Sean

probabaly the final track plan, offering heaps of siding space and a massive loop. still need to tweak lenghts on the fiddleyard, a balance must been found between loop lenght and siding size in order to maximise workability. fuelling area is a the loco spur now, which actually gives justification to have the spur and its also space for a rake of tankers. have been liquidating some old BR stock in order to finance the trackwork, donor for the cravens spray are now gone however however this is now of little concern as shown below. Finally have everything laid (except the turny. more to come around that, im bouncing between 2 very different ideas) backscene soon as i cant avoid it for much longer nearly time for the A class to travel under its own power for the first time. need to set up a circle of track somewhere for that all important running in. also got some new containers. not too fussed about the livery being prototypical here as im sure clients will have changed from time to time on the real container network. im sure the evergreen car will derail violently at the level crossing at some stage and become lodged for a few weeks. and then........ unobtanium! Some lovely new mk2's have been sourced in order to handle passenger travel on the branch. the colour on these seems to be closer to 130 than on 007 so adding in stripes and such should be easy, however it is far more plausible that they kept this ST livery into the 1990s if they are working this backwater branch station all the time so i may keep them as is, "Intercity" is just the livery that i remember from growing up, was a little too young to see or remember any supertrains. hopefully i should get the backscene on in the next few days and from there on the real construction can start. sizing up the sidings and loop. actually, yes. there was the end of a course of meds in the tank when i took those pics so the water was slightly tinted green, have changed the water since and i do agree that there is somthing about the lighting here. theres a long flourescent tube just inside the lid of the tank but the way its shining slightly outwards definitely seems to project more light over the models and its getting diffused uniquely by the water.

Hey guys. Bought 2 of the hornby twin pack containers today containing a 20 foot and a 40 foot, thing is i only actually bought them to get hold of the 20 footers and the 40's dont suit the layout as well. If anybody has any spare 20ft containers they might be looking to swap let me know. Liveries are evergreen and fesco. and they are decently detailed. I will consider any type of 20 foot livery in return. alternatively make me an offer.

to the torment of the driver they are also 1:76 scale

I would gladly rehome and put some to good use jhb if any are left

Following a successful trip to marks yesterday planning permission for the fiddle yard has been granted in the most unusual of locations, hopefully the drivers do not become too distracted by their new aquatic overlords. PWD have been brought in to take care of construction of the new line. (very tempted to turn the spoil boxes into 4w barytes although i know i really shouldnt, lol) the baseboard is sitting on a keyboard stand, so luckily i can simply lower it to the same height as this surface,. It will be nessesary to build some sort of bridge over to the baseboard, which also will have to curve onto the other wall. ill have to take the bridge out when the layout is not in use so it needs to be easy to setup and put away. gives the trains a little bit of a run then instead of just shunting from one end of a board to another.. finally able to start working out how long the loop and sidings will need to be now that the key pieces of rolling stock have been obtained. when working in rail modeller i like to work on the measurement of "pieces of settrack required to hold this rolling stock" and adjust things from there. given space constraints i couldnt do this properly until i had bufferstops in my posession. going back to my original diagram, I will move the fuelling area to the loco spur, as discussed in an earlier post. that way i can dump some tankers in there, most likely will try to model the houston-alexandra road set of 4 tankers. the fiddle yard allows the parking of 2 locos and 2 rakes. and either loco to take a rake of choice whilst another loco COULD be up waiting to depart or shunting the layout on a particularly busy day, but given the location of the layout it is rare that traffic will ever be so busy. an extra rake being parked in the station in the "old" siding will also regularly be seen, for some variety. to solve the issue of turning 130 in the fiddle yard, she can propel in with the push pull set and couple straight up to a goods set and depart, then she can turn around at the station and either park up or take the wagons back to the fiddle. occasionally it can be turned by hand or a a lazy driver might simply drive it back to the station going the "wrong" way. it is unlikely she will ever double head. rakes are to remain short but prototypical as i have seen to be typical on the quieter lines during this era. pallet cement wagons are likely to be my next acquisition but i have loads to keep me occupied for now, I want guinness too!, so if i cant find IRM loads anymore i will have to try my hand at making them. it is likely we wont see much 201 class action on the layout(due to it not yet existing in this layouts world), however I still want to have the option of running whatever i like from time to time so therefore all headshunts have been designed with her lenght in mind.

