Waton

[eldavo]

I've always fancied the idea of N gauge and the possibilities of a railway running through the landscape. The 2010 challenge was the spur needed to make me give it a serious try but of course the limit of 2010 square inches made things a little more interesting.

 

The build thread is here http://www.rmweb.co....pic/4400-waton/

 

The background

 

Planning started back in November of 2009 but no real substantive work on the layout was started till March of 2010 due to other commitments. Seeing photographs of Water Orton on RMWeb and other places triggered thoughts in my head. Many N gauge layouts achieve the "railway in the landscape" bit but are a bit bland in the operations department. The oddball track plan at Water Orton, caused by rationalisation, plus the variety of traffic that passes through gives scope for a bit of visual and operational interest. The decrepit nature of the station buildings also adds to the appeal.

 

I decided that I really didn't like the look or the running qualities of Peco N gauge track. There are some excellent layouts around that use it but it doesn't cut it for me so I planned to build my own. The trackplan was sketched out using Traxx software, which just happens to have been written by one of my local railway club buddies. Having little experience of N gauge this allowed me to print out a fullsize plan and get more of a feel for how things would flow. Laying the plan out on the kitchen floor I suddenly realised the scale of the challenge!

 

 

The original trackplan was a compression of the plan at Water Orton but during construction what I had laid out didn't look right. Things were getting too cramped so I decided to further rationalise and remove a facing crossover from the Westbound lines. The modified plan allows nearly all the original operational permutations and allows a bit more space for scenery. Here's the track plan mapped out using the Traxx software.

 

 

The scenic baseboards are 10 feet long and 14.25 inches wide. The rear left and right corners are cut off by the curving backscene. This gives a board area somewhere less than 1,710 square inches (my calculus doesn't run to working out the space removed by the curves!). All lines were planned to end in simple 1 inch wide cassettes of around 30 inches length adding an additional 210 square inches. All up it is comfortably(!) less than 2010 square inches. In practice these cassettes have not been constructed as I ran out of time.

 

Work started in earnest in March with the construction of 4 baseboards. These are built from 5mm ply and are very light but reasonably rigid. They are connected in traditional manner with bolts and wingnuts and have simple brass dowels for precise location. The trackbed is raised slightly off the open framework to aid the creation of the topology and improve the low level view.

 

The trackwork

 

As I've mentioned, proprietary N gauge track doesn't look right to me so I had to build my own from something. I joined the 2mm Scale Association which gave me access to their extensive shop, as well as another idea! I purchased quite a few metres of code 40 flat bottom rail, thousands of sleepers and some 2mm fine scale track gauges. The intent was to build all the plain track to the association gauge of 9.42mm but build the pointwork to 9mm (or slightly less) gauge. By reducing the gauge in the pointwork to less that the proprietary products gauge (about 9.1mm) I can run off the shelf N gauge stock with bog standard wheels and back to back measurements yet still reduce the flangeway clearances and so improve the look of the track. Not only is the look improved but also the running qualities. It's the equivalent of OO-SF or O gauge with 31.5mm gauge. Not a new idea but a good one. If anyone can spot the 0.42mm difference in gauge between the plain track and the pointwork, well done!

 

Pointwork was built using Traxx generated templates as a guide and plain track built using a crude cardboard jig. Very time consuming but worth the effort in my opinion.

 

 

 

 

In all there are 7 turnouts and a set of catch points each of which is operated by a Conrad point motor (at the moment). Although all the track is built in the same way I wanted to represent wood sleepered pointwork with concrete sleepered plain track. The basic track was blasted with a good coat of Halford's grey primer then given a waft of Plasticote Suede effect paint (a Jim S-W tip). The sleepers of the pointwork were also painted with Burnt Umber acrylic. Rail sides were handpainted with a rusty sort of colour and the track ballasted by painting between the sleepers with neat PVA and tamping the ballast in with the finger. Everything has been weathered to some degree with dilute acrylics slopped on with a brush.

 

Quite a lot of detailing bits were then added. Things like point machines or clamp lock motors, PVC cable conduits, concrete cable troughs, cables, point heater supply boxes, electrical cabinets and even a flange lubricator add to the overall effect.

 

 

 

Control

 

I have thought about using DCC but somehow the idea of trying to cram decoders into all these little beasts doesn't attract me (yet). Consequently Waton is currently set up for DC operation but with a bit of a difference. Currently the control panel is a prototype which will need replacing in the future. There are no section switches or conventional cab control switches just 13 switches representing the levers in a signal box.

 

The system is rigged to allow two operators to drive, one driving trains going East the other trains going West. A Morley twin controller is used for DC supply.

The operators are presented with a control panel with 13 switches and a signalbox diagram. Eight of the switches (with red toggles) operate signals the other 5 turnouts/crossovers.

 

 

The point and signal switches are electrically interlocked using a bunch of relays that means a signal cannot be changed from red to green without the correct route being set. Unless the appropriate signal is set to green then no power is fed to the track. The signal switches control not only the signals themselves but also which controller will feed power and to which sections of track. Basically if the signal is green or yellow you can drive past the signal and as far as the next signal at red.

 

Simples!

 

Well it is for the operators but even halfway through wiring up the insides of the box looked the exact opposite!

 

 

There should be 5 signals visible on the scenic section of the layout but as yet only one has been completed. The signals are all colour lights and four of the five are mounted on gantries. The gantries have been fabricated from odd bits of brass tube, "U" section and wire soldered together with scratchbuilt signal heads created from plasticard with 0805 form surface mount LEDs. These LEDs are small!

 

 

The simplest sequence of operation is when a train travels from Birmingham towards Derby, there are no point changes involved! To allow a train to be driven from the Birmingham fiddleyard the appropriate signal, in this case number 1, must be cleared. This connects power from the Eastbound controller to the fiddleyard and to the sections of track running into platform 1. Signal number 1 is not actually modelled so is only reproduced as logic within the signalling system.

