New house, new beginning

Well we have now moved house, which means the railway is in pieces and has to be put back together. The good news is that I can have a dedicated room, so it will not have to be folded away against the wall, that should help the ballast to stay on the track at least. It is also slightly larger that the room I had it in before so I might be able to incorporate extra track for the trains not currently running.

 Below are a few views of the room, I did lay out a bit of track to see how it was for size.

 Now I have to plan where to start, although I’m told the room has to be painted first, so I will be painting the walls sky blue.

A turntable for the model.

And finally, as far as track goes (I think) I decided we need a turntable, so Engines can be run in either direction without being lifted off the board.

This is a Dapol kit, with track glued on, trains can run over it, but I will have to sort out the wiring so we don't get short circuits aftet the trains have turned. It has the added complication of being on the section of baseboard that lifts out, which means there are a few cuts in the track to bridge.

It needs a bit of paint to make it look more realistic and I'm not sure what to do in the middle of the turning area. A railway modeller friend comes to visit next week so we'll have a look at it together.

I need to run trains again now, the track seems to get dirty quickly, causing bad running.

Railway Modelling- Naming the Stations

It appears that when you build a model railway layout you have to give the places on it names.

My layout now has two stations, so I have decided to call them Nittingham Central and Woollen Halt. These are mainly Midland Region but may get occasional visitors from other regions, usually with football specials. The names are derived from the other use of the bedroom which is the storeroom for ‘Glytknits’ (Soft scarves and knitted goods) that Glynis has started to make to sell at local flea markets.

Station 2 only has access to platform 2 at the moment and Station 1 has no access at all until I construct an underpass to the planned car park.

The bridge at Station 2 is based on a Scalescenes bridge that did not fit, so it is now heavily cut about and modified for this location. Any amateurism in the build is due to the fact I am a complete novice at kit building and have never tried scratch building before.

Double O gauge modelling - part 4

Well the board is fixed to the wall and can be folded up and down. The supports have been hidden behind plasterboard which just needs painting (one day).

The boards will fold up and down independantly and I have relaid the track approaching the join at the back so it meets up accurately. An electrical feed has been made from the left to the right board, so all the track is live, it just remains to do some live testing with a train before I continue to finish it off.



At the moment I have two circuits and a passing loop, I now need some sidings in the middle but havent yet decided how to lay them out. I have decided to build some model kits and see how they look on the board, this may decide the layout for the middle of the model.


I even got as far as running two trains at once. The track in the middle was just tempoary to run trucks into but may yet be incorporated in the plan.