The extension begins
Entry posted by wiggoforgold
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Some of the traffic at Diddington is generated by an agricultural light railway, which leaves Diddington and proceeds to a terminus out on the fen. On the model to date there has been provision for the arriving light railway train, and I made a hole in the backscene for the line to leave Diddington station.
I've now started work on the extension proper, with the construction of a joining section which will link Diddington to the terminus.
I gave some thought to the construction of the board. I wanted to keep the weight down as much as possible, and I wanted the finished article to be easily transportable, which limited the size. To make things interesting, I had a minimum size constraint as well, as the board needs to take into account existing furniture in the room, so it had to be long enough to clear that.
I wanted to use an "L" girder construction, as I think that gives the best strength/weight combination. My initial thought was to use ply, but this would mean accurately cutting the pieces from a single sheet,, and transporting the sheet by car, which was too small to take a sheet of ply. (I also wanted to get it done quite quickly, which didn't leave time to arrange the loan of a van, or to find someone willing and able to cut up the ply with the accuracy I required. So, I went to B&Q (no connection) and purchased some suitable lengths of strip wood to make up the "L" girders.
Work commenced by drawing a plan of the board full size in chalk on the garage floor.
The strip wood was then cut to length for the "L" girders. The side pieces were 70 x 10mm section, and the tops were 20 x 10mm. The two were glued and pinned together to form an "L". Ends and cross braces were from more 70 x 10 section, with gluing blocks in the corners from some 12mm square section I had to hand (size is not crucial). During assembly the pieces were held in me workmate, and repeated reference was made to the chalked plan on the floor, and a set square to make sure everything was in the right place and square.
Once the basic assembly was completed, holes were drilled in the side frames to reduce the weight of the structure, and give somewhere for the wiring (which will be very basic) to run. It looked like this.
At one end of the river the line will cross a fen drain by means of a concrete girder bridge, based on one on the Wissington railway. Provision has been made in the baseboard construction for the river and bridge. The base of the river is a piece of ply, glued to the layout frames. The bridge abutments are from some 40 x 20 mm softwood, cut to the width of the tack base (50mm at this point). The rest of the track base is from more ply, on risers which lift the track 40mm above the main frame. I used the ply to keep the weight down. As it will only carry a single track with light trains on it I have not used any additional support., If there were more tracks, or the trains were heavier, I would consider adding some additional longitudinal support to the ply, or using a slightly thicker section.
Next, laying the track...............
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