Category Archives: YouTube

1. Small, 1:43.5 (7mm Scale), Exhibition, Layout Design, Layouts, Liked off site, O Scale, Scales, Site seeing, Sites of interest, Switching, UK, Web, YouTube

Site Seeing – the “I love the Yard” edition

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Imagine an industrial 7mm narrow and standard gauge model railway with radio controlled crane and lorries. Then look at a great video and see it in action.

The Yard

Built by a group of four during a three-month period for a club exhibition. This layout is in 7mm scale and uses both 16.5mm (3.5mm HO standard gauge) and 32mm (7mm O scale gauge) track. Scenic area is only 2’2” x 6’, with an overall size of 2’2” x 9’ including fiddle yard.

Of particular note are the working features of the layout including:

  • standard and narrow gauge trains
  • working gantry crane, and
  • radio controlled lorries

The gantry crane had apparently been on another layout and manually controlled. When moved to the yard it was converted to radio control. The lorries, which I believe are the work of Mr Giles Favell, (see the resources section below for more) were in use on other layouts. The rolling stock came from other layouts also.

Control of trains is by DCC, while point control uses MERG canbus.

Resources

See more about the wonders of Giles Favell’s radio control 7mm scale lorries and his layouts at:

1. Small, HO Scale, Inglenook, Layout Design, Layouts, Liked off site, OO Scale (4mm:Foot), Operations, Operations, Scenery, Site seeing, Sites of interest, Web, YouTube

Site seeing – the Second Hand Inglenook edition – September 20, 2018

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I admire modellers who can get to the meat of a project, quickly and with vigour. Gazmanjack (Gary) on RMWeb used second-hand track, wood and other parts from his modelling left-overs to create a stunningly good small layout for operations. Read on for more.

Linden Ford – the second-hand layout

Gazmanjack (his handle on RMWeb) back in 2014 built an outstanding layout from left over bits and pieces, as an adjunct to his current layout, to give himself something to operate on during the other layout’s longer build. I’ve only just found it and wanted to share the forum post with you.

And what a cracker this layout is. I won’t go into too much detail here, as I think the adage of a picture telling a thousand words is true on this occasion. There is plenty of information in the post too on the build including scenery, tree armatures, and so on.

Image 1: Linden Ford – an outstanding small Inglenook layout

I hope that you find inspiration in the post. So much with so little that turned out so well. Well done Gary!

Resources

diesel, Large, Layout Design, Layouts, Motive Power, Operations, Site seeing, Web, YouTube

Site seeing – Loco dead line edition – August 20

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Locomotive dead lines make fascinating modelling subjects. One layout idea that has percolated along for the last couple of years relates to a locomotive rebuilder. A recent post by one of my favourite modellers, Mike Confalone, over on the Model Railroad Hobbyist forums, provides a great starting point.

Modelling a deadline

One layout idea that’s been percolating along for the last couple of years relates to a locomotive rebuilder. One aspect of that design is the deadline, that is, the line of locomotives waiting for work to begin on their rebirth, parts removal for donation to other units, and for some the final indignity – the cutters torch and a change of state to scrap metal. Fortuitously, a small project by Mike Confalone over on the Model Railroad Hobbyist forums has been focused on a deadline too.  Mike writes in the post that:

“On the proto-freelanced Allagash, we have a caboose track at Madrid. With the move to 1984 a few years back, the caboose track is used less and less as cabooses begin to become less common. We still run them on most of the road jobs, but most of the locals go without, per the prototype in that era. So, I’ve converted the caboose track to a diesel deadline. Its a bit tight but it’s the only available real estate in the yard and I didn’t want to put them on a remote siding. I wanted the deadline near the engine house. Seemed to make sense.”

Click the photo above to go straight to the MRH forum post

There’s five pages of comments and information there as of my writing this post. Being a fan of Mike’s work I may be biased. However, I find his work to be of the highest quality and well worth the time to review. I hope that you feel the same way after you’ve read through the thread.

