Holbrooke & Lock

[Keira]

I've made a decent amount of progress so far on my model railway, dubbed "Holbrooke and Lock", I thought a layout topic wouldn't be a bad idea, so here we are!

 

 

This is the track plan for the new layout, I've had a go at signalling it, but I'm no expert! The idea is to have small Great Western branchline trains snake their way through autumn countryside, flanked by a canal for half its course before crossing over it and terminating at Holbrooke and Lock station...

 

 

Over the past couple of years I've been slowly constructing various items of 4mm 00 rolling stock, just things to my liking, tending to be of Great Western outline and preserved on the Severn Valley Railway, but until now, I haven't had a layout of my own to run them on. So a few months ago a shuffling around of bedrooms presented an opportunity to construct an L shape end to end layout around 12 feet x 12 feet in dimension, and so I got to work preparing the space to take a layout and began construction. Of course the setting is to be GWR, but era is a bit tricky, my stock being a right mix. As most of it is preserved on the SVR, I could go that route, a preservation setting perhaps? But I've always wanted to model an Edwardian layout, my favourite time of the railways. I'm not sure yet, I'm just going to start building and see where my mind takes me.

 

The layout being end to end presented an excellent opportunity, I'm not one for shunting personally, I just like to watch the trains do their thing, a little problematic on an end to end, meaning it was time to bring out the A Level computer science project, which was automating a model railway! The layout is to be automated with computer control, using the Roco Z21 as the main brains, Digikeijs 4088 for the block detection and 4018 for accessory control, A Raspberry Pi handling control of a traverser fiddle yard and my program trying to make sense of it all and ultimately control a sequence of operations for the trains to act out. As trains will need to uncouple without my interference when they reach each end of the course, I'll need some sort of uncoupling device like an uncoupling ramp or a coupling such as Kadees or Sprat and Winkle that have automatic uncoupling features as part of their design. For me, I went with Sprat and Winkle, as they can easily be retro fitted to my stock which were previously built with just 3 links in mind. I think when its all done, it will be quite fascinating to sit in bed watching trains run round at the station, the traverser do its thing and a timetable of different trains just to play out in front of me, I can look at the time and say "oh hey the 12.25 is due in 3 minutes" and watch it roll into the station. A little ways to go before that though!

 

Edited November 29, 2021 by Keira
Amended track plan

[Keira]

 

When I was constructing the back scenes a couple of months ago, the window was always going to be a bit of a problem, this is the bit of back scene that covers a good portion of the window in the room, and when the layout isn't in use, I wanted to be able to reclaim the full use of the window, so some sort of easily removable back scene was on the cards. The following details my solution, not exactly fancy, but it works rather well I must say!

 

[Keira]

Good evening all,

 

For a while now, on and off, I've been working to construct the fiddle yard traverser, but with uni starting my energy to complete it has been even more limited than usual, it is now however starting to get somewhere.

 

 

When I built the scenic boards for the layout I somewhat regrettably (and naively) left little room for a fiddle yard, capable of storing 3 carriages and a tender locomotive, this has meant a bit of creativity has had to be called upon to get things to work. To allow for the length of trains I wanted, the fiddle yard had to be on a curve and now just fits the trains in to the limited space. As I wanted a traverser type fiddle yard, this being on a curve made things a bit difficult for me to plan out and to get everything to run exactly parallel. 

 

A loco and 3 carriages in the fiddle yard, it all just about fits! There will be just enough room for 3 storage tracks and a run around track on this board.

 

 

The traverser in action. As can be seen, the limited space for the traverser to move its full length of travel, allowing access from the scenic exit, is most certainly cutting it fine. A small portion of the track on the scenic part just behind the backscene on this photo has been lifted to be realigned to meet the exit in the backscene, as previously the track would have exited to close to the wall.

 

 

The "track deck" board is on normal household draw runners, and it runs very smoothly indeed. This is all fixed upon a main, structural frame. The whole thing will be tidied up and made to look a bit nicer in due course when the prototyping phase is complete, including the hole cut into backscene to let the trains through, it's all very much under construction at the moment. Also, the fiddle yard track deck will have some small walls of sorts all around to encase the rolling stock so that they don't accidently fall off the edge plummeting to the floor!

 

As this board is right in front of the door, it obviously needs to be taken down when the layout isn't in use, and I wanted something really easy to take down and put up, and so it sits on a foldable trestle, which can be simply folded up, no bolts to loosen or tighten or anything, and can be stored under the scenic layout boards. The fiddle yard its self has two slots cut into its cross members which simply fit over the aluminium bar of the trestle, so no fixings are required to put up the whole assembly, this fit is snug so it doesn't move about when the traverser is in motion. The trestle allows for adjustable height, and the fit of this adjustable height bar is a rattle fit in the slots, meaning as the weight of the fiddle yard shifts when the traverser is in motion, the whole assembly wobbles slightly, to fix this I bought some of these locating sockets/pins, in which some are fixed to the main scenic board, and some on the fiddle yard board, this locates the two boards together accurately, and stops any wobble! 

