Odsock Od-Jobs

Whilst dithering in the workshop with all the "what next?" ideas I opted to get 'odsock Corner out of the box for a play and ended up doing a few odd-jobs. Firstly the Lister having a stretch on the circuit. This needs a little odd job of it's own when I have the patience, the pedal beneath the driver's right foot is absent, at least it is still in the box! 

Apologies for the iPhone photos by the way, they seem to have come out rather oddly in the background. My proper camera wasn't really playing either... 

The first job on the layout was to upgrade the light circuit for the office building to use a 9v battery and have a proper on/off switch added to the back of the layout, having previously relied on 2x AA batteries with a switch on the battery compartment, under the layout...

The light is now a little brighter with the more powerful battery, hopefully it will last a while in practice... You can now clearly see the Titfield Thunderbolt poster on the rear wall if you look closely.

A pure act of whimsey has seen the station cat part-repainted to try and match our 8-month old kitten Pebbles, who is a mix of black/white/ginger. Doing this in-situ was an interesting exercise but I think I've got it about as right as I can for now.

Finally the Black Dog Mining open wagon has received it's long intended log load, using dried garden cuttings. These were carefully superglued together to fit inside, having lined the body with baking paper first as a precaution to avoid sticking them in permanently. As it happens they are a tight enough fit to not need gluing in place.

The mine tub still needs a load of garden/forestry waste, that's a job for another day...

Colin

Ingle-doodles

I had some time over the weekend so created a template from my Inglenook v3 mock-up that could be used as a basis for sketching some scenic ideas. When I originally worked through this idea the look of the right-hand end was established in my mind, and the left hand to be simple and have plenty of greenery and a grounded NG wagon body. 

The more I thought about it, the low height of the backscene (95mm) would actually make this look rather odd, especially as there was no height for trees. Conversely, in this small space I actually felt the need to constrain the railway in some way... So this was sketch 1, I gave up on adding more detail as I realised those buildings might be a bit grand in scale!

The building end flat against the backscene was intended to use a (4mm scale) 3D print I picked up recently, it appears in the next two sketches at proportions closer to reality! 

I liked the lay of the buildings in that original sketch but needed to reduce them to much smaller buildings. There are no 7mm equivalents of the Wills kits to bash so I looked at alternatives. One is a very old set of Highfield vacuum formed sides that I have for a Highland Railway brake van, bought cheaply with the idea of building a grounded body. Here it sits in the centre of the scene, with a concrete hut based on a 422 Modelmaking kit on the right.

The grounded body (and extension on the right) serves to cover the pull rods that would be fitted to the points to allow operation from behind. These will have to sit within the backscene to allow the whole unit to fit on the box and therefore enclosed from the scenic side.  Although I liked this arrangement I had concerns about the angle the grounded body would sit along the backscene, with the roof potentially getting narrower to the right as space runs out.

However, by switching the grounded body to the right-hand position (on checking the website the 422 building transpired to be a little too long) it sat a lot better, with the bonus of more space around the door. In the centre I have added a new brick/tile building representing the back of an open-fronted farm store, the roof carefully calculated to meet the backscene at full width and angle away from it.

I've given the right-hand end building a bit more space on this version of the plan, having realised it was too small in the originals. The open-sided variant in the original plan looks great but would not serve to hide the potential to sneak this line off-scene if/when a fiddle-stick is added.

Colin

Easter Reflections

Six Easter's ago I started creation what should have been my next layout, an O9 version of the Julian Andrews brickworks plan, later known as 'Avalon Brickworks' in the stewardship of Howard Martin. We were in lockdown and the weekend saw rapid progress on the layout during the day and depletion of a small keg of Hobgoblin (Ruby) in the evenings, and maybe afternoons... All the details

This project became bogged down in difficulties about what it should represent and what should run on it, I could have persevered but it was later all lifted due to the following reasons:

• The curve at the top-right hand corner was never smooth enough and really needed completely relaying.
• The angle and curve in the middle siding could never be decided on (in many ways due to me persisting trying to use MicroTrains couplers) - now actually I think it looks right as first laid!
• The fiddle yard siding was later extended and curved and always seemed to get in the way.
• I should have raised the track bed up from the board surface as I did on 'Shifting Sands', it always looked too 'sunken' around the edges.

As it was, the track was recovered, the curved rail mostly got used up on 'Odsock Corner' and the points and board await re-use, hence why most recent planning uses a 'Y' and Right-hand point. That current layout planning presents some dilemmas, there are several competing ideas that come up against practicality and reality. 

You may have seen the ideas on these pages in the last few weeks, centred around the Scale Model Scenery board for a Really Useful 'wrapping paper' Box . The most recent, posted on April 1st, was not really trying to fool anyone other than myself! That scheme needed a substantial run-off board to work effectively and there are space considerations as to where it could actually be operated - it would inevitably end up only being able to be set up in the workshop and having to have rolling stock transported out to meet up for a running session. I think at the moment I really want something that can live and be operated in the house...

