LNERW1

Ahhh. That does indeed make a lot of sense. British street names often have fascinating backstories. But maybe don't look into Grape Lane.

As far as I know Piccadilly isnt a place. Theres Piccadilly Circus in London and Manchester Piccadilly station. It might be a place like Waterloo, wherein it was named after a location of a military victory? also check your phone for behind the scenes updates

A quick video update: WhatsApp Video 2026-01-24 at 16.51.30.mp4

With all my toys being in boxes until they can be set up properly in the layout room, I decided to have a go at making something out of a cereal box to practice my modelling. I ended up making platform edges on the bare bones of a micro layout. As I worked I decided that, given it was a small space and I really want to do some proper modelling, I’d have a go at making a micro layout to sharpen layout building skills that I’ll need to build a large layout in the new railway room. And so a story began to take shape, and I decide to set the layout in south-east England in British Rail days, specifically the early 1970s. Bucksdown is a commuter town just southeast of Sevenoaks, with housing largely built around the Bucksdown and Ightam Railway’s station, located on King Street in what was, at the time of opening, a town of only 600 or so. As the town grew from the railway’s arrival in 1869, the South Eastern Railway built a station at Sevenoaks Weald in 1883, to attract some traffic from the town to its line. However, this was largely unsuccessful, and so in 1894 they built a short spur into the town centre, and opened Bucksdown Piccadilly station. Initially the branch could only be accessed from the south, as the line mainly served passengers headed to Folkestone and Dover, given traffic to London was served by the King Street line, joining the Kent Downs at Ightam. However, the amount of passengers changing to northbound trains at Hildenborough led the SER to opening a new chord, linking Piccadilly and Bucksdown Road, in 1902. From there, the station continued largely as normal, with once-an-hour trains going from London Bridge to Folkestone and vice versa, via the station, as well as a shuttle running to Bucksdown Road and Sevenoaks to connect with direct trains. However, it was never electrified under the SR, remaining steam powered until 1960. More importantly, British Railways started to cut services to Bucksdown Piccadilly, and with the Beeching Report, the station lost all services except a two-carriage express to London Bridge. After local protest, a peak-only shuttle to Ashford was instated, running out at the morning peak and returning in the evening. Due to the reduced service patterns, the station itself was rationalised. It was significantly shortened to accommodate for a new shopping centre, and this meant removal of the run-round at the buffer stops and one of the three platforms taken out of use. This left a much reduced station to coincide with the reduced service. However, it created issues as the locals further protested that the two-car express service could not be satisfactorily provided by any of the current DMUs on the Southern Region, and as such it was begrudgingly run with a Class 73 or 31, and two Mark 1 coaches. This provided further problems, as the loco and two coaches could not fit in the shortened platforms, and the line outside the station was too tightly restrained to allow the loco to run round outside the station. Thus, a unique operating pattern began: -As the train approached the station throat, it stopped at a point shortly outside the station, and the loco detached and ran into the Ashford platform. -The crew walked back to Thorpe Road siding, beyond the rear of the train, where a shunter was stabled. -The carriages were shunted into the London bay platform. -The driver returned the shunter to Thorpe Road siding, while passengers disembarked. -When the driver returned, boarding began of the return London service. -The crew moved the loco out from the Ashford platform, and backed onto the train. At this point the train would be ready to depart for London again. The Ashford train was much simpler, being run by various first generation DMUs, basically anything that was available at 6 on a weekday morning. This mode of operation would eventually take over the London train, as the arrival of the Express Sprinter meant the London train was worked by a pair of Class 158s from 1990, and in 2014 the line was finally electrified, with services being operated by Southeastern class 466s. As the Networkers are phased out of service, plans are afoot to extend the station further into the now partially vacant shopping complex, allowing trains up to 5 car Class 707s to use the station, and adding back the third platform. The King Street line is also doing well, providing a useful connection to the Kent Downs line. However, we are not in 2026. We are in 1970, and all services except the London train have been cut back. The Ashford shuttle is yet to start running, meaning the southbound curve is disused and only one destination, London, can be reached from the much-shrunken station. Piccadilly is near derelict, and is empty but for a few staff, for hours every day. The only people who pass through are a handful of commuters and, every now and then, the odd enthusiast down to watch the unusual operation at the station. This is the setting for the layout. And so, here are some photos: And a couple of maps to clarify the location of the layout, first the general intended location of Bucksdown: And a map of the Bucksdown area: Bucksdown Map.pdf (scanned from a hand-drawn map. Hopefully my handwriting is legible enough). I’ll elaborate more on my plans for the layout itself tomorrow, but for now I should reassure any readers that this is a short, simple project. It has a very clear endpoint, and once I’m done, if it is to a reasonable quality, I may look at exhibiting it. It’s meant to be a stop-gap until I can get a proper start on my main layout, and, most importantly, it’s my only modelling project. Im not going to bounce around and change my mind and rip up and redo. This will be a simple project that I will actually DO. I know thats somewhat hard to believe given how unreliable I am, but I hope to prove I can actually build a layout and not just sit around planning and making empty promises. This is half to find an outlet for modelling, and half to maintain my own ego, to be honest! But hopefully someone finds this interesting. (also, thank you very much @Metrovik for coming up with the name Piccadilly)

Does what it says on the tin! It looks like I’ll be going a few interesting places in the foreseeable and ive just made a vlog of a trip to visit family in Spain over the new year (premieres today at 5PM GMT) and I think some people here would be interested.

