Hamley Circuit

Discussion in 'Members Personal Layouts' started by Dr Tony, Sep 17, 2019.

  1. Dr Tony

    Dr Tony Full Member

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    Thanks Andy
    Yes, the characters are going to be a bit of fun too, I'm thinking air dried clay and paint and other things like wire.
    I intend to do all the owners of the houses, out the front of them so people get a chance to work out who's house is which. Mr Wrong and Mr Right might prove to be more muddled than Mr Muddle! if you are familiar with the story. I can also make others who either did not have houses in the books or those whose houses were just too hard. Also, none of the Little Miss characters had their houses pictured.
    We may end up with a minion or two popping up, potentially anywhere within the 4 worlds of the layout.
    Cheers
    Tony
     
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  2. Gary

    Gary Wants more time for modelling.... Staff Member Administrator

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    Nice work Tony, great colours too. This will most definitely attract the kids to the layout.

    I do like the little shanties kit you purchased for $5.00 ! I think I spent three times that on materials for my little Pennsy liveried flag stop station (your all yellow building).
    Great stuff. :thumbs::thumbs::thumbs:

    Cheers, Gary.
     
  3. Dr Tony

    Dr Tony Full Member

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    My son is majorly into Minecraft, and lots of his friends, so with one of the 4 worlds of this layout being Minecraft I have had to work out how to do the scenery, quite a departure from normal modelling fare.
    Fortunately one thing has just become easier, figures. They have these blind boxes in the supermarket with a random character in it. There is a code on the pack, but oddly enough, noone in cyberspace has decoded the current series.
    They are close enough to HO/OO for me, and they will save a lot of work. They are a little dearer than the usual Noch or Faller figures, but I'm not buying them, I'm only borrowing them off my son for run days.
    IMG_20201013_201654~2.jpg
    Cheers
    Tony
     
  4. Dr Tony

    Dr Tony Full Member

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    Bit of a rainy day has given me a break from building a compost system, so attention got paid to this layout. Set it all up again, getting quicker at doing this, with the purpose of mapping out where things should be in the "worlds". It also had an impromptu test when one of my son's friends popped in and they could do a head to head between 2 locos for a bit.
    I have now mapped out the Mr Men world, keeping it simple, but remembering that the front of each house is the important bit, as it is the only part that is strictly accurate, the sides and rears are just my imagination and copy paste with CAD. The layout is also only to be viewed from the front.
    The minecraft world has a theme now, it has two "biomes" separated by a river, on one side will be the "plains" which is flat and green, on the other side of the river it will be Mesa, a more desert like area.
    My wife has been given a "world" and she is going to make a more girl friendly area for it. It is quite good looking stuff, but i have totally forgotten what it is called, so watch this space to see how that pans out.
    This layout has been considerably delayed by Covid, most layouts I fancy have been spurred on by Covid, given more time to their builders. But this is a kids play layout for our local markets, and there hasn't been any markets since March (maybe February) but there is a chance that they could start again next year, with a few modifications. Having great boxes of lego for kids to all get into and share probably won't be on, but this where in theory, all they touch is the controller, could be a real asset.
    Cheers
    Tony
     
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  5. Dr Tony

    Dr Tony Full Member

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    Three weeks off work should have resulted in more progress, but Christmas and other house things prevail, such as swapping Michelle's craft/business room with the spare bedroom and my work desk. I now have more space to work from home, as moving forwards, this seems to be more the future.
    Luke has helped designed the Minecraft "biomes". I have stuck with themes that we can successfully achieve. Using a Minecraft guide to Creative, we have come up with 2 parts and a river separating them. Here is the Mesa side.
    All done in MDF, each layer was drawn out of paper, then cut using the scroll saw and glued together.
    Cheers
    Tony
     
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  6. Dr Tony

    Dr Tony Full Member

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    Very slow is the progress, but frequent work trips away don't help progress. Maybe I'll have to be like Rod Stewart on tour and take modelling stuff to the motel...
    I have finally got the biomes made and painted. Now to add a bit of the signature texture to the colour, and to make scenes.
    IMG_20210201_171634~2.jpg
    Cheers
    Tony
     
  7. James76

    James76 Full Member

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    Having a layout with a Minecraft theme: What a cool idea!
     
