The Industrial Area

With most of the work around the inclines completed, (The stuff that is left requires work closer to the front of the boards to be completed first.) I can get to work filling in the loop with the industrial area.

Here's what is in so far.

The track for the brewery and manufacturing industry is in. The next two lines are the wheat sidings and then the container sidings.

I've spent some time during the past week putting together a Walther's Medusa Cement kit. I've still got a bit to go but I put it on the layout for a bit of an idea as to how it would fit. In between the cement works and the container sidings is the steel works.

I had planned to use a Peco Manyways train shed. It is a little wide. I am trying to cram in as much as I can. It may be slightly unrealistic but I am more into the operations side of model railways so more industries to shunt is more appealing to me. I can save about 3 cm by using old Hornby Tri-ang loco sheds. While these are red and yellow with big windows, a bit of brick plasticard and some paint and they should look the business.

In the meantime, they will hold a bright place before the work is done.

Behind the wheat silos I've placed an extreme low relief building. It will hide the incline but still allow some access. I'm considering placing more behind these buildings so that the line to the terminus on the upper level disappears for a while.

The plan for this week is to finish off the cement works kit and lay some track.

Until next time.

Mind the Gap

 Before:

Oooh! What a nasty gap. I always thought that it would be a problem for future me. A bit of masking tape and some plaster, paint and some scenic material later and we have this.

While the gaps aren't gone, they are better disguised. The big one on the left is for future me to deal with.

The end result for today is this.

This is closer than people will get to the scene but I can tell that there are some patches where the ballast needs topping up.

Some of you may notice that I am using three different shades of ballast in this scene. There is a fourth shade around Bega. At the main junction of the inclines the track looks like this.

The three colours are for three different routes. I got the idea from Tony Koester, the American railroad modeller, author and legend. On his layout he uses a different colour of ballast for his mainline from his yards so that his operators know which track is the mainline.

All of my sidings that have so far received ballast all have Bombo ballast, which is the brown ballast on the right. The mainline on the lower level has a shade of grey of unknown origin. It is a lighter grey but you can still discern the mainline from the sidings.

On this level the mainline will have Ardglen ballast, which is a dark grey and on the left. This is the track that comes up the incline from the bottom level. This track runs along two and a half walls of the room before entering a return loop and coming back before heading back down to the bottom level.

The middle two tracks head up to the terminus and has Martin's Creek ballast. All of the ballast used is from Matt's Ballast and picked up from my local hobby shop or exhibitions. 

The track on the bottom level to Tathra should have Martin's Creek ballast as well but I used something that looks more like budgie grit or crushed shells. I thought it was good stuff. When I get the chance, I'm going to replace what I can with the real deal.

Operators will know that the lighter grey of Martin's Creek represents branch lines and the dirtier brown of the Bombo ballast as sidings to help them guide their trains through the layout as they change the points themselves.

This is a function of interior designed used in a lot of public spaces such as shopping centres and airports, if you remember going to them. The floor is a colour that takes you where they want you to go and can help differentiate from thoroughfares to areas such as shopfronts where they don't want people bustling past. I had to dig the clip up but I saw this years ago. 

I'm hoping that using similar principals of using colour will help operators. My layout is complicated and while I know it well, visiting operators visit once a month so it takes a while for them to learn the route. Hopefully, this will speed the process up.

Until next time.

A Scenic Start

 Last time, I was fixing up the main yard. After a bit of testing, I came up with something that I said that I wouldn't do. It works. It makes three sidings longer and the others about 5 mm shorter, so I figured that it wasn't a bad trade off. I did lose the Repair in Place (RIP) track and the storage siding. The latter was geometrically impossible.

While I was at it, I realigned the loop line that runs hidden behind the yard. This was to give the operator a better chance to stop their loco before shorting out the layout. I had accidentally run my sound 3801 through the points and shorted the layout. The chip reset itself. I have yet to reprogram it.

I have a real hankering to get the industrial yard going but I know that the best thing to do is to work from the back. In this corner, I want a bit of suburbia, a bit like this image from the last layout.

I was told by a mate in the UK when I was there in in January 2020 that the house with the porch needed a bloke with a BBQ. I went to the Ian Allan shop near Waterloo Station (it has since closed) and bought a set of Noch people having a BBQ. They didn't make it on to the layout before the flooding.

On Friday night I was pondering what to do. Could I get all of this sorted this weekend? The plan was to build the the scene on a platform of MDF on top of pine to support the foam. To try and keep the scene moving along the back wall I cut some ply to represent a hillside.

