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Railex 2011

Will Vale

Entry posted by Will Vale

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gallery_7119_1851_56373.jpg

 

This is a week late, but I spent a couple of hours today going through my images from Railex, adding captions, and picking some to show off. We had a good show, packing and setup were both painless, and I opted to put the layout up on plastic crates (weighted with bricks) on top of the supplied table to improve the viewing height. I think this worked quite well, but I need to give a bit more thought to display next time: The pelmet made conversations with punters a bit tricky at times, and without a backscene the fluorescent tubes were a bit hard on the eyes for the operators.

 

We managed to get all three layouts (Höllental-Hirschsrpung, Tanis 1937, and Igelfeld) plus stock, light fittings, bricks and two operators into my dad's Prius, although it was a tight squeeze for me in particular. I didn't have a backup plan for the event that the new layout didn't fit, but thankfully it did :)

 

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The venue got pretty hot in the afternoon on both days, and was at times very busy indeed. I managed to see quite a bit more of it than last year since it was possible to leave the layout alone with something running around and go for a wander - the plan works! We also had help from Robert's friend George on the Saturday which was fantastic, thanks George!

 

The heat didn't seem to affect the track at all - I was worried about expansion in the yard lengths of finescale rail, but it all behaved beautifully (I had left one expansion gap) and the only minor issue was a bit of unglued track in the fiddle yard went a couple of mm sideways towards the end of the weekend - not a problem, and it's easy to fix in any case. The electrics were rock solid, and I'm glad I put some extra feeds in because it was possible to detect the voltage drop in places. Maybe some more are needed still.

 

The control system also worked quite well - the fiddle yard roads are selected by a three position rotary switch and a push-button. Turn to pick a road, press the button to change the points, done. The only issue was we occasionally forgot to press the button resulting in the train leaving the yard happily but running into a dead road and stalling when it came back.

 

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Running was basically faultless provided we had the train correctly on the rails in the first place, less so if not - and this is easier said than done in 1:220. We did have a pile-up during an unprototypical banking of a 1930s streamlined express with a 1950s-condition BR85. It looked great and I wandered off for a bit, came back to find my dad saying "we had a bit of a disaster" and I was expecting to find my prize loco on the floor. Thankfully it wasn't that bad - it had shed its pony truck screw and then the truck, and the whole shooting match had piled into the wreckage on the next lap. Never mind, truck reattached and I think a dot of PVA as ersatz thread lock is warranted since it runs much better with that screw (which also retains the belly pan) loosened half a turn.

 

Tanis I switched on in the morning each day and basically ignored - I think I had to give the loco a push once, other than that it was perfect. It still gets some very nice comments. As did the new project - the rocks generated quite a lot of interest in terms of how they looked, and how they were done. The presentation also got compliments which was nice since it's the first time I've done the whole proscenium arch thing.

 

I did identify one major problem - while the train is visible for a good long time, it's out of view for slightly longer, and with the layout being very "new" looking and lacking in detail, there isn't much to engage the attention while we get the next one out. Igelfeld and Tanis are much better in this regard since more of the track is visible, and there are a far more non-train details to look at in the meantime. Apart from doing all the detailing, I think it might help to have some kind of flashing "train coming" light at each end so people know what to expect. Or some kind of moving feature, but I don't know what that could be that wouldn't also be cheesy. Possibly some prototype info wouldn't go amiss either.

 

My favourite quotes of the weekend, apart from the usual "Look at the tiny trains!" were a German diorama modeller (whose work I've marvelled at before) asking me if I was also German, and overheard by George a small boy being offered a train of some kind by his parent and saying "No, I don't want that one, I want a Z gauge!" :D I do feel sorry for any parents who've been influenced in this way by our efforts...

 

Finally here are some highlights from other layouts in the show:

 

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Kerosene Creek, originally by Raoul Quinn

 

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1970s Rhodesia, by Paul Napier

 

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Taumaranui (I think this is a club layout, I'm afraid I don't know which club.)

 

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Manners Street, by Kerry Willard

 

There are more pictures and layouts in the gallery which should be attached to this post, or if you can see Flickr where you are, I recommend looking at them in my Flickr set since the full-size images are available there as well:

 

* Railex 2011 on Flickr

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11 Comments

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Jon020

The layout looks superb Will... well worth all the favourable comments you received. Well presented too - I like the lighting display and neat fiddleyard. Nice neat entry too. Well done... excellent!

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bcnPete
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Excellent - really like the layout.

 

I do like the way the matt black fascia wraps around the linear lighting beam and morphs into the shape to match the scenery undulations.

 

Well done indeed - an inspiring three four months work... :)

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Will Vale

Thanks all, it was indeed a great weekend. No cake delivery, but a nice benefit of doing the local show is that we were home and drinking beer less than an hour after closing time.

 

Re. the presentation: I'm glad it works for you folks as well - I'm trying really hard to get around my ingrained dislike of backscenes since I can see the advantages quite clearly. The idea is to slot a straight (or curving forward?) backscene behind the scenery, but keep it detachable so I can get to that part of the layout, and keep the base weight of the board down.

 

I'm also musing about adding some extensions to the light pelmet brackets to lift the whole thing up another 10cm, but I'll wait until there's some forest on the slopes to see how that looks.

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backofanenvelope

Nice to see the layout in the wild.. well done for getting it there and I too like the black fascia. Like the idea of train info boards maybe some cheap digi picture frames?

Tom

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zlozlo

Hello, I very much liked your Hollentalbahn. On the Internet there are not a lot of those who does a copy of the Infernal valley. Only it is a pity that you didn't make overhead contact line. It would give still to bigger realness. I too do Hollentalbahn, only at me the main subject is Ravenna a viaduct. With Schwarzwalbahn impurity.

http://stummiforum.de/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=54698&start=125

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Will Vale

Thanks! I am intending to make the Oberleitung - if you look in some of the pictures you can see the concrete bases for the masts - but I ran out of time. I was planning to use the Märklin masts, which are close to the right pattern, but the Z-scale contact wire sections are very heavy - it might be better with just masts and no contact wire?

 

I've seen your project before when I was looking for reference for mine, it looks fantastic, you made a wonderful job of the Ravennabrücke.

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zlozlo

Usually after painting in dark color, the contact wire becomes visually thinner. For Z, it is possible to solder a contact wire from thinner wire, than at Marklin. And current collectors of locomotives to fix, that they didn't concern a wire. Z very small scale, there all too gentle. There will be no friction and load of a contact wire - won't be problems with a thin wire.

 

//This forum mangles the Umlauts, sorry!// -it isn't terrible))) I am not German, I Russian. In my language the Umlauts isn't present.

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Will Vale

That's a good point about the low forces involved. I'll have a try with 0.3mm brass wire and see if that works. The problem is that as well as the contact wire I'll then need to solder up catenery spans...

 

It probably won't be for a while, but I'll post here if I get something working. Thanks again!

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