RT's G3 workbench - Industrial diorama/layout

My new Transit

Arty

Western Thunderer
The latest project is the beginings of hopefully a G3 layout, as a start I shall be working on a 8-12ft straight section, concentrating on a realistic backscene.

2 of the boards exist, and some track has been made - no need to see the sleepers.IMG_2259.JPG
board2.jpg
So various bits of clutter are being sourced, the latest being a Transit van. Needs a bit more work, but I guess it sets the tone of the "vision" I have in my head.transit10.jpg transit11.jpg

Rgds
Richard
 

Steve Cook

Flying Squad
They look like tall legs Rich, are they going to hinged at the top A frame style, or just remain vertical?
Us shorties need to know you see ;)
Steve
 

Arty

Western Thunderer
They probably look tall because they are quite narrow, I think ( can’t really remember now ) they are 1200mm. I want a good viewing height, but it does mean I can saw a bit off if required.
I will be fitting some levelling feet eventually, so who knows how tall it will end up.
 

Steve Cook

Flying Squad
Don’t worry Steve, I’ve made a little stool for you
Thanks mister :D

They probably look tall because they are quite narrow, I think ( can’t really remember now ) they are 1200mm. I want a good viewing height, but it does mean I can saw a bit off if required.
I will be fitting some levelling feet eventually, so who knows how tall it will end up.
Getting close to eye line then :))
 

Arty

Western Thunderer
A bit more progress, the legs fit in the sockets.

board11.jpg
and with a bit of levelling, it didnt fall over.

board10.jpg
board12.jpg

16ft total length at the moment, I would like to eventually make it a continous run - it all depends how tight a radius I can persuade the stock to go round without buffer locking.

Next step adjustable feet and some diagonal braces for the legs, and a bit more trackbuilding.
 

Ressaldar

Western Thunderer
Hi Arty,

You might like to consider a slight adjustment to your leg design as at present, there seems to be nothing stopping the legs being pushed right through the baseboard tops.

The top horizontal would be better if it actually supported the baseboard - that is being fixed directly under the baseboard and its length being the same as the baseboard width, and the length of the leg itself only going 30mm into the socket and therefore not touching the underside of the baseboard. The drawing below shows the principle:

IMG_0001.jpg

regards

Mike
 

geoff_nicholls

Western Thunderer
If the level of detail of the fencing and the transit van is maintained throughout the layout, it's going to be really nice, and a very good advert for what can be achieved in a small space in our scale.
I wonder if the boards are a bit over-engineered? That looks like 9mm ply on the top, and 2 x 1 framing. I think you could get away with a thinner ply top and thinner framing if it was deeper, and you used X bracing of the top. I hate the woodworking phase of layout building and just bought mine from Grainge and Hodder. And my layout is designed to be lifted by a bunch of pensioners.
As for curves, 1.5m should be fine, even with reverse curves, possibly 1.2m if there's a short straight in the middle.
There's usually some feature in a good layout that catches the eye and fires the imagination, it's already present on your layout: that fence. Having it across the front, so we have to look through it to see the trains, is so true to life.
We need to start the whispering campaign with exhibition managers, on your behalf.
 

Arty

Western Thunderer
Mike,
I take your point, as I will have to adjust the height when I add the adjustable feet, I will remove some off the top of the legs so the boards sit on the crosspiece. Although I think unless this was a 7 1/4 gauge layout, the chance of the legs punching through 9mm ply is a bit remote :)

There must be 7-8 layouts at our club with legs of this design, that have done many shows so I'm confident the diagonal brace would only add weight.

Geoff,
I've stuck with the "traditional" board design because it's easy to make, cheap and as the boards are not too big, not too heavy.

Having said that, I will have to be careful that buildings and scenics etc do not add too many extra kgs.

I'm looking forward to "doing" the security fence, I've made that a removable strip along the front edge, mainly because I can build it at home in my workshop and have easy access to both sides of the fence. The posts are laser cut ply so are very vulnerable, more so when complete with the chain link and barbed wire. I've built a box to store and protect the fence sections which is the only way the are likely to survive.

Rgds

Richard
 

Yorkshire Dave

Western Thunderer
Hi Arty

If the layout is to be exhibited I would be wary of having it so tall given it's depth as it becomes top heavy. One solution is to have folding stabilisers/outriggers at the base of the legs.

I'm only speaking from experience where I had a 2400 x 300 mm HO layout set 1200 mm high from the floor which I always operated from the front. Although the majority of visitors are generally well behaved near layouts you get the few individuals who try and barge past.