The inglenook variations on that board hold a little more possibility for this by using them as a desk-sitter, but the board length will only just fit across the desk and with a solid wall either side I foresee issues getting it into place reliably. The original 'Upcycle' scheme that was abandoned well before Easter 2020 was a little shorter in length and perhaps better for it, although it could have benefitted from a little more depth. Height-wise it was designed to fit into a space and was going to present a challenge with fairly low-key scenery up to hedge/fence height.

However, at the moment, the idea of a single board that is shorter than the 30" of the Scale Model Scenery board, desk-sits easily and has low height scenery to store away with ease, is quite appealing. If it could offer a continuous run and some shunting possibilities, have a fairly generic setting and use the stock built recently with Greenwich couplers, it might tick a lot of boxes. If it looks like what was laid six years ago, that will be entirely a coincidence...

Food for thought...

Colin 

Boxing Clever

After some thought, maybe all that messing around with Inglenook variations is OK, but sometimes all I want to do is model more of a miniature railway scenario...?

Now it would probably benefit from a slight curve into the scene on the right, taking the platform out of parallel with the board edges and pushing the headshunt into the corner 'Shifting Sands' style...

Hmm...

Colin

Thinking in the Box

Taking the planning for the wrapping paper box project a step further, last weekend I mocked up the v3 Inglenook using the actual board parts and real points and stock to see if it actually worked in practice rather than theory. A few scraps of ply also got involved along the way...

The passenger coach here is substituting for a longer wagon, to test for some variation in the stock used. However the option is there for short passenger workings into the headshunt. I am conscious that the Lister is a fairly small loco and others, such as my Simplex, are a little longer - there isn't much extra clearance in the headshunt once the end of the board is taken into account plus any scenic treatment.

One option would be to have the board open-ended at the headshunt end to give a little more breathing space. This would provide a nice contrast with the necessarily closed-in sidings end. Here I've mocked up the positions of the wall and shelter leaning off it, but more importantly there is clearance in the sidings to allow three wagons to sit behind a magnet but still be recoverable beyond it.

Thinking back to the headshunt issue, a week on I opted to mock up the other possibility to breathe a little extra length into the space. This uses a second 'Y' point in place of the right-hand point and this affects the angle of the headshunt and the angles and curvature in the sidings. What it does not do is help me re-use the right-hand point that I intended to use from a previous project!

In many ways I think I prefer the way the sidings sit in the version with the right-hand point and having had another look today I think it should be possible to remove about 1/4" or rail between the two to squeeze a little more out, and angle the headshunt into the corner. We shall see...

Colin

Living in a Box

At Christmas, after a well-placed hint, I received a Scale Model Scenery baseboard kit designed to fit into a 'Really Useful' wrapping paper box. The intention is to produce something that can (hopefully) live in and be operated in the house. possibly as a 'desk sitter', although clearances may be on the tight side for that ambition. I haven't built the board yet but marked out the space (730 x 207mm) on some Amazon packing paper and played about with point templates, various rulers and a bit of post-production to run through a few options. 

The obvious one is an inglenook, a "standard" 5-3-3 seems possible but the second version is more a 4-4-2 with a shorter headshunt, the idea being that the rearward longer siding could have a rough platform to receive a simplex and a couple of 4w coaches from a fiddle stick run-off connected top-right.

The next option is to go for two points facing each other, along the lines of my earlier desktop-sitter 'Upcycle', again a passenger operation ought to be possible to the rear right hand line using a fiddle stick connected top-left. 

It's not too far from there to what to me is a very familiar plan adding another point... I have described this as 'Tragbar' as it is a mirror of an arrangement popularised in Scale Model Trains by the late Chris Ellis building the build of a layout of that name. It is more familiar to me as my Dad and I built a layout to this plan many years earlier called 'Chetley'. We hid the line top-right as a fiddle yard on the board but again this idea uses an optional fiddle stick. 

Next is a version of the plan I was previously looking at on the small cork board, a loop and siding. Whilst all of these plans benefit from a fiddle stick, this one requires it for full operation. However it would be possible to shunt it as a tuning fork without it for a quick operating session.

The final plan is actually a return to the Inglenook theme and has been created more recently than the other images. This switches the fiddle-stick line to the longer siding and the headshunt is a dead end. In some ways I prefer that as it creates a real restriction to the length rather than the possibility of cheating off down a fiddle stick! 

To fit in the box the board doesn't actually have much height to the backscene boards, 95mm - so buildings are something that have to be considered carefully. We are in the territory of huts, grounded van bodies and high walls. I envisage the line at the back running behind a wall, that get's higher and then has a lean-to over the middle line. Some shrubbery behind the back line would make it's disappearance complete as it wraps over the hole in the sky...

More soon...

Colin

Sitting Comfortably?

The driver of the Lister was not alone in his journey through the paintshop. For company he had the passenger and baggage for the 4w coach for 'odsock Corner. He's a 3D printed figure from 3D Printing for Charity (Facebook) raising money for the Lincs and Notts Air Ambulance.

He looks very relaxed in his shorts and cap! I could see a hint of a beard in the print so painted this in accordingly. The bag is from a set of Prieser unpainted figures bought in Shifting Sands days, both were finished in a similar way to other items in the recent batch, dry-brushing colours over a black-grey wash.

Colin