Model Railway Forum

It's been a busy week, but at last today I took some photos of the layout showing its partial de-urbanisation. Welcome to rural Shankly.

Rural Shankly Looking East


Rural Shankly Looking West


Saint Albright's Church


Taking a Breather at Shankly Sheds


War Memorial Shankly

More views of rural Shankly.

As well as changing the scenic features to make the layout more rural, you may have noticed in the last two posts that I've acquired a new Class 73 locomotive and four wagons. They are birthday presents and shouldn't be on the layout as my birthday isn't until next month. I was just checking that they were all in good working order. They are fine although the locomotive is rather noisy. I must remember to remind myself to put them back into the boxes.

Class 73 Passing Sheep


Containers and Cars


Container Load


Eurostar Gets its Nose in

Nicely done. Still cannot get over how much Brits are able to put into an oblong, and the emphasis on passenger traffic is marvelous. North American layouts, in a similar space, are often quite unimaginative, and there is a dearth of passenger train modeling.

Hi Chops, thanks once more for your kind words. Regarding getting a lot of stuff onto a small British layout, I can't comment on other British modellers, but for me it's partly that I'm not inhibited my the real world. If I want it on, I squeeze it in. As I've never worked on the railways, I'm a little hazy about how things would be spaced in reality, so I use this ignorance to liberate myself from space constraints. Ignorance is bliss! Regarding American layouts, everything is more spread out in the USA and it's unsurprising that this is reflected in any layout portraying the USA, even if the layout-maker is condensing it down somewhat. The USA is BIG. There is a certain beauty about the emptiness and flatness of so much of the USA. And by the way, happy 4th July.

Perhaps, Chops, you model Henley in England for the same liberation from reality. You certainly do it "Your Way".

Sunshine Breaking Through


Rural Shankly Looking towards Gdynia


Pulling a Load


Ground-breaking

I thought that I would give you some details about my new locomotive and rolling stock (aka early birthday presents).

The Class 73 is a Hornby Railroad Plus model. As I said in a previous post, my only criticism is that it's a bit noisy. The last photo in today's post shows why I'm pleased with it.

The 'freelance bogie car transporter in blue' (as it says on the receipt) is likewise a Railroad product. This is a solid robust model. Unsurprisingly, it came with plastic wheels, but when I tried to change them to metal ones, I found that the cone shaped part of the axle was shorter that usual and I simply could not get the new metal Hornby wheels on. I had to put the plastic ones back on.

The 'FFA Freightliner flat with two 30' containers' is also railroad. This model is less robust than the car transporter but The plastic wheels were a standard size/shape, so I easily replaced them with metal This was a very cheap model and so having to pay for four replacement sets of (metal) wheels didn't break the bank. When I took it out of the box, I was very pleased with the quality of the containers. I had already seen that buying containers separately without a wagon costs more or less the same (about £15) as this model.

That said, when I took the two Bachmann 'intermodal bogie wagons with two pairs 20' containers' out of their box (they were sold together), I was blown away by the detail. The Railroad containers suddenly looked very simple in comparison. The Bachmann box came with a thick layer of dust, so I understood why I had got the pair at such a good price - They had obviously been sitting in the warehouse/shop for a very long time and Hattons wanted to get rid of them. These are my first Bachmann products and I was very impressed, except for the fact that each wagon only had one coupler, so at the moment it's impossible to have them together on the same rake.

Time for some more photos.

A lovely busy scene. I like it.

I'm glad that you like it MG, and many thanks for the feedback. It's nice to have an audience and not feel as if I'm uploading to a vacuum. And here's a few more busy scenes.

IFF


Old Two-face


Put Your Back into It


Servicing the Coal Tower at Shankly Shed

It's always busy on the Shankly and Gdynia railway. Nice pictures - like the last one. It's the little things that add to the layout - sometimes you have to look hard to see them.

Ian with 100,000 views you have a good audience, keep the pictures coming they are a delight to see.