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Having spent the past few years building scenery and rolling stock for family and friends, I have decided that it is about time that i started to build a railway of my own. It will be my first layout in 50 years and due to the constraints of living in a small cottage it needs to stow away into an alcove when not in use. After toying with various ideas for a baseboard, I have bought a 'metamorphic' sideboard from eBay which consists of two shelves 5 foot by 15 inches linked by a parallelogram levers that slide the top shelf backwards while lifting the lower shelf until it locks very precisely and firmly to give a table top of 5' by 30".

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The first photo shows the lower board part way lifted and the second shows the boards locked together.post-22897-0-92562700-1488385790_thumb.jpg

The five foot join will be disguised by hedges, fences, buildings etc

 

My proposal is to have a single track round the outside of the board hidden behind the quarry hill to the left of the layout and a small town to the right. There should be space to double the concealed track as a fiddle yard. A passing loop inside left hand end of the main line will lead to a pair of sidings leading to the gravel works and act as a headshunt.  A siding to the front of the main line will serve the wharf and timber yard with the main line curving inland  through the town to rejoin the fiddle yard.

 

I need to build up the surface of the baseboards by 20 to 25 mm to allow depth for the wharf and dock, which will also allow a slope down to a beach along the front of the layout. This will also give a better surface on which to lay track as the boards are made from formica topped ply.  I am unsure whether to use sundeala or extruded foam insulation board and would welcome advice from more experienced modellers and also advice on the best way to form the hill behind the quarry.

Edited by Dickon
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Will be watching this thread with interest as I want to work a quayside into my layout too.

My plan is to landscape the baseboards with layers of 10mm Styrofoam insulation board with the quayside being either 20 or 30mm deep, in other words a scale 10 or 15 feet above the 'water' level.  The height will depend on the level of the tide and the freeboard of  any ships likely to lie alongside. The harbour wall will be plasticard 'stone' from the local quarry who built the harbour years ago to export stone for building.  

There is very little stone of that quality left by now so the quarry now has a crushing plant exporting railway ballast and roadstone by rail and the wharf is operated by a company importing Baltic timber and tropical hardwoods.  The quay surface will be plasticard cobble stones running onto a timber-built wharf extension where the land falls away beyond the end of the original stone quay.  The water surface will be a rippled water effect plastic sheet from Serious-Play over a painted baseboard. A £4.99 sheet is more than  big enough for the entire harbour with offcuts filling the spaces between groynes on the beach.  I had thought about converting a Frog/Gomex Shell Welder kit into a small freighter unloading timber at the quay, but have read that it is no longer an easy build as the mouldings are poor on account of the age of the dies.  I would like to hear if anyone has built one recently and how it turned out. For the time being I've settled on an Artitec tug and lighter and will probably park a motor fishing vessel or two further along the quay as time goes on.

Edited by Dickon
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I've been playing around with possible track plans and discovered that I can't have a complete circuit of track as the track radius will be too tight as it sweeps around behind the harbour unless I make the harbour so narrow that it becomes almost pointless.  So, plan b is for a classic shunting puzzle with the main line leading via a tunnel to a concealed siding or two underneath a hill behind the quarry.  I can now have a much bigger harbour basin with a lot more visual impact and space for more ships and quayside activity plus a couple of additional sidings leading to an industrial area behind the timber yard and a greater feeling of  space across the entire layout.

 

 

 

I have started to play around with the Styrofoam insulation board that I will be using to landscape the layout and my first impression are that it is super stuff. However there seems to be some controversy about pinning track to it.  I've tried 30 mm dressmaking pins which seem to work pretty well.  What do other people think?

post-22897-0-66957600-1488973476_thumb.jpg

Edited by Dickon
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  • RMweb Gold

If it were I, I'd be inclined to glue the track to the foam. This would make it more secure. My adhesive of choice is copydex, however, I've never tried that on the foam so I'm not sure if it would take? Just a suggestion.

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If it were I, I'd be inclined to glue the track to the foam. This would make it more secure. My adhesive of choice is copydex, however, I've never tried that on the foam so I'm not sure if it would take? Just a suggestion.

