedrale

Is there an obvious jig/etc. that I can use to align pairs axles when they are inserted into W-iron assemblies, in order to fix those W-irons parallel to each other? I'm thinking specifically of those kits which have loose irons rather than those which are tab/slot located - i.e. the Woodham Wagon Works kit I'm working through presently. I have managed this by eye using scribed lines in the past, but it feels like a simple fold down jig with parallel slots of standard axle spacings would make alot of sense? I'm sure i've seen something like this knocking around but I can't think of where. Cheers!

There is a lock on the bureau and all the drawers, but can I find the bloody key??

I am lucky enough to have a corner of the living-room to work in, so I'm hoping this can ensure continuity of hobby while keeping an eye on baby/toddler....

What's your recipe for the inside wood? Cream and grey? Brown? My brain can't distinguish the colours apart from 'this is unpainted wood'.

Second O5 is done sans some post-weathering touch-ups and powders: While doing this, I understood the first O5 (the pre-built one) had had some pinpoint bearings fitted. Thankfully, the S4 society bearings are drop-ins for the axle-boxes. It also had etched hooks fitted, those in the kit being rather weak. No problem to fit these, but I'm running out of links!

Ah! Good spot for both the solebar and the brake lever - I'll fix those once the oils have a chance to settle, they're still a bit mutable at the moment. Thank you for the reminder on the conjectural intermediate livery - I understand, I just like it. I realise that the other O5 in the work is complete, and so comes with brake levers and the cast iron number/nameplates - so I'll do that this time. Maybe there's room for a V4 with the conjectural livery - a transfer from Farthing? :) Other than that, this morning has been the construction of a Poppy's Woodtech jig (all done) and (probably against my better judgement) the commencement of another Woodham wagon kit in the Stephenson Clarke dumb-buffered wagon. Yet again, the etched floor is miles out for the wagon - God alone knows the reason why Roxey have included it. The small elephant in the room is the lack of meaningful progress on the R-class chassis. I have no excuse, other than the diversion to LBSCR and 00 has deemphasised the construction. All of my wagons are being/have been built with EM wheels for EMSF, though of course they could be re-gauged to 00, but for the locomotive I'm not so sure. For now, I'm enjoying getting through the backlog of wagon kits - but I sure do prefer scratchbuilding.

I know times have changed, but if Mr. Denny can build a layout in a bedsit with a newborn through to a room-spanning layout with two boys, I think I can manage a few hours here and there on the workbench - time will well, of course! I have ordered the water tower and have a saved search for the signal box on ebay, and have a few other 4mm bits on the go in my workbench thread.

I bought a built GWR O4(?) wagon for a song on eBay and after trimming the brake shoes, adding a pivot rod, removing the D-shape tension lock coupling, and fitting 3-links, I set about painting it in the red scheme - it's yet to recieve powders and a final super-matt varnish but overall I'm fairy pleased with the evening's work: I've another (unbuilt) version of this kit, I may well paint it in the hybrid livery illustrated so well by @Mikkel in his 'same but different' blog entry:

Just to put a heartbeat on this topic - I've yet to recieve the other HL hornblock still, apparently it's en route - so not much in the way of progress I'm afraid!

Do not apologise for being blunt, even as I my brain is pulling me towards the next thing emotionally I can identify it as unreasonable. It is definitely not deliberate! It seems to be a subconscious urge to stay in my comfort zone (of planning, checking, experimenting) rather than 'risking' a layout being built and not being fulfilling. If one needed expert advice on finding reasons to not build a layout, I think I could offer alot.

I am very fortunate to be currently well employed, and so you're right that the cost of these things is miniscule in the grand scheme - having just had to fork out £12k for a new bathroom and selling my MGB GT for £7k - an extra £100 here and there on trains which would otherwise require hours of work is really no great shakes. That said, my brain just won't let me be: I saw reference to the S-scale LBSCR layout built in Australia of the same time period, including the A, B, C, H, etc. and my heart yearned for it in a way I can't really explain. I put it aside and then went searching for any scratchbuilding supplies (found some plain bond brick - any use?) and came across the S-scale wheelset I ordered for my abortive S-scale LBSCR E1 scratchbuild and it called out again. SHUT UP BRAIN.

