Welcome to Aber Halt Junction, top tips for beginners and a little about my layout. Enjoy! Tweet me or email me if you have any suggestions for website improvements, I'm always open to new ideas. Firstly I would like to give a huge shout out to the 900 subscribers to my YouTube channel!! I am so humbled. I've also decided to have a bit of fun and started a TikTok channel, I've no idea why, I don't think I'm within their targeted demographic! It does allow me to do a lot of running videos though which people don't seem too interested in on YouTube, and I like to keep my viewers happy. My most recent video is related to my recent Class 37 purchases:
|
|
The other highlights are related to a layout design update. It's required quite an extensive rewrite. I have had to adjust the inner loop track layout which has required quite an extensive destruction. This is because it has become clear that my turntable can no longer really fit in as the bridge decline is a bit bigger than I planned. The pictures below show the track realignment and the space constraints for the turntable, as a bonus I can now get a terminus station, however it means I can no longer turn locos around...... Will reach out to the social media community shortly to see if there are any other options... If you have any please contact me.
How to? - An ever increasing list of items that I have found really really useful for me setting up in this wonderful hobby, covering the basics, including: programming DCC locos; constructing and designing your layout.
Brand New Starters - Before you even get started, everything you should be thinking about: "train sets"; modelling; how much is it going to cost you; different options for designing layouts.
Useful Tools - An ever increasing list of the fundamental tools that you need to get going in this great hobby, the essentials, the nice to haves and everything in between.
I hope you can learn from the mistakes I have made and my learnings. Whereas some other websites don't cover the costs that need to be incurred I do try to cover these as best as I can, if you feel I can do more please contact me. Apologies for the amateurish look of the website, to keep costs down I have constructed it manually, I'll be adding more pages and comments shortly so exchanging of ideas can commence in earnest, in the meantime I welcome any comments on my social media or you can email me at the link at the bottom of the page.
Thanks a lot for visiting. Firstly, the fundamentals, all comments on this site are just my opinion, I am not sponsored by any of the companies mentioned and I (unfortunately) have had to purchase all of the equipment mentioned.
I model (which sounds slightly pretentious considering I only have my baseboard currently completed!) in OO Gauge, some would say my available space and desire for complex operations lends itself to N Gauge, however my fingers do not.....
Full details of how I got the inspiration for my layout and got it down onto paper and then the computer can be found here, or here's a quick video that gives you a brief introduction to my layout:
This website is designed to give you some background (and more detail) than my associated YouTube channel into my layout, whilst YouTube is great, it doesn't allow for logical sequencing of videos etc and as for most social media things tend to be very much consumed in the "now", it's sometime quite hard to go back and see how things first began. The second (and more important) objective for the website is to provide particularly beginners with insights into the mistakes I've made and what you can do to avoid them, it also demonstrates what an absolute beginner with no artistic skills at all (seriously my Art teacher in school, said don't even bother you just can't do art, focus on science) can do in terms of modelling, and what an absolute beginner in terms of model railways can do in terms of construction. I will give an indication of how hard things are to do, using a simple "helping hand" scale of difficulty. Each of my "How To?" tasks will have this indicator, as I receive feedback I will adjust the scale accordingly.
.jpg)
| Level 1 | |
Very straightforward, dive straight in |
| Level 2 | |
Needs a bit of practice, try it out on a non-important piece first |
| Level 3 | |
Getting a little tricky, you might want to turn your radio (or my superb YouTube Channel) off so you can concentrate |
| Level 4 | |
My fingers (and eyes) weren't really designed for this, several hmmmmpppphhs will be exhaled, might take several attempts |
| Level 5 | |
Should I even be considering this? For 20 quid I could get a pro to do this for me...... hmmmmmm. |
As you'll see is a common theme in a lot of my videos and on this site, I have had quite a steep learning curve between my decision to buy track, locos, a power pack etc. a few months back to where I am now. In particular I completely underestimated the costs of constructing a model railway (or model railroad for my friends across the pond). This is despite the fact that I watched probably 2000 hours worth of YouTube videos on model railways in the past 3 years. And I was trying to work out why and then it dawned on me, the majority of videos skirt around costs, because to pro YouTubers they've had their layouts (in the majority of cases) for years and yes occasionally they bemoan how expensive the hobby has got over the past couple of decades without actually explicitly stating how much stuff costs.
