7 - Designing a Fiddle Yard Cassette System at Donnington Castle Model Railway

[@LetsGo_41]

That is great work. I like how you've done it and how you approached it.

[@DonningtonCastleModelRailway]

Thanks! I must confess that I really enjoy these types of project. With the availability of 3d printing and laser cutting it makes it really easy to prototype and build things that would have taken much longer in the past.

[@ericsainte290]

This is exactly what I need for my future N scale layout project. I'll take inspiration fron your design when making my own cassettes from lasercut ply. For the doors, I'll add a thin foam pad to protect the couplers and ends of rolling stock if they hit the door. And also the handles will make it easy to create a serie of supports to hang them behind the backdrop as I plan to hide the fiddle yard behind some industry or TMD (I model north Wales in 1985 in N scale while in OO it'll be south devon & north Cornwall in 1944 before during and after D-Day 😊

[@DonningtonCastleModelRailway]

Glad you liked the design. I'm more than happy to share the TinkerCAD project or SVGs if its any help. Like the idea of the foam padding on the doors, might use that idea myself. Whereabouts in North Wales do you model? I have lots of memories of trips to that part of the world as a kid.

[@ericsainte290]

@@DonningtonCastleModelRailway I'll be OK without the svg's... I myself design lasercut building kits for a Belgian brand so I am used to CAD (working with Qcad and Fusion360). As for North Wales, I went in '85 to Colomendy, not far from Chester, for a language immersion camp. I plan to model a fictive branch line terminus inspired by the area around Colomendy and Chester (Western region, of course) from the late 70's to the late 80's, trying to capture in model my memories of that time... (I even had the chance to visit the museum in York). My other region of interest in Wales would also be the Severn Valley Railway, that I discovered thanks to the first 'Narnia' movie (Highley Station made to be Coombe for the film, and the views of the train along the river Severn - I even plan to have a model of the Narnia train later to have it make guest appearances on the layout).

[@DonningtonCastleModelRailway]

@ericsainte290 I keep meaning to look at other CAD software, so I'll check those two out to see if I could use them with my very rudimentary skillset! Look forward to seeing how your cassettes come out. I know Colomendy really well, went there on a couple of trips in the 1980s. So your idea sounds amazing, especially if you can get an essence of the railways around Chester in there. Know them all very well. I remember seeing pairs of 20s trundling along the old avoiding line many years ago, I presume they were always heading to or from Shotton. Its all a bike path now, that I really should ride along at some point. Also love the idea of the Narnia train!