A new layout

I haven't posted anything in a while but fear not, railway modelling has been taking place. A couple of years ago I started work on a fairly sizable layout in OO. I wanted to model a busy Southern Region commuter station in the 1930's. It should have good operating potential and include a goods yard. Even though I wanted to model a station in the central London-Brighton area, modelling licence would be employed and all manor of Southern Region trains both east and west will be seen on its rails.

After a lot of searching through books and pondering over various stations I came across Waddon Station. Not the one we see today but the one built before the turn of the last century demolished in the 1930's. The old station looked quite house like and incorporated the station masters dwellings.The new (and current station) is a very plain brick box affair with an iron riveted bridge replacing the wooden one.

I chose Waddon as it had a very interesting layout which I could model without without resorting to bespoke point work. Being my first layout running only relatively new stock, it was going to be Peco Code 75 at the front and very old but serviceable Peco code 100 at the back. The latter was salvaged from a loft layout built by my late father over 30 years ago and apart from being completely oxidised, has presented no problems following a good clean.

Waddon was and still is a two line station but there used to be run around points, a parcels bay, goods yard, signal box and as it later turned out a set of run around points at the end of the head shunt as well. Although it had a goods yard it didn't have a goods shed but I will be adding one typical for the area as well as a small engine shed based on the one at Epsom. The station was electrified early on for EMU's and suited my chosen theme of a busy 1930’s commuter station in the expanding London suburbs.

The station platforms are also staggered making it a little more interesting visually, with little obscuring the busy rush hour up line platform.

The picture shows early development of the layout with some track laid and some just placed on the layout to plan it out.

The layout was going to be a round and round layout as I wanted to have fast trains rattling through the station and if they do three or four loops before the next local stopper appears then so what? I've seen enough exhibition layouts to know that anything running maintains public interest (and I like to see my loco's get to stretch their legs).

The first four boards were built to form a wide 'U' shape for the front of the layout and I quickly clamped them together and laid out the track. I was so impressed with the long run that I drew out the plan and began laying track. It was at this point that I realised all the boards were end to end and the layout was sixteen feet long not twelve! Oh well, too late now.

The photographs show the initial build which was in my living room and then the full circuit which was completed in my Mother's garage. The buildings will be scratch built copies of originals but the met calf buildings were added for scale and appearance.


In retrospect the only thing I am not entirely happy about is the very straight line of the track. However this does give a good fast run through the station and curving the track would have meant considerably expanding the width of the boards or loosing the goods yard, neither of which was an option. Therefore it's going to have to be the scenery that makes the railway flow through the landscape.

 

Fitting Point Motors

Although Waddon was started in my living room it was moved to my mums garage for a couple of  months while I built the back of the circuit containing the fiddle yard. This would have been very expensive, eight roads of  twelve feet with twelve points and motors except for the fact that it was nearly all  reclaimed from a long since dismantled loft layout. A couple of points failed muster and I was short of one point motor but apart from that I had all I needed to complete the task.

The motors at the back are the Peco type, which work fine but I don't like the big hole you have to cut under the points if you are going to ballast the track. They are also fiddly to fit, particularly getting the tie bar though the points. After much cursing and swearing I found the solution was to solder a small wire to the end of the point motor rod and then feed this through the hole in the tie bar. You could then concentrate on getting the metal lugs to locate knowing the bar was held in position.

The point motors at the front are the Seep type. These seem to work very well and you only have to drill a tiny series of holes and join them up with a file to enable the rod can pass back and forth. A lot of people find them fiddly to fix in place as there are just two small screw holes in the circuit board mounting the motor. My solution, was to place pieces of card between the blades on each side of the point to centre it.


Then go under the board and push the long rod of the motor through the tie bar, lining the motor up with the direction of the slot cut for the movement of the rod. Then making sure the rod was in the centre of the motor I fixed it in place with a hot glue gun. This seems to have worked very well and all the motors are still in place and working after two years in storage. Only one didn't work properly when fitted as it was out of alignment with the movement of the point. However, it was just a matter of cutting free with a craft knife and gluing it back in place with the correct alignment.

As the layout is DCC the control board is just for points and I opted for 'push to make' buttons for the fiddle yard and probe and stud for the station area. The push buttons change the points at both ends of the fiddle yard, while the prob allows route setting with just the paired run around points interlocked. There are two capacitor units, one or the front of the layout and one for the back, both powered by a basic Hornby controller.

 

Wiring the layout

I wanted to keep the wiring simple and always intended to use DCC. I had bought a Dynamis system and tried it out on a test track with a couple of loco's, however I had no idea if it would be able to power the whole of my new layout. Fortunately the power output is quiet good and it has no trouble running two King Arthur's flat out pulling seven coaches.

I decided the points would be operated conventionally as flicking between locos on the controller is OK but I felt the addition of route setting or point numbers was just going to be too slow. The cost was also prohibitive as although an accessory decoder will power four points, I was still going to need at least six units at around £30 a time.

Power is supplied through two umbilical cables running from the panel at the centre front to the back of the layout, one in each direction to reduce power fade and also carry the wiring for the points. All the connectors are the white chocolate block type with the big connecting pins, as I feel these are easy to wire and plug in. I had considered computer cables and connectors but the pins are small and the wires thin neither taking kindly to being dropped or trodden on. This also means faults are relatively easy to find and can be tracked down by plugging in one board at a time.

Next article, mocking up the scenery.