 

The slots that fit over the trestle's aluminium bar, the draw runners can be more clearly seen here also.

 

 

The foldable trestle in place.

 

 

The locating pins and sockets... do ignore the rouge bit of back scene!

 

 

The pins look skewed here, I went back and had a look, no they are straight, must be one of those weird camera illusions!

 

 

And that sums the progress up really, next up is realigning the track that comes off the scenic part of the layout and on to the fiddle yard, then laying the fiddle yard tracks and then time get some trains running!

[Keira]

A job that's been on the list for a while... when I took the backscene boards off the layout to apply the backscene picture to them, as I put them back up, two rather unsightly gaps appeared between the boards, one where the curved section of backscene returns to a straight run, and another where the removeable backscene section begins. And so I've quickly had a go at fixing those, it turns out the I never fixed the center portion of the curved section onto the baseboard frames, so it was just hanging there, pulling the ends out of alignment, it is is all fixed in place now though, and looks quite a bit better for it I think. All the back scene boards are separate, and can be removed individually if needed by undoing a few screws, and the picture is cut to fit on those separate boards, so there is a slight join line between them all anyway, but it looks much better than it did.

 

Before...

 

 

And after... the shadow gap you can see is just the slight misalignment of the boards, as the removable section is just that, removable, so it can wiggle a bit!

 

 

[Keira]

Late last week I fitted the traverser with a 12v stepper motor lead screw, controlled through a DRV-8825 stepper motor controller and Raspberry Pi. Still in its very much embryonic stages, it featured at the Warley local show on Saturday, it was the first proper chance to put it through its paces and I'm pleased with its performance. It's operation was only set up for the bare bones for the show, as I had only had it operational for a couple of days, but I'm now looking into micro-stepping and inertia control to fine tune the performance. I'll post a more in depth look at all the components as I start to tune their control in due course, but for now, here's a brief video of the traverser in action at the Warley show.

 

 

  

Edited November 29, 2021 by Keira

[RobinofLoxley]

This looks to be a very nice project

[Keira]

16 hours ago, RobinofLoxley said:

This looks to be a very nice project

Thank you!

[Keira]

I've been putting it off for ages, but the time has come to wire up the layout. I've been waiting on the traverser project, to see if my ideas were viable, before continuing with the rest of the layout; and, as the the traverser seems to be working well in this prototyping stage, the other night I decided to get the rest of the layout up and running. As the layout uses block sections into the DR-4088, there are lots and lots of wires going all over the place and it took some time to route them where they all needed to go. I've also added two bus wires down the length of the layout, one for track power signals to sections not going into the DR-4088, and an accessory bus wire, currently working from the outlet on the back of my analogue controller at 16V AC for lighting, accessories and point motors.

 

 

Speaking of point motors, I've gone for tortoise slow action point motors as the picture above shows (along with my  rather unsightly installation) but all works well despite many of them being in difficult areas for installation. These tortoise motors  require a medium for compatibility between themselves and the accessory decoder (DR-4018), for me these come in the form of the DR4101 interface boards, I've used 3 here to switch 5 motors (as some work as a pair).

 

The DR4101 interface boards between the tortoise motors and the accessory decoder

 

 

Here's the accessory decoder in the form of the DR-4018, CV 47 has been set to the point motor control value 6 for tortoises.

 

 

So here's the fruits of my labour, turnouts successfully operating from the Z21. Amazingly I managed to wire all of them the wrong way round, so the frog would short when anything went over it, sorted now though!

 

 

I'm pleased to see my slight bending of the turnout's geometry to give them a bit of a better flow through the station hasn't done anything to upset the mechanism, and trains stroll over them without issue.

Edited May 12, 2022 by Keira
correction for cv47 description

[Keira]

Some more testing on Holbrooke and Lock, exciting times! The first train has officially run the full length of the scenic section of the layout, now awaiting a full test with the traverser installed. For now though here's a couple of videos with 813 and the Great Western railcar. Not all the stock for the layout has had their Sprat and Winkle couplings fitted yet, so do excuse the rather bodge couplings between the locos and stock!

 

CSP Models 813 (currently under a repaint) taking trains back and forth on Holbrooke.

 

 

And the railcar shuttling back and forth with a Collett brake composite.

