Well, it's been a couple of weeks since my last post, and in that time not an awful lot has happened on the railway, I must admit, although there have been a few new arrivals!
I'm quite a fan of the older Triang models - mostly because they're cheaper than new models and there are a few classes of engine you can't get in new toolings. This pair doesn't fit that last point, but they definitely fit into the "value for money" category, I think.
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I bought these a week or so ago. They're a pair of Triang Jintys (Jinties?), and only cost £13 each from eBay. They came as a pair, and both run - though not amazingly, but I think that's down to them being fairly mucky on the inside. You can also see that the one closest to the camera has had a bit of a shunt at some point - a plan I had was to try and fix that perhaps with some plasticard. They're both missing the screws holding the body onto the chassis, and the one furthest from the camera is missing a front coupling, but for £13 each I couldn't say no, especially considering a lot of people are trying to get ~£20 for these. They'll work nicely as either just general-purpose engines, or small shunters, which I really could do with at the moment given most of the fleet is formed of larger engines!
These will need a proper clean (both internally and externally) before they run properly on the layout, but that'll be a project for the coming weeks.
Another new arrival is this - it was supposed to be a Christmas present but I think it turned out it was on pre-order
(It's the van, not the pillar box)
Funny timing given our Mr
@Cowley has been sharing his new mail vans - although this is a slightly different form of postal transport
This is a lovely little Oxford Diecast model, and works really well in the town scene with the pillar box: I might see if I can get a little postie to go with it. Vehicles on a modern-image layout do a lot to make it actually look modern-image - and while I'm not saying Oldmoor is by any means a perfect representation of the modern railway scene, it's definitely not a model of railways past. I'm looking into getting a few more modern vehicles and then perhaps swapping them out with the older stuff when I want to run a different era; though that might be a bit more effort than it's worth!
That's all the new arrivals on the layout from the past couple of weeks - now onto some more general bits-and-bobs. It's like the evening news with this sort of structure!
This is just a photo of Oldmoor Junction that I took when I was kneeling down to get the photo of the two Jintys above. I quite like this end-of-the-line terminus view; I might see if I can incorporate plenty of windows into the station building (if I ever get it built!). You can also see a bit of the new water tower in this shot - it's just behind the old Hornby one, on the right of the frame.
And here is that water tower! It's definitely a bodge at the moment, but you can hopefully see where I'm going with it. It's not been properly stuck together, and I'm still trying to work out ways of just finishing the base off before I work on the water tank at the top, but it adds a bit to this section of the platform. There's not a lot of space down either side of the water tower on the platform to allow passengers to pass, but I don't really want to move it any further back down the platform as then it'll be a bit too close to the main station building.
(We'll also ignore the fact that someone seems to have fallen over on the other platform...)
Here's a shot of the end of the water tower platform, showing the mess which is some ballast, the fact I need to sort out a join in the platform, and the very basic signals I made. The signals are made from just some cotton buds for the posts, and paper for the signal arms which I've drawn myself. They're just placeholders really, until I can get some Ratio kits for some proper GWR-style ones. The one at the end of the platform is taller than the other two, with two co-acting arms; my thinking was you'd probably want the driver of a non-stop service to be able to see the position of the signal before they reached it at the end of the platform!
This is a relatively boring photo, but it's just to illustrate a bit of a problem I've got at the moment with the two buildings to the right of the frame - the insurances offices and the pine shop. Neither of them work with the countryside village theme I've tried to make for the other road going through the town, and having them close to the roundabout spoils the scene with the coaching inn. I'd quite like to put a park, or at least green space, in the currently-empty area by the railway, for two reasons: the first, being that it's relatively easy to cover an area in static grass and then for it to look like something's been done; the second, being that I'm moving more towards the idea of the whole town being more of a countryside-type thing than having the two distinct urban and rural roads. It won't be perfect, but so much of the layout is a bit of a bodge because of the space and I'm not overly fussed about that really.
The only solution I can think of at the moment is that the two big buildings are taken off the layout, and then I either use the space they leave as space for the green area, something railway-related, or put a couple of smaller buildings in their place. The insurances offices building has been a bit big for the layout for some time now, and it doesn't really go with the 'vibe' of the rest of the scene. Plus, Oldmoor is definitely an idealised version of reality - hence the countryside road which looks like it's inspired by a jigsaw puzzle and the railway station 'restored' to the railways' golden era of the 1920s/30s. These two big shops don't really fit my idea of an ideal place I'd like to visit - I don't think many people particularly enjoy visiting a big industrial estate or retail park, and I'm no exception
Apologies for the rambling - but hopefully that gives you a bit of an idea of what I've been up to (or rather, not been up to) for the past couple of weeks. I'm hoping to get some more work done on the layout in the coming weeks: ideally most of the bits of the layout which require leaning over the board will be sorted come the warmer months, because ain't half a pain leaning over all those buildings anyway, let alone when you're as hot as the inside of a locomotive firebox!
Thanks for reading
-Peter