Thank you. I'll try glue on some off-cuts. Another option would be double sided tape plus the pins which are the full depth of the foam.

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  • RMweb Gold

If you brought the gravel works forward and ran the exit track behind it the gravel works buildings could be used to disguise an opening in a backscene.  The exit track could run onto a sector plate in the top left hand corner which you could use to access an off-scene fiddle yard along the back edge.

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Could the harbour somehow clip onto edge of board to  enable circuit?

I thought about that but rejected it as I live in a very small and cluttered Victorian cottage; hence the 'metamorphic' folding board allowing me to stow the layout in a space half its 'playing' size.

Edited by Dickon
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If you brought the gravel works forward and ran the exit track behind it the gravel works buildings could be used to disguise an opening in a backscene.  The exit track could run onto a sector plate in the top left hand corner which you could use to access an off-scene fiddle yard along the back edge.

I might try that; I'm sure a lot will fall into place when I start building the thing as I want the minimum number of  tracks crossing crossing the join in the baseboard.  I do like the idea of a sector plate or cassettes if I can fit them behind quarry hill.  At the moment I only have two locos, a J94 and a Bullied Q1.  I believe the Q1s quite often ran tender first, so ideas for a fiddle yard can wait a while. It is however worthwhile making sure that I have sufficient space behind the quarry and a low relief backdrop to the town.

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I might try that; I'm sure a lot will fall into place when I start building the thing as I want the minimum number of  tracks crossing crossing the join in the baseboard.  I do like the idea of a sector plate or cassettes if I can fit them behind quarry hill.  At the moment I only have two locos, a J94 and a Bullied Q1.  I believe the Q1s quite often ran tender first, so ideas for a fiddle yard can wait a while. It is however worthwhile making sure that I have sufficient space behind the quarry and a low relief backdrop to the town.

 

Something like this might work????

 

post-22897-0-86225700-1488992447_thumb.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

If you brought the gravel works forward and ran the exit track behind it the gravel works buildings could be used to disguise an opening in a backscene.  The exit track could run onto a sector plate in the top left hand corner which you could use to access an off-scene fiddle yard along the back edge.

I think (and hope!) that I now have a track plan that will both fit my available space and work.  The key to the solution was to replace the conventional left hand point on the quarry siding head shunt with a RH curved point which has allowed me to bring the quarry forward so I can put a couple of concealed sidings behind the quarry as suggested by Teaky a couple of days ago. 

I have also been able to slightly enlarge the harbour so that the largest boats likely to visit the place would be able to turn round while another vessel is lying alongside the quay.  I have now fixed the first 3 layers of Styrofoam to the baseboards, so once the new points have arrived and I know that I have a workable track plan, I can start to landscape the front board by cutting out the harbour and sculpting the area to the left of the harbour into an embankment sweeping towards a tunnel under the quarry hill.

I have yet to decide whether the breakwater on the seaward side of the harbour should be of timber construction like Yarmouth Isle of Wight where the breakwater is built from old railway sleepers tied together by lengths of rail or a more substantial stone built structure.

I have been scouring eBay for good looking British style buildings in plastic or resin and am finding the choice is very limited by comparison with what is available from the Continent.   I have however managed to buy some very nice scratch built Plasticard buildings including a splendid Edwardian town house and a very run down looking warehouse.  I have yet to decide whether the Edwardian building will end up as a hotel, a bank or a rather posh office for the harbour master.  This has inspired me to build a bay window which will become part of the façade of the Jolly Shipwright pub, known to its locals as the ‘woodbutcher’….photos to follow as and when.

post-22897-0-28539900-1489940461_thumb.jpg

Edited by Dickon
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Make the main scenic section on the top shelf and use the lower for cassette/sector plate to keep the stock safe under cover.

Will look more interesting when the whole thing is folded up.

That's exactly what I am doing. It also means that the taller structures and higher ground on the lower shelf are protected when the layout is folded while the more interesting buildings around the harbour remain on display. 