 

 

[Keira]

One of the pivotal criteria for this layout was the automated run round process for trains at the end of their run. The fitting of couplings capable of automatic uncoupling is well underway with the layout's rolling stock in the form of Sprat and Winkle couplings which can be uncoupled using magnets. I'm experimenting with home made prototypes at the moment which is going well, although the distance between the coupled vehicles needs to be reduced somewhat. As for the layout side of things, uncoupling is simply achieved using these magnets bedded in the "ground" between the rails. To achieve automatic uncoupling using computer control, the platform road uses 3 block sections and with a bit of foresight to the train types that will be run on the layout, a train can draw past the fouling point in the platform road and would then land in a 3 coach space at the platform, the train knows when to stop when the fouling point block section is cleared, there are uncoupling magnets placed at each coach interval to allow for different lengths of train to uncouple, the platform can hold a maximum of 3 64 foot coaches and there will be lenience in the magnet placement to allow for shorter coaches and trains with goods vehicles attached to also be able to uncouple in this space. The loco can now decouple from the train and make its way to the third section which is the head shunt, and from there can run round the train. The loco backs onto the train and shunts it as far back as for the head shunt to register occupancy, the train is now in such a position that it can depart without magnet interference and the couplings can take up tension and pass over the magnets without accidently uncoupling.

 

Here is a video of some early testing for this system, I haven't fitted any locos with the couplings as of yet, so its just testing with a couple of coaches for now, the system seems to work a treat though!

 

 

Edited December 3, 2021 by Keira

[Keira]

A bit of a while since I posted an update on here, not because of a lack of progress though! There's been lots of wiring and fettling bits and bobs that were taking a bit of time, but weren't particularly interesting to blog about. However, they are now done and I've started on the scenery! 

 

I've begun work on the long canal scene first, which follows the railway for a decent way and works its way through a lock and under a railway bridge. The end of the scene into the fiddle yard has had to curve off slightly to accommodate the fiddle yard road access, to disguise this bend the scenery builds up a bit just above track height, which I think gives a nice effect and with lots of trees will hopefully disguise the hole in the backscene and the curve, and will also be a bit of a squeeze for any passing narrowboats!

 

Here is the base foam scenery, just roughly to shape, this now has a layer of plaster cloth over it to provide a hard shell.

 

 

And here looking over the bridge...

 

 

[Keira]

Here's what things look like with the plaster cloth applied. A very satisfying process!

 

 

There are bits of interesting contouring to the landscape, which I took from real places I've been to or pictures I've seen online. The camera doesn't pick it up so well, but to the right on the photo below, the landscape squishes flat and out for a short section, a little odd feature of a canal local to me that I thought looked quite interesting. The squished shape also continues on the other bank behind the track, I'm trying to imagine what the landscape would have looked like before the trains, and how the railway and canal have cut through the landscape.

 

[Keira]

There's much work to be done with sculptamold to smooth out the landscape, I conformed the plaster cloth quite closely to the foam underneath to let the few areas of contouring show through, but this also showed through all the bits I didn't want to show through too, not a massive issue though. I'll also have some more mounds to add with the sculptamold that I didn't make with the foam, especially by the (temporary foam!) bridge where the landscape will filled out a bit more than it looks currently, rising slightly above the track level to gently transition from the cutting.

 

 

Speaking of the bridge area, I haven't yet landscaped the bit to the right, but it shows the height of the foam bed from the baseboard, giving clearance for the canal scenery to drop down at the lock under the bridge.

 

Here is the other side of the bridge where the lower level of the canal can be seen going into the lock, the (very rough and temporary!) buildings show the small industrial scene here, the inspiration for which came through some I think they are mill buildings on the Caldon canal, the setting here is very different to that scene, but it was the mishmash of different heights and buildings was the inspiration to create a little higgledy piggledy industrial area, I quite like it! I'm happy that even behind the bridge out of immediate sight there's a little scene with bits poking above the bridge, ooo what's that chimney part of, where's the pub sat, and you have to peer over to see them. The other side of the bridge has a prominent lock overflow point, which needs to come out somewhere, unfortunately I don't have much room back here, so it comes out rather close to the lock gates, such as those on the Huddersfield narrow canal.

 

The tow path is behind the camera, this will be lined steeply with narrow cottages to emphasise that cramped feel for this scene.

 

The block of foam in the background is the position of the local pub "The Holbrooke and Lock" for which the railway station was named after, a fun quirk from real life. The pub is at a height where it can still be scene from the other side of the bridge, creating a nice little view.

 

 

The other side of the bridge, showing the pub still visible, along with the chimney from the little industrial bit, the higher side of the lock overflow can be seen here to opposite the lock landing, suitable for a boat of about 70 feet in length.