Thursday, 2 October 2025

Stalling: Designing an urban layout in OO


Things took a rapid turn for the worse yesterday.
Mr. Hill rocked up yesterday with the overall intention to attack some O gauge planning for his layout. This has become so successful, despite being hardly begun, that he was inundated by phone calls enquiring about it as an exhibit for shows next year. Such is the price of stardom.
In addition, attention turned to the card layout and possible development of, as there were several recently built applicable items lying around. The general thrust of this was to rebuild Hopwood (see tab above) but in reverse plan, with purely Superquick kits and with a more generous FY.


From a direct flipped plan, things were moved about on 6 x 1' of area, then it dawned that with the mainly pull-push Southern stock envisaged, the release pointwork at the platform end became largely redundant and the whole thing started leaning towards the bastard child of a Futer's Fork and Minories.


This would only require three points as above. The scenics would be a 1960s style card building base with a couple of vintage Airfix items tossed in where needed, i.e. the butchered footbridge. The one or two figures on the platform are cast items from Dinky thus completing the vibe. The feel of it in my head would appeal to 'gentlemen of a certain age' and would definitely be the anti-DCC/sound approach.
Early days, but this has got definite legs on it. The O gauge, well that's todays workload and don't even mention the TT.....

 

Building a Superquick platform


 So there I was bowling along the South Coast as one does, and almost by accident found myself in Gaugemaster or The Engine Shed. Only it's not called that now and now goes by a name that is so memorable that I'd forgotten what it was by the time I'd got past the till. But I digress. 

There was a box of Superquick. Between you and me I don't think they are interested in selling this sort of thing now, but as I'm on a bit of a roll with things card this week I picked up the above and the signal box. The platform, I worked out, may well be an older version of the kit, which is a problem on one level, but a boon on another. It took me an hour and I was distracted at the same time by other stuff, so a good modeller would have taken half that. Goes together really easily with no glitches, the only mod' may be some extra support in the underside and I touched in the edges with some white paint. 

Still works for me and the card layout is one step nearer.

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Wednesday, 1 October 2025

Building copper clad O gauge points


  Not done one of these for a while, as I mentioned in an earlier post. Essentially complete here save the gapping of the copper. This is a pretty basic design that most people could get their heads around. Even the filing of the switch rails is not too onerous with this weight of rail. In this case 125 FB which was what was in stock. The length is a tad shorter than the standard Peco product at 16.5" and has a 1:5 angle.

I need two more of these for Mr. Hills layout and a possible one for the FY as it stands now. This is without name or final plan, though will probably be the usual four-point Gammon End design that is well worn on these pages.


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