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My first attempt at scratch building; The facade of the 'Jolly Shipwright' pub. Pity the upstairs window is not exactly above the door.  I guess that the main building is older than the wooden pub front and the brewery were more interested in the size of the bar than the proportions of the building!

post-22897-0-76690300-1490027615_thumb.jpg

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Will be watching this thread with interest as I want to work a quayside into my layout too.

Started work on the harbour walls this morning. Slater's Plasticard dressed stone with a lower revetment of Finecast random stone on the outer breakwater.  I need to add greenheart piles as fendering for the inner walls (matchsticks) and possibly some judicious 'rock dumping' of overscale ballast to reinforce the revetment.

 

post-22897-0-51729000-1490454528_thumb.jpgpost-22897-0-92158300-1490454539_thumb.jpg

 

I'm not sure about the pill box on the eastern pier

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Hi Dickon

 

Like the idea of this layout - it has the potential to look very different from many other small layouts.

 

Before, you lay all the track, have you thought about how you would operate the layout?

 

Once the main line locomotive arrives, then what happens? If you want to avoid having a normal run-round loop, you may need some extra sidings to keep the main line engine out of the way whilst a shunter does its work and the brake van ends up at the back of the train for the return journey back to the fiddle yard.

 

I find that drawing out the track plan on paper and using bits of paper to represent locos and wagons is a good way to find out if the plan will work or not.

 

Regards

 

Nick

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Hi Dickon

 

Like the idea of this layout - it has the potential to look very different from many other small layouts.

 

Before, you lay all the track, have you thought about how you would operate the layout?

 

Once the main line locomotive arrives, then what happens? If you want to avoid having a normal run-round loop, you may need some extra sidings to keep the main line engine out of the way whilst a shunter does its work and the brake van ends up at the back of the train for the return journey back to the fiddle yard.

 

I find that drawing out the track plan on paper and using bits of paper to represent locos and wagons is a good way to find out if the plan will work or not.

 

Regards

 

Nick

I could turn one of the sidings in the industrial area over to a loco servicing area with a small loco shed and a coal yard serving the town as well as the railway.

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Started work on the harbour walls this morning. Slater's Plasticard dressed stone with a lower revetment of Finecast random stone on the outer breakwater.  I need to add greenheart piles as fendering for the inner walls (matchsticks) and possibly some judicious 'rock dumping' of overscale ballast to reinforce the revetment.

 

attachicon.gifIMG_2093 - Copy.JPGattachicon.gifIMG_2095 - Copy.JPG

 

I'm not sure about the pill box on the eastern pier

I've now got water in the harbour basin plus piling and ladders on the harbour wall. I painted the underside of the rippled plastic 'water' with a mixture of Bugatti blue and Land Rover bronze to give varied shades of aquamarine.  I'm quite pleased with the way that the light plays on the surface of the plastic 'water'.

post-22897-0-25972900-1490965796_thumb.jpg

Edited by Dickon
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  • 2 weeks later...

Will be watching this thread with interest as I want to work a quayside into my layout too.

I've been looking at various N gauge fishing boats kits and found that although some of them are lovely the vast majority are also rather pricey.  Then I came across a resin kit for a 30 foot MFV in OO scale on eBay for a princely £5.50. Some quick mental arithmatic said 30 ft in OO gauge = 60 ft in N and here she is with a scratch built wheel house in mahogany veneer on a brass frame folded from a large industrial window.  The masts are way too thick, but at this early stage, they are just a pair of cocktail sticks to help me gauge an appropriate height.  

With more paint,fenders, nets and general clutter, she should look the part.  I'm not quite sure what she will be fishing for, but she will be rigged appropriately for the job.

post-22897-0-69943100-1492186047_thumb.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

In Great Yarmouth Harbour on the junction of the River Yare there is a standard pill box like this on the edge of the harbour wall in almost the exact same sort of position. Steve

I'll look in to it. Most of the pictures I've found so far show coastal pill boxes either standing on or built into a sea wall. Another possible site for mine could be at the landward root of the other pier, but it's range of fire would then be covered by the larger box sited where the railway curves inland from the seawall to enter a tunnel.

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