Minories are made of this

[Harlequin]

9 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Did you consider a piano hinge, Phil?

I did but I haven't got any to hand.

A piano hinge might be a backup solution if these don't work out!

 

[Worsdell forever]

1 hour ago, Harlequin said:

I did but I haven't got any to hand.

A piano hinge might be a backup solution if these don't work out!

 

 

Do you know the layout's on my foot?

 

You hum it and I'll play it...

[Harlequin]

There has been some more progress, at last!

 

I was hoping to get some track laid over the Christmas holidays but I don't think that's going to happen now - not least because I haven't got one of the turnouts I need.

 

I have painted the boxes to seal the timber, fixed 3mm cork over the entire scenic area, and printed out my design full size. (I moved the plan 5mm away from the back to allow the retaining wall to have some depth.) So far so good:

 

 

Where the platform tracks will cross the board join I have glued in sections of solid board (from the back of an old bathroom cabinet) and super-glued sleeper-sized copper strips onto them.

 

 

The copper strips lie just under rail bottom level of Streamline flexitrack and are the same spacing so once the flex sleepers are removed and the rails are soldered to the copper, painted and ballasted hopefully the change in sleeper construction won't be so visible!

 

I had to position the copperclad sleepers quite carefully because there's not much room to adjust sleeper spacing between the baseboard joint and the nearby turnouts. I did that by laying some Streamline track onto my full-size plan and then punching through the plan with a scribe to mark the positions on the board below. That worked here but it doesn't work very well on the cork - it just heals up.

 

So I'm pondering how to transfer the rest of the design onto the cork below. I don't want to glue the paper plan down because it won't stay flat and it might weaken the track fixing.

Edited January 2, 2021 by Harlequin

[Nearholmer]

Is the mouse-hole at the end definitely big enough to clear you stock?

 

For marking-out, how about a map pins on the sleeper-end line, say every 20mm, then remove the paper plan?

 

Anyway, its looking very neat and solid, and a coat of regulation grey primer is always a positive - I get through gallons of the stuff.

[Izzy]

Although many do it, glue paper plans down and build on top, I don't and have also faced this problem. Generally I'm making soldered track or chairs glued on to ply sleepers so the formation is built away from the layout, the paper templates soaked off, and then it's put down on the baseboard. Not so easy with RTR trackwork though, and the time I faced this issue a short while ago I taped the plan down with d/s tape, and then sliced along the lines in sections, and ran a fine nib pen along the resulting edges. So I ended up with an outline in pen on the cork. Good enough to know where the basics should be located. It worked okay and of course got covered with ballast later.

[Fen End Pit]

I know it is a bit difficult to arrange but using a laser cutter is a great way to mark out cork.

 

[5BarVT]

What I have done previously is to push a Brad awl through the paper into the card, then mark with a pen through the hole.  That’s usually enough to help with location of the closed up hole.

Another alternative is to drill through with (say) a 1.5mm drill.

Paul.

[Pacific231G]

Hi Phil

I noticed  a reference to copper clad sleepers. Does that mean you're handbuilding the track or is that just for the board ends? If it is going to be handbuilt what are the crossing angles?

Edited April 5, 2021 by Pacific231G
typo

[St Enodoc]

7 hours ago, Harlequin said:

So I'm pondering how to transfer the rest of the design onto the cork below.

Headless pins.

[chuffinghell]

7 hours ago, Harlequin said:

So I'm pondering how to transfer the rest of the design onto the cork below. I don't want to glue the paper plan down because it won't stay flat and it might weaken the track fixing.

Poke the holes along the lines on the paper and dust over the holes with talc or powdered chalk line chalk maybe?

[MrWolf]

Very neat carpentry @Harlequin and great to see the minories idea hasn't been consigned to history. I started making one with a Blenheim & Woodstock (ish) theme when I was not quite sixteen that had the terminus on one 42 inch by 18 inch board and the goods shed / station throat on the other. A matching sized fiddle yard plugged on the end. The hinges were intended to be hidden by a road bridge / embankment that also gave access to the goods yard.

 

Sounds good, until you realise the following facts:

At 16 my carpentry sucked. (Actually, it was ####)

At 16 I couldn't afford any decent timber. (No power tools for cutting wood nicely either)

At 16, one of my older friends had a broken motorcycle that his mother had ordered he get rid of before he went off to join the army. Naturally he pushed the wreck round to my house, probably because it was downhill from his.

 

Now, I am working on a 20' X 2' end to end layout.

But the minories idea never really leaves you... 

Once I have my current layout built, there's a storage space 4' X 4' X 2' under one end....

 

I am going to enjoy seeing this layout progress. Keep it up, already you have done more towards a minories layout than I have in the intervening thirty years!

[SteveyDee68]

11 hours ago, chuffinghell said:

Poke the holes along the lines on the paper and dust over the holes with talc or powdered chalk line chalk maybe?

 

Chuffinghell, are you another avid viewer of BBC1's "The Repair Shop", perchance? This technique was demonstrated recently when tracing the lettering from an old pub sign and transferring it onto new wood?

 

The chap involved (I am useless at names) pricked holes through the (tracing) paper, laid the paper onto the board and then "patted" chalk onto/through it with a kind of pad thing - the technique does have a proper name (see above re: names) and results in the design transferred perfectly with no damage to the underlying material.