  8. Dr Tony

    Dr Tony Full Member

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    Using the same techniques as the ground, cut out layered wood, I have made some trees. Drew up some outlines for each size, then put together as random sets, no two trees the same. Might have gone a bit overboard, as I have made 17 of the things, and they will have no use anywhere else but on this section of the layout.
    It's certainly a very different method of making trees for the layout.
    IMG_20210217_091545~2.jpg
    Cheers
    Tony
     
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  9. Gary

    Gary Wants more time for modelling.... Staff Member Administrator

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    It certainly looks very Minecraft Tony. Nice work so far. :thumbs::thumbs::thumbs:

    Cheers, Gary.
     
  10. Dr Tony

    Dr Tony Full Member

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    Change of pace and materials. Getting back to one of my favourite things, assembling plastic kits. There is something very therapeutic about cutting parts off the sprue, filing them down, and then assembling it all.
    This layout of 4 worlds is certainly a mixed media affair. This is for the Ferris wheel on the carnival world.
    IMG_20210221_173949~2.jpg
    Cheers
    Tony
     
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  11. Dr Tony

    Dr Tony Full Member

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    A rainy Sunday allowed opportunity to ballast a module. I have the first public outing of this layout in the first Saturday of May, less than 2 months away. This is the Mr Men board. The roads in the books are white, so will mine be too, does seem odd, but this is a cartoon world.
    Ballasting is proving fairly fast with my usual method of spoon and salt dispenser. The old triang wagon gets a good run as a ballast plow.
    Will take a while to dry with the weather today and this week, but there are plenty of other things to do. Such as making blue grass for Mr Silly's house. IMG_20210314_104632~2.jpg
    Of the 4 worlds, this is the one I have the best chance of finishing totally for the first run. The Minecraft world is well progressed. The fairground world has a few sideshow booths, a working ferris wheel, and a Carousel that I am a bit held up a bit with the motor drive. The fourth world, the fairy garden that my wife is planning has not started yet.
    Cheers
    Tony
     
    Last edited: Mar 14, 2021
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  12. Dr Tony

    Dr Tony Full Member

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    Another rainy Saturday allowed a bit more progress. This time I have decided to drill the holes for the fence uprights before putting the grass down. I'm getting tired of pulling little pieces of sawdust out of the grass. Masking tape works well for taking up the saw dust pieces when using static grass, but for most of this layout I am using ground foam, which does not respond well to the tape method. I am making a very simple post and rail fence between most of the houses where hedges aren't going to be used. This means cutting and placing 78 fence posts!
    Luckily I have one of those choppers for repeat cutting of styrene pieces. I then made a jig for pushing them in, so they all end up at the same height.
    IMG_20210320_122537~2.jpg
    I have also test placed Mr Nonsense's house, up a tree of course! a pink one at that!
    IMG_20210320_222230~2.jpg
    Cheers
    Tony
     
    Last edited: Mar 20, 2021
  13. Dr Tony

    Dr Tony Full Member

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    Getting back to the carnival world while waiting for the glue under the grass to dry and the making of another ride.
    Fun fact while researching this, in Britain these are called Merry-go-rounds and in the US they are called Carousels, no big surprises there. But the main difference is the direction it rotates, the British ones go clockwise from about, the US ones anti-clockwise. We always called them Merry-go_rounds growing up in Oz, so this will go the British way.
    The problem was motorising it. The gearbox that comes with the kit is very poor, it is noisy as it reduces a high speed scalectrix type motor by a worm and this drives a pinion onto a rack on the circumference of the turntable. As you can imagine, the tolerances are quite poor of the mouldings, having a pronounced mould line through the thread of the worm gear does not help either. I did manage to get this arrangement working satisfactorily for the Ferris Wheel, but there is a lot more friction in this one.
    After a bit of head scratching i came up with a new idea to provide rotation. This method for me had the added bonus of no added cost.
    One of my other hobbies is audio, and when I was younger I used to grab all sorts of stereo gear that came my way, some of it was unfixable and I scrapped, saving all the best parts. One of these parts caught my eye for this, a motor driven volume control. This has a motor with a double worm reduction drive. The worm gears are metal and run on metal pins, this should be more durable. The motor turned at just the right speed at 9 volts. The main issue was that as it was built into the volume potentiometer, it would turn 3/4 of a turn and then stop fast of course. So the resistor part had to be disabled. Taking this part out proved to be quite tricky, and I also had to lock the clutch up. This allows the user (when it was part of a stereo) to turn the volume knob normally without the remote. This slipped too much with the load of the ride. A hole was drilled and a nail was placed and bent into position. I would have rather used a small 14BA screw and nut, but I didn't have one to hand.
    IMG_20210325_164934~2.jpg
    I then had the issue of how to make it central, as the whole ride was not built for this sort of drive mechanism. There is a round hole in the centre of the baseplate. I got a piece of 4mm ABS, found a holesaw the same diameter as the hole in the base and cut out a circle with a hole exactly in the middle. It was slightly too large, so putting a bolt through this hole and tightening it on with a nut I was able to mount the thing in a drill, sort of like a wheel. I was able to make a poor man's lathe this way and grind off the outer layer of the ABS to fit the hole in the baseplate with a very tight fit. Put in an extra little hole for the locator of the pot and this was glued into the baseplate.
    Then came the matter of how to drive the turntable and the get the centre again. The path i chose was to use a old volume knob with some good internal ribs and large size for gluing. I then glued two lugs that would make contact with a bar set as a chord across the hole. This would solve the centring problem
    IMG_20210325_164946~2.jpg
    And I'm happy to say it works. Now for some more testing and hopefully assembling of the rest of it.
    Cheers
    Tony
     
