Sean

video-1598499146.mp4 Diesel traffic slowly increasing at the station, Im expecting a couple of points and more flexi on friday so i can replace some troublesome sections and finalise the track plan, am gonna be getting into scenics then.

video-1598488777.mp4 well this is rather unexpected............. but a running g class has been cobbled together..... the only space to put the weights was into the cab, so now it wobbles at high speeds, probabaly just like the real thing XD. the 121 i started earlier in the thread wasnt really interesting me anymore, i had used the wrong type of plasticard for the job and it would never work on this layout anyway, and besides i can buy a nice one of them if i really want to.. so i dismantled it for the cab and body parts to form a new loco and noticed the bogies would come out easily, and when they came out i noticed that they were both the exact same moulding of plastic casing except one is wired for power pickup and the other has gears inside to drive 2 of the axles so i soon realised i could install the pickups onto the drive pickup without any mods at all (the bogie has all wheel pickup now). the problem now is that there is a swivel joint between the motor and the gearbox that moves the motor into the center of the chassis but after some fiddling i can see that with the plastic joint pulled off the gearbox shaft its the same sized shaft as the motor, so i start to wonder if i can just press this motor into the gearbox and leave it sitting ontop of the bogie to run things. so at this point i decide to pry the gearbox apart, there is a worm gear driving a small litle gearbox to drive 2 axles. i pressed the shaft off the wormgear and much to my delight the motor pressed straight on, and this is where we run into issues as i cannot get fit the motor onto the side of the gearbox without it sitting at a bad angle that would stop the mechanism from working anyway. I ended up grinding away the side of the plastic gearbox until the motor was sitting ontop of it with the shaft pointing straight into the box at a perfect angle. this meant i had to discard a gear and the bogie is now only one axle drive, but it was probabaly the only way to make things work. next problem the bogie had traction tyres in the past but they are long gone, so i reassemble using a drive axle and a pickup axle, and it works, but is wheelspin crazy, the loco is barely moving..... to combat this i have taken a couple of measures, the old chassis had a 50g weight from the factory, I reused this within the new loco, it was too big to fit in so i had to cut it in half and hot glue it into the cab body. the other thing thing was to replace the old traction tyre wheels with 2 off of the spare pickup axle as i dont think i could reliably run any tyres on this yoke now regardless. they literally just pressed off the spare pickup axle and onto the drive axle. its kinda funny now, cos if you jam the speed open too fast on the controller the little loco is more than capable of doing a little wheelie or flipping itself over! only when you rapidly go from like 0-70% speed in a second or somthing though, its perfectly usable at slow speeds otherwise. just need to add couplings too it now the modelling can wait till another night, didnt expect to get the mechanics done so fast like that anyway. steps and buffers will need to be sourced from some other scrap heap. although im begging to run out of scrap heaps!

video-1598373472(1).mp4 AEC back together and being pushed by its power bogie, paint tidied up a little bit. this should be a great little runner if crawling like this on a standard hornby controller video-1598373691(1).mp4 This design is decades old but after cleaning up the wheels and loosening it up its quickly becoming one of my favourite motors that i own. that double worm drive seems to be putting loads of power down too. nice to be able to watch the open motor in action too. Can anybody point me towards proper servicing info for these motors? it was a bit seized and barely running since i bought it a few years ago but think it might deserve a proper service after coming back to life so nicely.

the dock shunter was on my list of maybes, as well as the dapol class 04 body. that chassis seems to use the same motor setup as the railcar im making and i know exactly what you mean. independant worm gear to each axle and it can both crawl and fly faster than youd ever want it to. there has been some strange, far out experimentation happening during the course of the night, and it looks like i may already have components for a g class contender. its even motorised already. will explain things in the other thread as its a bit of a frankenstein all said and done but it does run its around the same lenght as my 20 foot container so i know the lenght of the thing is roughly to scale.

as usual the orange band will need sharpening up when the paint dries,as well as the white bit at the front(although the camera is slightly exaggerating that) but overall gotta say im really pleased with the looks of this one. already passing the 2 foot rule with flying colours and satisfys that dmu desire on the layout.

