Spaced Out

Another weekend of sorting through sheds has added to the pile of boxes at the railway end of the studio.

It isn't as bad as it looks. At least that is what I tell myself.

For a start, this is the contents of both my old modelling rooms, both packed in a hurry and without regard to how much space I was taking up. I'm hoping there isn't too much duplication between them apart from paints and chemicals. I'm also expecting most of those paints and chemicals to be unusable by now.

Any organisation there is amongst the boxes is based on projects and stages of layout construction. So once I've re-organised them a lot of boxes will be going back into one of the sheds. That is presuming I've got around to tidying up the sheds themselves. the wooden one isn't looking too bad, but the big metal shed needs a real effort. Not only that, but the metal shed also needs to be readied for storing more 7 1/4" stock away from the goats.

As well as the boxes there are a lot of baseboards and materials that need to be packed away or used. At the moment I want to focus on the Casket Yard inglenook

I still haven't finalised the layout of the studio. The missing element is the workbench that I need to shoehorn in somehow. Then I can start to play around with locations for cupboards, shelving, and baseboard supports. a workbench will also let me resume work on the 7/8ths and residual 16mm kits that by their nature take up a lot of room.

Can you tell what it is yet?

It might not look like it, but I feel I'm beginning to make progress working on the site for the relocated vegetable plot and 7/8ths line. I'm a long way from having a plan for the 7/8ths in mind, though the manually controlled Wren more or less dictates a disguised continuous run of some sort.

Easter Aches

Easter here is always busy, whether it is hosting visitors or sorting out the garden. There are no prizes for guessing what it was this year. As for the source of my aches, well...

The ELR has always been a practical and purposeful line. From the days when it was, literally, a pointless 30m long it linked the house to the domestic and garden service area next to Quick Lane. The location of the terminus was a bit of a compromise.  Whilst it was quite close to the storage area it also had to allow for paved access to the big metal shed and the back gate that allowed access for dog walking. Despite that, I always thought it had a certain charm, especially in photographs.

As time went by the service yard got hidden behind a willow wicker fence to protect it from prying eyes. The extended running line allowed direct access to the metal shed and also to the main vegetable plot with the original terminus turning into a siding served by an awkwardly placed turnout. The wicker fencing meant it was as easy to serve the storage area by shunting wagons on the main line as it was to use the siding.


And then along came the goats, who trashed the wicker fence, the storage area, and the vegetable plots.

So the Easter weekend was devoted to demolishing most of the service yard and moving the vegetable beds. Last year's Sycamore cull has opened up an area for a new service yard, closer to the house. That means trains won't need to run so often, with more of a focus on the sporadic bulk movements when deliveries arrive than regular weekly workings. In an attempt to thwart the goats the kitchen garden is now as far away from the kitchen as it could be, next to my studio. Or rather it will be when I finish rebuilding it. The good news is that not only will the new plot be bigger but planning on-site suggests I should be able to fit in the 7/8ths line out of sight behind it.

It is, though, 100m from the furthest reach of the ELR.

An Unproductive Weekend

Well, I suppose it depends on what you mean by productive.

I did manage to get a little more sorting-out done in the office, including finding some old photos I'd forgotten about.

Flying Scotsman at Blackpool.
The Chester Festival of the Arts/Gainsborough Model Railway Society 'Chester Festival Flyer' special from Chester to Blackpool, 9/7/67
I'm the blonde!

Over the weekend I apparently walked over twenty-fives miles in the course of gardening.

I really should build the extension to the ELR. Where that extension goes is intimately connected to the decision about where to put the garden pond goes. Fortunately, I'm finding the location of the studio ideal for getting a different perspective on the garden, though it does look like I'm going to have to sacrifice the croquet lawn.

