Harlequin

Howard, I think that the over-centre spring has been removed from the turnout in the photos above. Is that right? Have you done that on all the turnouts? Do the point motors have their own over-centre springing to hold the blades against the stock rail and If so are you sure it’s working properly?

Hold on Howard, Unless you've debugged the problem with your current turnouts you may get the exact same thing with a set of new ones. Did you clean between the blade and the stock rail (outside rail) so that they make good electrical contact? (Ideally, use a fibreglass pencil and hoover up afterwards because the filaments that break off are both irritants if you touch them and insulating, which would defeat the excercise.) Did you do what Malc suggested - bridging across the insulating joiners? If so, what happened? If not, please try this: Power up the layout, make sure nothing is running, get a bit of wire and starting with one of the working turnouts: Bridge across one of the insulating joiners to the frog. Then do the same for the other joiner. When you change from bridging the joiner in the straight rail to bridging the joiner in the curved rail, you should hear the DCC80 relay click. When you go back to the straight rail it should click again. Do that a few times, making sure you can hear the click each time. Then do the same on one of the non-working turnouts: Do you hear clicks on both rails, the same as the working one? (Remember to try a few times each way.)

Bracing all fitted: Both boxes are now absolutely rigid and square! Those few diagonal braces make an amazing difference. It was important to clamp the boxes to be as square as possible, and to flatten out the warping in the baseboards, while the braces were glued into place because the braces set the shape of everything permanently. The bottom box in this photo carries the throat pointwork and you can see that I adjusted the bracing to avoid the point motors:

Hi Chris, I have an AnyCubic Photon (S) and I'm slowly learning how to get the best out of it. Did you see the complete signal I printed? Some problems still to get my head around but I did manage a hollow ball finial! I'd be very interested to try a print of your van body if you'd like...???

Today's task was to add some cross-bracing under the baseboards. That meant I needed to know exactly where the point motors would go so I printed out the track plan at 1:1, cut the sheets of paper to size and laid them into the right hand box. (The left hand box doesn't have any turnouts so no need to worry about that one yet.) The walls of the box meant that the printouts were very easy to align and I laid a couple of spare turnouts on top just to prove that everything had scaled and printed correctly. It all looks OK so far... I decided to make diagonal cross-bracing to do two jobs at once: support the deck and resist twisting of the box. It took a bit of maths followed by trial and error to get the lengths and angles right!

I note that if you nave not experienced any shorts then you will not have not been able to examine any wheelsets that would produce them... So what evidence do you have that back to backs are the problem? I thought it had been established pretty clearly earlier in this thread that the problem is related to axles that crab across the track for various reasons.

Development: Still a bit square... More flexible loco yard including turntable(!) Run round loop more like Leander's plan to make goods handling a bit easier. Traverser as before but very slightly shorter to allow the entire station to move down a bit and give room for something low-relief behind the carriage sidings.

Yes, exactly. An alternative material would be clear nail varnish: Thin enough to paint precisely, hard wearing, insulating, no need to mix and even comes with it's own brush(!). In fact you could label it, "Miracle Track Short-Stop", and sell it for twice the price!

It's very difficult to fit the essential elements into your L shaped space but here's an attempt to rebalance thing a bit: Similar to Zomboid's last plan and that's because they are both Minories-on-the-curve. (We're not obsessed with it, honest!) Two carriage sidings where the loco spur was in Minories and only 3 platforms to try to decongest things. Platform 1 is single sided with a fence along the back. No loco release crossovers - there isn't room, really. Needs a pilot loco. Pilot loco shed making use of top right corner, outside the main curve, accessed from traverser to separate it from the main curve and save a turnout. Inner curve just above traverser is R3. Kickback sidings use space inside the main curve for goods/industry. 6-road traverser just under 5ft long. All roads can be connected to both inbound and outbound. It's all a bit square but it's mainly drawn to see what would actually fit!

I think you're trying to pack too much into the space. None of it fits together comfortably. Is there enough capacity on the traverser? I think you need at least two more roads to match the station. This all definitely feels more urban than suburban, BTW.

Colour reproduction, colour perception and what the original colour would have looked like in period with varying numbers of coats of paint and coats of varnish... Absolute minefield! However, on a different tack: Looking at the photos of the model just now, it seems to me that the firebox is a little bit more domed than it should be. What do you think?

I think the fiddle yard needs to be included to know if there's enough length for a points fan or, if not, how much the station has to be re-aligned for a traverser. A 5ft traverser should do the job (with loco lifts for running around and turning). The station might need to be shortened and angled towards the traverser to allow for maximum displacement.

Passed but with a note to be more careful when fitting dowels in future.

The two boxes are done and will fit together OK I think. Annoyingly the right hand box is ~2mm wider that the left, but only at the top. At track level everything lines up,as you can see: That is because of the trouble I had with the dowels. I should have rejected that frame before I glued it into place. Ho hum...

Andy Reichart, The question was posed with the intention to learn from the community's response. No "Flat Earthers" here.

Bullhead OO diamond crossings?

So is the space available more like this? Are the dimensions correct? (That's a 305mm grid, BTW.) Your previous scheme looks more promising, I think, but I would investigate having the station in the top corner, as shown above. That would mean the backscene could curve panoramically around those walls and you would not need a true backscene along the room side, maybe just a low safety wall. Then the layout would be more open to the room, get more light, be more sociable, be more on view to visitors. It would also be easier to reach across the baseboard ("fiddle yard loops" in my drawing) from the room side so it could be wider for extra storage capacity. You might be able to find space for the high level branch line but it might be tricky. A layout on just that one level would be pretty impressive in itself, so maybe ask yourself if a branch line is really needed at all... You can still have the branch bay(s) in the station and run branch traffic in and out of it. Also exchange sidings for branch goods traffic - plenty of shunting required.

Just to clarify: The OO bullhead turnouts do not rely on blade contact, of course. Every part of them is permanently wired and no electrical switching is performed by the turnout itself. It's up to the user to provide an external switch if he wants to power the frog. This may be different to "Unifrog" products in other Codes and Gauges. (And the OO crossings may be different again - when we eventually see them in a few years time...)

Another option: If you measure up your space, draw your layout in the computer, you can then print it out real size and stick the paper down onto the boards. That does involve fiddling around with aligning lots of bits of paper but it allows you to do more complex curves, like inserting turnouts of different radius into curved track and transition curves, as Tony mentions. P.S. I've got my radius bar hung up in my shed - I'm never going to lose it!

If I've understood the space correctly,then how about something like this: This is very much a "Route 1" solution: Keep it simple - just two levels and the upper level very specifically tries to cover as few tracks as possible on the lower. Double track circuit on the lower level with station and fiddle yard loops. Mix goods and passenger on your main line, just like the real thing. Branch services can terminate in the main line station or the FY. Goods shunting at both branch and main line stations. All connected together and workable as a whole system. Branch gradient takes the longest possible route so 1 in 50 is easily achievable.

Hi Joe, So have I got this right? The room is used as a corridor, the floor is not level, the ceiling is only 6ft above the floor and the room is full of hot water pipes. Are there any windows? Are there electrical power sockets? Lighting? Could you post some photos so we can understand the space?

Like this?

Hi, Your boards are preventing you from reaching the ideal plan. Draw the plan first, making best use the room, then design boards to carry it. If that means you have to chop up or throw away the boards you've got it will be a good investment in the long run. Can we see a rough plan of the room and where the door is, please?

Yes, they are justified and they're ancient.

It was a water-based epoxy floor paint. I can't remember the brand but I found a product that was vapour-permeable so that damp in the concrete slab wouldn't de-bond the paint.