Tonglington Abbey & St. Renock Quay Kato N Gauge Unitrack Layouts

Post pictures and information about your own personal model railway layout that is under construction. Keep members up-to-date with what you are doing and discuss problems that you are having.
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Alexander Court
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Re: Tonglington Abbey - Kato N Gauge Unitrack in 4ft by 16ins

Post by Alexander Court »

Base Level Scenics Complete

So, after a few weeks, the scenic base is done, the hills are made and the bridge is up, the track is stuck down and wired, the buildings are glued down and the under scatter paint coats have been applied and the polyfiller road surfaces have been applied, left to dry and painted. The next step will be to apply the grass scatter and ballast. I'm still waiting on a ground water crane for the loco shed and a castle tower to turn up in the post though.

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Alexander

"I love the way you call it Art, When you never even use your Heart, and I just wanna tear you Apart"
Mike Parkes
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Re: Tonglington Abbey - Kato N Gauge Unitrack in 4ft by 16ins

Post by Mike Parkes »

There is a make (whose I have forgot) of OO cork underlay that comes in double track width but is precut to be split into single track width. The edges are cut at an angle which is laid upside down will butt up against the Kato track to give a flush ground appearance ideal for yards etc.
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Alexander Court
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Re: Tonglington Abbey - Kato N Gauge Unitrack in 4ft by 16ins

Post by Alexander Court »

Mike Parkes wrote:There is a make (whose I have forgot) of OO cork underlay that comes in double track width but is precut to be split into single track width. The edges are cut at an angle which is laid upside down will butt up against the Kato track to give a flush ground appearance ideal for yards etc.
Thanks for the suggestion, but given my impatience get going and limited funding I decided to crack on, my excuse for the higher level of the trackbed is that Tonglington Abbey station lives at the foot of numerous mountains/hills with a lot of water in the wetter months which can lead to flooding, especially as the line sits in the lower land below the castle mound, utilising the largest defensive ditch or moat as a cutting where the line heads off down the valley which the tower of the castle would have over looked offering a good vantage point to see any invaders approaching.

So anyways; On with the Ballasting!
Having glued down the main buildings I filled areas with Pva, like this:
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And then covered each area, going in stages, with Javis fine ballast:
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So while it was drying it looked like this )although it was two days before the glue had completely set and I could go outside and bang the ballast off that hadn't stuck):
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And here is how it looked after the loose stones were removed:
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Then I found some time to get some pics of the new ballast alongside my rolling stock:
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After my ballasting was done it was time to paint the castle tower I had purchased into the same colour as the local masonry, with a few brushes of green brushed in to represent damp moss/lichens in the cracks, and then this was glued down in position, slightly off square to seem more realistic, I hope, ready to have its base blended in when I do the grass work. (I'll also cover the flat centre roof area in foliage I expect as its abit unrealistic and to the windows too).
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And now a couple more shots to show how the layout is looking:
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And finally, a shot to be compared with the earlier one of the view from under the bridge:
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Alexander

"I love the way you call it Art, When you never even use your Heart, and I just wanna tear you Apart"
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Alexander Court
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Re: Tonglington Abbey - Kato N Gauge Unitrack in 4ft by 16ins

Post by Alexander Court »

Time for a bit more of an update. The ballasting has been done to integrate the trackbed and ballast as much as possible. I've done a base level of grass but I need to do more.The buildings are fixed down and this series of pictures was done on a rare sunny morning outside my house,as the lighting inside is appalling. I've tried to show off my rolling stock collection a bit with some movement between pictures. I'll leave it without captions, any questions just ask away:
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Alexander

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Chops
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Re: Tonglington Abbey - Kato N Gauge Unitrack in 4ft by 16ins

Post by Chops »

Meticulous planning, very nice.

I take note that your mixed goods train has a small rake of dairy wagons. Was this a common practice in the day?
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Alexander Court
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Re: Tonglington Abbey - Kato N Gauge Unitrack in 4ft by 16ins

Post by Alexander Court »

Chops wrote:Meticulous planning, very nice.

I take note that your mixed goods train has a small rake of dairy wagons. Was this a common practice in the day?
Thanks!

I have no idea but branch lines did have mixed trains.

Sorry I haven't been active lately but I'm finally moving to a better house this week.

Alex

"I love the way you call it Art, When you never even use your Heart, and I just wanna tear you Apart"
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Chops
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Re: Tonglington Abbey - Kato N Gauge Unitrack in 4ft by 16ins

Post by Chops »

Well thank you, given that I pretty much follow my own lead, I rather think I will be doing that!
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Bufferstop
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Re: Tonglington Abbey - Kato N Gauge Unitrack in 4ft by 16ins

Post by Bufferstop »

Hi Chops
I take note that your mixed goods train has a small rake of dairy wagons. Was this a common practice in the day?
The transport of milk from countryside to cities was an important traffic stream for the railways (and still is in a few cases). The full tankers would be worked forward on the fastest available trains. The returning empties would come back on any train. If they were tagged onto a local mixed (passenger and goods) train they would be empties. Depending on the geography some farms would forward their milk in steel churns which would be loaded into a van in a passenger train and either worked forward to the bottling plant or transferred to tankers at a convenient depot. It was the development of refrigerated road tankers which could collect directly from farms that finally ended the practise.
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Alexander Court
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Re: Tonglington Abbey - Kato N Gauge Unitrack in 4ft by 16ins

Post by Alexander Court »

Time for another small update!

