Model Railway Forum

Interesting thread Shunter, points are something I need to start thinking about shortly.
Glad to know you were successful.
Good luck with the holes through the walls, do it while SWMBO is out she’ll never notice unless she catches you with the hover, that’s always a give away .

Dave.

Points, as in fitting the motors, wiring them and getting them to work was the easily the hardest bit until I found these looms which just pushed onto the terminals on the motors which had the switches already attached.

So I'd get them, rather than buy the bits and try to wire the whole shooting match up by soldering the wires to the lugs etc.

Get a capacitor discharge unit (CDU) as well. My points wouldn't throw both ways without one.

All sounds easy now, but took weeks and quite a few wasted beer tokens before I got my head around it.

I am now scenery-ing the smaller terminus. I thought I'd build the platform before I started ballasting.

This seemed like a good strategic decision, bearing in mind I don't have any ballast yet but did have a Metcalfe platform kit, which NMMS tells me many of his customers use to build their platforms with - apart from those who buy other forms of platforms.



So I reckon on a platform which is going to serve both the goods siding and shed. The shed is also Metcalfe which NMMS tells me many of his customers use to build their goods sheds - apart from those who opt for other forms of goods sheds.



It's going to extend between both the siding and the track which two or three coach passenger trains will use, so will need to be kind of curved to fit into the gap between the two.



This doesn't strike me as particularly challenging, bearing in mind it's only cardboard.

It will also leave room for a car park/parking for lorries using the goods shed/goods part of the platform.



Well, that's the theory. Now where's that glue..?

Careful when you ballast up to the cardboard platforms - they can warp when they get wet and the water in the glue will leave a stain on them.

Tried a couple of kits but couldn't make the platform look right.

It's meant to serve both passenger and goods traffic on a small branch terminus loosely modelled on a couple of long-gone rural GWR lines which I've cut down length-wise to fit my office.

So I got some balsa from NMMS (Nice Man at the Model Shop...) , laminated a few sheets together and hacked them to fit. Now finishing off with side walls and tops from a Metcalfe kit.

I'll find something to colour them with to get the top colour a bit more uniform - ie get rid of the glossy glue smears once it's finished.

Then it's find some buildings and stuff. I want to get a kind of run-down passenger-wise but still busy local goods-wise sort of look.

Finally got started on getting a bit more done, so here's a quick update.

Also going to get rid of that light switch (middle, top...) somehow.

Nice to see it coming together, that section is looking good. If you hadn’t pointed it out I wouldn’t have noticed the switch.

Dave.

Very good-looking layout. Please keep the photos coming.

If you can't physically relocate the light switch, you could either crop the photos or use a drawing programme on your computer to 'airbrush' it out with some wispy sky blue.

If you hadn’t mentioned the switch I wouldn’t have noticed it. Leave it be or paint it to match the background.