Inspiration Required!!! Feel Free to Pry

[Spavo]

It's a dead end mate...............both ends!!

At one end there's an 8 foot wall at the back of the church and at the other jump over the wall and you're in the loco stabling sidings.....

As usual with me it's a little diorama within the layout..........not too well thought out but hopefully a nice area of the layout......

Just wait until my next layout......it might even have roads and access for passengers!!

Cheers Andrew,

Gav.

[Spavo]

Ok so all the tree's are finally in, I am just waiting for those nice people at Hattons to send me my farm workers so I can populate the area...

The next few days will be spent wiring in the 40 lights that I have installed all over the place I'll post some updates when those are all in and working correctly......

So the last few pics of the orchard then, more of a nursery really the way it has worked out but here....

All the tree's are in place....






From this view you can see the pathway I have left down the middle from the unkempt part on the left to the nice tidy nursery side on the right.....




And finally excuse the big feet in the shot but here's the Google Gav shot from above...



Cheers guys,

Gav.

[m.levin]

Great work Mr G Spavo.

[Infrontcat]

Hi mate

'Kin lovely Nice that you decided to do contrasting bits in the ochard. Adds to the colour and effect I reckon

Cheers

Tim

[Spavo]

Thanks Martin and thanks Tim.....

It was suprisingly difficult to create a random effect with the tree's so in the end i basically tossed a few trees on workbench and then planted them in a similar position on the baseboard, sounds a bit haphazard but that was the general idea.

Anyhow I am very happy with the way it's turned out and once the lighting is installed and the area has some life in it I am sure i'll get a lot of pleasure out of it...

Thanks guys,

Gav.

[Pedanticmongrel]

I bet that class 45 looks good going over those tight radius points!

[Spavo]

Somehow it makes it

But the class 50 lucky it has a crawling speed!

[Spavo]

So just a quick update to show the lights up and running, the orchard looks pretty nice at low light.......










With the spare lamps I lit the cattle path behind the church....






And finally a rather nice touch near the Freddie Kruger farmhouse....



Thanks guys,

Gav.

[barks]

hi ,

this is looking excellent,
the lights really make a difference, (i need some)
i was looking through and thinking it looks a bit spanish!

but thats where you are..

regards

barks

[Spavo]

Thanks Barks,

Yes my layout is tucked away in a fire equipment room under the ground where I work.......not all bad though, the rent is cheap, i.e. free!!

So my wife has been lovingly painting some figures that I mistakenly bought as unpainted on ebay, they don't stand up to macro scrutiny that well but from a normal distance they look excellent, she must have the patience of a saint painting these little critters.....

The picnic in the orchard makes a nice scene....






Say Cheese!




There's some right shady deal going on here, man with a box meets man with briefcase....




Stop Police!




Cheers guys,

Gav.

[m.levin]

Nice one Gav, You have produced a nice atmosphere.

[pointstaken]

Those lamps in the Pullman look rather snazzy, Are they Mr Levin's efforts?

Dennis

[Essex2Visuvesi]

I think they are the pullmans from one of the hornby premier sets

[Spavo]

Yes sorry Dennis, those pullmans are from the pre-fitted sets and come with the lights installed and working.....stunning rolling stock though, I am in the process of populating them at the moment.......

Thanks,

Gav.

[Spavo]

So after much messing around with my T9 I have finally got it to where I wanted, after fiddling about with the tender pick ups for a couple of hours it runs as smooth as silk at ridiculously slow speeds over the pointwork.....

I then got onto the nightmare of fitting a "Levington Light" to the loco which was the devils own job due to the lack of any space inside the loco chassis to hide the wires all the way back to the tender to the DCC chip, however with the use of very thin wires and running them underneath the loco between the loco body and the brake gearing it was possible.

After getting the wires to the back of loco it was a simple job to drill a small hole underneath the tender and feed them up inside, then came the fun of moving the tenders weights to the back to make room for the decoder's wiring and resistor for the light, I also added some lead weight to the front of the tender to compensate for moving the weights backwards, the whole job took a good couple of hours but I am delighted with the results..

A couple of photo's for you.....







So happy as larry with this beauty.........

Also on my list for light fitting were those two cheap A3's that were in the bargain bin in Hattons....

Luckily these are loco drive so the decoder wiring is easier to get to although space was a little tight, also both the A3's required a lot of fiddling around with the front pony trucks as derailments were common but with a little bit of tinkering and some lead cut to the right shape this has been eliminated leaving two great loco's....

Here is Sandwich all ready to go.....





And Ladas in the yard.....



And finally you remember those rather cheap and nasty Hornby Jinty's that were DCC fitted a while back? Of course I have one and after much messing around with it I have probably the best shunter in the whole world, no question.....

It already had superb traction but the fitted decoder was useless so I changed that for a Bachmann 3 function and adjusted it endlessly so that now at top speed it is hardly much more than walking pace, this makes it so good for shunting.

On top of this I have fitted yet more Levington Lights to both the front and the rear, god knows how I have managed to hide all the wiring but it seems to fit well, finally, I used some old strips of lead to weigh the front and the back down so a rake of 20-25 trucks is not problem, or for that matter a rake of 4 coaches...

Here are the pics.....







That's about it for now, I have moved another couple of loco's off the layout to freshen things up and am currently waiting for delivery of my latest bit of excitement, a Bachmann Super "D"

Cheers,

Gav.