finishing up some coaching stock tonight. hopefully all masked around the same heights not as many guide lines on the dmu but followed a guide on here for keeping the striping in line so should be ok, the + shape on the doors seems to be at the same level as the guide on the other carriage white top stripe is the same height but a different width on the dmu Unfortunately there is no clear way to easily get the glass out of the coach so unfortunately it will take a little bit of extra time to paint around all the windows etc

not a bad idea with that lower skirt on the chassis to cover up the wheels it wouldnt be too difficult by the looks of it. I had been looking at trying to get the dckits shell onto the hornby 0-4-0, the obvious problem being the valve gear though and the exposed wheels. but a skirt to cover them could probabaly be fabricated with a bit of work. maybe a nice project but i would just as easily buy the proper chassis for that. the other option i have would be one of these bagnalls which is a match in many ways however again the wheels would need skirting off and after looking at them again maybe the bonnet area is too big, which would make you wonder would the dckit chassis even fit onto the hornby at all as i know from the other locos that the motor would take up most of the space inside there. they only cost 40 though and are said to be an excellent runner. eyes have been on ebay for a second hand one but im not paying new prices for a second hand loco which seems to be happening a lot on ebay right now.

Cheers, what was a few weeks of head scratching has turned into more of a feeling of somthing nice coming together. have just pulled my 6 wheeled heating van around the layout, somthing i had convinced myself was impossible during testing so happy day. have not purchased any new rolling stock so far except the cie containers and my modelling supplies which are lasting well. the finished AEC will see me happy, always had a soft spot for DMU type things. I would be more interested in diesel than steam as thats what i grew up watching on the railways, the limiting in space limits me to a very specific era of diesel though which i dont see modelled as often so thats another reason why i am aiming for this collection of stock.

@Galteemore ive actually got two more from different train sets that I could mess with, aswell as the e class which is the same chassis again just in diesel guise ive got a couple of different shells for it too and a spare parts chassis so plenty of scope to mess around. I think the next locos i want to get to keep in with the theme of the layout are a d class (will look at class 08 for conversion) and a G class but undecided how im gonna go about that just yet, theres a couple of candidates i have in mind. so finally im getting around to a showing the track plan. backscene is down for the moment as the old track is rather unreliable in a few spots and reaching behind it is no fun, so down it came until i go track shopping again there was really 2 DSER stations that took my interest in how the track was laid out on the old maps and the 2 that became of most interest to me were Tinahely and Gorey and the track plan is incorporating elements of both, the single platform with runaround format which was more commonly seen on the shilelagh branch was appealing for a small layout like this because it would save the space of modelling a big 2 platform station, there will however be a second terminating platform which could be used for railcar or goods services which seems to have been on a lot of the old blueprints. the freight end of the yard is a copy of the old track plan at gorey station, minus a couple of sidings that were off to the other side as these did not fit, was a bit of a challenge to work out the logic of all of the points but i think im pretty close now, there is a second siding which still needs extending out when i can buy some more track. theres also passing loops to run three individual trains at a time on the layout if i so desire so there can be plenty going on. video-1598228124.mp4 was goofing around with a running session today/tonight and tried to push the curves to their limit a bit, one of them is running absolutely perfectly however the one that went down with damage will soon need to be relaid as its causing problems with certain combos of rolling stock. the chairs are loose over one section so its a nightmare asking it to stay in place. the rails usually spring out pretty easily. heres a double header of steam pulling 10 wagons plus a coach and railcar around an 18 inch curve :D! It would have been possible to take more except for the issues with the other curve, this is longer than any train I will most likely run anyway although i wouldnt be surprised if i orderded 10 dapol box van kits soon

mixed goods departs via the freight loop as the push pull waits in the passenger loop. loads of potential here for a fun little layout, and all from the comfort of my couch running at this pace its just over 2 minutes for the train to complete the entire loop video-1598155763.mp4

