Small layout - 4x1 comments please!

[sharris]

On 04/02/2020 at 15:52, alastairq said:

Set diagonally across 4x1 might add a few bits of inches?

A nice thought, but on 4'x1' you'd only gain 1".

[Nearholmer]

Nearly an inch and a half ;-)

 

Makes it look a lot longer though.

[sharris]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Nearly an inch and a half ;-)

 

Makes it look a lot longer though.

 

True, if your track hangs over the front and back of the board by half its width  at the ends  (you get 4' 1.48" according to Pythagoras) - I assumed you'd want the track actually on the board, and moved the centreline an inch from the edges.

 

 

 

Edited February 8, 2020 by sharris

[Nearholmer]

Could always go monorail in order to maximise space utilisation.

[Dzine]

HI Folks, Just built a micro 2'-6" x 1'-10", baseboard width can have a massive impact, on the diagonal it's approximately 7" longer.  Regards Paul

[Nearholmer]

18 minutes ago, Dzine said:

baseboard width can have a massive impact, on the diagonal

 

I ought to know this for sure, but isn't the difference in length between the hypotenuse and the longest side greatest for a square? 1.414x. 

[alastairq]

2 hours ago, sharris said:

A nice thought, but on 4'x1' you'd only gain 1".

 An inch may be all that's needed to fit a decent loco on? [To clear the turnout points]

 

Mind, it would work even better with a sector plate?

[The Johnster]

On 05/02/2020 at 08:28, Nearholmer said:

 

One arrangement that I think offers a lot it little is the “high level passenger shuttle; low level goods yard”. I don’t know who first devised it, but it’s been done by multiple people down the years and Paul Lunn has made it his own in recent years.

Not a micro layout, but the first of this sort I remember was Ian Petherton's amazing 'North Shields' back in the 80s, which managed to legitimately have pacific hauled restaurant car named expresses in the goods yard...

[Dzine]

My inspiration for the version in Micro Layouts was influenced by Andrew Knights.  I think his layout was called Glasgow Emerald Street, or something similar, which had appeared in Scale Model Trains under the excellent supervision of Chris Ellis 

[Pacific231G]

On 04/02/2020 at 00:05, Pacific231G said:

Yes. It did seem a bit tight so I must have had it confused in my notes with with another layout that was 5x1 inc Fiddle. It's taken a bit to track it down but, according to  one exhibition page John Gay's Amworth is 8ft  long in total. I'l try to find that other layout but I've come across several "proper" termini that were only 4ft long plus fiddle but looked much longer (plus a few that looked cramped)   

As evidence that a 4ft x 1 ft terminus is possible,  I took my unfinished  terminus to the French Railways Society event today. It is 4ft x 1ft and in H0m but  the plan it was based  on was from  a 4x1ft (1.2 x 0.3m) H0 layout called Guinette  built a few years ago by the French modeller Yann Baude  (now the Editor of Loco-Revue)  That had a run round, goods siding and loco shed siding but didn't look cramped.  The scale space is slightly larger in H0 than OO but British steam era wagons were much shorter so it more than balance out. 

 

 

To transpose the plan for H0m I simply added a second goods siding kicking back to a canal/river wharf and also have a longer run in (about 10 inches) to the first set of points. I'd not seriously operated the layout before but, even with only five points in the scenic section,  it was far more interesting to shunt than I'd expected and the run round loop can handle a six car train. 

 

[sb67]

On 08/02/2020 at 21:27, Dzine said:

HI Folks, Just built a micro 2'-6" x 1'-10", baseboard width can have a massive impact, on the diagonal it's approximately 7" longer.  Regards Paul

 

Sounds interesting Paul. Can you tells us any more, have you a thread on here? 

 

I'd agree about baseboard width, any extra inches helps with the scenery and not placing track parallel with the base board, in my opinion can improve a layout's look.  

Edited February 10, 2020 by sb67

[Dzine]

 

3 hours ago, sb67 said:

Sounds interesting Paul. Can you tells us any more, have you a thread on here? 

 

Hi ,  very observant sb67   It's an entry-level project that makes use of the toy end of things and has got, what I think are, great recycling credentials.  It's outing will be in a forthcoming issue of Model Rail, quite soon.  There will be a  piece on here after publication and I'm doing this because it will be open to sealed offers submitted to the Derwent Valley Light Railway, with all profits going to them (full details in the mag).  Kind regards Paul 

[sb67]

3 hours ago, Dzine said:

 

Hi ,  very observant sb67   It's an entry-level project that makes use of the toy end of things and has got, what I think are, great recycling credentials.  It's outing will be in a forthcoming issue of Model Rail, quite soon.  There will be a  piece on here after publication and I'm doing this because it will be open to sealed offers submitted to the Derwent Valley Light Railway, with all profits going to them (full details in the mag).  Kind regards Paul 

 

Thanks Paul, I'll look forward to seeing that.

