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Recent developments

Barry Ten

Entry posted by Barry Ten

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This year has seen slow, if steady developments, around the area of the bay and double junction.

 

The two signals here are both modified Dapol, both of which had failed and were therefore modified and

re-equipped with bounce-controlled servos. The platform starter is very low to permit sighting under

the footbridge, whereas the bay starter is normal height. The signals are controlled using a Megapoints

board, which I thoroughly recommend for ease of use.

 

Whether the bay would have merited anything other than a ground signal, I leave to the experts!

 

As can be seen, work has also started on painting the allotment retaining wall, but it needs rather a lot

of toning down. Quite what business the tea van is expecting to pick up on that lonely back road, is

anyone's guess.

 

summer1.jpg.c5ed979eb04affc64862430f84ccf9b7.jpg

 

 

Moving on...

 

The addition of a bay meant that there was no longer room for the old platform-mounted signal box in its old location, so after a great deal of dithering I finally decided to build one of

the new Ratio brick-built boxes and situate it much closer to the level crossing. Here it's just resting in place while I get a feel for how it will look. This works quite well (I think) because the old box was rather hidden behind the goods shed.

 

summer2.jpg.5c779f667ffa29ab53a43eb7ea869bde.jpg

 

And on...

 

The servo-operated level crossing is still going good, although annoyingly one of the servos developed a jitter and had to be replaced, which was a fiddly and difficult job,

due to me not designing the mounting devices for such an eventuality!

 

Beware: a servo operated level crossing is all very nice, but I tend to leave the gates open to trains and rarely close them!

 

Just coming into view on the right is a bracket signal for the double junction, again servo-operated. Unfortunately, having gone

to the trouble of installing these signals, I found that they were blocked from the operator's view by the pub that used to stand

next to the road. I'd been a bit bothered by that pub, though, because I felt that its parallel lines tended to emphazise the tightness

of the adjacent curve on the main line, which is one of the tighter spots on the layout. By replacing the pub with an irregularly

shaped orchard, I hoped to kill two birds with one one stone: make the signals visible, and de-emphasize the curve. The pub has

been allocated a new spot elsewhere on the layout.

 

summer3.jpg.d8d2b8f8837c85a8d60f2149e9535e7f.jpg

 

And on...

 

I thought this might be a good spotting location for trains, so - rather than have them half-hidden behind lineside fencing or walls - I sunk the orchard down into the scenery by half an inch or so, just so that the boundary fence could sit at a level which wouldn't obstruct the sight of the rails and wheels. This created a nice undulation to the foreground road, which I'm very taken with! I'm not a great believer in flat layouts, and I think even a small variation in ground contours can be very effective.

 

summer4.jpg.cd9455c67a9297b2d5a050b5bfbf336a.jpg

 

And finally, to round things off, just a slightly tighter view on the prairie. Eventually those backscene hills will be misted down a bit.

 

summer5.jpg.a707c46fa859b2b88f8a297064afc5c6.jpg

 

That's it for now, many thanks for reading.

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  • RMweb Gold
wenlock
  • RMweb Gold

Hi Al, all worthwhile improvements in my opinion.  I like the new position of the signal box, presumably the level crossing would be operated by the signal man,so hes got less far to walk!

 

The sunken orchard works really well. I completely agree, subtle land height differences make the landscape much more believable.

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richbrummitt

You need a proper (on a post) signal for passenger train movements so the bay would have a proper signal afaik.

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  • RMweb Gold
Barry Ten
  • RMweb Gold
21 hours ago, wenlock said:

Hi Al, all worthwhile improvements in my opinion.  I like the new position of the signal box, presumably the level crossing would be operated by the signal man,so hes got less far to walk!

 

The sunken orchard works really well. I completely agree, subtle land height differences make the landscape much more believable.

 

Thanks, Dave. I think if the box is close to the crossing, it could have been wheel-operated from within the box, but perhaps such an arrangement wouldn't have been done unless there was a lot of traffic. I'm envisaging this as a distinctly sleepy secondary main line with long intervals between trains.

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  • RMweb Gold
Barry Ten
  • RMweb Gold
20 hours ago, richbrummitt said:

You need a proper (on a post) signal for passenger train movements so the bay would have a proper signal afaik.

 

Sounds good to me. I mist admit when I built the bay I wasn't really decided if it was going to be anything more than a parcels or milk dock but since an auto-train or railcar can sit in it quite happily, it now serves as a passenger bay most of the time. Mainly I had a broken Dapol signal!

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  • RMweb Gold
Mikkel
  • RMweb Gold

Al,  I like how you are continously improving the layouts. Every time it looks just right you come up with something even better.  That undulating lane at the front is excellent.

 

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