Post #24

Well there has already been a change from the last posting #23 in that the extra siding designed next to the terminal road for the freight working has been dropped, just due to the layout of the points and curves. I will look and try and find another location to place one.

I made a trip to the local hobby shop (yes we still have a few) and purchased some Peco code 75 track and some smal radius points as well. Most of this track will sit in balllast and this will allow me to move the track layinf forward before I tackle the job of hand laying points. One issue is that I have to source some more printed circuit sleepers for the construction. I actually found a packet from Clover House that I must have purchased a long time ago as I believer they are no longer operating. I am hoping that 'Fast Tracks' have them in stock so the long process of ordering and waiting for them to arrive should be my next job.

The current work area

The area I am working on is shown in the above photo. The track will be single through here and it runs through ballasted track. There is a terminal road which makes a destination to go to and from and a standard gauge siding that will be served by both diesel hauled locos and also will be electrified for other goods traffic. As shown in the photo both lines intersect via two 90 degrees crossings and these will also be in their own right of way. Short of making the 90 degree crossing myself I decided for speed to purchase ready made crossings. The best I could do were Atlas code 83 crossings and it is surprising to see in the photo the width of the rail head comparing code 75 and 83. I think it will work okay as there won't be any 'operation' on the standard gauge as there is a sudden drop to the floor, I ran out of baseboard. There is also a slight grade in this area to get away from the flat earth policy and make it look more realistic. The grade comes up from the REA building and rises around 20mm at the top.

REA wagon outside the 'to be' building.

I thought I was on a winner when I saw this wagon available for sale at $15. The building I have to build is  Walthers Post Office building but the wagon was a refrigerator one. Maybe I can either rub out the words 'refrigerator' on the side of the wagon or pretend the ofice building keep on getting a large supply of ice creams delivered??. I don't think it will be a major problem.

The track ready to go

 I purchased four 90 degree crossings for the layout, the four can be seen in the above photo and refer to the previous track diagram to see how they fit into the layout.

Now one of my bright? ideas was to make the baseboard being able to rotate so I can access the underside easily for wiring up etc, but when I look at the amount of 'crap' that seems to collect on the topside, when it was time to provide the point motors for this section, I decided to mount the four on top via one way or other. The point on the right has a top side mounted point motor. I discovered after I had purchased a electrofrog one that it needed to be motorised to help sort out the polarity issue. It was the intention to just make it a sprung point but I think that can only be done using the insulfrog type. It will be wired in multiple with the other one that comes from the main track.

Two other point motors will be mounted on the surface and be located inside the REA building. I have used the router to dig two channels for the point rodding so this will solve that issue. The last point motor is going to be put into the back left hand corner of the house block. I will have to put a shed or something there to hide it, that as they say is further down the track.

The terminal road.

 

 

 

There will be a terminal road provided which as the photo shows will be on level ground. I purposely made it long enough to hold the Electroliner clear of the bypass track. You can see how much this unit has dictated a lot of the layout design. I'll say it is on a fan trip when photos appear of the Electroliner in this siding. I have obtained the plastic building shown which can be some sort of covered building providing a better form of weather protection for passengers. The palm tree was obtained from my O scale layout and I think it will still be OK for HO scale.

That's it for this update, I must get on to ordering those PC sleepers so I can start street construction.
 

Post #23

 Well I think I have got the final or very near final track plan worked out. I spent some time working out all the features I wanted in the layout in a previous post and I think I have achieved all of them. The main thing is to have it interesting to operate when the last bit of scenery and overhead wire is put into place. I was only thinking that this layout is probably amongst the smallest one I have built over my modelling years. I can now look back and claim biggest is not always best, but having said that I still don't how guys who build micro layouts can continue with the enthusiasm. They have them built in a few weeks and where is the challenge?

The first concept drawing of what I was aiming for.

 

 

 

You have to start somewhere and the concept diagram has turned out close to the final one. As explained earlier after I aquired the Electroliner I then had to increase the minimum radius to 11 inches to allow a smoother run, or put another way no derailments. There were ways to achieve a tighter radius (i.e. modifications to the set) but the 11" don't look too bad. An extra 200mm was added to the length and an extra 100mm added to the width. And after laying out the final plan I am glad I made it wider.

After making a second track template I started to draw the track outline onto the baseboard. And after two solid days of drawing, sharpening pencils I finally got the plan laid out. Even though the concept drawing was done to scale on a computer, it doesn't always work out in real life.

You will see that the final plan has plenty of curves in it and I only run parallel to the edge where I have to. I have always said that curves make it more interesting, anyway that's my theory.

Drone shot used to accurately map out the track plan

The photo above is how I was able to draw out an accurate plan ot the track position. I reached up above the board and took a series of vertical photos, around four shots. These were then imported into CorelDraw and then stitched together and then traced over to create the track positioning. In the photo the depot, crossing loop and the track into Aurora has been commenced as this is all done with RTR track. I also like to flood the board with buildings and other items to get the feel of how they will sit in the final outcome. I am still getting over the size of HO cars instead of the O scale ones I was previously modelling. 

So eventually I end up with a scale drawing of the final plan.

No not the final, after drawing this one up I discovered that I had a freight motor and wanted it to be able to run into a joint siding that was also worked by a railway locomotive. The factory/industry is the orange box shape towards the left hand side. So plan number two was done:

Now the trolley line was connected to the freight siding and I found I could squeeze in a work depot siding (shown dashed) as well. (Gee you can fit a lot in modelling HO) The rest of the layout I was happy with but it was this freight siding causing issues. The freight line heads towards the left hand side to cross over the trolley line via two 90 degrees crossings. I ended up purchasing four of them - Atlas code 83 as I don't think there are any code 75 90's that are made. At one stage I was going to have the freight line head down a grade and go under the trolley line that would cross via a bridge, but this works okay. The trolley track into the siding was only going to hold one freight car so after another change I reversed the crossover and this made room for two freight cars and a longer electrified siding. Win Win. So another change:

Maybe final Who knows?

So at the time of writing this is the final plan, not saying there may not be more changes to come. I know that the roads shown may not be the final ones but the track has to be laid before the roads can be set out. You can see that by reversing the track into the freight siding that this suits the siding capacity at the factory. I have a Walthers Post Office building ready to be assembled for this spot and have marked out its footprint onto the baseboard.

The barn has to be dual ended as some of the trolleys are only single ended so will have to exit the barn opposite to how they came in. The barn will only hold eight bogie cars and the long siding outside is long enough to hold the Electroliner.

So at this stage I am happy with the progress being made, but always plenty more to be done. Sadly I will have to wait a while longer before I will put up some overhead, but looking forward to doing that.