I went to ExpoNG last weekend and had a great time there. I spent most of my time drooling over County Gate and Pempoul, though i did end up helping out on the KB Scale stand for a while too.
I made two major purchases there, the first was a copy of Steam Locomotives in India - the Narrow Gauge, i've been looking for one of these for a while. It's got some fantastic locos in, and i'll definitely be employing some of the larger tank engines within it's pages on PnC.
The other purchase was a Soundtraxx Micro Tsunami medium steam sound decoder... WOW! DCC sound has me hooked now, i'm going to try and incorporate it into a tank loco design which i've got on my drawing board at the mo. I'll design the loco so that the speaker forms the face of the bunker which points into the cab - this then makes the entire bunker a 'bass box' in effect, and will hopefully improve the quality of noises such as chuff where bass is key.
I'll post some pictures on the various modelling forums that i'm a member of, and document the construction of the loco there.
Tuesday, 28 October 2008
Monday, 13 October 2008
Delusions of grandeur?
Something i'm very concious of is the fact that i have a rather ambitious and imaginative brain... This isn't a combination that goes together well when coming up with a layout design. Now i'm not going to announce a complete change of the track plan, just one thing which has made me think.
S scale has been 'on the brain' again of late, i scaled up a drawing of a 009 loco and realised it had the potential to fit a portescap sized motor/gearbox combo, and a sound decoder inside it. Now i'd like to try S scale, but when looking at the track plan for PnC i'm not sure if i would be happy with it in S scale. I'd have to shrink everything slightly and lose some areas of the scenery to allow for the slight increase in scale. Sound decoders and improved running are the main things which have been driving me down the S scale path.
There are two ways round this, one is to reduce the track plan to accomodate S scale on the board sizes i've got available. This is something i would consider doing to see how it looks, but i think i'll have to greatly simplify the goods yard, and shorten the station meaning i can't run trains of a length that i'd like.
The other option is to stick with 009 and make sure i can get it to run as well as possible. This will be greatly aided by DCC, and investigations into building my own chassis a bit like Jeff Bissonette has done. The only thing left to overcome is the size of loco bodies for accomodating speakers for DCC sound then. One thing i've thought of is to make PNC into a through station, this would allow trains passing through the scene to have a speaker located in the first coach or wagon and for the sound to come from that. This wouldn't allow any shunting of that loco/wagon combination, but perhaps i could build a loco suitable to have a speaker located inside to act as a shunter...
For this plan i think it best to stick to 009 as i said before. Whether i go for a through station i don't know, i would however like to portray the junction that PnC is supposed to be located near to if possible so i may see if it's possible to squeeze this in somewhere.
For sound i think the decoders are simply slightly too big to fit in your average 009 tank loco, however i might be able to design a freelance one where they would fit. This is something i'd like to have a go at with one loco to see if it's worth it, if not then it'll make my life a whole lot easier!
I think it's going to be important for me to realise what my initial objectives for this layout were:
1 - portray scotland with typical scenes merged into one believable town
2 - operate as realistically as possible
3 - give an impression of space, not being a layout with scenery stuck in around the track
Then i think i'll have to remind myself of these when i get delusions of grandeur again! At some point i'll have to cure the S scale bug and make a layout in it, it'll have to be small as PnC will take up a LOT of room in our loft so i doubt i'll get permission for anything sizeable!
S scale has been 'on the brain' again of late, i scaled up a drawing of a 009 loco and realised it had the potential to fit a portescap sized motor/gearbox combo, and a sound decoder inside it. Now i'd like to try S scale, but when looking at the track plan for PnC i'm not sure if i would be happy with it in S scale. I'd have to shrink everything slightly and lose some areas of the scenery to allow for the slight increase in scale. Sound decoders and improved running are the main things which have been driving me down the S scale path.
There are two ways round this, one is to reduce the track plan to accomodate S scale on the board sizes i've got available. This is something i would consider doing to see how it looks, but i think i'll have to greatly simplify the goods yard, and shorten the station meaning i can't run trains of a length that i'd like.