have you documented the mod anywhere i would love to see it.

yesssssss. the only things missing off my wish list at the moment are RTR 141 and 071, was too young to appreciate or obtain the earlier runs.

getting back into my 00 project boxes, its really nice to be reminded that ive already bought 99% of the trackwork and buildings that are planned on the layout and that things will be allowed to progress somewhat quickly. track is down to test out clearances, whilst the layout is good a little tweaking needs to be done regarding the loop and sidings length, i reckon i will compromise with slightly shorter sidings so that the loop can hold 120 foot of rolling stock. my goal is to be able to fit class 201 into either of the headshunts and 3 flats or 2 cravens within the loop. so its gonna be tight! but just about doable. worst coming to worst i will have to shorten the approach fiddle just a little bit. have a few solid ideas for the turntable but have as of yet to attempt to execute any of them., a shaft, motor and gearbox have been mated to the dapol turntable, but i havent gotten any further than that just yet as ill need to mount it to somthing before testing it out. the motor has a rotary encoder for position sensing with a microcontroller, so im confident i can pull somthing off with it. plans for a fiddle yard are in the works, however as im very space limited it may have to be set up and put away with each operating session. in that case i would really like to be able to operate the layout with no fiddle. once buffer stops arrive i will be able to work out just exactly how long the sidings MUST be as it the moment they are simply based on settrack lenghts and guesstimation.

Love this photo, just the type of atmosphere im going to be going for.

how about permenant way duties during this period? would this kind of configuration of pwd have been seen during my era? it would be possible to make up some barytes quite easily from the spoil boxes..... mixed liner, would love to get my hands on a few guinness kegs to use as a load for this. i reckon pallet cement and beets will be the traffic to serve the layout in question!

would you believe that is exactly what i had planned in an earlier drawing, the approach line was a bit shorter and the level crossing and road on the very right hand side of the layout. the bottom siding was going to run off the baseboard and onto another small little modular scene that i could change as i seen fit and served with a diesel shunter. sort of abandoned this idea due to space constraints as i have also sort of turned into a fish tank hoarder over the past year and thats a dangerous game within itself! the current plan allows the user to operate with or without the fiddle yard as space allows. got to love irm sunday delivery. now i can start planning siding clearences. can anybody tell me how much space i need to fit the rawie buffer stops?

So after another year im coming back to this, emails from IRM about the A class running out had got me thinking about the 00 layout again, and ive been messing around with the layout a good bit i railmodeller, finally this week i caved and bought one of the last 007's from the site, then i caved even further and bought the last spoil pack listed, hopefully i can afford another one from marks next week. combined with some tanker wagon kits and some home made 20 foot flats and cie containers that i already own along with MM130. the spoils will be converted into flats for liner traffic and the oil tankers will bring fuel once a week. there will be one other freight working which has yet to be determined. I am thinking timber or beet or bagged cement. (or a bit of everything as cash allows) liners will stay short but prototypical to smaller lines. a push pull set of coaches and a set of cravens will be available for passenger traffic. these form the basis for a solid set of rolling stock which suits the period just fine, early to mid 90's with the odd appearance from a brand new 201 and the odd heritage special organised by one of the preservation groups. the headshunt is long enough to accomodate 201. onto the track plan, i have coloured in the different elements for easier reference. i am basing the layout on a terminus in a yet to be decided location in the IR points era. the train enters by a fiddle yard on the left side and the view will be obstructed by some large building placed within the red area. the track crosses the road leading up to the station in blue and stops at the station, passenger traffic either runs round the train and exits, or simply push pull exits the layout. 130 hauling cravens must use turntable. I am hoping to motorise the dapol turntable for this project but thats neither here nor there at present i have a solid idea in the pipeline for that. the rectangles in the top right corner represent a fuelling point for the locos and the green box represents an old disused goods platform, inspiration for this taken from the old westport quay goods platform. the middle siding does not see much use since the end of loose coupled goods and will be suitably weathered, but it is occassionally used for overnight storage during busier periods. the bottom gray rectangle will be the freight yard and the track will be buried in the standing to give vehicles access to both sidings, have always loved this look so finally need to try that out. originally there was a gantry crane but i have removed this in favour of the large forklift type vehicles. this also allows me to model a number of different industries as time and money allows as the yard will not be defined to have one single purpose. to use the middle yard or siding the loco must first run around and then propel its rake into the destination siding. finally the small siding down by the turntable is simply a small loco spur to be used when a loco has to stand for some reason but it will give the operator scope to work 2 locomotives on the layout during a session. would it be better to move the fuelling area down to here also or is it better left situated where i have it now? perhaps i could plop an old engine shed here. Ive already got a nice baseboard for this, but i need to make space for it, so im going to take the oppertunity to upgrade it a bit and add a backscene and sides before i get started properly, should get a test track down pretty soon though as 007 is in the post! would love to know what people think of this idea as a whole? i want the actual operations on the layout to be as realistic as possible but there will definitely be some artistic license to running some non period stock also. Thanks Sean

