Ramping it up. 8th February 2012

After several attempts at different inclines, moving and relaying the track on the bottom board a couple of times we finally managed to get a workable incline, which you can see below.

This shows the first version of the ramp that actually worked. That is the locos could actually get up the incline.

In order to get the incline right we had to move the bottom of the incline back as far as it would go towards the board join. We also cut into the top board right back to the central joint to lower the inclines angle, which you can see in the photo below.

Here is where the inclime which you can see at the right comes up on to the upper board.

Because this means moving the entrance to the demo it meant another redesign of the depot. It was at this point that I gave up drawing plans and left those more experienced in layout design to workout the track layout on the top board on the layout itself,  then when the design is finally fixed I can draw up the plan from whats on the boards.

Track Laying and Relaying and Relaying and...

I know its been a while since my last post so lets see if I can catch up with activities on the layout over the last two months. On the 7th of January I finished laying the peice of point work you can see below. This piece of track work set the tone for the next two months as the next day I decided it was wrong and took it up and relayed it.

The offending track work that started off two months of laying track then pulling it and laying it again and again and...

By the 15th January we had layed most of the loops and the fiddle yard as can be seen below.





Here you can see the three main loops the front two are the main line and the inner loop is the preserved line

Here is the fiddle yard. Looks like I miscalculated  the length of the little sidings coming off the preserved line. I predict some track relaying in the near future.

In order to get more work done we decided to start working on the layout on Wednesday night as well as the usual Thursday nights, so on the 25th January it was decided that the mainline should be relayed with concrete sleepered track. So up came the mainline track on the front of the layout that was layed during the open weekend in December.



Here's the team hard at it. Not quite sure what it is that they are hard at?

Among the clutter you can see the newly layed concrete sleeper track.

Also we decided to make some changes to the fiddle yard.  We got rid of those tiny little sidings coming off the preserved line, swapped the points over to make the siding come off the other side of the preserved line which meant we could link them up making another loop for the fiddle yard.

The tiddly little sidings have gone and preserved line now has its own storage loop

Now that we've finished (or so we thought) laying track on the lower boards, we started to think about the depot board. This is when we hit our first major snag. The curved incline track up to the depot that I had designed was found to be too tight a curve and too steep an incline. OOPS! Well it looked good on the plan. This meant a total redesign of the depot board.  It was also suggested that make the entrance track to the depot be turned into a branch line which would mean creating a small upper fiddle yard board above the main fiddle yard.

This is the first redesign of the depot board

With the board redesigned we started work on building the incline.

This is us working out the angle of the incline

Various blocks and supports temporarily hold up the incline as Jem starts work on the supports for the depot board

This is Jem and Peter working on the supports for the depot board

After having  messed around with the incline we found that we still couldn't get the slope of the incline right and we realised that the point at bottom of the incline had to be moved back to allow  a long shallower slope. This would mean moving all the point work at the bottom of the incline back by about a foot. So much for track laying being finished on the lower boards. It was around this time that we found out that the two mainline tracks that had recently been relayed with concrete sleepered track had been layed too close together.  So that was more track that had to be pulled up and relayed. AARRGGHH!!!

Well as the would say on Top Gear, on that bombshell it is time to end; for tonight anyway.

More trials and tribulations soon.

New recruit 1st of January 2012

New Year's Day 2012 and while everybody was no doubt recovering from the previous evenings celebration I decided to take a new young recruit in to see the layout, my five year old nephew Tom.

Here he is nonchalantly posing for the camera as he has no doubt got used to from the thousands of photos of him taken by his grandmother

 The first thing we did was lay some track in the fiddle yard to complate some of the siding loops. I drilled pilot holes for the track pins and Tom put pins into the holes. Then I showed him how to use a pin pusher to push in the track pins. With a little help he became quite good at pushing track pins in.

This is one of the power feed droppers going in.  We have soldered the power feeds to the undersides of the connecting fish plates so they will be almost invisible in the finished layout.