At one exhibition I deliberately left a 60cm gap between the layout and the next stand to access the rear of the layout from the front. A trader then set up next to me and occupied more than the allotted space and consequently the access was narrowed. The trader then went to the rear of their stand and knocked my layout in the process creating a Richter 7 earthquake. The stock toppled but fortunately the layout didn't, however it was close. I don't think there was even an apology, just a glare as if it was my fault.
 

Arty

Western Thunderer
Hi Dave

It was something that crossed my mind as I was doing the legs, so when we assembled it at the club last night, we were suprised how stable it seemed considering it's height x width.
The two narrow LH boards are 300mm wide, the wider RH boards 450mm ( I think)
The height may change a bit, but the thought of fitting some outriggers fills me with apprehension, maybe with a barrier at the front it would be ok to fit some on the audience side. Anything extra at the rear would be very awkward.

That assumes it will get that far ;)
 

Steph Dale

Western Thunderer
Dave's story is 100% true; I was there. One also notes that at the time the layout had a wrap around style backscene. The outer surfaces of which were painted in black/ yellow wasp stripes.
Quite literally, you couldn't make it up...

Steph
 
Barbed wire

Arty

Western Thunderer
Running along the front of this layout is a security fence, cranked concrete posts clad with chain-link fencing material and topped with 3 runs of barbed wire.

fence1.jpg

fence2.jpg

The chain-link will be represented by tulle netting, but I couldn't find any 1/24-1/22.5 scale barbed wire. There are various products for 1/35 military modelling, but is just a pair of twisted wires.
As this fence will be in direct line of sight, it has to look like barbed wire. So after playing around with various gauges of wire, and various verions of twisting meethods, I came up with this laborious method.

fence3.jpg
A slow running motor and hook.

fence4.jpg

Using 32 SWG enameled copper wire, winding 3 turns and cutting the ends short, very boring.

fence5.jpg
The barbs were spaced along a length of the same 32 gauge wire, with another alongside, and strung along a fixture with a means of aligning the barbs at a equal spacing wilst the motor twists the wires.
It's a length of 1/4 round steel bar with alternating spacing washers and brass cable clips, it keeps the barbs in place but doesn't impede the twisting along the length of the wires - chosen because I had the bits in stock.

fence8.jpg
Well it worked ok, and with a waft of grey paint, it looks a bit like galvanized barbed wire.
The worst bit is winding the barbs, this test piece has about 50, and produced about 550mm. Using wire thinner than 32 gauge is very difficult to wind barbs, and really impractical. If you scale what I've produced, it is in reality overscale and simplistic, I think when the fence is complete, it will look the part.
The only trouble is I need to produce at least 25ft/ 7.5 mtrs.
 

Ian@StEnochs

Western Thunderer
Running along the front of this layout is a security fence, cranked concrete posts clad with chain-link fencing material and topped with 3 runs of barbed wire.

View attachment 83368

View attachment 83369

The chain-link will be represented by tulle netting, but I couldn't find any 1/24-1/22.5 scale barbed wire. There are various products for 1/35 military modelling, but is just a pair of twisted wires.
As this fence will be in direct line of sight, it has to look like barbed wire. So after playing around with various gauges of wire, and various verions of twisting meethods, I came up with this laborious method.

View attachment 83370
A slow running motor and hook.

View attachment 83371

Using 32 SWG enameled copper wire, winding 3 turns and cutting the ends short, very boring.

View attachment 83372
The barbs were spaced along a length of the same 32 gauge wire, with another alongside, and strung along a fixture with a means of aligning the barbs at a equal spacing wilst the motor twists the wires.
It's a length of 1/4 round steel bar with alternating spacing washers and brass cable clips, it keeps the barbs in place but doesn't impede the twisting along the length of the wires - chosen because I had the bits in stock.

View attachment 83373
Well it worked ok, and with a waft of grey paint, it looks a bit like galvanized barbed wire.
The worst bit is winding the barbs, this test piece has about 50, and produced about 550mm. Using wire thinner than 32 gauge is very difficult to wind barbs, and really impractical. If you scale what I've produced, it is in reality overscale and simplistic, I think when the fence is complete, it will look the part.
The only trouble is I need to produce at least 25ft/ 7.5 mtrs.


Looks like it could be a bit dangerous leaning over! However you probably won’t need a barrier to keep sticky fingers off.

Superb innovative modelling.

Ian
 

geoff_nicholls

Western Thunderer
If you've already trawled the web for dolls house and wargaming solutions and not found anything, then you're doing the right thing, making it yourself like that. It will be worth it.
 
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