Packing up the layout

I will soon be posting an article on the blog about adding the third rail to the layout and mocking up the scenery from corrugated card but thought I would quickly show you it all crated up ready to go home. Quite understandably my mother didn't fancy sliding around on the drive de-icing the car now the cold weather has set in, which meant taking the layout home.

The layout arrived at my mothers as individual boards, which unless great care was taken could easily be damaged. On top of that I have now added a delicate 3rd rail as well. Therefore to protect the boards I opted for the age old method of crating them together in pairs, face to face. This was always my intention and another reason I used the metal locating pieces for the bolts. As you can see from the photos, the end boards are just thin ply left over from the build with batons of wood to strengthen them. The batons are glued and screwed in placed in line with the captive locking pieces of each board. Some additional captive fixings had to be added where the boards join on the side instead of the ends.

The track exits the side of these boards as well, so additional protectors were also formed from scrap wood. You can see this on the side of board with 'start' written on it and the one behind. Some of the end pieces will become redundant once the scenery has been added as they currently hold the boards very close together to save space. The pairing of the boards may also change if buildings conflict with each other.

The intention is to now work on the boards one at a time or in pairs until May, when it will get a test run at our club open day. This will still be as a work in progress though but after that I have permission to put it back up in my Mum's garage again, thanks Mum! (She reads the blog by the way). However, the pressure is on as the layout is booked in for its first proper show in November 2013. Still, only the scratch built buildings to do, all the figures to paint, rolling stock to weather, kits to finish and couplings to add to the freight stock. Hmmm think I'm going to be busy.

Concrete

I've been helping a friend at my railway club, who is putting a French layout together for exhibiting. While modern French railways are certainly not high on my list of interests, I have done a couple of minor modelling projects for him, giving me the opportunity to try out a few new techniques and materials.

He wanted a large concrete paved area for a loco stabling. The basic concrete pieces were cut from a plastic display board material used for signs and presentations, several sheets of which I managed to rescue from the bin at work. It's quite thick to cut and shape but it also meant I was able to score in casting lines of the concrete where it would have been poured in sections. I also added some breaks and cracks with a sculpting tool.

Once cut to shape the peices were painted with a grey spray primer and left to harden. The intention was to paint the entire area with a lighter concreate colour but as the primer matches the ballast so well, this was shelved in favour of just washing and highlighting. The wash in the photos was a mixture of various black and brown oil paints, diluted with turpentine substitute. This was painted into the lines and cracks but doing this standing up and against the clock inevitably resulted in a little going over the edges. As I wiped this away it gave a very subtle shading effect, so I continued this across the board. What's nice about oil paints is that you can work them for several hours, so where I ended up with too much wash this was easily removed with a tissue dampened with the turpentine substitute. Like many washes the effect started to fade slightly as it dried, so I,m looking forward to going back to the club this week and see how it looks. Then it will be time to add the ballast and highlights.

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.

The other Scalescenes Christmas Card

Back to Scalescenes. The other Scalescenes Christmas card was made for my Mum. She is very creative and makes a lot of her own cards, employing all sorts of skills and techniques. So no pressure then.


I decided to use the Garage Kit T017 and essentially built it as per the instructions. The same snowy glitter effect was used as that on the Cinema card but with the addition of icicles. These were made from clear plastic packing material cut into thin triangles of varying sizes and lengths, then coated with a glittery version of the snow effect. When dry they were glued to appropriate edges and gutters for effect.

I used the garage as I had the idea to put Santa's sleigh on the forecourt. The only problem of course was that I had to build the sleigh from scratch and quickly. The side of the sleigh was drawn out on plastic card and then two thicknesses cut out at the same time producing two blanks. Straight spacers between the sides were added and allowed to dry before adding the outer body. This was gently curved by hand and then one end glued in place. Once dry it was gradually curved and glued in place a little at a time and then excess material trimmed back. Pipes, handles and fittings from the scrap box were then used to make the lights, gauges and rocket engines.

Finally the figures were added. Santa was a business man with his coat extended, waist line increased and a pointy hat added, all tiny amounts of green modelling putty. The elf was a European station guard with paddle, which became a lollipop. He was cut off at the knees and glued back on his boots to reduce his height and a pointy hat added, again with green modelling putty. Finally I had some ground crew brought second hand at a show and employed a couple of them as mechanics trying to fix the sleigh. There was no time to add interior detail to the garage but fortunately the viewers focus is on the sleigh outside. I am pleased to say that Mum was delighted with the results.

Building a Class 71

Taking a break on the blog from buildings I thought I would show you the Class 71 I'm building.

I bought this old MTK kit a couple of years ago from one of our club members before he sold it on our second hand stall.

Now I call it a kit, when really it's no more than a basic body shell with bogey sides. This of course turns my 'cheap kit' into a not so cheap project, as a) it requires a donor vehicle and b) a pantograph. Fortunately I managed to acquire both at the Erith show in Dartford, namely a secondhand Lima Warship for £22 and a pair of pantographs that looked about right for another £18. In order to recoup some of the cost the I'll be selling the body of the Warship and the spare pantograph on e-bay.

The first step was to put the shell together. There were two halves to each side, two ends, two roof sections and a box section that fits in the bottom to help maintain the shape. As the castings were so thick and heavy I decided to solder them together, as I felt gluing them with Araldite was fraught with problems. Sections would have to be held in place until the glue set and then one careless fumble and you get all your parts back in kit form again.

The castings are quite basic and the white metal is very soft by today’s standards. I presume the softness is due to a high lead content, when modern white metal castings tend to contain little or no  lead, having a higher tin content. This makes the metal harder but a little more brittle.  

All the flash and casting tags were removed and the sides flattened by pressing them on glass. All the components were then checked and filed for a good fit before soldering. The two halves of each side were soldered together first, then the ends were added to make an open box. The two halves of the roof were then joined together before checking and adjusting the fit.  I also soldered the join lines on the outside of the body as well, covering up the joins and adding strength to the body shell. I had to be careful filing back the solder though, as it was harder than the white metal of the body shell. This made it essential to hold the file parallel to the surface of the model or to avoid filing the body away while just rounding off the raised solder.

There were still a number of fine imperfections in the outer surface of the castings but I decided to primer the shell before filling them, to to better show up the imperfections. The photos show the body shell after it was scrubbed with a bleach kitchen cleaner to remove all the oxidation of the old metal and then afterwards in the primed grey.

I could go a lot further and remove some of the cast details, such as the lamp brackets and hand rails, so they could be added in brass but I decided not to as the detail in the overall model is very basic and I decided a good coat of paint and gentle weathering would be better. Some things will be added that are not on the casting like the distinctive front handrails and possibly a headboard. I will be adding some plastic card  battery boxes as the cast metal pieces were appalling.

My next blog on the Class 71 will show the dissecting of the Warship Chassis and fitting to the body shell, so watch this space.