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[Jmyrick]

Incredible!

[ivanf]

what doug said!

hope the exhibition goes well.

any plans for another video? I enjoyed the last one a lot.

[martink]

The first day of the exhibition is over, and the layout performed well and always had a full crew of viewers. For what it is worth, Orbost is there and looking good as well - two T gauge layouts!

I do intend to make another video and update the article on my website as soon as the exhibition is over - the video should be pretty much a remake of the last but of the layout in its new guise, hopefully with improved camera technique too.

The stock is standing up well to heavy use, but I am glad I whipped up a quick and dirty 3-car class 101 as a spare train the night before. I found a suitable image on the web, turned it into a carefully-sized DIY roof-and-sides overlay with Paint and Gimp, printed it out on plain paper, glued it to some spare body shells, and applied a coat of matt varnish.

The usual cruel, cruel closeup...

[martink]

The railway survived its first exhibition. Other than a few gremlins with the optical detectors, one pair of locos slipping and an intermittent fault with the roads, it all held up very well. The track was completely trouble-free and needed no cleaning, the locos never stalled (other than the temporary single-motor-unit DMU) and only needed superficial wheel cleaning overnight. Very, very happy.

I've cobbled together a new video (no captions yet). I liked the previous format and plot, so have pretty much repeated it here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_5s75-t01A

[ivanf]

Pleased to hear things went well.

And thanks for the video it's all looking fantastic!

[hedge]

Fantastic! Loved the bus/car crash. Lent an extra air of verisimilitude. Amazing achievement and should help put T on the map.

[dkightley]

Nice video...and glad the layout proved popular.

Another nail in the "T is a gimmic" coffin!!

[nscaler69]

For Martink and any others in Australia, 3 photos of Sarum Bridge taken at the recent Caulfield exhibition have been printed in issue 26 of 'Model railways in Australia' magazine.
The first photo has the caption "You like mini mini railways. Well this is mini mini"

Greg M
Adelaide

[martink]

It has been a long while since I have posted anything on this thread. Over the last two years the layout has been to a few shows and has had some minor upgrades to the control electronics. My plan was to basically retire the layout and replace it with a new, more ambitious exhibition layout, but alas, work commitments mean that the new one is postponed for at least another year.

So - plan B is give Sarum a minor facelift and let it have another year or two in the limelight.

The first stage of the upgrade is nearly done - a complete revamp of the electronics to finally get low-speed running and station stops up to the standard I want. The new system has been built, tested and (sigh) shipped to Doug for installation on The Bridge. I am now building a duplicate copy for my own use, and that should be ready in a week or two.

The second stage is get one or two new trains into service. With its existing set of three running continuously and full time at every exhibition, they get fairly tired by the end of the show, so having another couple to share the load should help a lot. I have a pile of Ozrail's improved wagons ready for the paint shop, and I hope the new wheel sets will let me run longer goods trains. Still thinking about the other one.

The third stage is to extend the layout by a few inches at the castle end. That has always been the rural backwater end of the layout, with nothing very interesting happening. This stage will add a simple working canal scene, with a couple of narrow boats shuttling back and forth. I can even see how I might implement a working lock, but the effort involved for that part says "not this year".

The fourth stage is to extend the layout a few inches at the town end, and then scrap the existing town and replace it with a much more extensive town scene, with a much more elaborate (working) road network.

The fifth stage will be to build and fit new backscenes. The existing ones were intended to be temporary, but experience shows there is nothing as permanent as a temporary expedient. Still thinking about these.

Anyway, the new stuff should start appearing on this thread piecemeal over the coming months.

First pic... the new control electronics and panel (unit #1, as shipped to Doug):

[zdrada69]

Very impressive layout. Congratulations.