Well, sounds harder than it is I think - it's a case of wiring 4 connections between Arduino Nano pins and the DFMiniPlayer chip pins. I'm thinking that if I can split the sound into start/middle/end and they play on push/hold/release of a button it should be enough. As enhancement I could modulate the sound by a random percentage 90-110% to change the pitch and length slightly so it's not always the same sound, and I could have two sets of buttons (for sound at buffer-end and throat-end) which then correspond to Left and Right stereo channels. I think it sounds more complicated than it's likely to be -t he components are about £25 total and it should be easy to write up and post online, then just a case of copy/paste. Yeah, I guess you're right - it seems a huge part of the journey for a long lived (rather than one-shot) layout is that it evolves with the replacement of RTR stock/buildings with scratchbuilds. I'm not sure the extra £80 for the Skaledale/Scenecraft stuff would be worth it, but I could always sell it on at a future date and recoup that?

I have a little bit of a quandary here - with imminent fatherhood (< a few weeks) I am aware that my free time is going to be extremely constrained. This dovetails with the zoomed out view I'm trying to take with this layout - though I love S, P4 (and this applies to EMSF to a degree) - I am limited in the amount of time I can allocate, and I do at least ONCE want to get a non-diorama layout to a state of operational completeness. I figure that some standalone structures are good things to work on between now and when the baseboards arrive, so I created the foamcore mock-ups for them a few days ago and I'm pleased with them. The water tower is from Sheffield Park at the nearby Bluebell - and I find now that Bachmann Scenecraft supply a ready-to-plonk model for it. Similarly, I had looked at building the S&F box from Littlehampton, but I now find that Hornby have produced a Skaledale model of the Horsted Keynes box, which is a 42(?) lever frame of LBSCR design. Both would need to be repainted into the LBSCR maroon and and cream, and though it goes against my natural inclinations, I wonder if leveraging these items would make sense in the same way I'm adopting 00 instead of P4? 🤔 Or am I short-cutting myself out of a model railway entirely by doing so?

Ah very nice, the joins are always quite obvious when I see them so some filler/etc. probably not a bad idea.

Addiscombe, Hayes, Bromley North? Be Still My Beating Heart. Though the branch line station designs are fuel for track plans, I wonder how appropriate they are with regard to the unprototypically-busy-BLT paradigm for layouts given the short length of the branches, the termini's proximity to larger mainline through stations, etc. ? As an aside I've wondered since the debut of Minories how little of the early RM's focus on urban layouts, let alone double-track ones. However, my Modeller readathon is now at 1963 and it’s got such a plaintive note, many : “last chance to see…” and then very long lists of branch line closures, and even the layouts have this sad undertone of “set in 1947 before it all went wrong…”. It is no wonder that people of the time wished to capture that before it all disappeared.

While I'm here I may as well also confirm - airbrush for the gloss varnish, and then for the tan/gunmetal/black mixture are you washing that over the parts, or airbrushing for full coverage?

How did you do the cobbles? very effective!

Thank you very much!

Setting & Scenics I'm in mid 1963 with my Railway Modeller readathon and of course, there is a lovely drip-feed of Berrow and Charford. Neither H M. Pyrke or J. Charman seem to be hurting for stimulation on their layouts as they expand and contract. I did note the tribulations of the Craigshire and Mertonford, a poignant note early that it had sat unloved and cob-webbed - let alone the mixed success of the multiple rebuilds, etc. But, in general there is an idea that a good idea can stand the test of time and be squashed and squeezed and still found worthwhile. I admire the early EM gauge adherents, though there are obviously large group efforts - some people have definitely gone the extra mile on their own back. It has made me question my choice of 00 a little bit given the challenges they faced and have overcome, but honestly if all this 4mm/00 layout achieves is to settle the question for me once and for all what I want and how I want to achieve it, then it is money and time well spent. Anyway, I saw "Thornbury Hill" at the Bluebell too and it has much to envy. If I can possibly distill some of the scenic elements of this wonderful layout down to 9' x 20" then I'd be a happy man... I do note that the rear corner with the bay platforms is particularly difficult to see, which I think I'd like to avoid on my layout Not sure how to achieve that though, without omitting the central platform canopies... Non-DCC Sound Seems to be fairly straight forward with an Arduino Nano and a DFMiniPlayer - it will require some development/etc. but happy to share my findings with you in due course.

