It's been eight long months... and the shelf layout is gone, and the roundy roundy is gone. Both were dismantled due to frustration and lack of progress. The shelf layout didn't make much sense and the roundy roundy wasn't wide enough.
Over the past eight months I rebuilt both to more sensible track plans but ultimately they faced the same fate.
The shelf layout got rebuilt using a 3 point track plan inspired by Paul Marshall-Potter's shelfie3 layout and the timelapse shown here - https://albionyard.com/2024/06/22/time-after-time-shelfie-3/
The Peco track and points got relaid like so:
A simple back and forth for mostly wagons using the 08.
Which is fine - I even got to the point of fitting seep point motors, making use of the electrofrog capability of the unifrog points, new DCC system - the whole shebang.
Similarly the roundy roundy got dismantled too and rebuilt as this -
Inspired by the famous OO Bredon layout, it worked really well and would've no doubt made an excellent first layout if it ever got completed. But we had a reshuffle at home which meant the 5ft x 2.5ft baseboard got moved into my home office/spare bedroom but the only way it could fit was such that the 2.5ft end was accessible without clambering onto the bed. This obviously was never going to work. I tried reworking the trackplan but no. So that got ripped up too and the Hornby track sold.
So now what am I left with - well, the shelf layout needs to be dismantled and I can no doubt sell the Peco points and bits of flex track. The seep motors are reusable as is most of the wiring, switches and DCC system.
But I've got a lot a TT:120 rolling stock sat in boxes and I started to accumulate cheap OO items too which is leaving me in a pickle.
My main interest in railways is the LMS as well as the Midland and LNWR railways. It appears it's going to be a long old time before any rolling stock for those railways is available in TT:120. So far all we've got for LMS is the massive Princess Coronation and Stanier 57ft coaches.
So this got me thinking, and being the skinflint that I am, I realised that for the price of a single Stanier coach, I can get 3 decent albeit old OO coaches. There's the Airfix corridor and non-corridor stock, Mainline's period 1 and 2 coaches, Hornby's non-prototype Period III stock and others. That's without even looking at the recent releases.
Similar for the price of the Princess Coronation, I could get 3 or 4 OO locomotives in LMS livery if I'm lucky - everything from small tank engines to Black 5's and bigger. Sure they might not be DCC ready but that's easily sorted if I need.
Which makes me think about the value proposition of OO as a beginner's scale. This is no doubt helped by the demographic certainty that nobody wants to talk about that results in lots of OO stock being available time and time again.
So now here I am planning a 6ft x 4ft beginner OO layout on 4 portable boards that can be put either on top of a bed, or in the living room, whenever I want to play trains.
It's inspired by a CJ Freezer plan I found in one of his old trackplan books -
And by the excellent layout created by YouTuber KV12543 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfUz6pv9-_A - this series of videos really shows how even a 6ft x 4ft layout can achieve realism and I love the names!
However instead of a terminus as in the original plan I've gone for a passing loop station located close to a mainline junction, with a small goods yard and engine shed to justify running some of the bigger locos and longer trains. Yes it's a trainset layout, and yes it's compressed beyond reality but there is a charm to that which I think some of the more prototypical layouts lack. To begin with I'll stick to DC control since it'll be relatively simple using a one/two engine in steam approach and the setrack points will control power in the fiddleyard as required. There's even space in the future to add a turntable on the upper left hand board to make operations more realistic. There will be a suitable backscene with tunnels/bridges to disguise the scenic break of course.
My plan is to use the Hornby buildings that I remember from my childhood (although I'm aware the current ones use stickers for the textures so I'll try to obtain the original versions if I can). The country station set (R8000) will fit in the left bottom corner, with a bridge over to a station halt set (R590) lengthened with an extra platform or two. I'll make use of the trackmat accessory sets 4+5 to round out the buildings. The upper half of the layout will be for storage/fiddling with enough space for most of the locos I've acquired and a couple of sets of coaches/wagons. In the scenic bottom half the track will be a mixture of streamline and setrack using the newer unifrog curved points and small radius electrofrog points to improve slow running. I'll stick with setrack points in the fiddleyard.
I think this will be a more productive project than trying to continue with TT:120. The total projected cost of this layout is roughly half that compared to the equivalent sized TT layout with a similar amount of rolling stock. Although as mentioned in OO I've acquired a good selection of LMS tank and tender engines that reflect the reality of the LMS in the late 1930s/early 40s much better - and at a much lower cost. They also aren't aflicted by the teething issues of TT:120 locomotives such as the issues with motors, bogies catching and causing shorts and coaches scraping around even wide radius curves.
So I plan to offload my TT:120 stock onto eBay and continue picking up OO bargains whilst I continue to plan this layout. Hopefully I'll keep this more up to date with my progress.