It was looking great until I realised that the clearances were terrible. I cut some 3mm MDF for the hillside and re-carved the foam. All this was after the scene was finished. Hey, if you haven't don a job at least twice have you really done it?

Here's the finished result with the tracks in front ballasted as well. The space wasn't the same size so I could only fit in one house. I was able to reuse a lot of the previous scene and I have included people having a BBQ.

The next task is to fix the gap between the two inclines.

Until next time.

Measure Once Cut Twice: That's the Right Way Isn't It?

 It's been one of those days.

Did you hear about the bloke who left the parcel shelf of his car on the roof of the car and drove out of Bunnings? That was me. So that's the caliber of the day and it's not the only thing that went wrong. Why not calm down with your favourite hobby?

The good news is that I think I now have all of the timber to finish the layout.

I wired up my turntable and tested it. It works. It's not as well aligned as I had hoped but the only line coming onto the turntable is curved, so it all works out. 

The line is curved so that my garratt can run across the turntable and into a suitably long track.

That's the plan. The reality is that the siding is at least 2cm too short. It's too short because after planning the loco depot, I put in my marshalling yard. When I did that, I altered the track plan a little bit.

Here's what it is.

The top track is an extra storage siding which can hold 10 BCH length wagons. The right hand point on the left was modified to fit a tight spot about three layouts ago. It still works. It leads to a Repair In Place (RIP) track. I though that it could be fun. The top three sidings are through roads, the bottom three are dead end sidings. The nearest siding from the ladder holds 4 bogie wagons and I am planning on this holding the guards vans. The top siding can hold the longest train from the Bega staging yard and will be the main arrival track. On the old layout we realistically used only one of the five available tracks as an arrival track.

Below is what it needs to look like. It's not what was originally planned, everything was meant to come of the first three way point.

The original idea was to have the ladder start higher but that would make the bottom three sidings shorter.  I can make the change by leaving the bottom 3 way point where it is. The top storage siding will be 1 and a half to 2 BCHs shorter. The RIP track won't really be useful but you could park the shunting engine there. Sidings one and two at the top will be longer by a 48 foot bogie van. The other sidings won't change.

If I move the the top 3 way point back even further, then sidings 1 and 2 will be two wagons longer. Siding 3 will be a little shorter. Siding 4 will be a little longer and sidings 5 and 6 will be shorter. There will also be more work involved. The current siding four effectively holds 10 CH bogie hoppers and a guards van without a loco attached. This is the same length as the two longest sidings in the Bega staging yard. Most trains moving to and from this yard will be 6-8 wagons long therefore the sidings don't need to be longer.

I also nee a little bit of straight track provided by the first point to reduced the hazards and strains of longer wagons going around the reverse curves.

Adjusting this track alignment will make my garratt problem go from this...

...to that.

I reckon though, all that can wait until tomorrow. 

Alterations for a Turntable

 

Here's the problem. I want a turntable. The best place for the track plan is directly above this station. Engineering wise, it may not be the best spot. A support for the top level will need to be cut away. It's on a triangular section which doesn't have much support any way .

The solution - and there was a lot of hope for the best - put in these two pillars and move the existing support back a bit. The first could be done. The second can't be. The support has nothing to move back to.

The hole was cut and adjusted in the not so round section. Even without the pillars on the platforms, the 12mm ply has a fair bit of strength. The existing supporting wall was altered and brick paper glued on the new work. To top it off the wires for the turntable will be able to go behind the brick wall.

Now I need to paint the turntable. It wasn't painted before and now I reckon it could do with a lick of paint.

Until next time.

Counting Chickens Before They Hatch?

 I know we've all been told not to do that but while I was waiting for glue to dry, I started mucking around with some buildings in the industrial area. I sort of had a good plan already and I thought that I could check it out. The plan changed several times this week.

First I got the warehouse out. I then thought that maybe I could put the brewery next to the warehouse but use the first of two lines for the wheat silo. That moved everything down one track. When I took the brewery out, I found the dairy from the old layout. That will take the place of the wharehouse.

Every siding, except the warehouse, was coming in off one point and with the magic of a couple three way points, fanning out to the industries. Moving one track down wasn't going to help the geometry of some of the sidings.

Track-wise, the best solution is to add another point from the head shunt. There is a bit of track to pull up and replace for that to happen.

The other thing to consider is access from the aisle. This works. There may be some uncoupling and pushing into the appropriate spot but the points are in reach.

Finally, aesthetics. It's got to look good. I wanted lower industries down the front. 

Here is what I came up with. The image is a bit messy. It's more of a record shot so that I remember what I'm doing later.

