Scalefour Forum

Point control rods and baseboard fascias The point control knobs are small brass drawer knobs with old Meccano rods screwed into them. They are secured with Meccano collars, and the throw is adjusted by the addition of washers where necessary. I’ll give more details when describing the reassembly o...

Switch panels and wiring connections I prefer in a home-based layout to have the controls built-in to the layout, rather than having an entirely separate control panel connected to the layout by an umbilical cord, as is common practice on exhibition layouts. On the other hand, the controls (which a...

Thanks to both Noel and to Paul for this advice. As will be distressingly obvious by now, I am not very 'computerate'! Noel's post prompted me to dig around on the Windows menu, and there was 'Paint', just as Noel said. I have now pinned it to the Task Bar. Then, as Keith suggested, I can simply sav...

I have MS Office 2007 on my computer, Martin, which includes Microsoft Office Picture Manager, which seems to be pretty much the same thing. I don't know if it's in later versions, but if you have Office it might be worth a look. Otherwise, as Keith says, Paint is always there, currently under Wind...

The next buildings to go comprised the Station Road group. The three buildings (comprising two pubs – The Three Tuns and The Golden Balls, with Bond’s Bell Foundry sandwiched between them) are joined together as a single group, which hardly justifies the street name. Maybe “Station Approach” would b...

The Builder’s Yard group has now been dismantled. IMG_5903.JPG IMG_5907.JPG The remaining brewery buildings could now be removed. The Maltings was next.... IMG_5908.JPG ……followed by the Malt Kiln IMG_5909.JPG The Brewery Offices were the next to go IMG_5925.JPG This resulted in the first damage to ...

Dismantling continues The board crossing disguises the baseboard joint where it crosses the tracks. IMG_5882.JPG The various pieces lift out separately, and can then be stored with other scenic items. IMG_5883.JPG The bridge structure is lifted put in one piece. [I’m not sure how this will be dealt...

I seem to recall that Mike Sharman reckoned there was some adverse reaction between phosphor bronze current collectors and steel tyres, but I regret to say that I cannot recall exactly what caused the problem. I have successfully used hard brass wire bearing on the edge of the steel wheel flange, an...

Thanks, Andrew, for your kind words. Posts in the near future will be focused mainly on dismantling the layout, and then on its re-assembly in its new home, but these will hopefully give some insight into the design of the layout’s infrastructure. The work will include some changes to the electrical...

Martin Many thanks for your wonderful response. Furness red has always been a bone of contention and I've always said it depended on what day of the week the paint was mixed as to the end colour. You've given an excellent answer and your model is very good as well. Do you do commissions? Philip Sor...

A start has been made at last on dismantling the layout in readiness for the move to its new home, beginning with the removal of rolling stock from the layout IMG_5854.JPG ………and packing it away for transport IMG_5862.JPG Various smaller buildings were removed to await packing. [The porter reading h...

I entirely agree with Tim and Alan, and would repeat what I said on the " A Question of Colour " thread recently. I am quite convinced that there is no such thing as the ‘correct’ rendition of the livery of locomotives and other railway vehicles, and that any attempt to capture the exact s...

For the use of Archer's rivet decals, see "The Burford Branch" thread [https://www.scalefour.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1846&start=225#p66080 ] Page 10, in the post dated 16 February 2019.

Perhaps an Artistic member, such as Martin Goodall, would like to comment on the effect that ambient light has on colour percception. At Scaleforum, the change from pre-exhibition glim lighting to ready-to-view illumination of Burntisland, for example, was most instructive. I was tempted to add my ...

You may recall that some time ago I discussed the apparent yellow ‘cast’ in photos of the layout after the installation of new LED light bulbs. In addition to giving an uneven spectrum, those bulbs proved not to be as long-lived as their makers claimed they would be, and when they failed one by one ...

Quite by accident, I discovered years ago that balsa sheet (at least 3mm thick as a minimum) makes an excellent sound insulating underlay. But don't use PVA for sticking it down, which will cause fearsome warping of the balsawood. Thinly smeared Evostik will do the job. It's not cheap, but it is qui...

I was very tempted to enter Crichel Down for the Cameo Layout challenge, but I was not sure whether it might be disqualified because it had featured in Iain Rice's Cameo Layouts book. The real clincher, however, was that it would have required too much work to get it back into a presentable state an...

Progress (of sorts) The new railway room is now ready to receive the layout and, as a first step, the untidy pile of boxes that used to be stored under the layout has been moved into a wardrobe in the new railway room, which has been adapted by the addition of extra shelving. IMG_5808.JPG The photo...

Just a couple of points for clarification. First, I inadvertently referred to the end-tipping clay wagons as "clay hoods". As Noel has pointed out, these wagons did not have sheet supporters (it was the BR version that had this fitting). Tarpaulins were nevertheless used to cover over the ...

The North London Group’s Bodmin GWR layout project was conceived in 1976, following the successful launch of the Group’s Heckmondwike layout earlier that year. The genesis of the project was a desire to replace the small P4 demonstration layout that the Group had been taking around various model rai...

I have also built one of these, but I didn't find any significant track variations when I ran it around the layout. I don't think my track is that perfect (!), so I assumed either that I had not assembled it correctly, or that I was somehow missing something. It has been stored unused in a drawer ev...

I can foresee the possibility that the Mid-Wessex Light Railway may acquire one or two of these vehicles.

I hope we don't go down the route of inviting a guest layout for the sake of it. The style of the layout is similar to others but the reasons for inviting the layout were to do with presentation, lighting effects, a modified automatic coupling and smooth operation as well as fine model making. All ...

No news is……….er, no news. By now, dismantling of the layout should have been well under way, and my hope had been that the layout itself would have been moved to its new home before the end of this month. But progress has been much slower than expected, and so at the time of writing, the layout is...

Being a simple-minded soul, I shudder at the mention of relays, control circuits end other electronic complications. The levers supplied more than 60 years ago by Tri-ang (some of which I still have in my spares box), and also the modern equivalent from Peco are simply passing contact switches. It s...