Starlingford - The End of the Line

[Black-Marlin]

Edit 31/03/2016

**Given the huge and somewhat unwieldy length of this thread, below is a table of contents, to facilitate the finding of things in the topic. I hope this helps those of you trying to navigate around 7 years of Starlingford's development online. Regards, Gavin**

1: A Star(lingford) is born; some pics of the previous layout; general introductions are made
2: The Engine Shed; Wyndham's helicopters
3: Trackplan; the first overgrown track
4: Cheshire and Excalibur arrive
5: Quayside and Castle appear
6: Thank you for smoking
7: Prestige trains; Ebay explodes in flames
8: Light Engines
9: Weathered Locos - Christmas 2008
10: The Metcalfe Invasion; a lovely pair of garters
11: LNER, Western & Southern pics; the Starlingford foliage 'technique'
12: Raising the coaling siding; finishing the castle
13: Castle inventory; LNER shed pics
14: Castle inventory continued; the return of Hornby-Dublo
15: My Ebay addiction runs away with me, and takes me strange places
16: Overexcitement at the T9
17: Ballasting the engine shed; Tornado causes a stir
18: Detailing the T9; first fiddleyard considerations
19: Flying Forts and J83s
20: The history of the N2 explained
21: Completely implausible expansion dreams, and traction engines
22: Prairie adoration; Tornado stirs it up some more
23: Tornado continues to be controversial
24: The debate now includes the LNER in its entirity...
25: 43xx, Hymek and *cough* Thomas join the roster
26: Thomas the Tank Engine reminiscences; Pedanticmongrel explains that he's not Wonder Woman
27: On the importance of backing-up one's files
28: J83, J94, Coaling Tower...and the author
29: On the difficulties of modelling in Aberdeen
30: Pedanticmongrel tries to reignite the Tornado debate
31: The history of the Hornby Class 47; reviews on my blog
32: Modelling resumes; diesel pics
33: How To Make Allotments
34: How To Make An Overgrown Siding
35: Posing at the station throat; factories added to industrial corner
36: LNER Greenery
37: On what 'GWR' might actually stand for...
38: Loving the Welsh; hunting down Winston Churchill
39:Buying a luggage van (badly); and why 'The Lost Symbol' should stay lost
40: Tornado arrives on Starlingford
41: New locos; new cliffs
42: Adding greenery to the cliff faces
43:Poetry in motion: Louis MacNeice and 'The Night Mail'
44: Tornado - a whirlwind tour
45: The J39 goes to Sunday School
46: Starlingford, a pictorial history after my 1,000th post
47: The mods exert a moderating influence; a Royal Scot gets some pictures taken
48: Troops appear on Starlingford
49: On the implications of modern freight, and some mermaids flaunt themselves
50: The LNER dominate the yard; and why soldiers should slouch
51: Plotting the next job...and the next...
52: Discussing the N2; Sarah keeps us in suspense; and Plymouth rings the changes on Starlingford's second birthday
53: Hornby plays a cruel joke
54: In defence of the honour of the thread
55: 'Guess the latest Ebay folly'
56: Rocketman wastes time... and a Hatton's folly occurs too...
57: A triumphant return; engineering kicks off
58: English tuition and allotment fecundity
59: Gorse blooms on Starlingford
60: A fiddleyard finally appears
61: A crane for the dockside; Tornado gets even prettier
62: Stock-taking on Youtube - Southern & Eastern
63: Stock-taking on Youtube - Midland & Western
64: Plotting the next return to the layout, and pre-ordering an O4
65: Starlingford appears in British Railway Modelling, August 2010!
66: The Starlingford thread achieves 1,000 posts
67: The O4 appears, as does realistic water
68: A pub is built, track is laid, and a page's worth of posts vanish mysteriously
69: Embankment construction begins
70: Starlingford - The National Expresses appears on Youtube, and further embankment construction is completed
71: Notes on watertroughs
72: On tanks, and why Starlingford is not DCC
73: Black 5s v. Royal Scots
74: A complete Loco list
75: Building buddleia, and Captain Scarlet goes shopping
76: Rocketman offers criticism; Durseystu spots an architectural lack
77: Requests for Tornado on a coal train are denied
78: Tips on how to remove Tornado's front coupling, and Rocketman takes exception
79: Rocketman's post is roundly condemned
80: The author...on opiates
81: Concealing locomotives, and appreciating aircraft
82: Sourcing the coastal collier
83: To keep or not to keep an L1, and how good were the Black 5s?
84: A return to toothache, and the WCML
85: New buildings, an apiarist, a repainted viaduct and long trains on Youtube
86: A further Youtube video of favourite pics, and further extensions to two carriage rakes
87: Where trees come from, and Christmas planning
88: Form vs. Function; Tornado breaks down; City of Lancaster joins the roster
89: Illness strikes down the family; tiny tiny birds on Starlingford may be vectors of tiny tiny bird flu; and the Hymek gets new windows
90: The coal boat develops; drinking and dining in the New Century Bar; Dad takes an unexpected trip to hospital
91: A belated birthday yields a 9F
92: 'Starlingford: Homeward Bound' video
93: Hattons lures me down paths of temptation
94: The Glasgow Binge; my workbench
95: Soldiers, Seeps and Halftracks
96: Achilles explained and progress photographed
97: Cabs, Combatants & Completion; Scots Guardsman
98: Das Reich
99: Tynedale introduced...and vandalised
100: Modelling Resumes...on Starlingford!
101: Completing the Quayside Scene
102: Church Planting and lo, there was light...
103: Picture Perfect
104: The finer points of milk distribution
105: Days of Green and Gold
106: Smooth Running on Youtube
107: Starlingford, home of Modelzone's newest employee
108: Christmas 2011; Pillars of the Community
109: Birthday and an inventory of the dreaded Stash
110: Starlingford on the BRM website
111: Photograph Guidelines, and Starlingford meets Rowland's Castle
112: A 'Bolt from the Bench
113: Ashen-Faced
114: The Rare Bird Conundrum
115: The Christmas Expansion
116: Raising the Roof
117: 2013's End-of-Year Reports
118: Horny-handed Sons of Toil. And a topless mermaid.
119: The Pom-Pom breaks cover
120: The Mighty White Lion
121: Stock Talk
122: New Perspectives on Starlingford
123: Aerobatic Rangifers once again
124: The Embankments come to life, as does Wyndham
125: Contextualising Starlingford
126: Beer, Hattons, Shelf Queens and Teasers
127: Starlingford's Inspirations, Cuttings and C-47s
128: LMS and C1 Services
129: Christmas 2016
130: Deltic, Lion and a 72xx
131: Wandering Weathered Westerns
132: How to Detail a Steam Locomotive

