Martin S-C

Because of Rule #1, obviously! I wish you a healthy and happy 2019 Derek, its always good to drop by your thread and drool at your wonderful models.

Yup! I'm totally fired up now. The electrician is here pumping foam behind the sockets and replacing the aluminium housings with plastic ones so that should deal with the condensation issues there. Tomorrow Mr Air-Con and Damp Expert is coming round to talk about ventilation and such with a view to also getting a less noisy air-con/heater unit installed. Big Day next Tuesday when Neil and Alan from the Little Layout Company are here to put in the baseboard frames. Over Xmas the frames have been assembled by Alan off-site. Legs should go in on Tuesday as well then on Wednesday Neil will bring over the printed out 1:1 scale layout plan and we'll have the Grand Unveiling. Due to all the gradients the layout will all be open frame construction except under the stations and main industry areas which will be 9 mm ply.

Gilbert, I think I'm in love with your ballast and the general grotty ground cover. Lovely job on that.

"Stubby" is a great adjective for the kind of coaching stock I like. I baulk at anything approaching 60 feet. 10 or 20 feet less than that is my ideal and I have a special fondness for the GWR 38' 6" bogie suburban stock. Very cute vehicles they were.

I very much doubt a lady would end up smiling and elegant like that if, today, she jumped off a boat on the Broads wearing an ankle length skirt and heels. I'm also puzzled by the black mass on her... decollatage. I honestly can't work out what it is. Is it supposed to be a scarf? Or is it a very cuddly Highland terrier?

*peeps cautiously into the thread* "Has the political discussion finished yet?"

Um... seeing all those bullrushes, I don't know how to say this, but they are freshwater plants. You don't see them in salt marsh. Are they easy to swap for something else? Or is that trestle crossing a river estuary? Making the water into fresh water in your world may be easier than replacing the vegetation! Photos of salt marsh: https://www.google.com/search?q=salt+marsh&client=firefox-b-ab&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiSstO5ztvfAhV1t3EKHRbHApcQ_AUIDigB&biw=1680&bih=948

The first picture is definitely the stronger composition as it brings focus to the two main elements - train and bridge.

I agree. RM web needs a thread dedicated to wagons and their loads. So useful.

Are there other water plane or water surface textures? I get this feeling you shouldn't be able to see very far down into such water!

Worth keeping Gilbert? I haven't had a go with the other one as the signals make it pretty tricky.

After plotting out the baseboard legs, today I went into the railway room and drew out the perimeters of the two operating wells. Its going to be tight for six people. Do-able but no room for sprawling about! Note that a couple of the plotted baseboard leg markers are clearly in the wrong place.

That first picture I wouldn't bother, but would retain the dull blue-grey background and using a clone brush "spread" it around to all areas so the whole BG becomes a blueish overcast. The second one is more fiddley but a similar result could be obtained by clone-painting from a photo of an overcast sky. I imagine the process you use in PS is more automatic and fast, my hand-painting methods can require up to an hour per photo so may not be an option for everyone.

I see it more as a bunch of mates chatting in a pub! One of them is building a model railway and keeps getting out his phone to show images of his modelling and related photos off the internet while half the group respond to that and the other half are off nattering about everything else under the sun. On my thread I am copy-pasting the useful replies into a Word document (or several Word documents listed under different headings such as baseboards, signalling, etc) and saving them that way. I can't think of a better way to retain access to so much knowledge and information spewing out so rapidly. Though I only have about 25 pages to go through and select the wheat from the chaff - and not 600+

Was there ever a crimson and cream plus a maroon (crimson lake) and cream? So two different versions.

I'm assuming James will be painting that in 4mm scale as the roof of his station waiting room.

Hi Stu, well the sockets are fitted and paid for now and I'd prefer not to use multi-socket bus bars in ths particular case; no real reason except I just feel safer with 1 socket = 1 plug. Just had a measure around the room and plotted out all the proposed baseboard legs. Only 1 intersected a power socket and then only by about 4" so that particular socket, when its moved above its partner, will clear the leg. Sockets are not 12" above floor but 24" so at a good comfortable height. I will use a remote on/off handset to switch power on and off so I won't have to go scrambling under any baseboards at all, until something breaks. If I go down the Raspberry Pi and mini camera and screen route for operations/signalboxes then I probably will exceed my current 16 sockets but I'll cross that bridge when I have to. I haven't been into the room since a few days before Christmas and had left the two windows locked and cracked open about 1 cm so the room was pretty close to ambient air temp. About 12:30 this afternoon I went in to switch the dehumidifier on and when I went in about 4 hours later to plot the baseboard leg positions there was no moisture at all coming out of the sockets, just a fair bit of condensate on the air-con unit's exterior exhaust pipe - this is 6" dia. and goes right out through the wall and is covered by a plastic grill so its full of air at 3deg C right now - hence the condensate; but nothing running from the plug sockets was a pleasant surprise - and no condensate on the windows either. Perhaps all my moisture problems were from the plaster skim and paint?

Cheers Stu. They are at about 12" height currently. I think I'll request them a bit higher, maybe 24". The sockets are also mounted in pairs side by side but I will ask for them to be mounted one above the other so they occupy less wall space as I want to fill the under baseboard areas with wheeled storage units. I like John's (St Enodoc's) idea of IKEA units screwed to reinforcing ply bases and then castors under those. Very practical. Luckily there isn't that much junk that needs to go under the layout. It will mostly be rolling stock, magazines and modelling bits. I will definitely connect the main power plugs via surge protection units. we rarely get any storms here and those we get are just babies but better safe than sorry.

Had I known you were planning to change I would have recommended Windows 7 - as you have found out a lot of the features introduced in Win 10 are not for the likes of us who prefer to sit at a desk and use a keyboard and mouse to input and view data. I feel sure you could still get a Win 7 disc somewhere but you'd have to go to a specialist PC store and not one of the big chains. I use Firefox as a browser and it used to be fantastic but not anymore, it has become burdened by too many clever bits bolted on and sometimes runs quite slow on my otherwise powerful PC.

What's not to like? Its simple escapism, just like building a model railway is and immersing yourself in your own created world. Some of it is actually very good, artful and thought-provoking.

Please have a go and we'll send the men in white coats around in a few weeks.

Lovely stuff, and I agree with James that virtual modelling has its advantages in terms of space and a whole different way of construction - and expense! No need to convert garages to habitable state at great cost! I love the first image in post #1063 - the morning commuter rush hour at Winkle Bay. EDIT: That is a stunning little engine James. I look forward to seeing your model very much.

Good advice. I will go measure up tomorrow and mark the positions of baseboard legs on the floor (with an extra inch or three to allow for any necessary variation)! Neil who is doing the layout build also has now printed the plan in 1:1 scale. I don't know if he means my scenery details or the Anyrail file but either way I am dying to see it.

Edwardian, has Steven Spielberg contacted you about the film rights yet? Personally I will await the anime adaptation. The internet bookazine lacks any magical flying schoolgirls.

Bloomin heck! That's fantastic. You did all this today? Amazing. I can see the Lydney Docks/Lydney Town influence.