For me, building a model railway is not about the destination, it’s about the journey.
Some Updates
I’ve added a few retrospective updates to the Baseboard Build page to show the little bits I’ve done since my last update.
There will be a major change in my life soon that will hopefully mean that I will have more time to spend on building my model railway layout.
Not as big as I hoped
So just to get an idea of the length of trains I’m going to be able to run I tried laying some plywood boards on the cross-members I’ve put in already and got some carriages out of storage. Just from setting them out roughly, it looks as though the maximum train length I’m going to be able to run is 8 carriages.
This will influence the design of the station on the scenic level of the layout (based on Hadley Wood). I’m going to have to make the scenic break at the road overbridge and station building point rather than the southern tunnel just the other side of it. This also has the added advantage of hiding part of the train ‘off scene’ and not filling the whole station area.
Finally, Another Update!
Unfortunately, life/death/work/family/gardening, etc. hasn’t left me much time to spend on the model railway. I have, however, just about finished the loft preparation and have started work on building the actual railway. All the updates will be under New Layout.
One Year Later
So, it has been just over a year since my last update. The reason for this is that we have been preoccupied with our move into our new house which finally happened in March this year. Since then we have been busy sorting things out with the house and doing loads of gardening. As the winter is approaching my thoughts are once again turning towards building a model railway. I am continuing to carry out research and build up ideas and plans in my head and I will be setting out my current thinking under the New Layout section.
It’s Done!
The old loft is cleared out and all the model railway stuff is down in the spare bedroom ready to be packed up. A bit sad in a way given all the work I did up there but I always thought of it as a ‘practice’ layout to learn lessons from. Hopefully, the next people to go up there will be the new owners of the house. Who knows when I’ll be able to get it all out again and start building my next layout. Here are some pictures of the empty loft –
Here are some pictures of all my model railway stuff in the spare room ready to be packed up.
Old Layout Update
I’ve also made more progress with dismantling my old layout. All the track is up and all the electrics are removed. I’ve brought some of it down from the loft and put it in the spare bedroom. I’ve just got to pack my tools up, pack all the bits of wood up, get it all down and give the loft a quick hoover. Here are some pictures –
Belated House Move Update
There has been some progress on our sale but not on our purchase. We were given an ultimatum by our buyers who wanted to exchange last week with a completion date at the end of September. We said no way and they came back with a completion date of the end of October. We thought this was fair and we couldn’t expect them to wait any longer so we agreed. We exchanged contracts on the 28th of August so our house is now sold. This is a relief because we are half packed and didn’t want to go through the whole sales process again. Unfortunately, though it means that if we haven’t made any progress with our purchase we are homeless on the 30th of October. We will have to look at some sort of temporary accommodation such as an AirBnB holiday home. Hopefully, there will be more available out of season. We are praying that the people we are buying off and their solicitor get their act together and that we can complete on our purchase as well.
Back to Plan A
So, we’ve had a look at renting somewhere and got nowhere really. The final straw was seeing a letter from our buyer’s solicitors saying they want to exchange this week and complete ASAP. We decided we are NOT being pushed by an impatient buyer into going into rented. We would have to sign up to a 6 month contract and if it’s all sorted in a couple of months end up paying 4 months rent and mortgage. We told the estate agent this and our buyers are now ‘staying with family’ in order to complete their sale. If they want to look to buy another house it’s going to take them a couple of months to go through that process anyway so they might as well wait for us (or rather the people we’re buying off).
It’s All Gone Pete Tong
Unfortunately the house move seems to have hit an obstacle. The property we are buying is part of a larger farm that is being split and we have found out that the owners have a mortgage on the whole property. So, this has to be split as well as the title at the Land Registry that we already knew about. Our solicitor says that this may take many months which understandably our buyers, or rather their buyer, are not willing to wait. Our buyers say they will go into rented but obviously there is the worry that they will then look at other properties and may find something better. It looks like we may have to go into rented while we wait for the split to be sorted. Of course we are then in a good position if we see anything better come on the market. It does mean we will have to move twice but hopefully we can do the second one ourselves at a slower pace. The difficulty with rented though is finding somewhere big enough to store all our stuff, with parking for three cars that will take a pet (our elderly cat). It would also be good to get somewhere near the house we are currently trying to buy.