Resources

  • There is a Megastructures documentary (Mega Breakdown – train overhaul) that is worth watching for an overview if you haven’t seen this type of operation before:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Class 1, Prototype, Publishing, Site seeing, Switching, Web, YouTube

Site Seeing – the Switching small customers edition

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There was an interesting video posted by Danny Harmon (who goes by the handle of Distant Signal on YouTube).

He focuses on the increasingly rare small switching customer. Once upon a time it was the core of railroading. And while it is harder to find, in some places it can still be found as Danny presents in this video.

Enjoy the video! And if you like Danny’s videos as much as I love his voice then like the video and subscribe to his channel. I have no affiliation with Danny other than as a happy viewer of his content.

Information, Large, Layout Design, Layouts, OO Scale (4mm:Foot), Scenery, Site seeing, Web, YouTube

Site Seeing – January 1 – The new Everard Junction version

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Everard Junction was a great finished model railway filling the loft of Richard Warren’s home in the UK (his YouTube channel can be watched here). However, he was unhappy with several key elements to the underlying baseboard design and issues with the loft space itself  that were causing running issues due to temperature and moisture. So he took what I consider to be a brave step and decided to start again from scratch.

With the loft area now completely reworked, insulated and ready to go, the work to build the new Everard Junction (Mark II?) is underway. As I write there are four videos in the current build series with more to come. With much detail each shows what ideas and issues Richard is solving as he builds the new layout. Richard’s baseboard design shows the very serious thought he has put into the new build. A couple of his ideas will make it into my next baseboard design, specifically allowing a removable backscene within the body of the baseboard.

Click the videos below to being watching, and if you find them interesting head over to the YouTube channel and like and subscribe. There’ll be more content about the build shortly and Richard is very good at presenting his ideas and showing his working method. Now onto the videos.

Videos

New Layout Build – Baseboards

Layout Update – November 2017

New Layout Build – Backscenes

New Layout Build – Fiddle Yard

There are a heap of videos on his channel that should be watched for their ideas and his modelling is outstanding. Enjoy Richard’s work; I do.

Site seeing, Sites of interest, Web, YouTube

Site seeing – February 16 – The traction faction edition

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Having grown up in a city with electric railways there is always that part of me as a modeller wanting to recreate what I remember as a kid. Watching the sparks pull away from the station and hearing the sounds of the motors change as they reached the limit of adhesion, especially on a wet day, can make me a very happy-chappy when I hear them. You can read more about the history of Sydney’s electric trains at the operator’s site “Sydney Trains“. Being an avid reader of technical stuff when I find really useful information about modelling overhead and trams, trains and trolleys I like to share. Thus onto todays site seeing journey.

Site 1: The East Penn Traction Club

This is not the only useful page on the site, it is however among the most giving pages on the site with a large range of downloads available on all areas of overhead modelling. A large proportion of you are US-based and for those interested directly in modelling trolley systems this is a treasure trove. For the rest of us, a large range of highly useful documents on improving HO model performance, modelling tips and articles and a set of standards that certainly could be adapted to your need without major change can be downloaded.

Site 2: Roundtrees Sidings

In the mood for traction action today we come to Roundtrees Sidings. Based on Fawdon (Newcastle) on the Tyne & Wear Metro in the 1980s features a working representation of the Tyne and Wear Metro system.

The original linked page had a lot of detail of the design and creation of the model. Sadly that original page is gone from their site, However, there are still some basic details of the model to help you understand size and scope. There is no track plan which would have helped. There are lots of videos available on YouTube however that give a reasonable idea of the model.

There are also, on our favourite video site, a lot of driver’s eye view videos of the Tyne and Wear Metro that are well worth the watch. Especially if you enjoy cab rides.

I hope you get some use out of today’s sites. Leave a comment if you find them useful or have other places of interest you’d like to share.

(Updated on 2023-07-11 by Andrew)

About, Site seeing, Site Updates, Sites of interest, This Site, Web, YouTube

Site seeing – January 27 – The ‘times they are a changing’ edition

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I received an email from Shawn Branstetter earlier this week announcing that his site http://shortlinemodelers.com/ would be closing down very shortly. I was, to say the least devastated. Shawn’s site is a treasure trove of useful articles and ideas.