So I had been holding off on putting up my track plan because i was fairly sure it wasnt going to stay the same, and since i had to put in an order of track anyway to get some fresh flexi i thought it would be good to spend a few days going over different station designs to come up with somthing that I will like and will suit my needs. laid the track and had a nice bit of an operating session today/night and i do like the layout a lot. was not great craic bending lenghts of flexi down to 18 inches and i ruined the first couple of pieces (although i did fix and reuse one as to save waiting till mid next week for another. overall the sections of flexi are running well but i havent completley pinned them down yet as to allow for slight adjustments, the main issues i am having are coming from using my old stock of track but that should be fixed in the coming week with anything dodgy being replaced. the whole backscene track is made up of old bits of settrack , HO track, and offcuts of flexi etc as i did not think i would need so much straight track and quickly ran out( and like i say i had already murdered my flexi for the job), so the trains arent running amazingly in there and in need of constant attention, but it got me running for the evening and now i will know exactly what to order next week. used the hornby semi flexible track for the first time which is probabaly why i broke the first 2 lenghts of it pretty quickly trying to bend way to quickly. bend the last piece down much more gradually and it was a lot more forgiving. am going to post an overview of the trackplan in the morning. as id like to get some feedback and or suggestions on how it works, however so far im liking how much i have squeezed into the small space. modelling is probabaly going to slow down now somewhat until i get all of my rolling stock projects and track gremlins out of the way now though. and it also gives me some more time to develop the idea and a place to play trains. for now, heres a little proof of concept video showing off the 18 inch curves. which dont look nearly as bad as they sound. worth it to have a compact oo layout behind the couch for me at least. video-1598057829.mp4 a rather oddball pushpull set buckets into the station at an unrealistically fast speed, just to show i dont need to be too careful with the curve. once this is in it clears the line for a 7 car mixed passenger goods to roll out at a nice slow pace, despite being on the exact same chassis i would say that the little cie steamer runs far better than what used to be a class 06 e class conversion at lower speeds. beyond this once i added an eight wagon it was starting to introduce a lot of wheelspin in the bends, although it could be due to a slight deformity in the baseboard surface which has created a slight step in the board cauing the track to incline slightly.still 7 wagons to a small loco in a small layout is still a pretty decent size train 6 vent vans and abrake van behind the little e class would look smashing.

AEC under construction...... will do a more detailed post when doing the power car. quite a straight forward conversion. still havent painted the other side of those coaches lol. and yes, this is going to be made go around those 18" curves

noted from info on here that the open plank wagons werent all nessesarily the same size in a given train so decided to bash out my last 3 wagons into cie livery ex thomas the tank engine this time, did not yet add the buffer details but they definitely look missing in comparison to the front wagon, I think the brake van is definitely needing to go grey now as well. dying to increase my fleet of these vans, followed by a few of the oil tankers, one is an old triang model with modern wheels and the other is another thomas the tank engine model but they are both essentially the same tanker. model

So, this idea has been shelved, as it did not tick all of my boxes, and since this is going to be my primary place to play trains for the first time in years, I want to keep it interesting, so it was time to critique what i really did want to get from this layout so I could get to planning somthing better. I really want a continuous run of track, its really nice to just have the oppertunity to give a loco somewhere to stretch its legs and sit back and watch rather than always having to drive manually on a shunting layout. sometimes shunting may become boring and it would be nice to send a train off on its way to free the operator up to watch for a while. That being said, I really dislike the feel of a "tail chaser" train set setup on an oval of track, which is what most of my early model railway days mainly consisted of. and this too can get boring, I have enough time and patience at the moment to make a good stab at a proper model railway, unfortunately living in an apartment it was going to be difficult coming up with a layout to fit into all of these constraints. At some point i stumbled upon Budget model Railways 18" wide continuous run layouts and these really did tick a lot of the boxes and i got to thinking if i could make one work with my style of modelling in mind, I still want to be able to buiild up a half believable scene. I have a pretty long space to dedicate to the layout and will be an interesting challenge building an irish layout within these constraints. with all of this in mind i got to work and put together and huge but also rather compact baseboard. at 18" by 7.5 foot its sitting snugly on a table behind my couch, and can easily operated comfortably from said couch,under nice living room lights, I did have a small loop of 18" flexi running a train but it was ancient and i didnt have the correct track pins so it soon fell to bits(im very inexperienced with flexi also) but it did prove that the trains would run ok. I took the baseboard from the abandoned layout and set it up as a backscene, for now, not sure if it will be kept or not. Given the types of rolling stock i have been assembling lately and where i am located in the world I have decided to build a fictional ex DSER station and goods yard in an era of early dieselisation up to around the 70's, this gives me an interesting line up of rolling stock which can be made to work on the layout and give an interesting scene to build up. I am not sticking to an exact prototype as certain substitutions in rolling stock may be made to account for spacial constraints, rules 1-3 will apply here. that being said some of what will actually run on 18" track will surprise you as much as they have surprised me, but cie shunters will feature heavily with the odd steam train(only the hornby 0-4-0 nothing to special. spent a good bit of time today with my track and the geohive maps coming up with a layout that i quite like but unfortunately did not have nearly enough track to put it together and am awaiting an order before i can continue any further but it does give a little breather to play with the model building again. track plan is incorporating elements from a few different DSER stations but customised a little to suit the narrow board.