 

I made a mental note for modelling when I saw it!

 

HOURS OF FUN RESEARCH TV!

[Harlequin]

19 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Is the mouse-hole at the end definitely big enough to clear you stock?

Yes... It was before I moved the plan south a bit. I think it's still OK but a little bit of shaving might be needed!

 

19 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

 

For marking-out, how about a map pins on the sleeper-end line, say every 20mm, then remove the paper plan?

 

Anyway, its looking very neat and solid, and a coat of regulation grey primer is always a positive - I get through gallons of the stuff.

Thanks. Actually I used a special "stick-to-anything" paint designed for kitchen units. Wierd gloopy stuff that had to be recoated between 6 and 12 hours after the previous coat. I ignored that instruction...

 

[Harlequin]

11 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

Hi Phil

I noticed  a reference to copper clad sleepers. Do ues that mean you're handbuilding the track or is that just for the board ends. If it is going to be hadbuilt what are the crossing angles?

No, just the board ends.

Part of the raison-d'etre for this layout is to make something close to what CJF imagined - so commercial track parts.

 

[Harlequin]

Thanks for the suggestions on transferring the plan everyone. I like the pin-based methods because if you're making a hole anyway it seems simpler to just use the hole-maker as the marker and avoid the extra process of making marks separately.

 

So I will try pinning the track on top of the plan, using small headed nails around the outside of the parts, then I can lift the track off, lift/tear the paper plan off and put the track back down in exactly the same place (In theory).

 

That's actually more or less how I positioned the track for my test oval but without the paper. Strange that the method didn't occur to me yesterday!

 

Edited January 3, 2021 by Harlequin

[danstercivicman]

Wow this looks great  

 

As a previous minories modeller great to see! 

[KingEdwardII]

11 minutes ago, Harlequin said:

pinning the track on top of the plan ... then ... lift the track off, lift/tear the paper plan off and put the track back down in exactly the same place (In theory).

 

Phil,

That's my approach - I find it makes getting the track geometry right much easier, especially for curves and the related cutting

 

Yours,  Mike

[St Enodoc]

8 hours ago, SteveyDee68 said:

 

Chuffinghell, are you another avid viewer of BBC1's "The Repair Shop", perchance? This technique was demonstrated recently when tracing the lettering from an old pub sign and transferring it onto new wood?

 

The chap involved (I am useless at names) pricked holes through the (tracing) paper, laid the paper onto the board and then "patted" chalk onto/through it with a kind of pad thing - the technique does have a proper name (see above re: names) and results in the design transferred perfectly with no damage to the underlying material.

 

I made a mental note for modelling when I saw it!

 

HOURS OF FUN RESEARCH TV!

Pouncing.

 

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/glossary/pouncing

 

Not having tried, I'm not sure how well it would work on a soft surface like cork though.

[Hroth]

19 hours ago, chuffinghell said:

Poke the holes along the lines on the paper and dust over the holes with talc or powdered chalk line chalk maybe?

 

Easiest to use a "pricking wheel" to make the holes...

 

 

You just run the wheel along the lines before dusting the chalk...

 

 

[MrWolf]

It should work with something soft, the technique of running a spiked wheel along a pattern and applying French chalk is also used for leather and fabric work.

 

 

Edited January 3, 2021 by MrWolf
Stupid autocorrect

[Hroth]

On 26/06/2020 at 07:16, Harlequin said:

The two boxes are done and will fit together OK I think.

 

 

Fore-cat is saying "So when are you going to finish my cat bed?"

 

[Northroader]

You could go along the back of your plan and shade over with a soft pencil, then put it in position right way up and draw along the lines, giving you a faint outline on the cork, which you line out in firm lines.

[Pacific231G]

10 hours ago, Harlequin said:

No, just the board ends.

Part of the raison-d'etre for this layout is to make something close to what CJF imagined - so commercial track parts.

 

Thanks Phil

I've always wondered about that but Streamline medium radius with a nominal three foot radius are probably close. Minories came years before Streamline  but if the OO version was intended for Pecoway points or Peco components they were also nominally three foot radius with a single cast frog offered.

[Harlequin]

I have pinned the station throat pointwork down onto the printed design:

 

It all looks nice and smooth. The curved point leading to platform 1 was a good choice and the curved loco spur really works well alongside the other curves. (You can see the authentic joggle around the hinge post into platform 3...!) I have tested some long coaches and a loco with a long-ish overhang and they both cleared the post and the edge of the box OK as they run in and out of P3.

 

You may remember that the design relies on some short curves between some of the turnouts. You can just see one at the bottom of the first photo. The plan was to make them by removing the rails from short lengths of flexitrack and rolling them to give them a set curve before re-threading onto the sleepers. This worked very well!

 

One interesting thing popped up: Things started to get out of place as I joined turnouts end to end in ladders. This was because the design didn't take the widths of the insulating joiner gaps into account! Just shows that the templates, the software and the printouts are very, very accurate!

 

Next job, lift all the track, remove the printouts, do all the point modifications, start soldering on droppers and then, we pray that the pins are all still in place and try to lay the track down again...

 

 

Edited February 14, 2021 by Harlequin

[AireValley1962]

The flow of the point-and-track work looks grand! I was going to mention the very small funny double reverse curve by platform three, but you beat me to it. Hardly noticeable unless you put your eye where the camera was.

 

All the best,

Will