My orders from Maplin and Expotools turned up yesterday (in my experience both these companies always provide an excellent next day service and are to be recommended) so I made a start today on the wiring.
The first task was to decide on a colour scheme for the wiring. DCC calls for six wires running to various places:
J and K are the power lines to the track and point decoders. I’ve coloured these black and red using 7/0.2 wire;
U and V are the AC power from the transformer for point motors as well as the DCC feedback modules. If you don’t want either of these features they can be left out. I used blue and brown 16/0.2 wire.
R and S are for the feedback from the block detectors. Again they can be left out if you don’t want computer control. For these I chose also 7/0.2 wire, in yellow and green.
The size of wire I’ve chosen should be fine for a small N gauge layout, but a larger layout may need bigger cables.
After a few experiments with DCC the back of the command station was getting into an incredible tangle of wires, all of which where in whatever colour of wire I happened to have available. So I’ve started by attaching the correct wires to the back of the command station.
Then I’ve attach self adhesive copper tracking to the underside of the baseboard which will provide power for the J wire to the track. Droppers from the track will simply be soldered to the strip, which should save a lot of wiring. The K track wires will be passing through the feedback block detection modules, but if you where using a simple ‘two wire’ DCC system these could also be connected through a similar ‘bus’.
The next task is to make up some cables to feed the six wires listed above to various parts of the board - as well as making connectors between the two baseboards. I’ve chosen to attach 6-pin DIN plugs to the ends of the wires. Even though the layout will not be portable I also want to make it feasible to move it if I move house without having to tear everything up and start again.
The one final task of the day was to order some track pins from Hattons. When I placed the order for the track
something in my head told me I already had some. It was wrong. Fortunately they do a reduced postage charge on such small, easy to handle orders.
With the track plan finished it was time to work out exactly what parts where needed. There didn’t seem to be much point buying everything at once since, I’m sure, it will take me a while to do all the track laying.
One handly feature of XTrkCad is that you can select sections of track and produce a parts list, even listing how much flexible track you will need. You can even enter the prices charged by your favourite model shop and it will calculate how much hard-earned you will need to spend.
So I selected everthing for the double track loop and got the print out.
That was simple. But, as I mentioned before, I want the layout to be DCC and computer controlled. This meant I needed DCC point controllers and block detectors. So I worked out the number of points (simple) and the number of blocks (not so simple).
And I added up the cost of the DCC parts, the track and the point motors. And got a bit shock. Juts for a double track loop (and admittedly a good amount of pointwork) the total was nearly £1000! I didn’t mind spending that spread over a few months but it was too much to spend in one go.
It was time to think about starting on something smaller, so I did some more pricing up for a smaller section - this time just the outer main line loop. This time things came to under £400. Still expensive, but much more feasible. All I had to add to that was a bit extra for wiring and connectors.
So the orders have been placed: (Southampton Model Centre for the track and point motors; MG Sharp for the DCC modules; and Expotools and Maplin for the electrical gubbins) and it’s just a case of sitting back and waiting for the postman.
My father offered to make me some baseboards for Christmas. Given that I’ve never one managed to saw a piece of wood in a straight line this looked too good an offer to pass up. He enjoys a bit of woodwork and, I think, gave him an nice project to occupy him over the Christmas holiday period.
So this morning he turned up with the boards which where duly put in place. Or at least they almost where. I had carefully measured the width of the room across the front of where the old desk was - where the front of the new board would be - at 94 inches, but when we assembled the boards we found that the width across the room at the wall was only 93½ inches. Oops.
Fortunately my dad is rather smarter than me and foresaw this possibility. He made the boards so that the top board overhung the ends of the framing at one end by ¼ inch. It was ten minutes work to remove the plywood backboards, cut off the end of the board and re-assemble things. This time everything fitted perfectly.
For those who are interested in these things, the framework is made of two by one timber (or whatever they call it in metric) with 12mm MDF as the baseboard. My father didn’t put quite as much framework in as I would have liked but the MDF seems fairly sturdy so should be fine.
I’ve always liked reading about other peoples layout construction stories, such as ‘The Trials of Treoch’ in Model Rail magazine and Steve Jones website so, now that I’ve started my own ‘proper’ layout I thought I’d create this website for other like-minded individuals.