A very bad artists impression of where the pond might go

The pond is a long term plan, and if I get my act together  it will also be integrated with the 'proper' 7/8ths line. In the meantime some re-jigging of the new, and now hopefully goat and chicken proof, vegetable patch has freed up space for a short term 7/8ths  project. What form that will take I'm not sure. I suspect the Wren really needs a continuous run and I can just about fit one in. That then raises questions of access to the whole length of the line, which in turn might mean building it at a lower height than is ideal.

At the back of the sheds I've also found rather more 16mm scale stock and track than I realized I still owned. The jury is definitely out on what to do with it all. Most of it seems to date from my last line which, you might recall, was in a very small garden. So perhaps I could find space to squeeze something in, with a focus on battery operation. Looking through this blog that last 16mm line is conspicuous by its absence, which is odd. It went through a number of incarnations, each squeezed into less space in the desperate hope that it would survive life with three teenagers and two dogs.

A Faller conversion. The ballast was a resin paving joint filler.

The Brandbright Fowler "Peldon"
Currently sat on my workbench awaiting TLC

Peldon again. It needs new electrics, including basic R/C and some cosmetic repairs

As for actual modelling this weekend...

... I've managed to get my Tim Horn EM stock display stand back into a semi usable state. It really suffered from a combination of mice and damp whilst in storage. We solved the mouse problem by housing rescued feral cats, but they caused problems of their own. Whilst it isn't as good as new it has provided a useful trial run for seeing if I can restore the baseboards for future use.

I've also been playing around with some Scalescenes kits ready to embark on my modified dockside boxfile layout. Whilst rummaging through boxes I discovered my old Peco locolift, so at least it will have a fiddleyard of sorts. Looking at the Scalescenes kits has made me think aboutTAoC. I was going to user lasercut buildings that equated as closely as possible to the structures suggested by Roy. But perhaps it is equally valid to use card models from a single source, in the way he chose models from the Prototypes range. With that in mind I've already got ideas for a station building and bridge, roughly based on Steens Bridge. The question then is what to do about a goods shed.

The Cadeby Conundrum

In happier days - now lacking a chimney and the cab backsheet is cracked

Having moved lots of books and tools from one of the sheds my studio now has a healthy population of spiders. In fact, the number of spiders has roughly achieved parity with the number of nearly finished OO9 kits.

Work on them and the Cadeby based micro layout came to an end when I lost my old office. I have to say that storage and the move to the studio have not been kind to them. It is quite depressing contemplating repair work before finishing them. I might even be tempted to start again on some of the cheaper 3D bodies. Other than that I will progress the models as and when, a major factor beign the suitability of the weather for spray painting. As for the layout itself, well that has now found a home in a storage box. I suspect it will see a little more use as a test track and for photography, before been denuded of trees as I borrow them for other projects.

Like Apa Valley before it, it has served its purpose. It got me back into OO9 and relatively up to date on improvements in the trade. It was always intended to be the precursor to a larger version of Cadeby that would allow for more sidings and a greater sense of place. It won't be an exact model because I'm inclined to allow for a continuous run and disinclined to model the monstrosity of a "modern" rectory.

The conundrum arises over baseboards.  I've got an unbuilt Tim Horn baseboard that I originally had in mind. I've also got two other ideas that could make equally good use of it though.  What hadn't really dawned on me until moving it the other day is that it isn't going to be a lightweight structure, even before I build a layout on it. That means whatever I use it for is going to need a semi-permanent home, and I'm not sure OO9 is the best use of that space.

So what are the alternatives? I'll take a look at a few more commercial alternatives, but I have a feeling I might end up using foamboard. I also think I'm going to play around with some dimensions once I've built a suitable Old Rectory and some larger trees.

 

Progress

OK, not much, but more than is probably apparent here. A lot of the boxes contain paperwork that accrued whilst I was in office stasis last year. I'm hoping I can reduce their number considerably over the next ten days.

Most importantly of all I finally have a workspace again. It is still less than half the area I've planned for, but it will do for now.

Meanwhile, splendid isolation continues.