The other option is to stick with 009 and make sure i can get it to run as well as possible. This will be greatly aided by DCC, and investigations into building my own chassis a bit like Jeff Bissonette has done. The only thing left to overcome is the size of loco bodies for accomodating speakers for DCC sound then. One thing i've thought of is to make PNC into a through station, this would allow trains passing through the scene to have a speaker located in the first coach or wagon and for the sound to come from that. This wouldn't allow any shunting of that loco/wagon combination, but perhaps i could build a loco suitable to have a speaker located inside to act as a shunter...
For this plan i think it best to stick to 009 as i said before. Whether i go for a through station i don't know, i would however like to portray the junction that PnC is supposed to be located near to if possible so i may see if it's possible to squeeze this in somewhere.
For sound i think the decoders are simply slightly too big to fit in your average 009 tank loco, however i might be able to design a freelance one where they would fit. This is something i'd like to have a go at with one loco to see if it's worth it, if not then it'll make my life a whole lot easier!
I think it's going to be important for me to realise what my initial objectives for this layout were:
1 - portray scotland with typical scenes merged into one believable town
2 - operate as realistically as possible
3 - give an impression of space, not being a layout with scenery stuck in around the track
Then i think i'll have to remind myself of these when i get delusions of grandeur again! At some point i'll have to cure the S scale bug and make a layout in it, it'll have to be small as PnC will take up a LOT of room in our loft so i doubt i'll get permission for anything sizeable!
Monday, 6 October 2008
Thinking inside the box...
One layout i've always had a soft spot for is Dulas which was a layout based on the Corris Railway in Wales. It was totally different to any layout i'd seen before as it was presented as a series of modules, each of which portrayed a distinctly different section of the line and were linked together by small black box sections with backscenes dividing the module scenes from one another.
This is an approach to layout design that i've always considered trying, and as my initial thoughts of a layout are as a series of small scenes, is something that i think would suit my style of modelling. Recently i've mentioned building an 009 modular layout with some friends, one of the ideas is to set it on a scottish island. If this goes ahead then PnC may become divided into several small modules, but form part of a much larger layout.
The scenes i'd particularly like to model are the tidal inlet with the bridge and the curved frontage like that of Plockton. If this modular idea doesn't go ahead then i expect i'll just carry on with the PnC idea as i, i think it will lend itself to both modules or one whole layout...
If the modules go ahead the they're likely to be in a box format containing each scene, perhaps i could make my boxes removable to allow PnC to be 'built' from the contents of each box...
This is an approach to layout design that i've always considered trying, and as my initial thoughts of a layout are as a series of small scenes, is something that i think would suit my style of modelling. Recently i've mentioned building an 009 modular layout with some friends, one of the ideas is to set it on a scottish island. If this goes ahead then PnC may become divided into several small modules, but form part of a much larger layout.
The scenes i'd particularly like to model are the tidal inlet with the bridge and the curved frontage like that of Plockton. If this modular idea doesn't go ahead then i expect i'll just carry on with the PnC idea as i, i think it will lend itself to both modules or one whole layout...
If the modules go ahead the they're likely to be in a box format containing each scene, perhaps i could make my boxes removable to allow PnC to be 'built' from the contents of each box...
Thursday, 2 October 2008
Everything has to be weathered!
Well, the title of this blog post is a bit of a give away as to the content...
I recently posted on the Narrow Gauge Modelling Online Forum about the use of MIG
weathering powders and washes. I tried them out on a selection of Welshpool & Llanfair wagons i've got. This photo shows the results compared against an unweathered wagon.
This was my first attempt at weathering anything properly. I'm very pleased with the results, and was happy with how easy it was to achieve the results you can see in the pictures.
It's not just wagons that will need weathering though, i plan on weathering absolutely everything on PnC to make it look life like. I doubt that weathering powders will be applicable for some things, but i expect that someone somewhere on the internet has written about weathering anything i come across a problem related to. Model Trains Weathered has been very useful and contains some superb examples of weathering and some detailed descriptions on how to achieve similar results.
Just a short one this time, i'll expand on other weathering subjects as i come across them on Dunbracken... i can see the puffer being fun making that look really 'well used' and grimey!!
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