Rolly’s been in touch again – have a look at his video (his first post is here).

“Here is another building I made. I have found that any model that has any movement tends to be quite expensive, yet it adds so much to a layout. I have made a few different ones very inexpensively. I sympathize with a lot of your viewers on fixed incomes and wanting to enjoy the hobby as I come from a modest background as well.

This model was made with balsa strips bought from Micheals ( hobby store) and found items from the dumpster. The back wall was a cut down base of a tape deck?( not sure as I tore apart various pieces of electronic gear that I forget what came from where). The gears are from a discarded printer, and the capacitors from same. The window is 1/4″ screen, again found.

The building itself is a workshop or mine building, that adds both noise and movement, hope you enjoy.

Rolland”

Latest ebay cheat sheet is here. Still going strong!

“Hi Alistair ,

Been back from OZ for about 3 week’s now so have had a bit of free time before Christmas to have a go at something in the Fat Controller’s room!

I’m building a ‘Z’ gauge layout if you remember in a spare bedroom (kindly donated by Mrs wife).

Before our trip I was experimenting with ways of pining down the track…. sleeper pins are very small as you can imagine and getting them central in a sleeper is almost impossible!…. so I’ve made a couple of little fixtures to help.

They are stock aluminium bar in width and height, just cut to length that I’ve machined 3 holes in each… fixture No1 has a central hole of 1.3mm, this is for drilling the hole for the brass fixing screw,

The 2 holes each side of it have small pins that fit perfectly between 2 sleepers thus keeping the fixture in the correct position….. once the pilot hole has been drilled in the baseboard fixture No1 is replaced by fixture No2 which has pins in the same place as fixture No1 but with a central hole of 4mm… this is exactly the same size as the screw head allowing the screw to position itself perfect into the pilot hole…. small screwdriver and the job’s done!

Hope this all makes sense, it seems complicated but it does work.

Hopefully the pics will be in order.

Hope you all have a very merry Christmas & a happy new year.

Keith”

A huge thanks to Rolland and Keith.

Keith has been keeping us updated on his layout from the very start so it’s good to hear from him – can’t wait to see the next update.

And don’t forget the Beginner’s Guide, because it’s never too late start.

That’s all this time folks, please do keep ’em coming.

Best

Al