The Bridge

[SmallCentral]

A titan task Very impressive

[dkightley]

A titan task Very impressive

Thanks for the comment....and yes, it is a titan task!!

Progress since my last post has been steady. I'm nearly at the end of painting buildings for the south end of the layout...just the buildings in the area of Hawes pier to finish off. I've also fitted the platform at he south end for the loop connecting the north and south running rails:

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Notice my unusual way of mounting the controllers. The two pots on the back act as mounting pins that fit into holes drilled vertically in the baseboard, and each controller leans on a small pillar glued to the board. I have switches on order to mount where you can see pencil marks; one to control the power supply to the loop, which is isolated from the main tracks, and the other to switch both north and south lines between one and two controllers.

The north & south running lines will be powered from both ends, which I'm hoping will be sufficient for good running. There's going to be seven or eight pieces of flexitrack connected end to end with power applied at each end. The run round loops will be powered via a centre-off DPDT switch from either the north or south running lines.

[dkightley]

An evening slaving over a hot (well, wet) paint pot....and Hawes Inn is coming to life:

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Seeing those paint pots in the picture just shows how crazily small this is!!

[dkightley]

Its amazing that its now the last day in February....which means I have just over three months to go to get the layout into a state where it can be put on show in an exhibition!

I have now completed painting the buildings for the south side of the Forth...with the exception of the railway bridge and platforms at Dalmeny, which I'll be painting as part of the final assembly. I've also been doing some more on the structure of the layout boards. I've painted and assembled the lighting arms; two floodlights per arm, which fix onto the top of uprights using threaded rods...just cable fixings to add when I assemble the layout for the first time.

The next long jobs are the painting of the buildings for the north side, and progressing on with designing and printing the road surfaces, again for the north side. I'm hoping to have broken the back of these two by the end of March (bearing in mind I have a WW2 Home Front event to manage at the Tramway Museum at Easter which will sap a lot of my time.

The plan at present is that April will see the final assembly of the south side and starting the same for the North side. This will leave May to finish the north side and then finish the assembly and paint the bridge structure, leaving what time is left in May and the two weeks in June to add some detailing and do any final tweaking.

[ivanf]

time for a small hurrah then.

Finishing half the buildings is a bit of a milestone.

hope things stick to the plan.

[SmallCentral]

Courage I'm in the same situation But my layout is more simple

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[dkightley]

Finishing half the buildings is a bit of a milestone.

I wish it was half the buildings.....it's actually 121 out of 373, about a third!! But finishing those on one side of the bridge IS a milestone!

And I wish the same to you, SmallCentral......

[dkightley]

Moving on with one of March's planned jobs.....

I've already prepared the road sections by creating the basic road layouts on paper so I can check the sections will fit each other and the layout board. Here's a shot of some road sections at this phase (on the left) with five (on the right) at the next phase with detailing of drives and road markings:

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You may spot I've done sections 17A, 17b, 21, 22 and 23. There are sections numbered from 1 still to do.....

[dkightley]

Having spent a day away from the layout earning some dosh!!, I'm back on texturing the road sections...and have finished all the sections on the end layout section:

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Progress on these road sections seem so slow......

[SmallCentral]

Courage

[dkightley]

I've nearly finished the road sections!!! Just half a dozen left to do. Here's the current state of North Queensferry:

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And so I can see how it compares, here's a Google Earth view of a similar angle:

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In between creating the road sections, I've been maintaining my sanity by doing bits on the fabric of the stand. Here's a few photos of progress:
An end of one of the turnaround enclosures with a coat of wet emulsion:

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The front and angled sides of the same enclosure with their first coat of paint, with the two parts of the enclosure for the other end behind:

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The six uprights for the lights and a few steadying timbers:

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In the RH box, the six tops for the lights, each with two 10w floods, and in the LH box four more floods , several rolls of Velcro and a pile of luggage bungees to help stop the table legs folding when they shouldn't!:

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As you can see, as I'm getting nearer the finished article, space in my house is rapidly disappearing!!

[dkightley]

At last I've finished creating the detail on the road sections....and confirmed they all fit correctly. Here's a shot of the North Queensferry peninsula with all the road sections positioned with a few unpainted buildings:

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The next step is to print and cut out each section. Fortunately, I can use my Silhouette cutter to get the cutting done accurately.

Before I start that, I think its time I had a change of scenery (uhh,,,sorry for the bad pun) and returned to painting buildings...starting with the few you can see in the photo.

[dkightley]

I've generated about half a bin load of waste paper.....and have got all 27 road sections printed off ready for spray varnishing. All of the sections bar two are made up of three layers (the remaining two having two layers) and once varnished will need flattening out and gluing together. When the varnish dries, they'll curl like those fortune teller fish you get in crackers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cxzI3ZXgok

I'm also making headway with painting buildings....some 15 or so with varying amounts of paint on so far.

I've got an upgrade to a website to finish,,,,,so progress may stutter a bit over the next few days........who said you can relax when you retire?????

[dkightley]

Just had the layout invited to it's fourth.....or should it be Forth ....exhibition. Bill Velox of the Newbury Model Railway Club has just invited the layout to their show next February. Not bad for an unfinished layout!!!

[Nutter]

All looking good, do the shows that have invited you realise how big the bridge will be 😃

[mattinair]

This is great news for promoting T gauge....It's going to be amazing....(!)

[dkightley]

....do the shows that have invited you realise how big the bridge will be

They sure do!! Some of the bigger gauge layouts are quite large....but having said that, my layout will not go un-noticed!

[SmallCentral]

[toodlepip]

You will be backing onto a 42 ft long O gauge oval so the comparison will be quite something when you come to Newbury Doug !

[dkightley]

Amidst all this excitement, there's still the small task of a layout to finish.

Here's the fruits of the last few days armed with a paint brush:

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This is just under half of North Queensferry....slightly jumbled up a bit!