Golden Years

Another NEAG meeting and more interesting stuff than I can take in! Once again Bob has a bit of Fencehouses up and running and we get to see his beautiful double junction. The D49 gets a bit of a run out and some useful tips are picked up for its improvement.

Meanwhile the rest of Bournmoor is in brown-out as we get the similtaneous use of several RSUs. It was interesting as a commited iron-user to see these in use; bravo to Rod for taking the plunge after all of these years. It was also good to see the Judith Edge kits brought along by Steve; a challenge if ever I saw one.

Finally, I managed to get a first view of the baseboards for "Brafferton". Again I've benefitted from the knowledge and skills of members where I have little to speak of! Alan Smith redesigned my boards and I now have five making the full circle. This avoids the layout potentially "breaking its back" as each joint is opposite a solid piece of baseboard; something which six boards singularly fails to do! Alan cut the wood with his CNC facilities making an all but perfect job - the circle is perfect and the edges require only slight sanding to be baby's-bum smooth. Additionally I have taken the opportunity to stretch the scenic section to three boards or 60% of the circle as opposed to 50% originally. This may take it slightly outside the Layout Challenge criteria, but I'm sure I can blag that somehow...

Thanks to Mick Simpson for the photo.

Next step is to get the boards assembled and start on some legs; these should be within my capability (I hope!).

Curves In All The Right Places

Here are some shots taken by Mick during a mini NEAG meeting in my kitchen last Saturday. David Long came over and joined Stephen Harrold, Mick and myself for a chinwag about DCC and for David to have a good poke about on the nether regions of 'Niddbeck Bridge'. David brought along his Uhlenbrock chipped class 33 Farish diesel with scratchbuilt chassis. Slow running performance was impressive and will no doubt improve even more with a few CV tweaks. David also had a selection of photos of his new 60's/70's era diesel shunting layout which looks very impressive and not too far away from being exhibitable. One to watch out for.

The pic below shows the newly installed curved backscene board on 'Niddbeck Bridge'. As previously described this is two thicknesses of 5mm foam-core board made bendy by lots of vertical knife cuts at 5mm or 10mm centres according to radius required. First one thickness was glued into place using PU gel wood adhesive (Bison TimberTix) and held temporarily with dressmakers pins. Once this had set the second lamination was added, PU'd and pinned in place, relieving cuts face to face. Once the glue had set it became a gratifyingly firm structure, acting as a central spine for the whole baseboard unit. The thickness of knife blade used also affects the 'bendability' factor of foam-core board - a thick Stanley knife blade allowing more flex than say a thin scalpel blade.



The shots below shows the double-curve treatment used at each end. My intention is to try and make the layout appear scenically longer than it actually is, by wrapping the painted sky/landscape backscene round like fiddle yard like this, and by making the scenery taper off to next to nothing. Tony has kindly offered to help with the scenic and buildings aspect of the layout, so I'm hoping he might assist with painting the backscene. I've long admired his understated effort on 'Masham'.





I'm presently debating how to clad the exterior side and end edges of the layout. The foam-core board is very susceptible to scuffs and dents, especially when being carried single-handed through doors and loaded into cars etc, so some form of protective skin is going to be required. I think Tony used Fablon to cover 'Masham' ('sticky-back' plastic of Blue Peter fame - remember that?). My inclination is to use Formica or thin plywood.

A start has been made on the station building, or at least the etched windows, doors and bay front that Bob did for me. The platform and cattle/horse dock are next up, or at least the edge bits, so I can then get on and ballast the track.