not done much on the modelling front as Ive been dedicating my spare time into trying to get some kinda playable layout together. made a little progress with 121 but i wanna play trains soon! got this old class 101 on ebay a good few years ago in the condition its in here, not the best of paint jobs and the thing barely creaked when put onto a powered track as the wheels were black, its running decently now though after a good clean and lubing. seeing examples of this set on ebay for around £30-40 so its another one thats easily picked up, it does have those ugly large flange wheels again though. kk I reckon it would not be too difficult to turn it into one of these AEC 2600 railcars, conversion to a one pillar windscreen would be the main thing and the headlight setup, but the gear under the carriage would also need to be changed (not too difficult with some plasticard) the main standout detail would be the profile of the roof but it could be moulded into a more roud profile if i was inclined later.... the door and window layout isnt far off

cheers, i dont suppose you chanced first radius at all? I wouldnt mind if it looked crap going around it as the curve would be mostly hidden as long as it did actually safely go around.

Hi there lovely layout. just wondering what radius of curve you are using on this layout as I am also trying to build into very limited space and this isnt a million miles away from the space ive got available.

would these have been loaded the same as the 10 ton vans at loading docks etc or wouldthe container have been lifted on and off of the skeleton at any point

So once i had begun to play with my track plan I wasnt too thrilled with the fun factor and decided to take it all up and start again. it can be a bit of a challenge to build a compact layout like this and keep it interesting to play with but this is what ive thought of after a couple of hours messing with bits of track on my baseboard. track plan slightly based on westport quay from another thread however shortened a bit and slightly modified for a more modern feel. I wanted to be able to run slightly longer trains onto it even as a shunting layout to keep it interesting.any feedback is appreciated. trains will enter from fiddle yard through a tunnel just like cork kent but i would also like to use it to give the impression that we are down closer to sea level and possibly use some cliff in the backscene, passenger trains will usually run around and return straight away but occasionally the last service of the day will call for the coaches to be left behind and a load of goods taken down the line, when these goods return then the next morning that loco must take the coaches before normal traffic resumes for the day , theres also a loco spur for the e class to sit at as it usually stays stationed at the goods yard but taking the occasional train to the next depot (fiddleyard) the spur can also be used to store a few excess wagons if needed until a train can return them. goods loads can be either mixed or specific trains depending on network demand at the time. the station will be expanded to be 2 full coaches long. just down from this we have a small oil depot for filling tankers and a loading island which serves both tracks , road wise these must be accessed over a level crossing. the loading island can serve either cie sundries containers for side loading or ex br vans for loading and unloading. down at the end of the line weve got the containers industries. the lower track would be dockside and containers would be lifted to and from ships that are docked here. in the top siding I would have a container gantry over it built as a low relief structure which would serve as a way of transferring containers from the railway to the road. for operational interest i think it would be cool if the only way to get a container off a ship and onto a truck is by first unloading from a ship and then having the e class come and transfer it up to the gantry crane on the other siding.of course if the loading dock or oil depot is in use this will create more shunting work for the operator. this is why it is stationed here permenantly and we dont use the service loco to do the shunting for us. I am thinking about hooking up a second controller which could keep the sidings shunting as a passenger service came in and ran around. for example it could be crawling a couple of containers down from a ship as a passenger service rolled in and ran around its train or even just general shunting to build up the next outgoing freight train. there are only 3 points here also, so point motors and uncoupling hardware might not be out of the questionas there would not be a huge amount of the. to set up.