 

 

The train can now be driven from the fiddleyard to platform 1 and has to stop at the red signal at the Eastern end of the platform.

 

 

 

The operator can now return signal 1 to danger, electrically isolating the train, and when ready clear signal 3, the starter for the Derby directon.

 

 

With a green signal the controller is now connected to the track alongside platform 1 and the route into the Derby fiddleyard. The train can continue its journey.

 

 

 

 

You can see this sequence in video form if you choose but I'm afraid the standard of my videography is none too clever!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqPOKpzU7fE

 

Scenery and stuff

 

I was keen to try and convey the feel of Water Orton even though I couldn't accurately represent it in the available space. Even though it is only a few miles from Birmingham it is a very green area with masses of trees which sets a few challenges in itself.

 

There is a lot of green scenic material on the boards particularly lichen representing hedgerows and small trees. Everything is overgrown so you can't see the fences that I haven't built!

 

Larger trees have been constructed from wire armatures with hot glue gun glue for bark and various bits and pieces for foliage. I still need to create quite a few more to complete the scene.

 

 

There are relatively few buildings (so far) but what there is have been constructed from card and plasticard with Scalescenes brick papers and custom textures I have created from my own photographs. A key building is the station building itself, it's quite distinctive and is today in such a run down state I had to try and model it. It is a fairly simple set of plasticard boxes clad in printed paper textures.

 

 

Just for the heck of it I squeezed in a river of sorts at the Eastern end of the layout. In reality there is a river and two bridges at Water Orton but they are a couple of miles West so modellers compression had to be used. The water is built up from layers of PVA glue but unfortunately I had trouble with damp getting in, or not getting out, and this is the second attempt and is still cloudy. Clearly there is some industrial polution occurring up river!

 

 

There have been some disasters along the way with Waton. I carefully constructed the bus shelter style structure for the platform from brass wire and plasticard, painted it up, planted it and sat back and admired it. A few days later I was spraying Tesco's finest (read cheapest) hairspray around to lock down some foliage and lo and behold the glazing in the shelter warped all over tha place! While I mused over how I could find the time to rip it up and rebuild it someone on another forum remarked that it looked like fire damage. So out came the paints and weathering powders and the shelter was duly cordoned off due to the actions of local vandals.

 

 

 

Rollingstock etc.

 

To be honest not much has been done on the rollingstock front. I have been quietly acquiring stuff from my primary supplier (ebay) and various forum members so that I have the basis of a fleet but most of it needs some work/improvement. I did take my airbrush out to a couple of Dapol 66s to see what could be done and I think weathering the stock will be an enjoyable job over the coming months.

 

 

The traffic through Water Orton is pretty varied with coal, oil, containers and various other freight services plus a lot of passenger moves. Waton will have all this plus some modellers license I'm sure. I guess 66s will be the mainstay of the freight locos, in red, green and blue variants but the monotony will have to be broken with a few more interesting items as well.

How things stand today

 

Here is a Google Earth style overall view of Waton.

 

 

If you stand far enough away from the layout you could be fooled into thinking it is complete, this is far from the case. There is a huge amount still to do not the least of which is to build the fiddleyards. With time running out I elected to focus on the scenery aspects rather than building cassettes as I knew that these would only be a temporary measure. Waton has been built from the start to be an exhibition layout so the next major work item is to extend it beyond the challenge limits to add proper fiddleyards. I will probably end up with a roundy roundy style of layout with a large single fiddleyard arranged in parallel and behind the scenic boards. I'm still mulling over the possibilities.

 

The signalling has to be completed and the main control panel will be rebuilt properly to complete the interlocking (currently you can return a point after the signal has been pulled!) and the switches will be replaced by a lever frame. A lighting rig will be added for exhibition purposes. There are more buildings to build and the scenery at the Western end is not complete. Apart from the trackside there is a distinct lack of detail everywhere else that needs to be sorted.

 

Of course you can take sneaky pictures that hide these deficiencies.

 

 

 

 

The silliness

 

The original rules stated that we had to try and incorporate references to 2010 and 5. The layout is actually built based on Water Orton as it is in 2010 in all its decrepitude but someone obviously has a birthday.

 

 

It must be summertime to be light at this time unless the clocks have stopped!

 

 

 

References to five are a bit more tenuous I'm afraid. Of course the name "Waton" has five letters and there's a group of 5 young ladies on their way to a celebration...

 

 

 

They seemed to have spotted someone over in the car park. I wonder how being a member of the local Morris Minor Van club has affected his street cred? There are 5 vans...

 

 

 

Back on the platform down at the end there are 5 train spotters complete with cameras, tripods and rucksacks. I drew the line at trying to build a folding chair which seems to be a prerequisite for Water Orton train spotters!

 

 

 

There are 5 children playing in the garden of the bungalow. No wonder they have a people mover on the drive!

 

 

 

There are 5 businesses in the parade of shops (if you include the Waton Cantonese)...

 

 

 

There are 5 point levers in the signalling frame.

 

 

 

There are 5 different bins in the recycling centre. There's also a rubbish bin and this, surprisingly, doesn't seem to be overflowing with carrier bags (yet)!

 

 

 

There should also be 5 colour light signal heads modelled but so far there is only 1!

 

 

In conclusion

 

The 2010 challenge has been the trigger to get me to properly explore the potential of N gauge. It's been a lot of work over the last 6 months but great fun and I fully expect to get a lot more fun out of Waton as I take it forward. I'd like to thank all those that have provided kind comments, ideas and encouragement, it really has been appreciated.

 

 

Cheers

Dave