Sorted!

Well, not quite.

The forecast of a spell of warm Spring weather, and the prospect of losing five days of annual leave that I can't carry forward, finally persuaded me to take a week's holiday at home. I was actually surprised to realise it is the first week I've taken off since July.

It might seem odd to some of you to take a holiday when people are homeworking, business is quiet, and sensible people are self-isolating.  The novelty of home-working wore off many years ago, so unless I force myself to take time off it is just like working in the office, only with longer hours. The wet start to the year also means I have a big backlog of tasks. To put it in perspective, this weekend I walked sixteen miles without leaving the garden. If nothing else, that is proof that the ELR needs to be extended.

The big job for this week is to move the vegetable garden as far away from the chickens and goats as possible. That, unfortunately, is also where I was planning to put the 7/8ths line. Whether or not railway and vegetable plot can co-exist is something I'm going to have to think through. It might be possible in some form but not the one I intended. Another big outside task is to start putting in a loading dock for the ELR  in the eyesore space created when we had to remove a stand of sycamores. How far that progresses probably depends on how timber I can salvage.

The other big project is to start organising the studio. Leaving aside that many boxes of books and model railways haven't really been unpacked since we moved here four years ago it is still chaos as a result of the shift around of rooms last year. It is amazing what I'm finding that I'd completely forgotten about, likes these 7/8ths kits from Model Earth

I suspect for the next couple of months 7/8ths will be my main focus, since I had so many part completed models on the go last Autumn. After that, the layout in a box takes priority as a precursor to TAoC.

My O gauge ideas are firming up. I want to make use of some of the RTR locos available whilst not falling into the trap of being derivative. I love the Minerva Manning Wardle, for example, but it is so common on exhibition layouts these days. I'm homing in on the Leomisnter-Bromyard branch at the moment. I know the route really well, having lived near Leominster, on and off, for some twenty years, albeit in what now feels like a very distant past. Station layouts were relatively simple, and there is even scope for a narrow gauge interchange. I'm imagining a variation on Llanastr with a solitary 57xx as motive power.

bOther!

I was going to write quite an angry post about people in our hobby living in a bubble divorced from the reality of the current situation. Things have moved on since then and I hope we all now realise the potential seriousness, and that the knock-on effects will be widespread. In the big scheme of things, this is still just a hobby. Having said which I've no intention of minimising the impact on traders, manufacturers and others who depend on the hobby for all or part of their living. I'm also extremely worried about heritage lines.

In the short term, the key priority is keeping others safe, and, in doing that, protecting ourselves. 

Here in the fens, it isn't making that much of an impact on us, yet. Issy and I both work from home 50% of the time so moving to doing so 100% isn't that hard. On the other hand there is no novelty factor and we've already got well-worn routines that mean we make the most of the working day rather than idling.

I am taking some time off, quite literally as gardening leave in the sense that I'm using it to do gardening, rather than before joining a new employer. And it is hard to ignore that the ELR takes u quite a bit of one of our gardens.

So as well as doing some maintenance I'm thinking about a wholesale reworking of the track plan to separate the workshop from the running line. After all, one day I might finally get around to holding an open day, and it would make life a lot easier and safer.

The title of this post relates to another dilemma that I half-hinted at a few weeks ago. Like Chris Ford I'm thinking about O gauge, and this seems like a chance to think about it a little more. At some point I still want to build an O16.5 layout based on the Glyn Valley. So it makes sense to start getting some experience in the scale again. It isn't a priority as things stand, but that might change. I'll have to see how I get on once I can start building TAoC. A big question is probably whether I can really face up to the backlog of EM gauge conversions that has built up whilst I've been without a workshop. We shall see. If I do make the leap somethign else will have to go, and it is probably the Tanat Valley based layout. You know, the one where this blog started. 

I also need to find a track plan that would fit in the space I'm currently allocating layouts. until I don't need the office space. That could be quite a challenge.