Here's a short video of Tom having his forst try at controlling DCC trains with the Bachmann Dynamis wireless Control sytem that we had chosen for the layout

Tom brings my newly chipped Hornby Class 31 in to the what will become the station area next to one of my Bachmann Class 108 DMU's 

Starting Fiddle Yard and Loops 22nd December 2011

By the end of the open weekend we had the track layed on the front boards.  Now we needed to get the loops and fiddle yard done.

Here in glorious blurryvision you can see Ian and Jem starting on the fiddle yard while Peter and Richard start work on the outer loop of the main line.

Having positioned the first set of points at the left hand side of the fiddleyard it was decided to start laying the outer most loop from both end and let them meet in the middle. 

Here you can see again how Peter's blowup of my plans aided in speeding up track laying.

Outer curve was set at 24 inch radius, which was about the biggest curve we could fit on the board. The next curve was designed to run parallel to it, which would have made it a smaller radius but as the curves are going to be covered by the upper boards we started the inner mainline curve a little earlier and made it a 24 inch radius curve as well.

Here's Peter working on the the first curve of the outer loop

Open Weekend 10th -11th December 2011

After a furious rush to finish the layout boards on the last club meeting before the open weekend we managed to get all the boards built and assembled and ready for track laying. Peter Chatt one of our new members managed to get my layout plans blown up to full size which could be layed on the board and make laying the track a lot quicker.

Here we see Jem and Ian taking abreak from studying the plans to pose cheesely for the camera.

Back to work guys

Above you can see the full size plans allow us to  position the track immediatly.  Drill and pin it through the paper then cut and remove parts of the paper from underneath the track.

It might look as if they are doing a bit of welding on the layout but the lighting in the often means you are working in your own shadow so extra lighting is often needed for close work.

The complicated point arrangement at the station entrance is coming together.

By the Sunday most of the front of the layout had track laid.  In the photos below you can see where the paper plans have been cut away from where the track has been laid leaving parts where track is still be fitted.

Ian chats with another club member while he lays track

So by the end of the weekend the front two boards had most of the track down and we even managed to get a train two running.

I know it looks like they are playing with trains but they are doing essential track testing.  Honest!

I know there hasn't been much sign of me in these photos and that's not just because I was behind the camera but because I was doing modelling demonstration at the other side of the hall.

There I am discussing my model buildings with a visitor while my beloved wife Tracy demolishes her lunch behind me. (Photo by Irene Taylor)

Board Construction

We started construction of the layout boards in early November 2011. The boards were constructed of rigid MDF with a softwood frame.

Myself, Jem and Ian working on the baseboards (Photo by Peter Chatt)

Several new club members joined us, which speeded up construction. The layout is made up of twelve individual boards. Ten for the lower level and two for an upper level at one end of the layout.  below you can see the lower level boards layed out on the floor showing the full 22' x 8' size of the layout. For use at the railway club the two middle 6' boards are removed making the layout 16' x 8'. The layout will only be assembled in its full size for exhibitions.

Here the boards layed out on the floor show the size of the layout

By early December all the boards were constructed and we had started to fit legs to them. The surface of the boards were then painted with black emulsion paint.

Here you can see the front and side boards bolted together with legs attached.

It was then a mad dash to get all the legs attached and the board bolted to together in time for the club open weekend on the 10th - 11th December 2011 when we would be hoping to get started laying track.

Introduction

The layout was originally conceived over several months in the summer and autumn of 2011 by myself, Jem Soady and Ian Carty. The layout would built for the Blyth and Tyne Model Railway Society and sponsored by my own company Smart Models who will be providing all the building models for the layout.

This project started out as refurbishment of an old 8' x 4' layout. This rapidly changed to building a new layout that was first 16' long and then 22' long.  After many weeks of planning we came up with the plan below.

We decided to use DCC control rather than the traditional DC control. This would be the first club owned layout to be controlled using DCC. We decided to use the Bachmann Dynamis DCC Control system as this is a system that all three of us use and are familiar with.  Also it proved to be considerably cheaper than comparable systems. This plan was agreed with the Blyth and Tyne Model Railway Society and construction began in early November 2011.

Above you can see left to right Jem Soady, Ian Carty and Myself working

on the assembly of the baseboards on 3rd November 2011. (Photo by Peter Chatt)