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Coron - a small 009 virus free project


Nile
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Coron is the working title for my new 009 layout.

With every other week off for the next few months I have lots of spare time to make use of. Some of that is going to be spent on this project.

I wanted something small and self contained (no external fiddle yard or stick), with operating potential. Inspiration came from a recent article in Back Track about Holywell Town. This was a small terminus in North Wales, readily adaptable to a compact model. This is my sketch of the prototype.

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The bridge across the middle forms an ideal scenic break, with a sector plate hidden behind it. Moving the access road ramp to the middle will help hide it as well. This is my plan.

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The idea is to use materials I already have to hand where possible. For the baseboard I found one I'd made earlier, it's two pieces of foamboard stuck together and coated with shellac. It's 30x80 cm which turned out just big enough, and very light. Much time was spent trying out various combinations of points and track. The train in the photo, at 12" long, is the longest that will fit.

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The plan settled on uses a 12" LH point and two Ys. The sector plate will be top right.

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Thanks for the interest, I'd better get on with it.

I've used another layer of foam board for the track bed and sector plate. The track bed was cut to match the track layout, stuck down, coated with shellac and finally painted an earthy brown colour. Before gluing the track down with UHU I made holes in the top surface for point control. More on this later. Here it is with mostly temporary wiring for testing.

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The sector plate is using a pin as its pivot, I'll eventually replace it with something better. These photos show how it will work.

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Finally for now an aerial view showing the track layout. I've already installed a couple of magnets for shunting, there will be more when I've worked out where they need to go.

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Point control.

I wanted to keep it simple, wire in tube type of thing with a switch for the frog polarity. Or brass rods in tube as I had enough of them for the task.

Then I made it more complicated by wanting to be able to operate them from both front and rear of the layout. This ruled out the use of the slide switches I had as they have too much travel. For this to work the switch movement needed to match that of the point blades, about 2mm.

The answer was to use toggle switches, with the operating rod wrapped around the base of the lever. I had some switches in stock just right for this. This photo shows a test setup. The main operating rod to the point is 1mm, soldered to this is some 0.8mm rod that goes around the lever of the switch.

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This shows the final setup.

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The rod passes through a hole made in the foam board, simply by pushing a cocktail stick through it. Some bits of tube act as guides and supports. under the point tiebar an L shaped bit of rod is soldered to the main rod, this passes up through the tiebar. All this has to be installed before the point is glued down. Pushing or pulling the red knob at the front will move both the point blades and the toggle switch.

Success!

This last photo shows a test rig I made for the Y points.

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I wanted to check there wouldn't be any problem using them unmodified with DCC. I was looking for any momentary short circuits when switching the blades. This can happen when using microswitches, but proved to be no problem with this toggle switch. Hence I haven't made any changes to these Y points.

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Moving onto simpler things, hopefully. For the station building I chose the Wills SS67 wayside station as it looks about right and I already had one. However as the location is quite narrow in a cutting I decided to make the building a bit narrower by removing 6mm from each side of the end pieces. I also had to remove some from the bottom so that they would still match the sides when assembled.

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New edges were made up from 60x60 thou microstrip. A midified end is shown on top of one untouched.

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With the other end done the four walls were then assembled, the corners re-enforced with more of the microstrip.

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A key part of this layout is the bridge. It separates the scenic area from the fiddle yard and its position will determine where everything else will go. So I got on and made a mock-up from card. This will help determine the final design, and the position of other items.

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The view from the goods yard side. The access ramp down from the bridge will help hide the fiddle yard.

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The view from the rear. There is just enough room under the ramp for a train on the sector plate when it is fully over.

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A low level view from far left corner of the layout. Trains on the sector plate can just about be seen through the bridge. The scenery at the front here will eventually be built up a bit, making this view harder. The near end of the sector plate will get some scenic treatment as it is visible under the bridge.

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Having worked out where the platform and station building will go I made a base for them from bits of leftover balsa wood. I had to glue three bits together, so it looks a bit messy underneath. To bring this up to the same height as the trackbed I glued down some odd bits of foamboard.

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The base was then glued onto these and the edge of the trackbed.

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This will be covered with planks.

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Before I glued the base down I used it as a guide to cut some planked Plastikard to shape. Here it is glued down onto the base.

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With the station building (not yet fixed) in place.

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More by accident than design the platform is the same level as the top of the rails. At one end of the platform is the bridge, at the other is the signal box. There will be room for a small access ramp in front of the box, passing over the gubbins in front of it.

I painted the rail sides a muddy brown colour. Then I remembered that I wanted to add etched fishplates and file notches in the rails (preferably before painting them). Oh well better late than never. I've placed the joints at roughly 20 scale feet intervals.

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Later I painted them and the sleepers with Railroad tie brown paint. The bit of card in the background is the base for the signalbox.

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Bridge construction has begun. The final design has been tweaked slightly but it looks basically the same. The inner structure is 5mm foamboard. This will eventually be clad with card and Plastikard.

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To test the design I used a pin as the pivot for the sector plate. This eventually became a bit too loose to work, so I came up with a more permanent solution. An L shaped piece of 1mm brass rod was inserted into the pin hole from underneath the board. The base of the L fitted into a slot cut into the underside of the board and was secured with superglue gel.

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The rest of the rod projected above the board vertically.