We now return you to our regular scheduled broadcast


Hi all.

When my parents moved house last year it seemed like a heaven-sent opportunity to colonise a new, larger loft. My previous layout, another loft-based effort, had been 10' x 5', which was a goodish size, but it had a lot of problems with poor wiring, hastily-applied scenery and a truly horrific sag in the middle (clearly, if you're using chipboard, you HAVE to support it with a box framework). Still, it was fun and action-packed. Here are some pictures:

[TOM M]

it looks great i like the way youve put planes and trains together in one
how big is it

thanx
tom

[boyofbears]

wow

it looks really good, especially the planes!!!

if there is a run way, then there is like a certain scale for it so that it is the right length, are the planes the same scale as the trains?

[Black-Marlin]

With a new attic, though, I had a lot more room to play with. My layout now, Starlingford, which is progressing achingly slowly (not my fault - I'm in Aberdeen, Scotland, and the layout is in Bangor, Northern Ireland) is 10' x 16', which is considerably more interesting! With the addition of some supplemental boards I have about a hundred square feet (there's a 12' x 8' operator's well) of track-laying-area to play with.

I decided not to have a fiddle yard but instead to have a marshalling yard, which could fulfil the same function but with scenery on. Don't know yet if this was a good idea or not - for some reason, it is the only part of the layout where the scenery is nearing completion. Other areas are still bare chipboard (and yes, this time I did include a sub-frame of 2" x 1" timber).

Here are some pics for your viewing pleasure...






However, the long straight pictured above seemed somewhat uninteresting, and I had a further problem: what was I meant to do with the long Hornby bridges (the suspension bridge and 9 arches of viaduct) that I had from the previous layout?

Part of the problem was that I had a double track mainline and both bridges were single road. I hadn't heard of Hornby's new(ish) Skaledale double-track viaduct, and anyway, the objective was to use old stuff, not go out and buy more! In the end I decided that if I was going to use both bridges I needed to have the tracks separated by quite a margin. My justification would be that, in true prototypical fashion, the suspension bridge had a weight limitation placed on it, thus requiring a sturdier viaduct for heavy freight trains (cunning, eh?)