Guess who’s back? Quick video tour of where I am now, as promised. IMG_2122.mov

It's a bit of a risk going to Valencia as it puts me within missile range of the Canaries, so I'll have to take a break from being an insufferable asshole to poor @DJ Dangerous when I'm down there! But needs must. Hopefully I can get a bitta video of the Spanish choo choos to put up here, and maybe on YouTube since I only have one video up as is.

Preliminary earthworks along the south wall of the garden, from Knockrann curve to Barnacollin bridge. Annoyingly difficult to level out since the shovel snapped. Apologies for the rather dark video but I only thought to record my progress after the sun went down. IMG_2033.mov Since the railway room has been built, theres been a line of spoil along the southern edge of the garden, which I’ve started shaping into an embankment leading to behind the new building. I thought I’d post this as I’ll be visiting family in Spain from Monday to Thursday, so I won’t have another opportunity to share progress for a while. At the end of the week, once im back home and it’s daytime again, I’ll do a full walkthrough of the planned alignment. The railway has been planned for nearly four years now, so hopefully 2026 will be the year it finally comes to fruition.

Here we are: Full network as of 6 Dec 2025, with suburban services in Limerick and Cork and trams in Limerick, as well as Intercity from Cork (Youghal) to Limerick: Dublin with incomplete network and intercity lines emanating: Cork area (infrastructure): Cork city (services): Note the Melbourne-style tunnels around the city centre to allow the city to have a metro-type network as well as a grade-seperated access between the West Cork lines and main network. I'm very fond and proud of this feature. The two suburban lines are Mallow-Athnowen (west of Ballincollig on the Macroom line) and Cobh-Ringaskiddy (via Airport). The idea is that the tunnels can easily run under the motorways using cut-and-cover construction and tunnel boring under the city centre. I'm very dedicated to giving Cork a network that could allow it to grow and function far better and begin to rival Dublin. Cork Area (services): Limerick (infrastructure): Limerick (services): Dublin Airport station complex (Metrolink and Clongriffin-Drumree line intersecting): I think I'm approaching 200 hours on this game- I can never say it wasn't worth the price. I'm excited to see more services running and intersecting with each other on this bigger network.

It’s addictive once you get going. I’m out volunteering as I type this but I’ll grab a photo of my current network (the fifth, I think, iteration) when I’m home. Once you get the hang of it it’s great fun to build networks. Have you the “show existing railways” mod? Absolutely priceless for recreating networks. I’d also recommend “Openrailwaymap platforms” and “Openrailwaymap abandoned and disused railways” for some stuff the existing railways mod is patchy on. Also plenty of good track mods, theres a good 1600mm mod and you can use metre gauge track to recreate 3ft gauge- close enough as makes no difference to the eye when playing. Other great stuff like tram track with higher speed limits, 200km/h track if you want to make a future Cork or Belfast line, no end to the stuff you can get. Brave of you to start in Dublin, I usually kick off with smaller cities to make it more manageable. But good luck with it!

I wish I was surprised. Never any winning here. DART+ pushed back, Luas Finglas pushed back, Metrolink delayed, 2:1 cut. For a country that has no significant large companies (such as car companies in the US and Germany, Shell in the Netherlands etc) to lobby against public transport, we seem to be doing an incredible job of ruining any hopes of competent public transport. Nothing but despair and fury from me over this.

Late? What do you mean late? The Heretic’s outings at Blackrock: On Adrian Clapa’s Vesper Road: On Herbert Alexander’s Over The Hill: On @Dempsey’s Barrack Street Yard: On Dougal McFarlane’s Morceaux Ville: IMG_1679.mov I thought I already posted these, but clearly I was wrong. Thanks to the brilliant and friendly layout owners who let me Hereticise their layout. Sorry for forgetting to post these.

Platform 1 at Portlaoise: (Blue Circle) IMG_1839.mov (Red Circle) And here’s the locations of the two: Note I’m not sure the blue circle is completely correct, could be a couple metres off either side as it’s hard to make out whats what on the sh***y Google Earth imagery.