    Last edited: Mar 25, 2021
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  14. Dr Tony

    Dr Tony Full Member

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    Over the course of the last week I have managed to get some grass laid. I have had some artistic interpretation of what would be in each space. For the most I have used home made ground foam, using Gormo's coffee grinder colouring method. This is to represent mown grass. For some houses, like Mr Mean I have used an olive green 4mm static grass, as he is too mean to mow. Mr Messy has a collection of dregs of static grass picked out of the applicator, all mixed together after a few scenic sessions. The common areas have a normal coloured static grass. Mr Silly and Mr Nonsense both have ground foam, coloured blue of course!
    IMG_20210403_153104~2.jpg
    After a cleanup, the next task is fences and hedges, then apart from the little figures themselves, this board will be considered done.
    Cheers
    Tony
     
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  15. Dr Tony

    Dr Tony Full Member

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    Finished the fences and hedges, some different coloured hedges, Mr Messy has a dead brown hedge for instance. Mostly scratch built fences, except for the neat one of Mr tickle, and the hacked out one of Mr Mean, they are both Wills fences.
    IMG_20210413_173004~2.jpg
    I am quite proud of my basket weave fence between Mr Dizzy and Mr Silly, used to see this sort of fence a lot in real life, but they have mostly gone now.
    IMG_20210413_173029~2.jpg
    Have to make a couple of gates now and make the figures. Will have the character in question standing outside their own house, and I will have others who do not have a house here walking the street. This is especially the case for the Little Miss characters, as none of the books show their houses.
    Also have to finish off the gardens. But it is basically complete and will do for the first outing of the layout that comes in less than a month.
    It will most likely get regular runs either every month or every second month, so if things change a little and get added to this should help keep it interesting for folk watching it, hopefully enough for parents too.
    Cheers
    Tony
     
    Last edited: Apr 13, 2021
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  16. Dr Tony

    Dr Tony Full Member

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    Finished ballasting the Minecraft world, found out that I have about 2 weeks left
    IMG_20210415_163908~2.jpg
     
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  17. Dr Tony

    Dr Tony Full Member

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    Only 2 weeks to go:eek::eek::eek: I have now completed the ballasting, just done the calcs, 6.8m of triple track, equated to about 3 litres of ballast, and at least half a litre of glue, before I watered it down. I managed to get each board done in under an hour.
    Quite lucky, 3 litres of this ballast was all I had. I was just in the place in Tasmania where I picked out up from, but my wife filled our bags with loads of wool she had picked up cheap. Not so cheap when we had the excess baggage charges though. Luckily I didn't have ballast to add. My wife is going to make temporary scenery for this board, all I have to do is the carnival board, one more ride to finish, then grass the lot, and power to the rides.
    IMG_20210417_155254~2.jpg
    Then the rest of the year to do all the rest of the detailing, unless I start another layout....:scratchchin::avatar:
    Cheers
    Tony
     