[Pacific231G]

On 04/02/2020 at 00:05, Pacific231G said:

Yes. It did seem a bit tight so I must have had it confused in my notes with with another layout that was 5x1 inc Fiddle. It's taken a bit to track it down but, according to  one exhibition page John Gay's Amworth is 8ft  long in total. I'l try to find that other layout but I've come across several "proper" termini that were only 4ft long plus fiddle but looked much longer (plus a few that looked cramped)   

I've finally now found the layout that I'd confused with Amworth. It was North Leigh by David Jones. It was/is a 48" by 11" GWR BLT set in Oxfordshire that looks remarkably spacious. The OO layout is fed by a two foot long by three inch wide fiddle yard. 

It appeared on the late Carl Arendt's microlayout site with a general view here

https://www.carendt.com/wp-content/uploads/leigh720.jpg

and a bit more about the layout here

https://www.carendt.com/small-layout-scrapbook/page-84-april-2009/

From the pictures  I'm pretty sure he used medum rather than small radius points and the run round will handle a four wagon train which is small but the layoutdoesn't look in any way crampe.

David Jones built his layout in New Zealand but I know I've seen a couple of similar layout in Britain.

As Kevin says, Carl established a wonderful resource for anyone interested in very small layouts.

Edited February 13, 2020 by Pacific231G

[Russ (mines a pint)]

Late to this one, but a way of saving space might be to use the fiddle yard to complete the run-round - sometimes known as 'half station' approach. Where you model just the end of the platform and the first coach appears and can be run round, this frees up more space for interesting goods facilities and shunting? 

Good example here by Neil Rushby who I believe still posts on here. 
Rushby's Railways: Abergwynant (rushbys-railways.blogspot.com)

[Pacific231G]

On 21/02/2021 at 21:10, Russ (mines a pint) said:

Late to this one, but a way of saving space might be to use the fiddle yard to complete the run-round - sometimes known as 'half station' approach. Where you model just the end of the platform and the first coach appears and can be run round, this frees up more space for interesting goods facilities and shunting? 

Good example here by Neil Rushby who I believe still posts on here. 
Rushby's Railways: Abergwynant (rushbys-railways.blogspot.com)

Hi Russ

My own view FWIW is that this is fine for exhibition layouts - Terry Trew's Earls Court is a brilliant example- where it's what you show the public that matters. For a personal layout though I need to feed that I'm actually operating a railway- or at least a station-  so want to be able to carry out all the movements in full , You might well be able to persuade yourself that moving a traverser or sector plate is equivalent to operating the points at the throat end of the run round loop but I can't.

 

Oddly though, while operating my own small H0 terminus station during lockdown just for my own pleasure, I've found that I don't have the same problem using the fiddle yard (it's a very  simple one) as a shunting neck. 

When I'm handling overlong trains- I just tell myself that the limit of shunt (it would probably be the advance starter if it were a British prototype) is off scene as it often would be in reality. I actually designed the 50 inch long layout so that a five wagon goods train could be shunted (on Inglenook principles) entirely within the modelled area but I'm finding that handling overlength trains without getting snookered is far more challenging and therefore fun.  

 

(This is the afternoon mixed train departing with two more wagons than the loop can handle)

The terminus was actually designed as a purely personal layout for a bit of innocent wagon bashing but in the past few years had only been coming out for French Railways Society events and the Wealden Group exhibition . I decided a couple of months ago that having a layout and not playing with it was silly so took it out of the storage mode it's been in for the pasdt three years and set it up on my worktable. Half an hour shunting the daily Marchandises-Voyageurs (mixed train) has proved very relaxing.

What does also make sense to me for a main line terminus is using view blockers to model just  its operational ends, the throat and the buffer/loco release end, but with quite a lot left out in the middle. That was the main purpose of the  central road bridge on Cyril Freezer's Minories, though most layouts based on it seem to have ignored that. So long as you never see the loco and the last coach at the same time you can, I think, accept a five coach train as really being eight or ten coaches long.  The overbridge is one way of doing that but there are others and you could probalby apply the same principle to goods yards.I think it would be harder to apply that principle to a branch line terminus but if, on this layout, the station building was at the front would that disguise jsut how short the trains really are?

Edited June 27, 2021 by Pacific231G
couple of new thoughts