This one is just about adding some foliage and is the last time I did any real photography of the layout before moving house. I will start by saying that we have very limited internet access at the moment, we have no broadband or phoneline at the new house yet, however it has given me time to think about the layout. I'm thinking that I shall remove the terminus buffer/track piece I made for the main running line at the right side back scene wall/end, and cut a hole, then I can make the layout a continuous run, with a separate board (6ft by 2ft in size) parallel to the current one, they would be back to back and there would be two temporary curved pieces at each end of the Tonglington board which would allow the two boards to connect. I haven't got a name yet for my new plan but I'm sure I will decide on one based on the map of my region.

Anyhoo on with the pictures,
Some shots of the local archaeologist's land rover passing by the ruined castle and over the railway bridge:
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Some general shots of the layouts new foliage and thickened grasswork:
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So that's it for this update.

Thanks,
Alex

"I love the way you call it Art, When you never even use your Heart, and I just wanna tear you Apart"
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glencairn
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Re: Tonglington Abbey - Kato N Gauge Unitrack in 4ft by 16ins

Post by glencairn »

Excellent work, Alex. Well done.

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Alexander Court
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Re: Tonglington Abbey - Kato N Gauge Unitrack in 4ft by 16ins

Post by Alexander Court »

glencairn wrote:Excellent work, Alex. Well done.

Glencairn
Thank you!

Apologies for what seemed like the sudden death of this thread, but since the layout moved house with us it has spent most of its time in a cupboard, it suffered some minor damage after the initial move but nothing major and this has been rectified except that there is no longer a backscene board at the station end, and I'm unsure if I want to extend out that way. I had the 00 out on the bed in the spare room over Christmas and there is much I want in the new Hornby range, however, I really need to address issues with locomotive allocations in my N gauge. The Minitrix dock tank has become sluggish but that is probably from age and a lot of use by me, the Minitrix 2mt tender loco is very poor running, the black 5 from Farish is stiff and an awkward engine to drive, the Lima 4f is dead and the Minitrix class 27 which just about works reasonably. So that leaves me without a real decent runner although I have gained one or two new items of rolling stock.

Alex

"I love the way you call it Art, When you never even use your Heart, and I just wanna tear you Apart"
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Alexander Court
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Re: Tonglington Abbey - Kato N Gauge Unitrack in 4ft by 16ins

Post by Alexander Court »

Time for some progress, from the rolling stock point of view this time. At Siddington Works the staff have been busy and now
coaches they have been working on have returned and entered revenue earning service, I've taken a few pictures to post here.
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And then a couple of shots of the 'Blue 5' about to depart on a service heading down to Siddington Junction and then off to Crawford or somewhere.
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That's all for now, really must get a reliable loco, and some points to make a fiddleyard out of, and more point switches, and...


Alex

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Mountain
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Re: Tonglington Abbey - Kato N Gauge Unitrack in 4ft by 16ins

Post by Mountain »

Very nice. How do you find how Kato track performs? I like the way you have ballasted around it.
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Alexander Court
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Re: Tonglington Abbey - Kato N Gauge Unitrack in 4ft by 16ins

Post by Alexander Court »

Mountain wrote:Very nice. How do you find how Kato track performs? I like the way you have ballasted around it.
Thanks :)

I find that while the trackbed is raised and harder to convincingly ballast, the track connection style is much better than peco, the fishplates aren't ruined within minutes of rearranging track. The ability to buy points premotored is very handy as well, all my points will be operational once I have enough switches. My locomotives have no issues with the track, they just don't work very well in general.

Alexander.

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Re: Tonglington Abbey - Kato N Gauge Unitrack in 4ft by 16ins

Post by Mountain »

Alexander Court wrote: My locomotives have no issues with the track, they just don't work very well in general.

Alexander.
When I tried N gauge I found I tended to be spending ages cleaning track and wheels. I also found this with H0e despite the high quality chassis.
I found 00 gauge to be better, but surprizingly, since I have gone up a scale to 7mm narrow gauge, the extra weight added to the little 0-4-0 shunters does improve the running a bit, though I still need to clean wheels and track. Is more that things are easier to clean and I don't believe I need to clean them so often.
Though I don't yet have my layour wired up, a small oval of track with a pair of passing loops on a 2ft x 7ft layout is quick to clean. My last 00 gauge layout took me between half an hour and an hour to clean the track if I did a proper job and cleaned every siding!

What would be ideal for N and 00 gauge (Which 009 and 0-16.5 could also use) would be a device which cleans wheels of all powered and unpowered wheels in seconds.
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