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  18. Dr Tony

    Dr Tony Full Member

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    A week to go and I got a good weekend to work on it.
    Got the whole thing set up to do testing after ballasting.
    The story I am going to use is this layout is going to evolve over time. There is one "world" which will be populated with lego figures and equipment so it is 'under construction', suggestions may be taken as to what people might like to see there.
    The Minecraft world is going to start like a game that is just starting, with just the basics for the land started. I hope to get the carnival world more populated this week, not just the rides.
    Testing revealed numerous downfalls with the Bachmann Thomas wagons. They are well detailed to the books, and their wheels are good, however, they are far too light, for example the milk tankers are about 30g each!
    It proved easy to load up Annie and Clarabel with a bit of lead, but the tanker is going to be harder, changing the steel weight to lead in the same space did not gain much, might have to consider filling the tank through the very small slot hole in the base.
    The Hornby troublesome trucks also live up to their name, they are at least open wagons, so I will make removable coal loads with some weights hidden in them.
    The other main task for the weekend is getting the layout ready for transport. I need it to fit in a hatchback, all in one trip. The trip on saturday is less than 1km, but I envisage taking it further afield one day. I also wanted to protect the ends of the tracks from getting damaged.
    I made up boards that held the baseboards in place on the sides where the tracks meet, the boxes that hold the controllers provide the spacing of each board, one upside down on top of the other.
    They are still manageable to move around.
    One of the side benefits of this way, is that once i have finished detailing all the boards I will store them in the transport position, this might give me two extra shelves in my system, maybe another small layout to store there! :scratchchin:
    The pressure is now on for the rest of the week to finish it all off.
    Cheers
    Tony
     
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  19. Dr Tony

    Dr Tony Full Member

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    Well, it all went off successfully and people want me back next month, could be regular gig!
    Spent friday night packing scenery items, locos and rolling stock into boxes to load the car first thing in the morning.
    This was the scene 7:30am in the morning, I liked playing tetris as a kid.
    And the two front seats were still free!
    Unless than an hour and half I had a full set up and functioning layout, with a bit of time to set up the PA system in the venue for others.
    Even managed to get a promo for Platform 1 in, I still have the banner from Gary, it has been rolled up for too long and I needed more rope, next time. I am thinking of getting my own made up, one of those free-standing ones, had one lined up last year, then Covid hit. Also wore the PFM1MRC shirt.
    No issues in setting up, every hole lined up with every bolt and the electrical gremlins stayed home.
    Had a constant stream of young ones all day, they mostly wanted fast. They weren't too fussed as a rule about whether they drove a Thomas engine or not, mainly the really young ones wanted Thomas himself. One kid even really wanted the old Lima approximation of a class 17, somehow that was appealing.
    The last world in the construction zone proved popular, we found an old pot of "kinetic" sand (keeps its shape) and plonked that on from a box, it had a digger buried in it, rather than pull it out and clean it, I made it a nice little cameo, with the action barricaded off, all the foremen standing around looking at it, with the perpetrators having a cup of tea hidden by another machine.
    Apart from finishing various bits of scenery I have a few things to add to next time.
    I was going to bring a computer and run a bunch of you-tubes just in the background for grandparents/parents to watch while their kids play. Maybe some Gormo's shed and some PFM1 promo videos. A whistle might help for starting and stopping people. Also a footswitch for cutting all power quickly. Further down the track a timer will be found.
    Only maintenance task to do is to Duck. He threw a traction tyre towards the end of the day, he then 'waddled' just like the original model, giving rise to the name Duck, quite appropriate really. Hope I can source one locally, don't really want to pay more than a new loco in postage of parts from the UK.
    Going away for a work trip this week, so I am channeling Rod Stewart and taking my modelling with me. I have packed a bunch of paints, brushes and lots of HO people so that I can populate the carnival grounds, they look a little bare!
    Cheers
    Tony
     
  20. Dr Tony

    Dr Tony Full Member

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    Well, the next outing for this layout is just under 2 weeks away. I would like it to be a little different, so I have focused on getting people for the carnival world. This has taken a while, I had a Prieser pack of carnival people, which are all very nicely posed and moulded, only they don't come painted. It's a lot of fun painting them, choosing their colours, can make employees of the carnival have coloured uniforms. But it is a very slow process, but in the next week I should have something to show for the hours spent painting.
    Today did some rewiring, the switches for the rides were originally momentary, but as they are placed where only I can really reach them, this was a pain. So swapped them out for latching switches, fortunately physically identical. Makes wiring under the layout easy when you can just put it all sideways on the bench.
    IMG_20210523_144448~2.jpg
    Cheers
    Tony
     
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