Ashburton and Totnes

[JohnBS]

ASHBURTON AND TOTNES

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Many years ago, while living in London, I began construction of a large fixed layout of Totnes station, the River Dart and estuary, Dainton Tunnel, Staverton and the Ashburton branch. The whole thing was an L-shape, about 4m by 4.5m and 1m deep. It was approaching completion when we moved down to Somerset some thirty years ago. Despite its massive size, the layout survived the move, minus the Ashburton terminus, which had to be removed to fit into the new railway room (the loft). Therefore, the ultimate outcome was two separate layouts, a remodelled Ashburton and a reconstructed Totnes.

 

The two models share common themes – each is set in South Devon in the heyday of steam on the Great Western Railway. Both, are to 2mm scale, though using N-gauge track, and share a collection of locomotives and rolling stock. Ashburton is a small working diorama of the well-known branch line terminus while Totnes is a larger continuous circuit.

 

Ashburton on its supporting base unit, which acts as a storage box for transporting the ancillary equipment

 

The construction of each layout differs slightly. The older, Ashburton, is in two separate boards, 1.3m and 1.1m long and 0.45m wide, with radiused corners. It has a perimeter framework of 22mm thick softwood with cross braces at about 0.4m centres.

 

The newer, Totnes, has six main track boards, providing an oval about 3.0m by 1.7m, with two infill scenic boards and one small board for the Quay Branch. These have a structural frame of 4mm birch ply, with cross braces at about 0.4m centres, diagonal bracing and a spline beam under the centreline of the tracks. The latter was very carefully aligned vertically to avoid undulation which are difficult to detect. The track bed is 9mm MDF and the rail is Peco code 55, carefully ballasted with fine sand. Turnouts are again Peco, with Seep motors. All vulnerable edges of the framework are reinforced with 8mm square strip-wood and ply joints with 12mm triangular fillets.

 

Totnes at an exhibition, on the extended base unit.

 

The layouts have a common setting-out height with the tracks at 1.2m above floor level - indeed they share the same support structure. Joining faces were reinforced with an additional layer of 9mm MDF and were aligned with loose-pin butts (hinges) and connected with M10 bolts, washers and wing nuts. The exposed front edges were faced with 3mm MDF, cut to the scenery profile. A similar MDF strip was fixed to the rear, curving round the ends, as a panoramic back-scene, cut to the distant ground and tree profile. The sky boards were separate, spaced about 5mm away from the back of the ground profile. Both layouts have lift-off sections to give access to hidden tracks or where buildings cross baseboard joints.

 

Scenic surfaces were constructed out of 10mm insulation board (Sundeala), cut, edge-glued to each other to form a three-dimensional monocoque and carved as necessary. This gave an homogenous surface, capable of taking fixings (trees, signals, etc) and of being shaped. (It also enabled me to use up loads of off-cuts from the earlier version of Totnes!)

 

Ashburton has five storage sidings which are somewhat unconventional; they sit under the rising ground at the back of the layout and are accessed via a sector plate which forms the track in the rock cutting at the right hand end of the layout. Totnes has a conventional fiddle yard behind the back-scene, with four roads in each direction, a central exchange road and head/tail shunts at the left hand end. These fiddle yard boards are protected by a 20mm up-stand, in 3mm MDF. For transport, pairs of boards bolt together face-to-face, through end protection boards.

 

Both layouts are supported on a base unit - a fold-out box construction which provides a firm base and storage for many of the ancillary items – power supply, tools, lighting and cables. The lighting is by a concentrated array of tungsten halogen lamps on a high single pole. For Totnes, the base unit is extended by adding a further four sections, again joined with hinges.

[St Enodoc]

Nice to see this thread John. I enjoyed watching Ashburton at Railwells earlier this month.

[Brinkly]

Hi John,

 

I have enjoyed both layouts at exhibitions: it is good to see a thread for your layouts.

 

Best wishes,

 

Nick.

[Caley Jim]

Nice to see you on here, John.  I remember being next to Totnes when we were at Aylesbury with Connerburn about 9 years ago.

 

Jim

[Tim V]

Enjoyed Ashburton over the many years, one of the more believable versions with the hillside behind.

[Joseph_Pestell]

I too have seen the Ashburton layout at various exhibitions but did not know about Totnes. Look forward to reading more about that.

[queensquare]

A thread dedicated to these two beautiful layouts is long overdue, I have numerous pictures in my files, some of which I will add when time allows.

 

You can read about John's techniques for painting those stunning backscenes in MRJ266

 

Jerry 

[JohnBS]

PART 2

 

Scenic areas were shaped by carving and sanding the Sundeala, priming with dilute PVA and covering with Polyfilla mixed with brown emulsion paint and PVA. When set, areas such as roads were sanded smooth. Grassed areas were formed by gluing on surgical lint, fluffy side down, with contact adhesive, then, when set, removing the backing. Colouring was then done with dilute enamel paint (mid green, yellow and white) and the grass teased up with an old suede brush.