Have had bad experiences with inclines a couple of layouts ago, when my first trainset (Hornby's 'Night Mail' with City of Nottingham in BR Maroon) rose and fell in undulating waves (in the immortal words of Terry Pratchett, "The landscape rose and fell like a honeymoon duvet"), I decided to be brave and drop a whole section of baseboard. Then, because I like contrast, I decided to have the bridges disappear into a tunnel. Here are the pics:

[Black-Marlin]

wow

it looks really good, especially the planes!!!

if there is a run way, then there is like a certain scale for it so that it is the right length, are the planes the same scale as the trains?

Ah - my (not-so-) secret shame. There was a vague approximation of a runway: it was not even close to the length it ought to have been!

And to answer your other question, I model in 4mm (i.e. 00 gauge), which is 1:76 scale. Planes and other military models by companies such as Airfix, Revell, Italeri, Corgi, Hasegawa, Academy and Matchbox come in 1:72 scale. While to a purist these are different, in practical terms you simply cannot see any variance. For example, here are Dragon and Forces of Valor tanks crossing Hornby track in front of Superquick card buildings:












Although these are from a diorama - built for no other reason than 'I was bored' - they do illustrate the extent to which you can supplement railway scenery with militaria, and vice versa. it's worth checking out the accessories packs produced by Hasegawa and others. They tend to be slightly cheaper than specialist 'railway' items produced by Ratio, etc., but come on: a barrel is a barrel, and why pay more for one from a 'railway' specialist?

Cheers,
Gavin

[PTmodeller]

I'm in Aberdeen, Scotland, and the layout is in Bangor, Northern Ireland)

Who taught you Geography?

[Spavo]

Excellent photo's of those wrecked superquick buildings.....very good ineed.....

[Black-Marlin]

Even though I used Hornby's Virtual Railway CD-ROM (so it's the old one, not the new DVD) I found that life was much easier if I laid track, saw what worked and what didn't, and adjusted accordingly. Apart from anything else, the CD wouldn't permit a layout more than 10' x 6'! In the end I used the old track from the old layout, as it was knackered anyway and wouldn't mind a few knocks and tweaks. Even so, I still wound up changing my mind again...and again...and again...

Here are some photos of the original track layouts...plans which now only exist in these pics...














However, I learnt the hard way that these just wouldn't work. In particular, the siding on the edge of the board proved calamitous, as my Bachmann V2 took a spectacular dive over the side and fell onto the hardwood floor , which wasn't good for either the locomotive or my daily vocabulary.

And the turntable, though interesting-looking, was limited in that two of the sidings you see are isolated and it too is somewhat precarious. Clearly, a rethink was called for.

[Black-Marlin]

I'm in Aberdeen, Scotland, and the layout is in Bangor, Northern Ireland)

Who taught you Geography?

Someone who failed to take into account the truly stunning irony that probably the single best place to study Northern Irish literature is the North-East of Scotland. As a result I'm limited to modelling Starlingford during the holidays, but I have another project here that I'm calling 'Marlbrook'. It's a 9 foot end-to-end layout (again, 00), and hopefully I'll be starting a new forum on it soon.

Gavin

[PTmodeller]

Oh.

[Black-Marlin]

After much thought about the turntable, I realised there was a way to make much more efficient use of the space. If I moved it down, connecting to both the main line and the marshalling yard, I could use a third controller and power clip to power the turntable and everything off it (this is where the Hornby turntable comes into its own for the non-wiring-enlightened. The instructions enable you to just set it up and go.) As a result I could have two trains running on the up and down mainlines, and use the third controller to shunt in the marshalling yard via the turntable.

It sounds more complicated than it is. Hopefully the pictures should demonstrate what I mean.

Here is the turntable before my electrics epiphany:



...And here it is afterwards:

[TOM M]

wow

[Black-Marlin]

wow

Thanks!

[Black-Marlin]

So with track finalised, pinned, and the 'Siding of Death' lifted, it was time to think about ballasting. First of all I replaced the siding with a strip of meadow, because who wants to look at ten feet of gravel? Here are the pics:








...And then we deal with everything else and overgrow the lesser used tracks a little:








Remember, this is what the marshalling yard used to look like:


Whereas this is what it looks like now:

[chrisalddin]

have a look at my layout in my Sig

you see how i have stopped the Skydiving trains with a good idea!
see last reply in thread