A Languishing Layout refurbished

[Flying Pig]

About 25 years ago in the short interval between university and work, I put together an N gauge layout from bits of an earlier scrapped effort and a redundant piece of baseboard. It never saw much use and languished at my parents house until loaned to a friend, where as far as I know it continued to languish until Lambton58's boys began agitating for N gauge. Transported south, the layout was quite busy for a while, though the threatened scenery never appeared. Lately it has gone back to its old habits in the garage while Lambton59 works on A levels and his own N gauge branch and Lambton60 builds aeroplanes. It's never had a name either.

 

As I'm collecting stock for another foray into N, I thought I'd take some along on a recent visit and give it a spin on the old trainset. Err, it'll be a bit dirty mumble mumble, said Ralph as he went to fetch it. No surprise there as I'm used to cleaning his track before I run anything on it. However, while I was cleaning the curves, it became obvious just how badly I'd laid them back in 1985. The layout is too narrow anyway at 21" but with my wandering radius, heaven knows what the tight spots were like.

 

Stuff it. Out with the trackpins (yes - trackpins; this was a quick repair so I could get my stock running: Lambton59's branch is using copydex as advised by RMwebbers) and the end curves were relaid. Here's Ralph saying a much needed prayer over the layout while my Farish 37 beds in the new curves:

 

 

The nearer one uses some new track Ralph had lying about. In retrospect I wish I'd done the same with the far curve as despite my extending it slightly it still has a couple of kinks in the ancient rails that disturb some of the boys' steam locos. Well, not perfect then, but I think I managed a degree of transition at the ends and I've exorcised the worst of the tight spots, certainly with the new rail. It's all Code 80 BTW and yes, it does strip out of its rail fixings at the slightest excuse - code 55 is much more robust in that respect. Overall dimensions are 54"x21" and the battens on the left show that some thought has gone into widening it.

 

The idea behind the plan is illustrated below: a junction station with a secondary line truncated to a terminus and the branch reduced to freight only to provide continuous running. Fiddle yard on the left, or perhaps a passing station - I never did decide. The sidings scribbled out in red have been added by the boys and weren't part of my original scheme.

 

 

Freight was to have been handled by a Farish 25 and I had dreams of a Met Camm DMU for the passenger, but price militated against buying one and I'd lost interest by the time I had the cash. The 25 never did run particularly well, even on the straighter sections, but the whole experience is much more satisfying with my new 37 which runs beautifully under the control of an antique H&M Duette (high resistance of course). The tankers are the original Peco ICI ones - not accurate, but I still like the livery. The less said about the barrier wagon the better.

 

 

And here's Lambton59's milk train (which reminds me he needs some 6 wheelers):

 

[Lambton58]

And very enjoyable it was too! It's easy to forget the simple and theraputic pleasure of just watching trains go by.

Also gratifying to see that the prayers seemed to work

Ralph

Lambton58

[Kris]

Did you consider suggesting that the down main was the one that has been left in place and the up the lifted one? This would have suggested a larger radius curve on at the end.

[Flying Pig]

It's pretty much dictated by the arrangement of the runround loop in the inside, which in turn was probably a function of the points I had available at the time! I think I also felt that the remaining single line would have used the most generous available radius.