The oil loading platform fits the bill there. The tall wheat silos are up the back. I was going to buy an extension kit for this. The wheat trains are long so up the back of the area is perfect. They will need to be split into two as they will block the view of the brewery. I found the factory building that used to be next to the brewery. That's going back next to it. This pushed the wheat silos further back and there won't be any room for an extension of the silos. Each siding for the wheat silos can hold up to 6 hoppers. Perfect for my 8 wagon train.

In front of the wheat silos will be two tracks for container wagons. I need two long lines for my gantry to pretend to work on. Enough for 10 GME wagons. Perfect for my 6 wagons which will be captured with on layout traffic.

In front of the container sidings will be a steel works made from a Peco train shed. Its place is held by the brick walled brewery base. It's the same width.

Next to that with the silos and unloading shed in place will be the cement works. It is a tall structure near the front but from the operator's view that shouldn't matter. If it was closer to the wheat siding, it would create a narrow canyon.

I'm hoping that when every thing goes in for real that all my chickens hatch and I can really fit it all in.

I know that this sort of thing isn't everyones cup of tea but I just want to move wagons around and have a reason to break up and shunt trains.

Until next time.

Before I do that...

 I thought that I would run some trains last Monday. I started with the V-set. It derailed on the curve on the lower incline. The track needed propping up on one side. By Tuesday it was working. I ran the HUB set. The 44 class which needs new gears (I have some replacement wheel sets but I think I will need some more gears. Let me know if you know where to get some.) keeps coming off on one spot. I propped it up and reduced the incidents by 50%. I later found out that the leading axel doesn't roll straight. The latter fix caused every car on the HUB set to come off.

It had all worked perfectly before! There was more surgery to the track and to the HUB set. There was no flexibility with the bogies rolling up and down. A couple of cars that I have had no problems with were now causing me issues int he weirdest spots.

It was frustrating but it was all fixed on Wednesday and the HUB set ran behind an 85 class that I have out for a freight train. I have and Auscisions B class with has no tolerance for dodgy track. It ran through the problem section with ease. I reckon the problem is solved.

On Saturday I figured the best thing to do would be to put the platforms at Bega together so that I could start cutting the turntable hole.

Normally I put the timber down and cover the whole lot with a cardboard/paper top, leaving no screws. Not this time, the screws are visible. I just have to cover them up. Here are some images. The stuff is not permanent and I've already put them away. This station is down the front and will be one of the last things finished but I need the platforms done to cut the right size timber to hold up the upper baseboard top.

Until next time.

Running Again

The good news is that I have trains running again.

When I say trains, I really mean my Powerline 48 class loco. After laying the tracks and fixing a couple of spots the layout, the new track was wired up to the DCC bus . Next the layout room was cleared and the vacuum cleaner brought in.

I've been building layouts for years so I shouldn't be surprised that everything works but there is still that fist pump into the air when there are no problems. 

The Powerline 48 does a great job. It came DCC fitted and with a working fan. You had to take the body off and void warranty to switch it over the DCC. The fan was disconnected before the body was put back on. Bits are falling off it and it picks up track pins left to close to the tracks but it performs a sterling service on my track cleaning train.

During the week I started with the incline to the terminus. I'm using the Woodlands Scenics 2% incline set. I have found on the previous layout that you can put two tracks onto it. I use matte board (the cardboard used when framing pictures) as a road base on top of the incline. I found that this time on the incline from the bottom level that I wasn't quite perfect enough and needed to brace the side on the curves. 

For this incline I figured that I would have to brace it again so I am doing that before I put the track on. The inner track will be Hornby double fourth radius track with suitably spaced Peco flex on the outer. The reason for using the set track pieces is that I am not good at laying curves. I'm getting better but these cause me less headaches and make the parallel curves easier to lay.

I also had a look at the industrial area inside the balloon loops if the incline and decline. I reckon that I can get six industries in the space: an oil terminal (I've always tried to have this somewhere), steelworks (for my steel train to have a reason to stop somewhere), container siding (I had one on the last layout and I was given a Brawa gantry) cement works (once again I have some stock) wheat silos (from the old layout) and warehouses (built for my old layout when I was on the coast). The latter could be substituted for a brewery - I'm still thinking about things.

Before I start that, I really need to finish the incline, otherwise I am kneeling on track and that hurts the knees. While I'm working on the incline and waiting for some glue to dry I could start on the marshalling yard.

In the meantime here is an image of trains waiting to run from the Bega staging yard, underneath where most of the work was done this week.

See you next time.

