Model Railway Forum

Thank you BB and Artur for your posts. Regarding the under-scale buildings, I'm glad its not just me who thinks so. I can't complain as I bought them second-hand and already made from a shop, so very much 'sold as seen' - I saw them before I bought.

I would add that I don't think being under-scale is limited to the continental model companies. I've always thought that the Airfix / Dapol church and railway station are clearly not 1/76 scale. I have seen tiny stone churches in real life but they are different in style and features to the Dapol version. Just up the road from my house is a church that looks remarkably like Dapol's and it's a whopper. The Dapol station has lots of windows and not enough bricks between them. I don't mean that it's impossible structurally, but it is not the proportions they would have used.

Dapol Church


The Dapol 1930s houses behind and to the left of the church are a similar size to the church.

Airfix / Dapol Railway Station


The photo doesn't show the station windows very clearly, but notice the size of the houses behind, They are also Dapol, except the closest to the camera. I like these kits very much, but the scale is surely not correct. NB Both photos are of my layout from several years ago - happy days!

A marvelous explosion of activity. The S&G is one of my favorite British layouts, demonstrating how much can be done in a small area to great effect.

I read this thread from A to Z a lot of times. I really love this layout !

Thank you Chops and Raboliot. It really is nice to get some positive feedback.

The good news is that I've relaid the three inner circuits with mostly new track and I've run lots of locomotives and rolling stock, and they all rolled really well. That was a great relief as this included finally installing two new sets of curved points and I was worried that they wouldn't align with the set track and flexi-track.

I've also cleaned and oiled most of my locomotives, and bought a Sentinel in Manchester Ship Canal dark blue livery and a British Rail maroon six-wheel mess coach, so I can truly say that I've got my model railway mojo back.

I'll try to take and upload some photos tomorrow. I took some previously but they were too dark to use due to the darkness of the day that I took them.

Hi everybody,
Here are the photos as promised yesterday.

Hornby MSC Sentinel


Hornby BR Mess Coach Pulled by Old Faithful


I haven't put the scenic features back on the base board yet, so I just temporarilly placed some model buildings behind the trains for visual effect.

Hi Everybody,
Three months have passed and it's good to be back. I was just getting the SGR together when a family crisis struck. This is now under control, but it reduced my railway time to zero for a while. Since I last posted I have put much of the scenery onto the layout - very provisionally - and have run some trains. They ran very smoothly, so I'm still very pleased with my track laying. Here are a few photos of moving trains. I know many MRF members don't like this effect (I did a 'straw poll' several years ago and got more against than for) but I'm doing it purposely just this once to prove that it's really up and running.







The three photos show moving trains on the four circular tracks. It's hard to see but in the first photo there's a black locomotive just disappearing to the right of the grain silo pulling some white roofed coaches. The fifth track - a branch line that joins the outer oval to the Gdynia docks - also functions but is only being used by static rolling stock in these pictures. You may notice that I've simplified the backscene since I last posted. This is a temporary version until I add a long thin detachable extension to the baseboard in that area. When that's done, I'll paint the definitive backscene. Picture 2 showcases my scratch built road bridge. Probably I should buy some more Wills Kits brick-effect plasti-card to face it down, but that will have to wait. Now that the bridge is constructed, I want to produce the raised hill area that the bridge attaches to. At the moment, there is just air at the end of the bridge. Rather dangerous for motorists!

So, some progress has been made.

Hi everyone,
There's good news and bad news. The good news is that I've got lots of new SGR photos showing most of my locomotives and rolling stock on the layout with scenery and figures. The bad news is that the SGR is dismantled and leaning against the the loft wall and is likely to be there until October. So the plan is to upload some photos every so often on MRF and do some work on some scenery and figures so that new stuff is ready when the layout returns. That will keep the SGR ticking over. I must say I enjoyed my two or three weeks of running trains, putting on scenery and taking photos. Here are the first photos.

Old Faithful


Little Giant


Black Beauty

Great pictures Ian - I look forward to seeing the SGR back up and running - October's not too far away