I find zooming in all the way on my phone produces a similar blurred effect, but it is better for grainy looking photos. I did post a photo on RMweb I believe, but that, a grayscale or noir filter, and a little fiddling with the sliders in the editing menu can produce some seriously good miniature photography. Low angles also help a lot.

What's hilarious is that a review can't do anything to stop what they're complaining about- it only checks whether the process of granting permission was fair, not anything to do with the plan itself. NIMBYism seems to be a sport intellectually on par to beating each other to death with rocks while grunting furiously.

DuckDuckGo over Google any day! I’ve found it works a lot like Google about 5 years ago, so much reduced AI search results, plus much better privacy. 60E1 is 60kg/m isn’t it? About 120lb/yd again if my maths is right.

There are countless, all for different purposes (rural, industrial, main line, finescale), and it should be noted that the two scales are separate as far as FREMO are concerned- the organisation is very concerned with accuracy, the main attraction is that you can run trains for realistic distances, build stations to scale etc so mixing scales would be pretty counterproductive to that. I’d direct you to the official website for any standard you may wish to use: https://www.fremo-net.eu/en/modulsysteme (it will probably be set to German, the language selector is at the top left of the site). As I’ve said, I’m using the HO scale Hauptbahn double-track standard, for maximum compatibility, but please note if anyone’s interested in building compatible modules, it will be functionally 00 gauge, with Peco code 100 track and, until I can hard wire all my old stock to DCC, will probably have to be DC 12V, but if someone wants a DCC compatible layout I can try that and just use my modern locos with chips (although I would also have to fit them first )

A combination of price, more track geometry generally being available, and the need for FREMO to be super compatible, and allow for as much stock as possible. The first I think is pretty important, code 75 being a little more expensive is all well and good on a 4ft long layout, but if it's a 2km (yes, real kilometres) long FREMO layout that adds up to a huge extra expenditure. Code 100 looks fine anyway, and in my opinion actually looks better for modern image. A lot of the rail at Stradbally, where I volunteer, came from CIÉ (not new though) in the early 70s and are 74lb. Most rail on the IÉ network now is around 104lb. Taking into account width, it's a pretty close increase, but that's assuming code 75 is a good representation of 74lb rail or around that. But suffice to say code 100 is actually fine and a better solution in this case. But I see why people go for code 75 when they can.

If anyone is interested in an Irish modular, I'm using the FREMO Hauptbahn standard- PM me! I personally think it's a great solution to the difficulty of creating clubs in a country with a sparse enthusiast population. Apart from the Polish layout FREMO Ireland have, I believe the SDMRC also has the beginnings of a GWR Hauptbahn-standard layout, however I believe theirs has code 75 track whereas I plan on using code 100. @Jack_Dunboyne can correct me but I believe FREMO Ireland also use Peco code 100 on their layout.

The garden room was a significant investment, so the baseboards on top of that won’t be a huge cost comparatively. The room also needs to be available as a spare room from the start since we’re hosting family soon, so a semi permanent solution won’t work. As for running out of enthusiasm or getting distracted, I’m not particularly concerned about that. I’m going to be putting a lot of very careful thought into the track plan so it doesn’t get boring, and as far as prototype goes, I don’t really have one in mind- not even a particular country, so changing interests shouldnt be an issue. Most of it will be open main line anyway so anything Irish and most things British will look fine on it. And keep in mind, it’s FREMO. I can swap modules out easily and quickly if I want to put in a new one. I also need the space for filming something- before you say anything DJ, it’s NOT amateur porn, I have a long term film project I want to release around 2029 or 2030, but I don’t entirely trust myself to follow through and it’s not super relevant here so I’m saying nothing about it. Anyway, here’s the garden room: 78549905606__CABDA52A-C508-4D28-8059-B2B9DB442E84.MOV

I believe the room is around 4mx8m and i have not gotten through to the baseboard guy yet (dont worry its not the MRB guy)

I did, 'tis a garden room Half needs to be usable as a spare room, so I'm using the brilliant FREMO system and making it modular. Most of the time it will be a 100% railway room, but I can take down one corner in just a few minutes and it can be used as a guest room. It'll house a folded double track loop, made up of two C-shaped or L-shaped halves, connected by a helix at either end. The helixes are not portable, as the plan is to make it possible to exhibit the layout with the two halves connected on the flat. There'll also be a few junction modules (custom made with FREMO dimensions and endplates on the main line ends so as to be compatible with the rest of the layout) one to connect Ardree in to the main layout. However, there'll be one or two other small terminus layouts connected as well- but that's a story for another day!

I had to run out and film it on my (not very good) phone, in about -1 or -2 degrees, at 9pm, in November, in my jim jams. I could see my own breath better than the garden room! And it's too dark now to get anything better. I'll be back with a picture in the morning, hopefully.

WhatsApp Video 2025-11-20 at 20.44.15_9ad4a29b.mp4 New railway room!