would that be fert on flats on pallets or ferts loaded into the actual fert wagons? im getting some cool ideas now, gonna update my layout thread later tonight with some new designs as they fit these operating parameters well.

guys this info is all super invaluable and answers most of my questions in one go @seagoebox - those pics capture the essence of what i was hoping to could do just perfectly. I had struggled particularly to find images of containers being unloaded/loaded.... looks like i even have enough space to run a prototypical train.... what else was put onto 42 foot flats, were the pallets of fertiliser on those, or pulled in tow in the fert wagons? and finally what is actually meant by the term liner to a an uneducated lay person such as myself? if anybody can point me towards any particularly interesting videos of mixed liner trains that would be great. have seen a couple of interesting ones so far. for passenger action i think im sorted:

hey guys just planning a baseboard and when trying to decide what rolling stock to run i want to establish some sort of an era and model industries related to the stock im running. have a 121 with IR points livery, a supertrain with IR points A class on the way and also a 201 in early IE livery. This sets my era to the late 80's or early to mid 90's just as the 201 is being introduced.( i might make the time period a little ambiguous to allow running of both logos,were they ever in service together?) What freight workings were operational during this period? i have some 42 flats on the way and some containers, and some oil tanker kits to finish off. not really sure what else would have been running around these periods except for sugar beet. were the corrugated open wagons still in use at this point or was it exclusively moved to the tall beet wagons? were mixed rakes a thing anymore by this point or had it all gone to rakes of the same wagon? thanks in advance for any help. Sean

this and the flimsy handrails are my 2 biggest gripes with the 121, obviously both are as so for the above mentioned reason so its hard to complain.

with power restored on the line it was finally time to trial the up until now not run mk3 set. WhatsApp Video 2021-08-04 at 18.07.51.mp4 i reckon this is the next scene im gonna work at to get me settled back into things. WhatsApp Video 2021-08-04 at 18.07.52.mp4 mk3 set passes at speed as the dart awaits futher orders in the siding.

So nothing much has happened for the last few months as the layout had to take a back seat in order for me to get the thesis written, im definitely not scrapping this one, i like it too much last thing i got done was fitting isolating fishplates for my sectional running but i never got around to rewiring things so thats the next job on the cards, getting things operational again. for now though, heres some food for thought.

oof thats no good for a cheapskate like me!

Give me a week or 2 and im planning to order a 201. 141 and C class in n guage, fingers crossed they arent too crude. just been put off by the postage price so far.

thanks mike. this is one of the threads i read through before finally taking the plunge on n. have you got any experience with the shapeways kits? i want to try and get them working on a kato chassis.

Been a nice productive weekend here on the line. im falling in love with n guage and the speed at which projects can progress and what can be gotten into the space. mk3's landed so i could finally size up the passenger platform. was pretty happy to get the final thing built to that curve on the first go. the platform can accomodate a 141 and a train of 3 mk3's with the loco or generator car coming to a stop in the tunnel. next, i decided i was gonna pick a section of track to start to build up a nice lineside scene and thought the trackside banks around the forest would be a perfect starting point. but first i said i would try a spot of ballasting, and well considering how well it was looking i kept on going until i had used up the entire bag, ittl need touching up here and there where a few bits of scatter has landed down on it or it did not stick completley. but to say ive never ballasted before im pretty chuffed. railheads will need a clean befoer i try a loco but stock is going over it nicely. the oval has also now been seperated into seperate sections using plastic fishplates for independant loco control on dc so these sections will need to be wired next. rocky area with last white section of hill to be completled, then i will be able to finish the forest floor and built that up. forest end is shaping up really nicely. I havent started on the actual forest yet as i only got around to filling the last hills etc today. its nice being finally able to take pictures that arent a sea of white polystyrene landforms. ex BR stock on tow to the inchicore paint shop after a recent aquisition.

