Northroader

Ticks all the boxes.

If you’re after ideas for a small industrial layout, you can do something boxfile size, which keep costs right down, trackwork and rolling stock, but give you some operating fun, until you want to upsize, or maybe build another. Useful ideas in here: https://micromodelrailwaydispatch.com A good example by a fine modeller on this site:

It’s nice in the engine room of one of those when it’s going top lick. Besides the engines, you’ve got stuff like cardan shafts rattling round. Reminds me, my hearing aid batteries are getting down.

Well, thank you for that, such a long time ago now. Me, expurgated in a model book! It did go quite well, I suppose the weak link was the sector table, my attempt to save space on the runaround. They could be found in real railway usage, in practice I found the sliding end made it very stiff to move with a loco sitting on top. The other drawback was really you needed to line the table up with whichever road you were shunting on, or sooner or later you’d get a wagon down in the pit. I moved on to a traverser table, three roads on the table which slid under the platform on one side or the other, so the pit was always covered. The table being mounted on a couple of drawer runners facing upwards, the ball runners making for a really smooth operation. The whole lot had.quite tidy, believable look. These days I seem to moved towards “off stage” runrounds, even shorter layouts.

OK, give me a bit of time to fix some wiring in, and you’re on. No DCC here, mind, we’re Primitive Fundamentalists.

Hours running, five minutes shunting, (and that’s it) and an hour back. Good use of your time? Still ,you’re quite welcome, it’s all in a state of flux at present. (It always is, though) Do you ever get to the place in Gloucester? Maybe call by then.

There’s a bit more been done on the line. I wanted to join the station unit of the baseboard to the fiddle yard piece, to get something that’s well aligned and giving a flat surface. The two units dimensions were off what you could do with a single sheet of foamboard, but Ive been splicing it to get a better single unit. I’m in my eighties, and building baseboards from 10mm foamboard suits me fine, as all I need is a Stanley knife and a pot of PVAbond, so I can go on kicking the can down the road for a bit longer. The layout is in an unheated extension to the house, so there’s a close season approaching when you need to bring the PVAbond into the warm house, and stop gluing over the winter months. So here’s a sketch of the layout size now, and what the underside splice looks like: It’s a bit shorter than it was, the two tracks in the station cut back a bit. The layout is faced with some 4mm ply, and there’s ply pads where the screws go through to attach the backscene support. The tracks in the station are laid on 4mm cork tiles, and the cassette has a 4mm ply base, so it all lines up. The tracks are stuck down with some Evostik. There’s stiffening strips along the sides of the cassette, and a hook screwed into each corner to help handling it. Here’s some views, with a closeup of the join, with a track gauge. Now I just need to make something with wheels to go on it.

My only bogie coach was done with a hardwood roof and the coach weighs far more than it should. Balsa sounds a sensible approach, would it have helped to face it with a few layers of paper to get a smooth run? Anyways up, the sides look good, and the paint job is lovely. Glad to hear the bogies contributed to the success. Me, I’m sticking to four and six wheelers.

https://m.ok.ru/video/1583025359470

They were Alco built in America for British Steel at Margam in South Wales.

Bob, pay more attention.

You’ll be needing another track on the front of your diorama then?

Put “NCC” on the tender, and folks will be none the wiser.

You are reaching true enlightenment.

Cooking foil does it for me.