Quick Update on the Move
So two things have happened –
- We have received an electronic and paper copy of the survey on the new property. When it mentions the outbuilding it says that it is single-skinned and doesn’t have a damp proof course. This will make it a lot more work and money to get it converted into habitable accommodation. So, instead of an annexe or holiday let it could become the new home for my model railway. But…
- There was also the good news that they have increased the Stamp Duty limit to £500k. As we had already arranged the mortgage to include the Stamp Duty we will now have that money left over after completion. This will give us a bit to spend on doing the place up but whether it would be enough to convert the outbuilding we will have to see.
A Little Bit More
The bubble wrap arrived, I think I may have ordered a bit too much!
It won’t fit through the loft hatch! Never mind, it will get used when we finally get to move.
I’ve taken all the track up at the far end of the loft and all the Heath Robinson extra woodwork that it was laid on. There were a lot of metal brackets in it that might be useful in the new build. I also got some potentially useful screws out of it. It was a bit tricky getting some of it up and I had to lay on the baseboard to do it. Some of the track got badly damaged when I tried to lift it because the pins were in tight.
Apart from that it was just generally sorting things out and working out how I’m going to pack them up. I briefly considered the
On the house move front we had a full survey done on the new house on Monday. We’ve only had a brief verbal report by phone so far but there was mention of mice and bats in the lofts. This worries me a bit but I’ll wait and see what the full written report says.
Second Day
I’m back up in the loft again today. I’ve done some more packing away of rolling stock (still can’t find that box!) and I’ve actually started lifting the track. Some bits are coming up much easier than others and there are some pieces of track that I will definitely not be able to re-use. With the bits pinned on the ends of the sleepers, the rail tended to come out of the tiny chairs that hold it on code 75 track and it never goes back in. One thing I have discovered is that track pins draw a lot of blood! I’m not trying to save any of the track pins, they’re all going in the bin. The old monitor I had plugged into my laptop up there is out ready to go to the tip. The Black & Decker workmate I was using has come down and gone out to the shed.
I was really getting ‘into the zone’ in the afternoon when I was dragged away for family responsibilities (I had to go and look at a ladies puppies!).
Back to work tomorrow so no more progress for a while.
Finally Started
So today I finally managed to drag myself up the loft and start packing/dismantling my old layout. I think I was putting it off because it seems a shame to undo the work I’ve done and because I didn’t know where to start! Anyway, I decided to start with packing away all the rolling stock. I have some plastic towers of drawers with wheels on that I think should be OK for moving if I put some tape
I kept the packaging for the Peco points so I can use this to protect them. I wish I had kept the boxes that the Flexi track came in. I have one new pack but all the salvaged track will have to be tied up and put in bubble wrap (I ordered a big roll of it today).
I have found most of the boxes for the rolling stock but there’s still one that is eluding me. Identifying which wagons or coaches go in which box was a bit tricky but a bit of Googling the product code helped.
Some of it I bought unboxed so again they will have to be carefully cocooned in bubble wrap. I’m not sure how I’m going to package the scenery yet.
The boxes seem to be fitting in OK and I’ve tried to stop them sliding about with various bits and pieces like squashed cardboard.
I think the whole process is going to take a lot longer than I thought so I’m glad I’ve started it. The house move seems very quiet at the moment but these things have a habit of suddenly all coming together and I don’t want to get caught out.
My First Post
So, this is my first post on my blog and I’ll explain the current situation. We are at the start of the emotional rollercoaster of moving house. We have an offer on ours and we have put in an offer on our dream home. I should be up in the loft dismantling my current layout but at the moment I just can’t motivate myself to do it. I’ve got as far as taking some pictures and videos of it as it is, to remember it and as a record of what I did for reference in building the new layout.
As it stands now I haven’t even seen the potential new home for my layout (we viewed the property but didn’t look up in