So.... I am going to lay it all bare, I will give you the costs that I have incurred to date to get my layout (and planned layout) to where it is at. You will be surprised at the amount. But in addition to that (and as it is my stated aim for the site) I will show you options that you have for doing model railways on a budget, and it is possible very much so, I will give you budgets and tools that you can adapt for yourself to get into this highly rewarding hobby.
| Date | News |
|---|---|
| 23/06/2020 | New Home Page constructed. New design and feel. New pages added, including a "How To" section.... |
| 11/06/2020 | For those of you have suffered my terrible website to date, I have decided to write a new one. Started the new coding today, will probably take me a week or two to get a V2.0 uploaded, until then I can only apologise. |
| 15/05/2020 | I have a new loco!! My fleet has doubled. Got a lovely new ViTrains Class 37 "Caerphilly Castle" |
| 12/05/2020 | Finally worked out how to get my Guestbook up and running: http://www.aberhaltjunction.co.uk/guestbook/gbook.php?a=sign |
| 11/05/2020 | Updated my Layout Construction page |
| 10/05/2020 | Got my first few YouTube subscribers, THANK YOU all!! |
| 10/05/2020 | Uploaded my first "real" YouTube video, introducing my layout. |
| 04/05/2020 | May the forth be with you! Joined MRYCG on Facebook, what a great place, so much inspiration, from basic to expert. |
| 01/05/2020 | Uploaded my first ever YouTube video!!  |
| 01/05/2020 | New version of website uploaded, landing page complete plus "About Me" Section. |
| 30/04/2020 | Work started in earnest on the New (improved hopefully) Website. |
| 30/04/2020 | Hornby affiliate account kindly accepted by Hornby, thanks!  |
| 26/04/2020 | Draft 1 of the website launched. YouTube Channel created, with no videos yet! |
I hope you enjoy your visit around my website, I hope you find it is an improvement on my last incarnation. If you have something which puzzled you for ages and then you managed to fix, please feel free to share it with me, I'm sure you won't be the only person who has the issue. Please feel free to drop me an email, sign my guestbook (very 80's I know) or tweet me with any recommendations that you may have, I'm always learning.
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
There's a reason why this is here on my homepage, I want to be upfront about it. It is everywhere on social media (which is a very new thing to me <3 months) and I was quite naive coming into this, I didn't realise that there were people who made money just out of doing affiliate reviews on YouTube, I think anyone can then see that there could be potential for bias in those reviews, particularly if the links aren't obviously "affiliate links".... A lot of people bemoan the amount of advertising etc. that is appearing on YouTube videos, as such I have endeavoured to keep this website free of intrusive advertising (another reason why this message is squirrelled away down here) and unlike other YouTube channels or newspapers I won't be asking people to sign up to my Patreon or whatever (I don't and won't have one), I also only do reviews on items that I have purchased with my own money. To keep this website free of advertising I have paid for hosting and I have not linked it to a google ads service or the like. It is therefore my endeavour to not make money out of this site, but try to keep it cost neutral (it costs me around £20 pounds per year), to this end you will see a few affiliate links (I will make them obvious, they will have a *AL next to them) dotted throughout the site (there are less than 20, if you don't click on them you wouldn't even know they are there, which hopefully satisfies the people that don't want to watch YouTube videos or have popups!). As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. They are explicitly for items I have purchased and have found useful and hence would recommend.
An affiliate link does not cost you any extra, which is where I think it differs and is better than a Patreon or asking for donations, which I must admit I do find a bit strange, I donate to charities, not YouTube celebrities, where you are paying for something which I think should be free. I do however watch adverts on YouTube for channels that I really enjoy, as it doesn't cost me anything and gets the creator ad revenue, I see it as win-win, it doesn't cost me anything, apart from 30 seconds of my time and I like supporting great Channels, like Tom Scott (not train related), Chadwick Parkway, Dean Park, Kampala Road etc. As you'll have noticed throughout my videos and here on this site I have a nostalgic love for Hornby, back to the days when I had a Hornby train set as a kid, I know things have diversified now and there are many more suppliers to choose from, but I still feel there are some things that Hornby do well and as such when I think that is the case and I have bought stuff directly from them and think it is worth buying I will mention it. By all means feel free to peruse this website as many times as you wish and don't click on any of the links, my main aim is to get more youngsters into what I think is a brilliant hobby. Anyways diatribe over, enjoy my site, if you are inspired to click one of my affiliate links I am very grateful, if not I am very happy that you came, happy reading/learning/watching!
My Hornby Affiliate Link: 
Contact me with any comments or questions, I'm always keen to learn:
OOGauge; Model Railways; Model Railroad; aberhaltjunction; hornby; hornby select; dapol; class 121; ESU; Loksound V5.0; Hobby; Shed; Class 121; Class 37; Beginners; Trains