 

Roads and other surfaced areas were textured with a variety of materials - talcum powder, scouring powder, fine sand, crushed stone and ash etc - stuck with dilute PVA and tinted with dilute enamel paints to avoid softening the adhesive.

A typical slice through the Totnes layout. Ashburton construction is similar but narrower.

 

Devon banks (hedges) were constructed on roughly-carved cores of Sundeala, covered with filler, painted and flocked. Reeds and specimen plants were made from various materials - plumbers' hemp, crushed tissue paper and commercial scenic products.

 

For me, the good news is that almost all the buildings and many civil engineering structures, trees and details were salvaged from the earlier layout. Trees were produced in various ways. Specimen trees at the front of the were either carefully made with foliage material (Woodland Scenics and Heka) on wire armatures or were high quality purchases. Trees in the middle distance were simpler, a basic wire support and simple foliage clumps or teased-out air conditioner filter fabric, sprayed with adhesive and then flocked. Mass planting at the back of the layout was even simpler; a structure of rabbit wire (20mm square mesh) with clumps of flocked filter fabric.

 

Buildings were scratch-built, made of mounting board with the late lamented BuilderPlus stone and brick papers or textured plastic card. Windows were made from acetate sheet, scribed for glazing bars with the grooves filled with paint, wiped off before fully dry. Roofs of foreground buildings were slated with paper, ruled in one direction with a biro to give a texture to the vertical joints between slates and cut into overlapping strips for the horizontal joints. I use 1mm square graph paper for this as it saves a lot of measuring!

 

The rolling stock was also largely already available from the earlier layouts. Of the stable of over 30 locomotives, many were scratch-built, others were heavily modified proprietary models and some just weathered, crewed and renumbered. Coaching stock is a combination of proprietary models and kits and wagons are proprietary, all weathered.

[JohnBS]

ASHBURTON

 

Plan of the layout

 

Yet another Ashburton layout! As noted above, this one began life in the late 1970s as the branch line section of a larger fixed layout focussed on Totnes main line station. However, when we moved to Somerset in 1987, the branch line section had to be separated from the main layout as the intended railway room - the loft - was too small. There it stayed, with the vague idea that one day it may come in useful. Perhaps it would form the basis of a small portable - even exhibit-able - independent layout.

 

A general view of Ashburton station and its setting. The Western National bus is waiting for the arrival of the branch auto-train. Beyond is the Railway Hotel and the entrance to the livestock market. The gas works with gas holder and retort chimney is behind the station. In the distance, rain clouds are gathering over Dartmoor.

 

And thus it was reborn. Of course, little of the original baseboard remains but at least the need to construct buildings and rolling stock was minimised and I had learnt a little in the meanwhile.

 

The branch auto-train with No. 4820 has arrived and picked up a second trailer coach for the strengthened morning school run to Buckfastleigh and Totnes. The second trailer was stabled at Ashburton overnight. The school run was strictly segregated - boys in one coach and girls in the other!

The layout is set in the late 1920s and takes the form of a simple diorama. From the familiar Ashburton track plan the single line runs across a small stream and enters a (mythical) steep rock cutting. This hides a sector plate which connects to five storage roads and a head shunt buried under the rolling hills of south Devon. I chose this approach because I didn't want a metre of dead "box" on the end of the layout.

 

Weighing and bagging house-coal in the yard and using the sack loader to load Robertson's new Ford lorry. 517 class No. 1435 arrives with a train of four-wheelers and beyond are the water tank and crane.general view of Ashburton yard with the rope-worked coal siding in the right foreground.

 

The layout is controlled by an ECM controller and 'probe and stud' panel for point and signal operation, set into the back of the layout. The operating programme for Ashburton is based on the working timetables of the 1920s and 1930s. For normal operations, stock includes a 517 with a rake of four-wheeled coaches, a 14xx and autocoach, a small prairie, a pannier, a Dean goods and a saddle tank with passenger, milk, cattle and goods rakes.

 

More soon,

 

John

Edited September 2, 2018 by JohnBS

[Brinkly]

I used to work in the local primary school and could see the station from my classroom window. It is such a shame the A38 cut the line in two. I know many people have modelled Ashburton in the past, but I can totally understand why. It is such a charming station, requiring a small pool of stock: ideal for a finescale layout in any scale or gauge. 

 

Kind regards,

Nick.

[bécasse]

I know many people have modelled Ashburton in the past, but I can totally understand why. It is such a charming station, requiring a small pool of stock: ideal for a finescale layout in any scale or gauge. 

