Welcome to my website, I appreciate you coming and reading my story! I hope you can learn from my learnings. 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 (sounds slightly pretentious) in OO Gauge, some would say my available space and desire for complex operations lends itself to N Gauge, however my fingers do not.....
During this Covid-19 tragedy and equally contributory mid-life crisis I decided to take up OO Gauge model railways. I have been watching the likes of Chadwick Parkway, Everard Junction, Sam's Trains and Kampala Road for well over a year, so I thought.... how hard can it be??? The answer is quite.
They are truly brilliant at providing inspiration and showing you how amazing your layout could look and they do cover the basics, however getting there from scratch and avoiding some very basic potholes (even though you think you know enough to avoid them, D'Oh!!!) is harder than it looks, well at least it was for me, maybe I am more basic than I realised!!
I aim to share the fundamental errors that I have made so hopefully you can avoid them, to date they've probably cost me a couple of hundred quid!! Which in these hard times I'd prefer to have avoided. I'm certainly not suggesting that you shouldn't get into this great hobby and indeed I wish I'd got into it sooner, so big thanks to the aforementioned channels for getting me so inspired.
I still watch them every day and they each bring me different things: Inspiration - Everard Junction (layout) Sam's Trains (rolling stock); Humour and fundamentals - Chadwick Parkway; Dry Wit, Exasperation (mainly with Hornby) and perseverance - Kampala Road. Each of these at different times have enthused me, so thanks again guys! Please check them out, they are all worthy of a visit.
On my youtube channel: 
I plan to discuss all of the trials and tribulations that I have faced in getting my layout up and running, including track layouts, power/control options, track (much more complicated than it sounds), rolling stock (to date only one Class 121 from Dapol plus a new addition Class 37, which every layout should have :) ), design software (I use a particular [free] beauty), baseboard construction (more of a challenge in these Covid days), aspirations for the main layout, plus much more. It'll take me a few days to get the first video up. I hope you enjoy! 23/06/2020 - There's a few up there now ,enjoy!.
I plan on getting one page done per week, so please check back regularly for updates, hopefully you can learn from my trials and tribulations. To date I have probably made five or so fundamental errors, which maybe if I'd been watching the other YouTube channels more closely or hadn't been so impulsive in my purchases I could have avoided them!
Still to come!:
1. My motivation, my story, does it make sense, or doomed to fail?
2. My layout construction to date.
3. My purchases to date, local hobby shop versus internet colluses (or however you spell it), pros and cons.
4. Peco, Hornby, Dapol, Gaugemaster, the list goes on..... What's best for what? My initial thoughts.
5. Designing my layout, a great free design package, SCARM.
6. "Selecting" my controller
7. My five main errors so far:
See you again soon, thanks for visiting, please feel free to visit (and subscribe :) ) to my YouTube channel, all of the above will be going up as videos over the next few weeks.
Apparently if you hit the notify bell icon you will also be told by YouTube when I upload, by the way there's no cost to subscribing.
Cheers!!
| 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.
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Read all about it on my home page here.
My Hornby Amazon 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
