A diary of Tramway Demiel

Well done Mikey, you're officially open!

I would say that 30 people is a quite respectable attendance - it's on a par with most G Scale Society open days I've been to - as indeed was your weather!

I'm curious to know what the locals made of it? It impresses the hell out of me, especially as I have been privileged to watch it develop over the last couple of years.

HeHe, comments ranged from a simple "Mon Dieu!" to "Do all zee eenglish 'ave zis in their gardens?"
A few people said they would like to come again, so that was good

mikey

FELICITATIONS

Well done Mikey, 30 sounds a very healthy attendance.

Thanks for the continuous stream of photos. It is much appreciated that I can regularly watch your excellent layout develop.


David

thanks for the kind comments. We all have the option of looking at a thread or not but I know that one picture can be worth, well at least a hundred words! (and its quicker to post!)
This railway stuff is an absolute obsession!!

Mikey

True enough Mikey, apart from:

Railway stuff is a hobby

French Tramways of the year 1910 - that is an absolute obsession!

But, more power to your elbow I say, as long as you keep posting photos for the rest of us sensible people

Seeing as you seem to understand my 'obsession', heres the progress on Mr Benet's mini chateau,(needs a light coloured wash to blend in the stone textures);



and here is where its going to go, prepared for gravel, and ornamental pond sited;



The idea is that a seperate rail line will enter his estate, go round the house, stop at his private halt ready to convey him who knows where (and yes this really happened in UK and in France!)

mikey

Well done with your open day !
No-one ever tells you how truly deeply stressful getting ready really is....
I only have a few visitors at a time, and Sam reckons I spend the previous four hours
charging round the garden muttering "never again".

Anyway, keep the piccies coming....and be obsessed by all means - it gets results.

That's a great chateau, Mikey - looks like it won't be getting blown over either! Will you be doing that 'climbing ivy' effect on it?

Your buildings are amazing , I am have been looking at a small welsh cottage kit for the past 3 months (its sitting on my workbench) debating how I am going to paint it as I am not really into this painting lark.

Peter, I would never dare to tell somebody how to do something, but if its any help; Decide on what overall colour you would like the building to be (thats determined by the type of stone used). Paint the whole lot with that colour which is then your base coat. If ,for example, its a Welsh cottage google it and look at images to see how the stone weathers. I then put little amounts of various acrylic colours on a plate and using a dry brush technique (using a brush that i have cut the bristles down to about 1/2 inch) I dip in the colour,take off the surplus and then tap it all over the base coat. then repeat using all the different colours you can see in the stone. After a while you will have created texture and it will look quite realistic.. At the moment i am using Valeja acrylics as they have a lot more pigment in them and weather quite well outdoors

mikey

Heres the two tram locos in the passing loop;






Mikey

It’s looking good Mikey, looks like a busy morning on the tramway. With regards to the painting, thanks for the info, I suspect it is just getting started. I will post a pic on my thread

Nice pics again Mikey!

Peter, just make sure you share the pics of your progress!

The 8.30 passes under the new bridge under construction;





This gives some idea of the Chateau project progress. You can see in the second picture why it is not necessary to have moveable points as the train can pass around the loop in either direction;





Mikey

I suppose the château got the extension loop for granting running rights for the tramway to run over some of its extensive estate.
Looking good Mikey.
I think the château is beginning to look like Carls country pad with its garden railway.

I am also impresses by the way your vegetation is growing; mine is growing at the same pace as the railway…. Very slowly.

Here's the successful results of a project I started a couple of weeks ago; I've never been impressed with the LGB smoke generators, nor the amount of smoke shown in pictures of live steamers unless, like Brians, they are taken when there is snow on the ground. I bought a smoke machine (machine a fumee) from french ebay ( a company called 'multi discount', yes a french firm) for 29 euros, its a 700 watt output ,which is normally about 90 euros, they are 'seconds' in as much as the paint finish is blemished, but the works are guaranteed. Anyway I connected a length of plumbing copper pipe to the nozzle and a length of housepipe, buried it under the track with a small brass nozzle at the end. Its remotely controlled and here (at last you say) are the results;







I think its impressive.