A Little Rearrangement

Here's what it was:

From the front is the headshunt for the marshalling yard. Next is the inbound track. I'm not sure if I can call it the up or down as the layout is one big loop. The track it inbound to the terminus which which make it down from Sydney. However, Up trains from the terminus will travel along this track as well as they make their way to Sydney. The third track from the front is the outbound track. Trains travel from the terminus over this track to the reverse loop and then along the inbound track before joining the up and down lines of the rest of the layout. The last line is the short passing loop. Behind this would be the three or maybe four track loco depot and then a head shunt for the goods yard and its lots of sidings. The turntable in the background was a pipe dream. It was not ever going to fit.

The thinking behind this comes from the old layout. Look at this image below.

The main station was situated on a balloon return loop to the left of the camera. The track layout is virtually the same. The three sidings behind were the carriage sidings. The plan was to have a shed building at the front and retaining walls where the timber is. 2 metres, I thought was way too long for a single building. I just wanted to give an impression of a large building.

As an aside, a few years ago the the bloke who is building Everard Junction on YouTube built a scale carriage shed. It was great.

While planning the loco depot, I was trying to achieve something more than the stabling tracks from my old layout. I have steam, diesel and electric locos and I wanted some facilities for them to be serviced. I also noticed that I was reaching over the marshalling yard headshunt and two running tracks and the new platform.

What if I move the depot closer between the running tracks and the headshunt? The old layout had some loco storage sidings inside the curve of the headshunt could I put a turntable there?

I looked for ideas through a stack of Byways of Steams, model railway magazines, a Railway Digest article about Yeerongapilly loco depot and other sources for inspiration.

Here is what I have ended on.

Right at the back with be a two track incline to the terminus. It is 2% and identical to the old layout. Most steam locos make it up with a suitable load. A couple more will need some more weights.

In front of the incline is the headshunt for the freight yard. It is designed to have a loco and eight of the wheat hoppers clear of the first point which will be to the wheat silos.

Next, where the Tangara is, is the outbound track. When running from the terminus, the Tangara would stop at this station, carry onto the return loop as though it has travelled to its suburban and return on the nearer inbound track to the same station. Then it will travel back up the hill to the terminus.

The 70 class is at the end of the marshalling yard headshunt. On the old layout, operators never have to handle trains on the headshunt. It is just a straight bit of track. The downside is that the exit crossover to the mainline can be blocked by locos. I plan to have all my points thrown by hand by the operators. That discussion is for another post. 

The 46 and 85 class locos are on the electric loco storage track. This will have access to the shed as well. You can just see that to the right of the shot.

The 48 class is on the access track to the shed and can be used for storage.

The track in front is the arrive and departure track. The 45 class is on the fuel track for diesel locos. The GLX is on a track for a storage shed. I reckon that they need spare parts coming in and they'll need to be put somewhere. I don't really know how that works. I figured that I'd need some S trucks at the back of the shed  for rubbish as well.

Moving to the right you come to the coaling stage and turntable. See below.

I'm using a Peco turntable. Before it's installed, it'll need some cleaning up and some paint. The arrival and departure track is directly in front of the shed. The opposite track of the turntable needs to be long enough for a Garratt. The track in front of the arrival and departure track is long enough for a couple of BCH hoppers to supply a coaling tower. It won't quite be 100% prototypical but I'm looking for an effect. This track probably won't be connected to the turntable. 

Four of the tracks off the turn table should be able to hold at least 2 diesel locos each. I know that round houses hold one loco only per track but I am after storage.

Behind the turntable are two points. The closest is for a storage siding off the headshunt, which was handy on the old layout. The furthest is from a passing loop onto the inbound line. Both of these points are easily accessible across the turntable.

One thing to consider when planning reaches is a baggy sleeve that could catch on things.

The three tracks curving in from the right have been removed and will need to be realigned.

I reckon that I could have up to 18 locos stored in the depot. Not only that but a goods train will need to replace the S trucks full of rubbish, spare parts van, oil tank for the fuel siding and the coal hoppers for the the coal tower. That is an extra train and destination, as well as an interesting bit of operations.

Here is the big problem. The turntable sits directly above Bega Station. I can put a wall up the top to hide it from Bega platforms but the bigger issue is the need for support.

I will need to remove one retaining wall section underneath. That shouldn't be too hard. I will also need to prop up the top from the platforms. The right edge of the turntable is on the baseboard join. I'll need to do the Bega platform tops sooner rather than later.

If I put the turntable on the other baseboard I would have less support issues but no space for tracks off the turntable. I could have a long siding big enough for up to seven locos stacked on after the other. So long as they were in order of need this wouldn't be a problem. I wouldn't have extra space for the coal hoopers and vans.

