Sandy Lane

[Chippingford]

Hello everyone

Welcome to my latest project, Sandy Lane. It's a semi-fictitious small end to end layout in OO scale, DCC controlled, based somewhere around the turn of the century (millennium bug - eek) on a coastal town in the South West that had its lines ripped out in the early 80's. I've imagined what it would be like had the railways remained in place and continued to service the area.

Progress so far ... baseboards constructed, some track laid and fixed some awaiting fixing (I ran out of track yesterday), bus wires installed and control panel started, upper level working, some scenic items acquired or built, most scenic items in production lol and I've had a small attempt at scenery, a lot of reading of books/magazines/online to help.

Over the last few years I've tried to acquire locos and rolling stock that would have been around this area from the early/mid-nineties onwards. Surprisingly out of the box production locos are not too forthcoming but I have done my best to research and I've managed to get hold of some nice items. Loadhaul, Transrail and Mainline a plenty

Oh and lastly, my previous layout was in the basement which turned out to be dirty, damp and cold so I built this one in my nice, cosy, warm dining room. An unusual location? Possibly? It was possible.

Here's some pics of the build over the last year ...

Last year ...









This year ...

[Chippingford]

Here's a video of the baseboard build ... perhaps I should post in Baseboards topic ha ha!

https://youtu.be/TwahnpOBRzs

Hope you enjoy

[Brian]

Nice construction video, well done

[Mr Bones]

Great video, loved it. It's one I wish I'd seen before I did my baseboards

[Chippingford]

Thanks for the comments , I put it in the baseboard section just in case someone might find it useful.

[Chippingford]

Lately I've been working on lighting using the accessory bus to gain some practice and experience of getting the lighting to look authentic. I Decided to work on some of the buildings already constructed to practice how to wire them up and seal the light bleed (if necessary). Have to say it's been great fun and a wonderful sense of achievement. I've used some ordinary LEDs for inside the buildings, taped and glued into position with a bit of blacktack. For the outside of the car park I used some of Kyte's lights lamp posts. I didn't realise how thin those wires were and now I'm thinking I need a more precise tip for my soldering iron to replace the clumsy spade tip I've been using. Pics and links to videos below.

Scalescenes car park

https://youtu.be/NsujlfVFkRY Dusk time-lapse short (15secs)


Street level

Roof level

whole building

Side view

[bulleidboy]

Very impressive.

[Chippingford]

So the multi-storey carpark pretty much finished, just a few touching ups to do on it. I decided to film the process of making it from start to finish, started last year and finished last week. Made it to show the process of building card kits for those who want to know what's involved and to hopefully attract some helpful comments from veterans.

https://youtu.be/LRihnQLWW9w

[teedoubleudee]

Looks great.

I use lighting extensively on my layout, in fact I prefer it in "night" mode than daylight. But whenever I try to photograph it, it always looks much brighter than it actually is.

[Chippingford]

Looks great.

I use lighting extensively on my layout, in fact I prefer it in "night" mode than daylight. But whenever I try to photograph it, it always looks much brighter than it actually is.

Same here, I prefer the ambiance of the night. The camera makes everything much brighter and it's difficult to get around, if you have settings on your still/video camera then you can always dial down the exposure. I use and iPhone to film and I can't change the exposure for video so for my lighting I used a relatively high value resistor 4.7k or 10k depending on where they are. I also put LEDs in series, up to 3 to dim them further. I then power the lighting bus with an old controller and further dim the lighting by turning down the "speed" setting. so far that's the best I can do, if anyone has any other tricks I'd be interested to know.

For still pictures fortunately the new iPhones you can change the setting for exposure time from 3 seconds down to 0 seconds. I still have to do all of the above to make sure it's dim enough to look authentic.

Hope that helps.
Ivi