Sunday, January 01, 2006
Hi
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.