 

 

Except that it isn't if you wish to operate it as the prototype was. The kick-back siding that serves the maltings (and provides standage for coal wagons, etc) isn't easy to work with a loco - and so it wasn't, wagons were normally worked in and out of it by a borrowed trader's horse or, in later days, pinchbars. It may also have been a place where rope-working remained specially authorised when the practice was generally outlawed in the early years of the 20th century, but I don't have a copy of the appropriate GW appendix to check.

 

A "working" horse in 2FS would be quite something - and as for two men with pinchbars! (Although the current issue of the Belgian ​Trains Miniature Magazine/Modelspoor includes an article by someone who has built a working windlass operated foot ferry in 1:160 scale complete with operator.)

Edited September 3, 2018 by bécasse

[Steven Draper]

Really enjoyed your Ashburton model at Railwells - Hope you do not mind the photo. 

Knowing Totnes very well, I've always enjoyed your Totnes model too, didn't 'click' that they were both by you. 

Edited September 5, 2018 by Steven Draper

[JohnBS]

ASHBURTON

Continued

 

Ashburton yard with the rope-worked (or horse-worked) coal siding in the right foreground, the engine shed and coaling and watering facilities in the centre and the old quarry beyond.

 

Pannier No. 8731 and a livestock train waiting at the home signal. Ashburton's weekly livestock market was a busy time for the branch and the annual livestock fair was exceedingly so, requiring special trains and the use of the refuge siding at Staverton to accommodate additional trucks.

 

A quiet time in the yard. Seed sales operated from a grounded clerestory coach body, the labourer refills sacks that have split from the heap of seed on the tarpaulin. His boss is in deep negotiation with a local farmer, or are they just passing the time of day?

 

Higher Soar farm house and barn beyond, above the steep-sided rock cutting which takes the branch line towards Buckfastleigh, Totnes and the rest of the world.

 

Ashburton was first exhibited as a work in progress, at Bletchley way back in 1997 and appeared in Model Railway Journal issue 94 in the same year and more recently in the Railway Modeller of January 2011 and British Railway Modelling of July 2012. In 2010, Ashburton was awarded the Visitors' Cup for the best layout by the Manchester Model Railway Society.

Its latest outing was at Wells on 11-12 August 2018.

 

Even more to follow,

 

John

[Tim V]

Found these pictures from the Watford show 2002. There was a strong 2mm presence there.

I was interested in the lighting/presentation, was this the lighting rig on the layout then?

 

 

[Robert Shrives]

I like the cutting shot as it just shows what I think is the best subterfuge to access a fiddle yard ever seen on a layout.  i am sure  it has been copied.

 

Please, would it be possible to show an "action shot."

 

Robert   

[NHY 581]

Ashburton was one of the highlights of this years Railwells.

 

 

Lovely.

 

 

Rob.

[NHY 581]

I like the cutting shot as it just shows what I think is the best subterfuge to access a fiddle yard ever seen on a layout.  i am sure  it has been copied.

 

Please, would it be possible to show an "action shot."

 

Robert

 

Agreed. More than a hint of Thunderbirds about it.

 

 

Rob.

[JohnBS]

Found these pictures from the Watford show 2002. There was a strong 2mm presence there.

 

I was interested in the lighting/presentation, was this the lighting rig on the layout then?

 

TimV,

Thanks for the photos.

I guess that this was an early iteration of the lighting - since then, the post has been sprayed matt black (now somewhat scratched) and the PAR38 lamps swapped with a couple of 150W tungsten halogen lamps. What I wanted to achieve was a concentrated “sunlight” affect, sited sufficiently high to avoid shining in peoples’ eyes (about 3.0m above the floor). Well, it was always sunny in South Devon in the 1930s!

Best wishes,

John

Edited September 5, 2018 by JohnBS

[JohnBS]

ASHBURTON

 

Chapter 3

 

Some more Ashburton photos.

These were taken by Ian Manderson in August 2010 and are therefore his copyright. They cover similar ground to the previous ones but are better in quality than my pedestrian efforts, so here goes.

 

517 class No.1435 with a train of four-wheelers exits the bridge at the end of the rock cutting and approaches the home signal. The Red Devon cattle are fairly indifferent.

 

No. 1435 arrives at the station. The branch pick-up goods engine, small Prairie No. 4536, sizzles quietly 'on shed'.

 

Later, the fire has been built-up and, with a bit more steam, the injector can top-up the boiler so No. 4536 is filling up the tanks at the water crane. Meanwhile bagging coal continues in Robertson's yard.

 

No. 1435 has run around the coaches and dropped them back to the platform to await departure. The fireman is looking out for the starter signal and listening for the guard's whistle. The seeds store in the grounded coach body is in the foreground.

 

All © Ian Manderson, 2010

 

A bit more of Ashburton to come.