I contacted Shawn for comment and post it here in its entirety: “Unfortunately it is true Andrew. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do with the content however, the Facebook page will remain active. Whiteriver Productions has expressed interest in hosting the content and I don’t want the name to go away I just don’t have time to be a developer, writer, very poor editor and illustrator by myself and find time to build. It’s just too much. Somehow I will make sure all content is available to everyone. As soon as I figure that out, I’ll let you know.”

Site 1: Get it before it is gone – Shortline Modelers

Go see it and grab anything you can now. Not sure how long this will remain available or where it may move to. Check out his cement modelling articles – they are outstanding.

Site 2: Shortline Modelers on Facebook

Head on over to the Facebook page and follow him there if you have a Facebook account. This will keep you in touch with Shawn for the future.

Hornby, Manufacturers, OO Scale (4mm:Foot), Scales, Site seeing, Web, YouTube

Site Seeing – October 10 – Hornby’s new Peckett W4 Saddle Tank

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First off I’ve got to give a shout out to Oly Turner and Chris Matthews’ blog for highlighting this model; one of their recent posts bought this little gem to light. Many of you may have guessed that I focus more on the North American and Australian scene in HO and O scales than the UK. However, I have a deep love of the UK industrial steam era and especially the four and six coupled locomotives that served these industrial railways for many years.

I don’t get very excited, very often about new releases from Hornby in the UK. I am getting very excited however by the release of their new 0-4-0 Peckett W4 Saddle Tank in 4mm ‘OO’ scale. If you are into small layouts, and or industrial layouts in a small space then I think that you should be too. And here’s the reason:

What’s not to like. It’s small, well proportioned and perfect for the type of small industrial layout that most of us can afford and fit in our homes these days. They are all DCC ready and would appear to be able to fit sound – if through a somewhat small speaker.

They look like they’ll be a red-hot seller. In fact I noticed that all the pre-orders have already sold out. Here’s hoping that Messrs Hornby ramp up production and keep this item in the catalogue for some time as it will form the basis for many conversions to come.

Like to see it running in engineering guise?

You can find out more about the development of the model from Hornby.

Site seeing, Sites of interest, Web, YouTube

Site seeing – June 19, 2016 – The big city edition

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Today’s site is a masterpiece. No more hyperbole, so let’s get straight to it.

Site 1: Industrial switching layout – City Limits

While the site is in French, using Google translate allowed me to get a better understanding of the content. Visually I find this layout a stunning, well thought out and executed ISL. I hope that you enjoy it too.

Site 2: YouTube – City Limits

Site 3: YouTube – City Limits 2

Site seeing, Sites of interest, Web, YouTube

Site Seeing – May 22 (the I needed some steam therapy post)

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I woke up this morning after dreaming about driving steam trains all night. Don’t know why, but there it is. So over a breakfast of toast and jam, and a cup of tea I got in some serious steam therapy and wanted to share my sense of serenity with you.

If you are in need of some steam therapy, consider the therapist ‘in’. Sit back, crank up the sound and enjoy.

Therapy session 1 – UP Challenger #3985 + 143 Freight Cars

While I understand why steam is no longer the king of the rails, doesn’t it make you wonder ‘what if’?

Therapy Session 2 – Steam Locomotives At Speed

While not as imposing as the UP Challenger, there is something cathartic and invigorating about seeing express locomotives ‘expressing’ themselves at high-speed; enjoy!

Therapy Session 3 – Steam trains at speed

I want to make sure that you are as revitalised as I am. So here is a little more therapy for a bleak, cool and windy Sunday (at least in Ballarat). Go get a coffee, or tea, or frothy beverage of choice, and relax into 45 minutes of enjoyment.

I hope that you got some value from our therapy session this morning. I think that we should see one another again soon. Let’s schedule another session in … well leave a comment, or like this post, and we’ll see when we can fit one another in eh?