many will be scratchbuilt- "Here here" for scratch building structures! Go Mark!

That is one super plan! I find rolling stock and engines a distraction from scratchbuilding, hence my slow progress.

Philip

David - its a pity I can't scale time the opposite way for layout construction! 'Slow time' where five minutes = one hour. Imagine what you could achieve in a lifetime!

Cheers, Mark.

Yes, Carl - very excited, as always, by this prospect.

Cheers, Mark.

Thanks Philip. It will be a lot of fun to construct.

Below are two photos of the mock up coming together. I blew up my plan to twice the size of the original and printed off several copies. One copy I attached to a piece of foam with glue. I then collected some different sizes of flat headed nails (I used old gun nails) I worked out a vertical scale and used a marker to mark the heights out of the foam on the individual nails and then pocked them into the foam plan at the correct places until my mark was flush with the top of the foam. I then cut out track lines from the other plans, glued these to a cereal card backing, and then glued these to the nail tops.





More soon, cheers, Mark.

I like your track plan. You're smart to mock it up first and make sure it's going to give you the visuals you want. It looks like you, like many of us, like railfaning over operation. I look forward to seeing this project develop.

Bob

Wow! Smart move Mark.

Thanks, Bob.

Its mainly about the scenery building for me. I think there should be plenty of operational possibilities, but watching a train wind its way through the mountains is sure to prevent me from progress on the layout at times! You will see soon my intentions with the model of the model that should help in visualising things at this stage.

Cheers, Mark.

Thanks, Carl.

I'm sure the mockup will pay dividends as I move forwards with the layout.

Cheers, Mark.

Hi guys.

The modeling weekend once again proved very fruitful and a lot of fun. As always I come away super motivated!

The model of the model nearing completion of stage 1.


After I had finished gluing my track plan to my flat headed nails I added walls to the model. These are the back boards of the layout modules, and the height is the ceiling height of these modules - the same height as I have built in Tellynott. The module ceilings are about 8 inches thick, and the top of these just fits under the bottom of the beam between the two rooms. This is so the modules can be unbolted and rolled out (in a very specific order) from the layout rooms if need should arise. I have carefully considered this process in my planning. I'm not sure what the floor height is yet. I just added some height to the track to allow for river valleys. I'll work this out moving forwards. The layout will not go all the way to the floor, but it will go quite low in places.


In included this photo as it shows pretty well how big the area of Shadowlands is. If you were to square off the area to the bottom right - that is the entire Tellynott area. I haven't worked out the square feet yet, but a glance says Shadowlands takes up about twice the area of Tellynott!


Ooops! I tried to go gently with the expanding foam, but it just kept growing!


I had already thought I would need to cut the model into sections so I could view different areas like I was standing in the layout room. The 'oops' meant I just did this step a bit sooner. It will now be far easier to trim and sculpt the foam. You can see I have started this process. Experience whit using this medium has taught me never to try to clean up foam 'oopses' before the foam has cured.


More soon, cheers, Mark.

A layout model of the layout !!! Outstanding planning, will help eliminate 99.9% of problems before they occur, I find your "Tellynott" module build inspirational, the scratch building, kit bashing modification you produce out of this world. Thank you Mark, keep the pics coming.

Tom.

I like the idea of building a model of the layout. Neat idea. Now you'll have to build some rolling stock. What scale would that be? 1:1,000,000.

Bernd

1:1000000

Good luck with the Springs on the Kadee couplers.

Thanks so much for your kind words, Tom.

Its always a pleasure as well as a big motivation, to be able to share my progress with you all. Thank you for following along and for taking the time to comment.

Cheers, Mark.

Thanks Bernd and David.

Actually, although my scale (devised to fit as much onto a piece of A4 paper as possible and then doubled in size for the model) of 1:16 2/3 and HO scale 1:87 are both awful scales, when multiplied together they equal 1:1450, which isn't at all bad. My plan of 1:33 1/3 is 3mm=100mm, which I have no problem working in. leaves about 3mm spare at the end of the A4 paper.

Cheers, Mark.