Initially I will set up the block sections and isolating joiners as if I were going with DC and probably have a very vestigial toggle-switch panel for the sections. If I end up switching to DCC then I replace the panel with a common link and it all gets left 'on' forever. If not, then I am set up to move forward to support the DC, signal-driven forward-block route control - either way, I want to have multiple feeds for each track section, and it costs me very little to have some isolating joiners and figure out the rest of the details at a later date. Block-section wise, probably something very roughly like this: I have realised of course, that the double slip recommendation for access to the turntable road would preclude the need for an additional trap on the carriage siding, d'oh! I think I may also ignore the FPLs on the lever frame, unless I am feeling particularly masochistic. I like the idea of turntable road - maybe in the future as part of an extension, or maybe in the past as 'history' for what that siding was for. I understand B'ham had a couple of non-leverframe items to aid operation. If I understand Buckingham's wiring properly, then there's a push-button which should enliven the platform buffer-end sections and their adjacent platform roads to the 'station' controller, in order that train locomotives can head back and dwell at the platform ends. I wonder if moves shunting from the up main back into the platform roads should be controlled by a single shunt disc/arm and a rotary control (to represent the hand signals) rather than five (?) shunt arms.... Anyway, that's still some time away!

Signalling The Brighton Line Signalling book by C. Durant has been duly purchased, should be a good read. I'll hold off on further discussion I think - I reckon the only pertinent thing at this stage is to ensure that I err on the side of caution for insulation breaks and block sections on the layout. DCC? On that note, I can see almost no benefit in using DCC 'to run multiple trains simultaneously', since I will have working signals (or at least, the wiring and switches that will move a future signal), using them to control the electrical block sections (and thus train presence/movement) makes total sense. The only thing I could see which might be marginal is active braking, and the use of whistles. I'm wondering if I can find a circuit which will 'active brake' a DC controller, I'm sure some must exist - and for whistles I'm looking at an Arduino with pushbuttons where the controllers are - both peeps and long whistles to occur at the buffer end, platform end, and fiddle yard end. Can't be that hard, surely?! :) Happily, I picked up this to sample from:

Ah, so it's a gloss coat underneath, with a matt wash/streaking that's buffed off the boiler? Lovely!

I got so much out of reading A Railway Adventure I changed my holiday plans (it was a holiday read) to re-route myself to visit the Talyllyn. When talking to a friend and ex-Bluebell volunteer he had such a wealth of knowledge and interesting anecdotes that it made me realise I know very little about the railway other than what's on Wikipedia and my one or two visits. I'm now a member and will be there more often, but there's got to be a well-written book about the Bluebell, surely? Getting it up and running after abandonment, trials and tribulations of dodgy stock, financial concerns, renovations and demolitions, etc. ?

Simon, thank you for that diagram - I will endeavour to continue for research, @ianathompson 's prompt for The Brighton Line signalling book is probably a great shout. I found myself at the Bluebell Railway today, and enjoyed myself an LBSCR 54' First for part of the trip, so could experience both the 6w Firsts and the rebuilt 54' stock that will feature on the layout. I managed to pick up the last Umber H1 the shop had for sale at about the same price available onlline, so that was nice! I also had finally time to unpack the Bullhead track order. After a steady diet of P4 and EMSF it's a bit quaint to see the too-narrow gauge, but I'm repeating the BIG PICTURE mantra a fair bit at the moment and all is calm. I laid it out on an old hollow-core door to get an idea of what it might look like: The turnout in the packet needs to be replaced with a L/H point, to create the extra route that @Regularity suggested, so that's going back to KMS Railtech. Fair warning incase this turns into a GWR BLT, this was the motive power at the Bluebell:

In my defence I was sketching on my iPad upside-down but you're quite right of course. Thankfully, no such danger with the models...