Progress: Track and a control panel!
Entry posted by IanLister
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Hi
Time for a long overdue update on the progress on the south bank of the Tweed estuary….I know it’s been a while, but I’ve kept looking at it and thinking, “Not just yet, I’ll just get this bit finished first.” I keep going home and leaving bits and pieces all over the place and then coming back and picking up where I left off and truth to tell it’s not been very photogenic; a combination of mess, clutter and infrastructure work that’s not very spectacular. You wouldn’t want me to scare you with photos of that, would you?
But now I’ve reached a point where, if you’re interested, you need to know where I’ve got to.
The board I’m working on is the hub of the whole layout in several ways. It’s where the single track descending from Berwick and the ECML comes into Spittal and starts to branch into the station and goods yard approaches, and from where the industrial branches to Tweed Dock and Spittal Point start to diverge. It’s also the best place to locate the main control panel for various reasons. To understand the strategic importance of this bit, you need to know a little about the operating regime I have in mind……
Spittal is not a one-man operation. The run from fiddleyard to terminus is about 80 ft, and there are two significant branch lines to operate as well. Three or four drivers/shunters and a full time signalman is the plan, and I’m fortunate that a very friendly and supportive group of EM gauge modellers meet at the workshop once a week; I hope they’ll become the operating team.
The signalman will be in charge of all train movements and will control this:
The track diagram represents the hub of the layout: passenger facilities and runrounds, and the start of goods yard, Spittal Point and tweed Dock branches. Once trains leave this section, they are either on their way to Berwick, the ECML and Tweed Valley junction, or they are heading down the token-operated one-engine-only industrial branches or into the goods yard. Whichever of the latter it is, they leave the signalman’s domain and are not allowed back without permission. While there are passenger services to Berwick and Eyemouth, all stations to Edinburgh, all stations to Newcastle, and the Tweed Valley and Alnwick-Cornhill branches, in addition to excursion trains arriving, the vast majority of the train movements are freight orientated, with the goods yard, Tweed Dock, Spittal Quay and Spittal Point interacting endlessly to process a very significant amount of inbound and outbound traffic to and from all the destinations listed above. Trip and transfer freight workings will be almost continuous, and the traffic will keep the signalman very busy indeed. He has route-setting 2-position switches and a bank of 12 signal levers to control the movements. On the wall in front of him but behind the layout will be a 28” monitor, with a rolling train information display so he knows when he may have time to grab a cup of tea……..
The goods yard, and the 2 industrial lines, will have their own discrete control panels, which will be driver operated; as they are single engine operations it’s the obvious way to do it, and spreads the load somewhat.
The control panel sits on the front of the station hub baseboard mentioned above, on which the trackwork is taking shape fairly quickly:
There’s just a bit more tracklaying to do and then the job of connecting it all up, adding servos etc and building the signals for this section. One of the great advantages to me of working in this sequence is that once I’ve connected this bit up and added the long single track section I’ve already made and had running, the control infrastructure will be complete for the whole layout; 5 power districts with circuit breakers, the accessory bus and all. When I add the next board and track I’ll just need to hook it up to what’s already in place and it’ll be up and running, so the apparent hiatus in developing the layout while I’ve put the control infrastructure in place will actually speed progress enormously.
One of the things that was worrying me about building the track on this board was my decision to ash ballast to the tops of the walnut sleepers before laying the C and L chairs and rail. This has worked well on the plain track sections with the use of a simple homemade jig to align rail position in relation to sleeper ends (there is a Templot diagram stuck down but you can’t see it because of the ballast!), but I was worried about turnout building using the same method. I built the crossings in place before ballasting, then added the ballast, and gauged everything from the crossings and it appears to have worked; my first 5 turnouts in EM/4mm and rolling stock runs through them all even without the check rails added…..which I’m leaving until the wiring and final testing is complete:
The ballast is Advanced Lightweight Polyfilla stippled with a paintbrush; it will be painted/weathered after the track is finished by letting well thinned acrylic paint soak through it. The way in which the paint spreads through the ballast without soaking into the walnut sleepers is wondrous to behold, easy to do and a great time saver compared to the usual ballasting methods. I’m lucky the NER used ash ballast in this area on its branch lines.
So there you are; evidence that I’m still alive and still busy developing the layout and loving every minute of it!!! If I’m honest, it’s my model railway dream coming true….the layout I always wanted to build one day in the future……
Ian
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