Yesterday I spent a lot of time trying to size my video such that I could upload it to Blogger. This morning, whilst walking the dogs, I realised that I should've put it on Vimeo, in HD, and then linked to it. Like this

If you're not familiar with Vimeo, the little box at the bottom right with the outward pointing arrows will take you to full screen. Highly recommended.

Quite a lot has happened since the previous post. Track laying is complete and all the point motors are installed, wired and tested. The use of three core cable certainly makes the point wiring very simple but it does add to the weight, however this doesn't matter as the layout is not portable. I've glued and screwed a central spine along the full length of the baseboard and removed the front temporary batten (a) because this edge will be cut away to roughly follow the shape of the yard and (b) in order to do the busbar work.

The busbars are each formed from a row of screws and a double run of the earth wire from 2.5mm twin & earth which was left over from doing the club busbars which use the red and black cores. My colour code is red and white as determined by the drop wires.

I have decided to leave the rear batten in place as the land at the back will rise from the baseboard so there is no benefit in removing it. Its isn't glued but this is fine

The road to the station will rise up from the valley and continue past the station yard and over a level crossing where it will make a sharp right turn and run along the back of the station, rising up to the scenic break between the two main blocks of the layout. I haven't decided exactly what will be beside the road but it will almost certainly be cottages, garage, pub and shop. I am a big fan of ScaleScenes as you can print their kits as often as you like which is very cost effective, especially if I decide to have a lot of cottages along the road.

My next job is to make the platforms.

First some good news. The Dapol 57xx arrived with chip complete and did not work on our test track! Solution? Clean the track, at which point it worked fine and Martin's modified loco also worked. Martin is now fitting the pukka brushes and we will then have two locos.

Track laying is under way. I have had two sessions and a third should see it done. Then it will be the point motors and wiring. The main line is dead straight so I wanted a way of trying to achieve this. I settled for screwing a straight edge to the baseboard against which I pressed the sleepers whilst also using a Tracksetta straight. The end result is passable so long as you don't look too hard.

The MDF had a slight bow in it so at present it is screwed to two temporary battens, as if it is a flat baseboard unit. Once the point motors are installed I will fit the actual spines, remove the battens and jigsaw away the surplus board which will then be ready for installation in the loft.

Meanwhile up in the loft I realised that the fiddle yard was too wide so I lifted it, split the boards down the middle and reinstated them to form a 12'-4" long yard which will have just two long roads with two crossovers. Thus we will have six sections. When a train arrives I will reposition the loco and brake van if applicable, and then reverse the train to the furthest available place in the yard, ready for future dispatch. This way I will only require generous access for my large hands (strangler's hands as my loving mother used to call them!) at one position. It's a great theory. I'll report again when the scenic work is complete! It just occurs to me that if I want to operate a FIFO system then it would make more sense for the first train in to go at the front of the yard. I will give this some thought.

Turn Number One

Why is the piece of sheet material which you want always at the back of the store?

It looks like it will fit!

Straight edge and Tracksetta

Work in progress

The first thing you'll notice is that I have re-named the blog. I did that at this point in time because I just learned how to do it! More to the point the name made no sense as the station names have changed along with all of the design concepts.

The detail change of Corkerton to Corkerbridge is because I think it sounds better and feels more appropriate for the major station.

Construction has begun in the loft and we now have some flat baseboards for the fiddle yard which is now located under the main layout. We also have the backscene in the form of brown MDF. Once the joints around the joists have been sealed I will paint some random sky using watercolour techniques but working with white emulsion and artists' acrylic paint.

Our first foray with DCC has not gone well. The old Farish loco failed at the first when its brushes disintegrated. When Martin told me I realised that I had been a bit stupid and have ordered a Dapol 57xx from Model Junction which will come to me chipped and ready to go. Thus we will have a guaranteed test unit. I have also ordered brushes from BR Lines who are specialists in Farish repairs. If we don't get a tune this time I will turn the loco into a static model of a loco being worked on in the Corkerbridge running shed.