 

John

[St Enodoc]

ASHBURTON

 

Chapter 3

 

Some more Ashburton photos.

These were taken by Ian Manderson in August 2010 and are therefore his copyright. They cover similar ground to the previous ones but are better in quality than my pedestrian efforts, so here goes.

 

7BC1A6F9-1593-41CA-9951-5428FB814EDA.jpeg

517 class No.1435 with a train of four-wheelers exits the bridge at the end of the rock cutting and approaches the home signal. The Red Devon cattle are fairly indifferent.

 

2CD67F04-2822-4838-B886-3E1D23E7E8A8.jpeg

No. 1435 arrives at the station. The branch pick-up goods engine, small Prairie No. 4536, sizzles quietly 'on shed'.

 

2008D5C1-B2C2-451A-9384-DC2D0A7282A7.jpeg

Later, the fire has been built-up and, with a bit more steam, the injector can top-up the boiler so No. 4536 is filling up the tanks at the water crane. Meanwhile bagging coal continues in Robertson's yard.

 

0785072A-A386-4C62-BF0E-F6024E756C83.jpeg

No. 1435 has run around the coaches and dropped them back to the platform to await departure. The fireman is looking out for the starter signal and listening for the guard's whistle. The seeds store in the grounded coach body is in the foreground.

 

All © Ian Manderson, 2010

 

A bit more of Ashburton to come.

 

John

I do like the PO coal wagon!

[2mmMark]

I'd be interested to hear more about your ballasting & painting technique for trackwork, John.  Yours is the best looking N gauge track I've seen. It's quite a feat making Peco N gauge track look good and the techniques will apply to finescale track too.

 

Mark

[JohnBS]

Hello Mark,

Thanks for your comment and query.

I think that my ballasting technique is fairly normal. I came across something that called itself Play Sand, meant for kids' sand-pits. It is a very finely-graded pale yellow sand and came in a 25kg bag so should be more than enough for me! As to track, I have used Peco code 55, though I would use fiNetrax code 40 if it had been available then. The track base that I use is 9mm MDF, set on cross-bearers and a carefully-levelled 4mm spline bearer on the centreline. If the track bed is not smoothly graded, running will always be problematic (we have all seen layouts with little mountain peaks at baseboard joints).

The track is laid directly on the base - no cork or underlay as this gives another opportunity to create undulations - PVA glue and temporary pins as required. When all has been tested, ballasting can begin. If I need to confine the width of ballast, I use masking tape, otherwise, I run a line of ballast along the tracks, spread with a temporary card profile notched for the rails. I remove excess with a brush, then mist with a plant mister and drop the usual water/PVA/washing-up liquid with a syringe body.

Then it’s time to pick off ballast that has stuck to the rail or to the tops of the sleepers. When all is fully dry - two or three days - out come the paints. I now usually use emulsion paints (match pots), tinted with acrylics and well diluted. You have to be fairly quick with this or the PVA holding the ballast will start to soften. Alternatively you can use enamel. Wiping some of the paint off the tops of the sleepers will give them some definition. When all is dry, the sides of the rails are painted with enamel. Finally, the rail tops are cleaned - firstly I use a 9” file to plane out any residual high spots but don’t try this with 40thou rail! For day-to-day cleaning, I use fingernail buffing pads Superdrug do a block with four grades of abrasive, from shaping to polishing.

So nothing much unusual here. The key issues are:

Make sure that the track bed is correctly levelled

Us a sufficiently fine grade of ballasting material (no boulders)

Spend sufficient time spreading the ballast evenly

Carefully get rid of bits of ballast in the wrong place

Paint the track with reference to photos.

Hope this is some help, especially to those venturing into making their first layout.

Best wishes,

John

[JohnBS]

ASHBURTON

 

Chapter 4

 

Hello folks,

Here is a link to a short video of Ashburton

 

https://youtu.be/1S8czzgKUms

 

I hope that this works.

More later,

John

[Ian Smith]

The BRM video of Ashburton is also available on YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvJ1cXb-IGE

 

Ian

[JohnBS]

ASHBURTON

 

Chapter 5

 

More Ian Manderson photos.

 

Pannier No. 8731 arrives with the morning milk train. Usually, it will drop the small Siphon C (next to the engine) in the platform road, where it will be loaded with churns from the local farms. Then it will be attached to the mid-morning auto-train to return to Daws Diary in Totnes.

 

Saddle tank No. 1506 leaves with a livestock train at the end of market day with the Western National bus from Buckfastleigh in the background.

 

Now a couple of buildings with not a train in sight.

 

Tuckers Fertilizers and Maltings store with its octagonal chimney and the coal heap.

 

And the Maltings building.

 

All © Ian Manderson, 2010

 

More later,

 

John

Edited September 11, 2018 by JohnBS