thats exactly it dave, and this is really inspiring me to construct a larger n layout after seeing that i can run decently long trains even on this small layout. the mk3's arrived today so i can finally start on the full lenght station platform

so with the micro shelved, and the TMD moving slowly, I was still without a place to run trains, particularly somewhere with a continuous run that i could just sit back to watch trains going around. until i started playing with an old farish class 08 set ive had for the last few years and looking at n gauge layouts on youtube i quickly fell in love with the idea of building a small layout in N as practically i do not have the space to create a decent sized oo layout. and my scatter brain approach tends to find it hard to actually comitting to a plan for a large scale layout this has become much more manageable and fun. Its only a simple oval with a single track station and a yard/siding on the other side, and im using this build to really focus on improving my scenic work and actually finish a project so that is ideal for what I am doing, there are a couple of isolated "dead" points in the trackwork which can be controlled via the controller in order to allow one train to stand whilst the other runs to the station freeing up the siding for them to swap over. there will be no backscene, as i intend to operate the layout from different "scenes" which will change depending on what side of the base board the user decides to sit at. There will be some efforts made to visually obscure the scenes which the user is not sitting at as this way points of interest can change over time. there will be a few unusual features on this layout such as a small coillte forest with 4x4 tracking and a ruined round tower which attracts tourists. I am trying to recreate the feel of what a railway running through the dublin/wicklow mountains may feel like but whilst also incorporating props from some of my other hobbies. the station itself will be based upon kilcoole as it is the only single track station i really know of around me but the line itself completley fictional and without too specific an era. as N presents enough challenges as it is already forest area slowly being fenced off and terrain building up. not a big area but the local 4x4 club hold leasehold for offroading here. out of a tunnel and over the bridge. fully loaded siding as the dart service runs round. this is just a simple yard/ loading dock. IMG_6600.MOV IMG_6602.MOV IMG_6607.MOV few videos capturing the atmosphere of just what im trying to achieve with this layout, im really looking forward to modelling this one to completion. I do particularly like the dart station level crossing scene.

Hey guys so its been a long time since i updated this thread,a lot of the building stuff has fallen by the way side and with such a healthy array of OO rtr stock on the way i do not know if i will be making anything new in OO for a while. that being said I am a few weeks into a new n gauge layout build which was initially intended to be continental. however after seeing the potential of what can be done with Irish n gauge the focus has shifted into building an irish layout with a few suitable items of rolling stock to go along with it. so far I have kept things mostly simple. however i do have shapeways stuff and some farish mk3's to refinish with vinyl on the way which will be interesting. first on the chopping block is the farish 08. as the body of these are die cast, not a while lot can be done except for a respray and the correct decals applied. I have had this as part of a set for a good few years now but it has not seen regular use until lately and it is a little cracker of a unit. happy to plod along at a walking pace. from this same set, the brake van, in need of a suitable respray and a few details changing to make it feel more irish. I do have a soft spot for box vans, and when i seen that peco offer these rtr for around the same price as a dapol OO kit, I had to grab like 7 These come complete with slightly shorter looking couplings which peco say space the vans out properly to scale. they do look really nice in a train. the roofs pop off for easily repainting in grey. however as can be seen here. I have not been able to remove the white LMS lettering without taking off the greay paint so i reckon i will need to simply paint over it, these should look great when i get my hands on suitable transfers. Finally for the moment until the mk3's arrive and I am able to fund shapeways theres this kato 103 emu which im planning to refinish into a 2 car dart set, not entirely sure what era I will be aiming for with this as I have just been having too much damn fun playing with it, at about 60 quid this is a damn good little runner that can again easily move at a snails pace. I am definitely planning on adding at least another one to the collection when i get to building a larger N layout. its got metal wheels all round and makes a seriously impressive little click clack when its going around the layout. Also Theres this, not a train but definitely fits in the spirit of this thread and at 10 euro's from oxford I really am impressed with the level of detail which surpassed expectations on it. It even has a little Irish Reg plate which i assume is based on the real bus, cant really see it to well in this photo however.