Last night I drew Fornham St. Jude full size using Peco point templates and what a good job I did. I expected that standardised format points like we must use would take up less space than those in the real world but I was wrong. The next problem shown up was that some tracks will be too close to accommodate the goods shed so I will build that next. I have in stock a Ratio kit which was given to me, many Christmases ago, by Jackie. Once I have this to hand track laying can begin.

I now have 15 Seep point motors and yesterday I did a bodge test to check that a transformer I have in stock will do the job. It delivers 18v and is rated at two amps. It worked a treat. I intend to wire each motor back to the mimic panel using 3183Y three core cable. Blue to A. Brown to B. Green/Yellow to C. In this way I have a simple colour code for the motor, I can pick up the common (C) from a hefty busbar under the panel and I will only need a label on the cable to show which point it operates e.g. F01 = Fornham St. Jude point number one. I will put the numbers on the mimic panel

The station track diagrams

The diagrams were scanned from the two volumes of An Historical Survey Of Selected Great Western Stations. The terminus was selected simply by its general attractiveness and overall facilities, passenger station, goods shed and sidings, engine shed, turntable. They appear to offer interesting operation. To print it at the correct size was a simple matter of scanning into PhotoShop and resizing as follows. The plans are at a scale of 120ft to 1 inch so by simple measurement you get that the overall size is 11" therefore the real world size is 1320ft which at our scale is 2640mm. The layout drawing is one fifth full size so the scan should be resized to 528mm. However I want the station to fit within one half of the overall layout so I made it 400mm i.e. 2m. I then checked the platform length, 150mm i.e. 750mm which is long enough for 5 coaches and a tender loco. I also checked the track centres which are 5mm i.e. 25mm which is what's required. So this all looks good and the print was pasted into place.

I had previously drawn the two 180° turns and linked them with the back straight. Newquay was positioned and the connecting line added to take the track to Turn 1

Bourton-on-the-Water was selected by a similar set of criteria as above but additionally it needed to be from a single track environment and be compact in its depth. I didn't want any overlap between the stations so I positioned the two tunnel mouths on the back straight and using the method outlined above resized Bourton-on-the-Water to fit the space, again checking platform length and track centres. This time the platforms are 100mm i.e. 500mm long which will handle four coaches with the loco beyond the platform. Again perfectly acceptable.

Construction Plan

Because of the level changes I intend to build the fiddle yard first, then Fornham St. Jude and install them along with the hidden track work up to and including Turn 1. At This point I will have a useable, albeit non-scenic layout. I can then build Corkerton which is a considerably larger job and install it and the connection to Turn 1. The final phase will be all the scenic work, buildings, and all the myriad things which make a model railway

I have no idea how long this will but who cares?! The fun is in the construction every bit as much as it is in the operation.

And now for the good news. We have a design which I like. It's a terminus station out and back design and it has a fiddle yard. So why have I used a fiddle yard? The simple answer is that (a) it was the only way to receive larger trains (b) I solved the real estate issue. My big objection to turning loops and fiddle yards is the space which they consume but I have solved most of the issues. First the fiddle yard is alongside the layout and so does not waste length and by being the lowest point is can be ignored when viewing the layout. Next reversing loops. Although turn one (I number from the main station) will have to be under a scenic hillside in the usual way, turn two is under the main station and so has no impact on space

In the photo, red lines are hidden tracks

The stations are taken directly from standard texts and have not been modified by me (yet). The terminus (Corkerton) is Newquay and the through station (Fornham St. Jude) is Bourton-On-The-Water. My next task is to make a full-size replica of the layout by using Peco's templates. I have made up a master sheet which I must now get copied. I will then build the layout in paper just as you would when working with the real thing. This should produce the final design from which the layout can be built with confidence; particularly cutting the station baseboards to shape.

So now for the bad news. We have another failed design. If you look at the photo you can see that I was working on a tail chaser design with a single through station. It should have had more than one station but I abandoned the design for another head scratching session