The Welcome Mat

Welcome to this Blog. Hopefully you may find it of use (i doubt it but it doesnt stop me hoping does it?). All my skills are normally self taught, and at the moment i'm a lone ranger when it comes to my layout with the occasional help from friends (normally it involves alot heckling).

I've never yet got a layout really past the electrics stage. I normally lose interest which is why i've decided to become involved in lots of things so i can vary my time between different things. All the work you see on Westleigh is my own work and all the photos you see on my fotopic sites are again my own work. I'm amazed i havent started to play with it, perhaps leaving the vast majoirty of the wiring to the end helps.

My main interest in railways is principally the early 90s. Even though i only just got into double figures in terms of age just as privitisation came in, i find it a very interesting period. My earliest memories were at Salisbury, Oxford and Bristol. So to counteract this aswell i tend to model the northwest scene during 1990 to 1994. However i also do the Wessex area during the same period and the scottish lowlands during 1988-1990.

I do have a little interest in the 1996-1998 privitisation period. I'm more aware of this period than the sectorisation period and again i wouldnt mind if it turned into this era.

I also am working on a project of Devizes station in 1963/64 just before alot of the line was rationalised and eventually closed. This however is a very very long term project and probably wont get anyway for many many years yet.

I do spend alot of time in the summer out an about doing photography particularly of civil jet aircraft. I'm certainly no David Bailey but i'm reasonably proud of most of the photos taken.

Anyway i suppose i really should get off the computer and get on with some modelling work, except work has a tendancy to get in the way!

Monday 4 June 2012

A new update for a new month....

Well its been a while again, so many things have taken over my time since update so here it is. The last few weeks, months even i have been debating to see if its possible to do hands off uncoupling. I was going to bodge a system using the tension locks but after having heard of various trials with them i decided it was the way to go. Basically my main problem was a 1st radius curve so having tried some out today they all sailed round fine. I could probably even drop it from the long to medium shank length which is what surprised me especially as i keep getting told you cant do it on less than 3rd radius, i proved that wrong! The layout was set up today and run for the first time and it all works fine. Not a single problem even on the uneven patio. This is something i wanted to get out of the way as if anything didn't work i wanted to find out as soon as possible. Ive also got my On-On-On switches courtesy of rapid and Ive also fitted some new signals to the front to protect the run round loop. This should mean the major electrics are done although i do need to sort out how many buffer stop lights i need so i can get an order off to Mr Barrow. The wiring is done for this however through the panel, Switch and onto a connection on the panel so it would be a quick job to install. I'm going to upload some video to youtube tomorrow showing it working and it up in its full size. It looks so small in a show hall but its massive at home. Still its just under 16 weeks to go now! Also for some reason it isnt putting the paragraphs in properley, i dont know why though!