Model Railway – Rolling Stock Storage & Layout Laid Out!

A BIG problem!

It has been ages since I last wrote about my model railway, but I am definitely still working on it! One problem I’ve had on my railway is that I have a lot of wagons and carriages, and I’ve needed somewhere (other than on the track or stuffed into a box!) to store them all. I decided to glue some of the spare tracks I had for my railway onto some wooden boards and add some buffers to either side, in order to make it easy to store all of my rolling stock in a neat and efficient way. I squeezed 11 tracks onto each board, thankfully I had managed to find more than 22 tracks of the correct length in the piles of track I have been given – because cutting all those tracks to size would have been a nightmare! I also added some handles to either side, in order to make it easily stackable and easily moveable. It’s nearly finished – so in my next post I will post some images of the finished thing!After clearing the track, and a lot of the rubbish all around, I grabbed my pencil and began to sketch. I sketched out where the pond would be, the signal box, fences houses shops and roads, all around where the railway tracks were. I also painted the sheep and birds I bought for my railway so I could see how they would look on the model. I added one of my trees (post on this coming soon) to the layout, along with the signal box, some cars, some people and some reeds. This was all to illustrate some of how my railway will look when it’s finished, and it was fun seeing some of it come together. I now plan on working on building up the landscape for my railway, which will be my next big project.

The Layout (with computer sketch on top)

The final project I worked on recently was extracting the tea leaves from expired herbal teabags to be used on my layout. The reason I was using the teabags actually had nothing to do with my model railway, but was for science idea I saw online that involved lighting them on fire. If they are lit at the top with a lighter, after burning half the way down, they then fly up into the air, which I thought was pretty cool. I then realised, after removing the tea from the teabags that the ground up tea would work well as something to scatter on forested areas of my layout to add more realism, so nothing went to waste!

Thanks for reading my latest railway progress post, I hope you enjoyed and I should be back soon with more posts!

Model Railway – LMS Coronation Class

As I promised, I am writing a post about my LMS Coronation Class engine, The City of Bristol.

These engines were built between 1937 and 1948, they were the most powerful passenger steam train ever built for a British railway company; with 3300 horsepower, they were more powerful than the diesels that replaced them! I actually have a plan to change my model from its semi-streamlined condition which the model was of, to the streamlined condition, using a diagram I found in the SRPS archive store. After doing the streamlining I will change it to its LMS livery, which is red. (Please note this won’t happen for a while). In the future  when I use the diagram, I might post a picture showing its size! – it’s a 1:8 scale diagram of a 26m long train!

A picture of my model:

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A picture of the engine in its ‘Streamlined’ and ‘Semi-streamlined’ conditions:

800px-6229_Duchess_of_Hamilton_at_the_National_Railway_Museum

Duchess_of_Hamilton_-_2006-05-06

I am very sorry that this post was delayed by a week, as I had delays finding pictures.

I’ll be putting out a new post in the near future; however, I’m not putting a date on it – don’t want to repeat the same mistake twice!!!

-Update, the conversion, I’ve decided, would be too difficult, so I have no plans to go forward with converting it to streamlined (which is a shame). Sorry.

Model Railway – Not a Fowler Dock Tank!

As I posted in a comment a few weeks ago, my BR Engine No.68478 did not have a BR Engine No. of 47160-69; easy mistake!

Basically, I searched into the internet my engine number, and because they were the same wheel arrangement, 0-6-0, I got confused when I saw the picture on Wikipedia – Never trust the pictures alone!

But, after searching through the previous engine numbers I found my engine’s class. This engine was designed and built in 1900-01 and was the NBR D Class, before it became the LNER Class J83, and later into BR ownership. There were forty of these engines produced, and were designed for short-distance freight and shunting. These engines were all scrapped, with the last one being in 1962, after the slow replacement by the more efficient diesel trains.


NBR- North British Railway; LNER- London North Eastern Railway; BR- British Railways;


My Post-LNER J83 Engine

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This still sadly doesn’t fit in with the time-scale of the model, but I do have another engine, a LMS Coronation Class engine, which I will post about in the next two weeks.

PLEASE DO NOT GET THIS CONFUSED WITH MY INCORRECT

FOWLER DOCK TANK POST!!!

Model Railway – Layout Changing

On Saturday evening, daddy, Megan and I spent some time moving track around into the layout design we wanted.

Layout plan we decided on last time:

Layout20140806

We made a few changes because the layout design above was impossible to fit in, we made a few minor tweaks to make it work. We removed the tinker yard daughter board (points on the far left), extended the mine (buffer on the right), and changed the switch-yard to fit in (top of the layout).

After daddy and Megan had left, I had some very weird problems to do with dust, the engine would suddenly stop, reverse, then continue as if nothing happened. Then as I had the controller on no power, and was just about to switch off the controller, it shot off like a rocket! I will need to investigate…

Model Railway – More Research

Last weekend we went on a camping holiday to Port Ban, on the West coast of Scotland. As our trip took us through Loch Lomond and The Trossachs national park, exactly where I’m setting my model, I paid attention to houses, and things I will include on the railway.

Next up was houses/buildings which I will need to model, increasingly more important discovering my shop and church models are in O (churches don’t look different). The houses I saw were rectangular, with a roof slanting down to the longer walls. The houses were painted white, with slate roofs, and often vertical windows sticking out of the roof. Sadly I didn’t get any photos, due to bad planning, but you will see in the future some photos of the models.

Something I noticed was that the forests down low were actually not at all pine, and contained a mixture of other trees. Which means for one thing my forests don’t have to be boring, and secondly I can use the trees I have.

Photos show sections of non-pine forest (it was wet…):

IMG_0036IMG_0044Scaled IMG_0031.2

Model Railway – Fowler Dock Tank

As promised, I have done some research!

(Incorrect research though… – view Not a Fowler Dock Tank! for more detail)

LMS “Fowler Dock Tank”

This train is the LMS Engine No.68478, commonly known as a Fowler Dock Tank, used to shunt in docks, designed to go around tight curves. Only ten were built, between 1928 & 1929. They were all decommissioned and scrapped between 1959 & 1964, which is sad because none were preserved in museums.  Although it fits in the time period, it doesn’t fit with the inland setting of the model.

My model LMS “Fowler Dock Tank”:

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Model Railway – Back on Track!!!

For years my railway has been disused, in a cold and dusty, dark attic; but now I’m putting it back on track as I begin on my new adventure to build my first model railway!!!

Layout Design

This layout design was our old track just changed quite a bit, we needed to keep changes minimal, because re-arranging is hard. I wouldn’t say it was my ideal layout, but it does works nicely, and daddy agreed to do all the new nails!!! The outer loop is the mainline, with the inner section containing the village, switch yard and coal mine.

Layout Map (rough draft):

Layout20140806

LMS “Hughes Crab”

Before beginning on scenery I have to (note: present tense – more coming soon on this post) do some research. I have discovered my model train given to me by some friends, on my birthday one year, is a LMS No.13000 engine. This engine was produced between 1926 and 1932, which means my railway will be set just after that, which also is the time I was planning anyway.

My model LMS “Hughes Crab“:

IMG_0006LMS Engine No.68478

This train is a British railways engine No.68478, as of now I am unsure of anything about it, other than this number. Next week I will have done some research – Sorry for the Inconvenience

My model LMS Engine No.68478:

IMG_0007