My plans for during the week is to re-lay two of the curves that I need to adjust. I've done one so far. 

Then I can do some wiring and have something running by the end of next week end.

Here's hoping.

 

It Really Has Been a While...

6 and a half months. Crikey! I didn't realise it was that long.

To carry on from the last blog post. The top layer went on and tracks were laid. The same four locos were used to test the next level. 

However, not all of the top level tracks were put on. Enough track for a running session was put on. Missing were the goods yard, the loco depot and the marshalling yard and a suburban station. The latter was replaced by a relief loop which was big enough for a loco and six of Austrains GME wagons with a guards van. That's all that went in there.

I had an April deadline for a running session with blokes from the club. 

There was lots to do. An empty coal train to swap with loaded wagons, the fore mentioned container train to take to the harbour yard, a couple of other trains to take from staging to destinations to shunt.

Nope. They just ran trains and watched them go around and chatted. Which was good but it didn't test the layout out, except for the mainline.

There was one major problem that I discovered when I was wiring the layout. The junction was totally wrong.

In the image above the points at the top are the entry and exit to the goods yard. Trains are meant to enter from the left, cross over to the year road and exit the image to the right. When the last wagon is clear, the train and set back, uncouple and the loco head off to the shed to the right of the image. The mainlines are the bottom two tracks. The middle tracks lead to and from the passenger terminal which will be on the upper level.

Trains from the mainline can't access the goods yard.

It should look a bit like this.

I could not believe that I had made this mistake in the planning and I was sure that I needed another double slip. Then I worked out that I was following an older draft. It would do until after the running meeting.

Then nothing happened until last weekend. I took a break from model railways. I just wasn't feeling enthusiastic about it.

When I think about it, my lack of enthusiasm was because, despite a couple of compromises and faults, my old layout had ten passenger stations planned. A couple were small and one of those would have been a request stop. It had seven destinations for goods trains to shunt outside of the main yard.

The new layout has effectively three stations. The terminus, Bega and Tathra. My freight marshalling yard is planned to have more sidings but they are all shorter.  There would be four destinations for goods wagons too.The loco depot wouldn't be effective either. It was looking to be three tracks wide and more for loco storage than for servicing locos. I might be able to get four tracks but that might be pushing it and a turntable is impossible. Turning locos would need to be done on the reversing loop which all trains would travel on.

The new layout just doesn't seem as exciting.

It is however, more exciting than listening to trains go past. I live 400m from the railway line and since I've been working at home, I've heard a lot of freight trains go past.

So last weekend I fixed the dodgy junction and took out the relief loop to put a narrow island platform in. And that was the start of a major rethink and ripping up a fair bit of track.

If I hadn't had that break, I reckon I would have soldiered on with the plan and would have gone past a point of no return.

More in the next post. I'm hoping it will be sooner than six months.

New Year, New Update

 It's been a while but work has been progressing. 

This image was just after the track was laid but just before wiring. I use a Digitrax system which was placed on the last layout. This time it's going to be housed on a shelf - roughly where the rubber gloves are.

The DCC bus wires are run around the edge of the layout for ease of access. Next to these wires the six strand phone cable for the hand held controllers.There is still some of this cable to be fitted as I had run out of double adaptors. I do have a Digitrax WiFi box thing that lets me use four smart phones. This is enough as, in less restrictive times, the layout could quite easily keep five people busy and a couple of those folks will be operating a couple of shunters.

When I laid the track, I used a couple of rolling stock which sometimes cause me problems. We've all got them. Pushing them about seemed to go well. After power was applied to the track, I employed my awesome foursome of track testers. All of these locos have found faults before - especially the electric locos. They seemed to find the faults that were in the hardest to reach spots. These spots were joins on curves.

This time I tried to stagger the joins so that they are about four sleepers between the left and right track joins. Extra track pins were put in next to a couple of the tracks to make sure the joins weren't too sharp. The 43 class was very happy with my track. The B class wasn't. It found a few issues. use of a track gauge and track pins solved this. The other locos didn't skip a beat.

However, there was one train that I had forgotten about. The Auscision V Set. When running a certain direction over a certain section of the old layout, it reliable came off. It was given a run and found another fault which was soon fixed and thoroughly tested. I'm not saying that Auscision make trains that fall off the tracks but I am saying that sometimes my tracks make Auscision trains fall off. Hopefully my track is better this time.

As this is the lower level, most of what you see here will be covered. Before I add the next level, I want to ballast the tracks that transition into the covered area. There are a few lines to do.

Until next time.