SamHill Posted April 12, 2019 Share Posted April 12, 2019 (edited) After a few years of service our club's existing Children's Layout had seen better days and over the winter suffered from poor storage and the boards warped out of shape so a replacement was required. With this years show 6 months away (28th September) a new layout was needed. Yes, a "childrens" layout can be built very quickly, and simply but, that isn't what we want or offer in our club. Our club tries to inspire the next generation of modellers so having a rough and ready layout just isn't going to work it needs to instead look the part. That means proper scenery, working signals and more. Whitebelle is going to be the new club's children's layout and construction has just begun. And it needs to meet the following requirements: - simple track plan to minimise failures and running issues on "show" day. - supports two trains running to allow two children to use it at the same time. - be robust and able to withstand a certain level of bumps, knocks and bashes. - be portable and able to be stored underneath our permanent layout "Whitewebbs Park" in our main club room. - be big enough to be interesting to use but small enough to fit into the corner of one of our exhibition halls. - feature working signals to add interest. Based on all of this - the layout will be 1200 x 1200 mm in size (4ft x 4ft) entirely scenic that splits into 2x boards 1200 x 600 (4ft x 2ft) sections that can lock together into a cuboid for storage. The track plan is shown, with two simple sidings but mainly its just two running loops with a tunnel to add a bit of the surprise factor. The boards are constructed from 6mm plywood with 42x21mm pine framing spaced at 300mm intervals for strength. Edited June 1, 2019 by SamHill 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
calvin Streeting Posted April 12, 2019 Share Posted April 12, 2019 (edited) any chance you could do a split level aka one loop over another to get bridges ? (just an idea) and i asume no join between tracks to minamise crashes ? Edited April 12, 2019 by calvin Streeting Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SamHill Posted April 12, 2019 Author Share Posted April 12, 2019 As its a children's layout - what is better than having it made by children for children. Enter Isabelle (hence the "belle" part of the name, the "white" comes from the name of the club - Enfield Whitewebbs). Isabelle is 6 and will be lying all the track, creating the scenery, the ballasting, the buildings and all the painting! What she won't be doing is the woodwork (saw's are a little dangerous) or electrics (less dangerous as the power can be turned off but a bit fiddly)... Here is Isabelle having laid out all the track marking around it to show where to paint in black to go under the ballast. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SamHill Posted April 12, 2019 Author Share Posted April 12, 2019 And completing the outlining of all the track. You can see here the layout of track more or less matches the plan above. with the tunnels being tested. Trusty "annie" and "calarabel" were used for testing the track was all ok. 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SamHill Posted April 12, 2019 Author Share Posted April 12, 2019 Next, Isabelle sanded the edges of all the boards to remove rough edges and then painted the track areas black - and also the road sections to run into the town. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
calvin Streeting Posted April 12, 2019 Share Posted April 12, 2019 4 minutes ago, SamHill said: As its a children's layout - what is better than having it made by children for children i agree 1 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SamHill Posted April 12, 2019 Author Share Posted April 12, 2019 Once the black has dried it was time to relay the track and nailing it all in place. This took... quite .... a ... while....! And a lot of miss hits - but, remember she is only 6...! 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SamHill Posted April 12, 2019 Author Share Posted April 12, 2019 Then, while the grown ups were busy doing the electrics ... Isabelle had a practice go at the scenery. 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SamHill Posted April 12, 2019 Author Share Posted April 12, 2019 11 minutes ago, calvin Streeting said: any chance you could do a split level aka one loop over another to get bridges ? (just an idea) and i assume no join between tracks to minimise crashes ? There are joins between the tracks as baseboard splits into two sections for storage but these are managed, no split level as its a bit tricky for a child to build and not robust enough either for the level of use it will get at our show. 1 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SamHill Posted April 12, 2019 Author Share Posted April 12, 2019 The electrics for the tracks are now finished. More will be added later for LED signals. Next up its to move on to the main scenery and track ballasting. 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete the Elaner Posted April 12, 2019 Share Posted April 12, 2019 That scenery looks great & shows that age can be irrelevant Excellent example of introducing younger modellers into the hobby. We have discussed a small layout built by junior members at our club...but they all want to join in with the one we're working on, which they are more than welcome to do. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SamHill Posted April 26, 2019 Author Share Posted April 26, 2019 Another week (and a bit) here is our latest progress... So, a bit of cheating by using a landscape mat for the large green areas, its very uniform and will be subsequently toned down with scatter. Lots of glue was spread, matt rolled out and cut to fit the areas then power controllers (basic Hornby ones) were installed. Then moved onto making the tunnel using lots of polystyrene! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SamHill Posted April 26, 2019 Author Share Posted April 26, 2019 This shows the current overall view - one board is further on than the other (it splits into two 4x2 boards) however trains are running! Total time spent: 9 hours.... Roughly: 1 hour baseboard construction. 1 hour track planning and marking. 2 hours painting the board and sky back scene. 2 hours on installing the track and electrics. 1 hour on landscape mat fitting. 30 minutes on installing the controllers. 1 hour on making the tunnel. 30 minutes fixing down the first set of buildings. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SamHill Posted June 1, 2019 Author Share Posted June 1, 2019 It's been awhile - 6 weeks since last post here is the latest look ... scenery is mostly done a few trees still to place, the town buildings are placed, the tunnel finished and next it's to install working signals one is in to the left of the station one to go and switches are still loose too. on the hill top will be a field of horses. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SamHill Posted June 1, 2019 Author Share Posted June 1, 2019 And... here is how we got to the photo above... 1 - firstly ballast spreading.: 2. Glue dribbling... 3. Waiting for glue to dry... 4. Making the tunnel portals.. 5. and hiding the buffer... 3 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SamHill Posted June 2, 2019 Author Share Posted June 2, 2019 creating a path for the footbridge then adding weeds to soften the landscape mat uniformness...! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SamHill Posted June 2, 2019 Author Share Posted June 2, 2019 The finished tunnel and crossing combo - with Bertie bus waiting for Thomas. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SamHill Posted June 14, 2019 Author Share Posted June 14, 2019 Latest update - continuing work on the scenery a horse field added (whitebelle ... its a bit like black beauty in name, which was a horse... ) and someone hanging out their washing. Nearly finished now - just some more trees to plant and an awkward empty space in the middle to fill in. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SamHill Posted June 17, 2019 Author Share Posted June 17, 2019 An early morning view down Whitebelle high street - you can see a Southern tank engine in the distance going over the crossing. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SamHill Posted September 27, 2019 Author Share Posted September 27, 2019 Just to let you know - Whitebelle will be on show at the Enfield Whitewebbs Model Railway Show tomorrow! Come along and see it plus 16 other layouts. Whitwebbs Museum of Transport in Enfield - EN2 9HP Full details at www.ewrm.org.uk Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SamHill Posted October 4, 2019 Author Share Posted October 4, 2019 The layout proved very popular with our visitors at the show - and ran without any faults, although we did burn out Percy, so that's off to the repair yard now. 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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