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The pin hole on the sector plate was enlarged to accept some brass tube (1mm inside diameter) which was glued in place, flush with the underside. This fits onto the rod, held in place with some plastic tube that is a tight fit over the rod.

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Much better now.

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Bridge construction continues in the background. While waiting for glue to dry I added some more details to the layout, ones that need to go in before the ballast. I wanted to add the point rodding from the signal box to the off-scene point at the far end of the loop. I didn't have enough of the Wills stuff, but found some MSE bits in a box that would do. These are the stools, placed at 1 inch intervals. The actual rodding will be 0.3mm nickel silver rod. I also found some signal wire pulley wheels, so I made up a stack of four in a frame of microstrip. I won't be modelling the actual wires as they would be invisible.

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Another thing holding up ballasting was the magnets in the goods yard. Or rather the lack of them. So using some wagons I worked out the optimum positions for them, making sure none would be trapped at the ends of sidings. Now they are in place I can ballast these sidings.

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Some bridge building progress. Card has been glued onto the top and ends, making a fairly solid and rigid structure.

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This was used as a guide to cut out the openings in a sheet of stone Plastikard. The shape of the arches come from the base of a DVD/CD tub.

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I raised the height of each arch by 3mm before gluing the sheet onto the bridge. The gap at the top of each arch was later filled with three strips of bricks cut from a sheet of brick Plastikard.

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In the last photo above some progress with ballasting can be seen alongside the platform. I do this in small sections to avoid the diluted PVA causing trouble by soaking into surrounding areas. With this section now complete I was able to install the point rodding using 0.3mm nickel silver rods, blackened and painted. Outside the signal box I installed some Wills cranks and plastic rods.

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I also added rodding to the middle point. The other point will make do with an adjacent lever.

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I'm glad you find it interesting.

And now for some more bridge action (there's a lot more to come as well). With most of the stone sides glued onto the bridge it was time to do the brick arch undersides. Brick Plastikard is thin and flexible enough to fit, but I wanted a way to work out the shape of the pieces without a lot of trial and error fitting. So I made templates from some thin card, Hatton’s business cards were just the right size and thickness.

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These were used to cut out the pieces from a sheet of brick Plastikard. It's easier to cut on the plain side, the blade is less likely to wander off course. The white reinforcing strips at the ends are to keep them straight, they would tend to bow upwards without them.

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To fix them in place I used Hard As Nails solvent free adhesive as UHU would have dissolved the foam. I found this bag of lead shot the best thing to hold it in place while the glue set.

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I’ve also been working on the access ramp down from the middle of the bridge. As well as giving access to the goods yard it also partly hides the sector plate.
The test model was a straight piece of card, but that was far too boring. The final design is more curvy, avoiding dead straight lines where possible. This has made it far more complicated to build, just as well I have plenty of time to do it. The basic structure is thick card, glued together with PVA. More stone Plastikard is glued onto the front facing sides with UHU. Extra reinforcing pieces will be added as the build continues. There is a master plan in my head, but it’s not fixed in stone (or card) yet.

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I’ve added another piece of foamboard next to the goods yard as a base for the ramp, bringing it to the same level.

The ramp is now attached to the bridge, there is a small block of wood in the angle between them.

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Edited by Nile
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Now how does the saying go? Measure once and cut twice? Or have I got that wrong?
When I cut out the opening under the ramp for the sector plate I had used the cab height of the loco as a guide. I failed to notice that the chimney is a few mm taller, so when I tested the clearance this happened.

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Fortunately there is actually plenty of room under the ramp, I just had to enlarge the opening a bit for it to fit.

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The bridge structure is now almost complete, the last piece of stone sheet has been glued on.

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The bright patch next to the arch shows where some card needs to be added onto the rear, plus some extra reinforcing pieces.

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The underside of the ramp has now been lined with card and reinforcing pieces.

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Checking that the loco still fits.

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The main structure is now complete, just some detailing bits to add now.

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Finishing off the bridge construction are the coping stones. For these I used 2x1mm Evergreen strips glued onto the tops of the walls.

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While I was at it I extended the rear wall at the bottom of the ramp.

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I filed the strip into a more rounded profile, then filed grooves across it at 8mm intervals.

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Painting next, that could take a while.

 

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While paint dries I've got on with things electrical.

I've fitted a socket to the sector plate so it can be easily removed without unsoldering wires. All three pins will be used eventually.

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I wanted the main connector socket to be removable for maintenance. I eventually came up with an arrangement using magnets and locating pins.

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The white part will be glued onto the board, it's upside down in the photo above.

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The socket has been glued to the edge of the board and wired up.

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The grey box plugged into it is the DCC adaptor, the red lead is from the DCC controller. It can also be used for DC operation, but with only one loco on the layout. I will eventually make a proper DC control box that will allow operation with two locos on the layout.

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Time for a catch-up. In parallel with this electrickery I was painting the bridge. Onto a stone base coat I dry brushed various shades of grey and brown. A thin wash of black toned it all down (maybe too much). For the smoke effect above and under the arches I used black weathering powder, making a bit of a mess as usual with this stuff. I thought the finish was a bit shiny in places so I gave the whole thing a thin coat of Vallejo matt medium.

The bridge has landed, glued down with solvent free glue.

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