Rhyd Ddu: Woodland scenics vs IKEA

Colin Lea of "Rhyd Ddu" also saw the suggestion in Model Rail magazine of using 'Florera' from IKEA as ballast. He carried out an experiment 99p IKEA against £5.75 Woodland Scenics. His conclusion - Woodland Scenics is better. However I think the IKEA stuff could be useful in a yard where the ballast was going to be weathered anyway. See for yourself:

Rhyd Ddu: Woodland scenics 1 - IKEA 0 (AET)

Bo-Bo diesel

With the Life Like GP38 I recently bought and some bits from an Airfix/Dapol Drewry shunter I'm planning on building an Eastern European influenced loco. I'm planning on an off centre cab design.

To make sure I have a sensible loading gauge I'm planning on using using the height and width of the Lyd2 as a guide. Working from the measurements of the Lyd2 here gives me a maximum of 28.9mm wide and 42.7mm high.

Pizza construction

I've made some progress with my pizza - track is laid on foamcore and I've started building up where the road will go using card. A cottage will go where the wire is with the duck pond in the bottom right.

I'm also planning on trying to scratch build a couple of more British looking coaches to run - my current design is slightly longer than the Egger-Bahn coaches. The design might need changing to make them fit round the curves.

Pizza Progress

Whilst waiting for a train I came up with a rough plan. The track will circle a cottage and a duck pond. The scenery will slope up towards the back of the pizza so that about half the circle is in a cutting. At the highest point there will be a brick bridge over the track. A road will cross the bridge, go down past the cottage and there'll be a level crossing at the front of the layout.

Over the weekend I bought a 36" length of peco track, some track pins and fishplates. I also checked out base materials in B&Q but didn't buy anything as wood only comes in massive sheets and I don't have anywhere to store the excess. When I got home I searched the garden sheds and found some chipboard that was left over from adding shelves to the wardrobe. It's the white laminated stuff so not the most obvious choice by it's not going to get used for anything else. I marked out my plan on this and borrowed a coping saw from a friend.

Pizza?

Inspired by the latest scrapbook on Carl Arendt's site I'm now thinking of making a pizza layout first. It will give me a chance to practice my modelling skills and won't use any points. It will also give me a loop of track to test locomotives on and it will be easier to move (hopefully moving house soon).

Intro

I'm currently thinking about building a small OO9 layout. At the start of the month I got back my most of my 009/HOe from my parents. I'm not really sure what I want at the moment. Something small that could be used as a module of a larger line in future. I might use the trakplan from Gum Stump & Snowshoe Railroad.

What I have:
Egger-Bahn 0-4-0 steam tank engine
Egger-Bahn 2 green coaches + 1 break coach.
Waggons - 1 tipper, 1 skip type thing, 1 flat waggon.
Vans - two Egger-Bahn vans - same sort of wheel base as the coaches but no wheels.
Around 10 Peco points and some short lengths of flexi track.

I've also got a summer coach and a kit for 5 slate waggons in a box at my parents somewhere.

Created a list of some things that I'd like on kaboodle. I'll need to get some more flexi track before I can build anything.