Mikey

BTW if anybody is tempted to copy make sure you get a 'smoke' machine and not a 'fog' machine. The fogs have a higher percentage of water to make smaller drops and may cause damage to your models. The smoke is dry and once 1 metre away from the machine is not hot.

mikey

Woww . I need one of those for my Brewery chimney

They are bril Peter. I'm working on a way of connecting a hoselock multitap so that i can have three hosepipes for a housefire, papermill chimney, and the station. You can get the smoke liquid for about 4 euros a litre .

mikey

OK so we've installed steam/smoke on the layout and the next thing is sound. Again i'm not impressed with DCC soundcards, wrong sounds and too quiet. so a couple of years ago my daughter gave me a pair of stereo wharfedale speakers. today i cut them down and made a box for them to go in. attached fibre glass insulation at the back and bubble wrap at the front to waterproof them like this;



Add a front cut from an old lawnmower grass basket and a roof;




It now looks like one of those French electricity generating buildings. Now installed alongside the station with another one at the other end. I make my own CD's with my home studio, so with some downloaded steam sounds, bells, whistles etc the speaker is connected with some old cable to a CD/tape player and is very effective. the brain is fooled into thinking that the sound is coming from the moving train, (similar effect to surround sound on a TV where the sound actually comes from either end of a room but the brain assumes its coming from the moving mouth!)

mikey

Yet more ingenuity from l'atelier Mikey!

I had a similar idea salted away that involved a cheapo mp3 player plugged into a small speaker and secreted about the workshop bit of my pipe-works. My reasoning was that it would take even less power than something mechanical like a tape/CD player. I borrowed some 'industrial' sound effects wav files to load it with, but haven't got round to doing anything more

I'm intrigued as to how this will turn out!

Earlier this evening we buried the cable and ran it under the track and across the 'river'. the idea is to build a small shed for storage with a control panel for sound and other effects that are planned. I downloaded some steam sounds, shunting etc and then swiped the soundtrack from a commercial video of an old tramway. Of course this system is no good if you want to speed things up because the sound wont change, unlike DCC, but its ideal for a slow tramway engine plodding around town! the problem with MP3 player is that the earphone socket is not loud enough to power a decent sized speaker, you have to amplify the sound first which then becomes the same as using a CD player.

Mikey

I think your opinion of DCC sound cards might be a little out of date, Mikey. I use ESU cards and the sounds are extraordinarily good, both the recording and the sampling/looping. Dietz sounds are fantastic too. A lot depends on the speaker however and how its installed. You need it fixed firmly down so it won't vibrate and inside a space such as (on a steamer) the boiler or a side tank.

So you need to know what you're doing when you fit them - which I don't so a local electronic whiz kid fits mine for me.

And I find them much too loud! I have mine turned down to about 35% volume and that is still loud enough for the neighbours to notice.

I think Mikey should work with "the salvageur"
They will make a good team.

mikeyh wrote:

Here's the successful results of a project I started a couple of weeks ago; I've never been impressed with the LGB smoke generators, nor the amount of smoke shown in pictures of live steamers unless, like Brians, they are taken when there is snow on the ground. I bought a smoke machine (machine a fumee) from french ebay ( a company called 'multi discount', yes a french firm) for 29 euros, its a 700 watt output ,which is normally about 90 euros, they are 'seconds' in as much as the paint finish is blemished, but the works are guaranteed. Anyway I connected a length of plumbing copper pipe to the nozzle and a length of housepipe, buried it under the track with a small brass nozzle at the end. Its remotely controlled and here (at last you say) are the results;



I think its impressive.

Mikey

Looks like your sapeurs pompiers now have a raison d'etre.