video-1597372603.mp4 containers roll back in clearing the line for the goods train to roll out, think its about time i put together a fiddle yard.

van is done and the windows are in, needs the usual bit of touch up where the masking tape bled but overall its a good little van. video-1597366080.mp4 since i had to make sure the new loco chassis was still able to be fixed up and ran I was motivated to finally wire up my little line, so now we have the new little e class moving under its own power handling an outgoing container run, who said the hornby 0-4-0 isnt capable of a crawl?? (admittedly mine definitely needs a bit of a service though it hasnt had a proper run in a few years now and neither has this track) This one is completley stock but i believe they can be modded for rather smooth crawling indeed.

as im a bit of a glutton for punishment ive started to piece together another familliar face, thought i was done making trains for now but this small pile of parts kept sticking its tongue out at me so i said i had better make use of them. not gonna be aiming for a super detailed example again although there are some elements which I want to spend additional time on such as getting the curve into the front of the cab and rear correct. a even has a lit cab! i should be able to think up a little circuit to keep it lit for a few seconds after the train comes to a halt. van is looking really well although not too photogenic at the moment with my poor lighting, will update tomorrow when i finish that one off altogether. quite looking forward to getting the windows fixed in after paint. this is its good side and most likely the side ill use the details on. other side is not terrible but it was done first and details like the door just didnt come in as flush as i could get them on this side,overall im very pleased with this van though,only thing annoying me is that this van is sitting slightly higher than the coaches and therefore the orange stripe is sitting a little too high and i imagine the white one will too, i think its partly because of the small scale of those tri ang coaches though so may be okay next to some proper irish stock. overall im happy with my little DIY branch line rake.

containers arrived today, they arent an exact fit for the large hornby bed. but its close enough for my layout and they do set a nice scene alongside the coaches. managed to get the windows cut into the heating van and they arent looking all that bad after tidying, this unit should paint up nicely , i took the plastic screen off an old broken thermometer and this should make up the window glaze nicely when cut into small pieces..

so among my old bits was this other little gem it used to form part of a fairly big breakdown crane on a one of the old ho sets i had as a child. plenty of doors and 2 little vent details i can use later, time to get my blunt cutting tool out. roughly 5 minutes later it has been hacked into a load of old doors and panels. childhood ruined. was looking for ways to easily cut into this wagon so i heated up the exacto knife with my lighter and it went through like butter, once i had the door in i got a little more confident and cut in the first window! not perfectly but tidied up with the bit of card. mistakes were made on the other side too! thank goodness for fillers when i get back to this ill use the masking tape all the way around the wagon following the lines of the windows i cut, i dont need them to be perfectly square(although it would be a bonus ha) as long as i dont cut them too big to ruin the lines of the livery. the exacto knife is able to make shave out a surprisingly square looking cut out though.

Some great resources there lads should keep me reading for a while @jhb171achill the carriages im working on seem to be pretty common and available for next to nothing online, i do have a couple of larger steam sets and a graham farish set and a few other goodies im strongly considering parting with at the moment though. not too much to report today as im tied up with other committments however I have gotten a little start on the heat van. like most things hornby this clipped apart with ease, still undecided about how to add a window and door at this stage, im torn between finding a very cheap damaged coach to use as a donor and just trying my hand at cutting them in when i find my dremel in the shed again. fairly drastic step next. but im completley sanding down the wagon on all 4 sides on a block of wood to deface it. that is then repeated on a nicer bit of sandpaper as 120 grit will have it left feeling a bit rough. So now ive basically got a blank canvas for a new carriage! decided to give it a coat of high build primer to start to fill in the heavy sanding job and highlight any imperfections left behind . ive got to take some more measurements but interestingly it has left the doors of the old wagon behind and these dont seem like they are a million miles away from where they should be.Could be onto somthing with this.