History
I used to ‘play trains’ a lot as a child but gave up (like so many do) in my later teenage years. I had a layout in the shed but lack of funds and ability meant this never got past the laying track
stage. Electrics where barely there (a couple of wires from the single controller) and scenery was non-existent other than a few plastic building kits.
In late 2004 I was walking past the magazine racks in the local newsagent and noticed a tasty picture of an HST on the front cover of Railway Modeller. I ignored it at the time, but had to go back a few days later to purchase a copy. I intended it would be just a brief bit of nostalgia but when I was given a couple of small electronic kits - not for anything railway related - for Christmas it conjured up childhood memories of wanting to create a fully computer controlled layout.
With that at the back of my mind I soon discovered DCC, which would make computer control much easier than the electronic circuits I was considering.
So, in early 2005 I sent of for some stock, some Peco Setrack and a controller. This was set up on an old desk in the corner of the spare room and was slowly added to as the months went on.
But by late 2005 the desk was getting rather full of track and stock and was rather bereft of scenery - it was time to build a proper layout. If I cleared the end wall of the spare room I had space for a layout about eight feet by 2 foot six.
The Layout
I’d bought one of Cyril Freezers track plans books for ideas and while there was nothing suitable for directly copying there where some good ideas in there. I knew I wanted a double track main line, but I wanted to do more than just watch trains going round in circles. Some of the layouts in the book showed a circular loop which also had a terminus which could be reached from a triangular junction, so trains leaving the terminus could run either way around the loop, or even leave the terminus on one branch of the triangle, run one or more times around the loop, and return to the terminus via the other leg of the triangle.
I liked the idea but playing with pen and paper showed there was no way I could make this fit in the space available, but the idea of a branch line to a terminus stuck. Then a moment of genius struck. If I positioned the terminus with the rails buffers towards the front of the board at the right hand end they would only be about three feet away from my office desk which houses the computer and it’s associated hardware and piles of paperwork. I could easily add an extension across the gap which could have a return loop of Setrack running over the desk.
This would combine with a line passing from the front to the rear of the main baseboard which would act as a reverse loop so trains could run in a continuous ‘dumbbell’, or from the terminus and back without having to reverse at the station or fiddle yard.
So the plan was pretty much done. I downloaded the free XTrkCad software so I could get a more accurate picture of what would fit. The idea was to have a fiddle yard at the back and a station at the front which would have a line branching off to the left, which would rise to a terminus over the right hand side of the loop.
The original idea was to have the outermost loop on the left as the branch line. But I was getting uncomfortable with the way this would have to rise an a short distance to pass over the lines entering the fiddle yard. It would mean a change in grade starting immediately after the pointwork at the station and a tight turn to pass over the main lines before they entered the fiddle yard. Tight turns, changes of grade and pointwork where, so I read, all bad ideas - especially when combined.
I toyed with the idea of making the branch line the inner most line at the left hand end. Putting this into XTrkCad showed that it worked well, and left me with a very pleasing looking junction at the left hand end of the station (After creating various ‘fantasy’ layout ideas I’ve realised that I have an odd passion for complex pointwork. The problem with pointwork, though, is that it takes up a lot of space. Fortunately I managed to come up with something that looked pleasing but which didn’t take up too much space).
Finishing Touches
XTrkCad also showed that I had a surprising amount of space left in the centre of the boards. Time to add some ‘on layout storage’. I popped a loco depot, sorry TMD, coming off the branch line and some sidings behind the main line station either for a goods yard or carraige sidings for my desire to collect some Southern Region EMUs.
So, here we have the finished track plan. It doesn’t show too well but the two crossing on the inner main line at the front are single slips allowing trains to leave the branch line on the inner loop or enter the branch line from the outer loop. That at the right hand end of the fiddle yard is a double slip allowing trains to enter or leave the reversing loop or to reverse out of the fiddle yard.
And yes, I know the track is flying over thin air at one end! That’s the positions the tracks where originally in when I started playing. I moved them all onto the board and carried on designing. Then XTrkCad crashed and I had to revert to an older saved version. Somewhat annoyed by the crash I set about re-instating the lost tracks but forgot about moving the lines. And I didn’t fancy disconnecting the tracks and redoing all the joins, so I left them where they where.
