Vanders Posted December 31, 2012 Share Posted December 31, 2012 What do you get if you take Lawrence Hill, combine it with Severn Beach and then move the whole lot close to Avonmouth? Hopefully, you get something like Laurence Hill.The basic premise is simple: the line was originally a double-track secondary route from Bristol to somewhere near Gloucester, via. Avonmouth. Inevitably the line fell victim to Beeching. However rather than being closed completely, the section of the line from Bristol has been singled and the line truncated at Laurence Hill, kept mainly to get workers to the port and various nearby chemical and industrial companies. Although its days are numbered the small yard remains operational for now, being used to ferry materials to the new motorway which is being built: concrete, steel, bricks, fly-ash and various other goods all arrive by rail. This was inspired by this rather atmospheric shot of bricks arriving at Lawrence Hill in ex-LNER 12T pipe wagons. The layout itself will be N, with the track a mixture of hand built pointwork and Wayne Kinney's new and rather excellent looking fiNetrax for the plain sections. Lots of grime, BR Blue (and some Green, obviously!), diesel traction and no TOPS. Lovely! So the first thing I needed was somewhere to house the layout. One 10ft by 6ft shed bought, assembled, insulated, wired, painted and fitted out later, I could build the boards. These are 50cm by 1m, constructed from a single sheet of high density polystyrene insulation board; currently a fiver at B&Q, and perfect for my needs as each sheet was 500m by 1200mm. Each sheet has 90cm deep 6mm ply glued to it with (solvent free!) grab adhesive and a handful of screws to assist while the adhesive dried. The ends of the boards which join are doubled up with a second layer of 6mm ply. Just add bullet dowels and over-centre latches and you've got yourself some baseboards with very little work. The legs were rebuilt from a previous attempt from earlier in the year: those boards proved to be heavy and flexed very easily, but the legs were quite nice. I just need to add some diagonal bracing to them to stop the last small amount of twisting. The cassette based fiddle yard has yet to be built. Once you've got your boards, you need a plan. This exact plan was designed for the previous boards. In this iteration I intend to slew the line on the right hand side towards the centre of the board, as I now have more space to play with on the second board. The yard and station will remain the same. I couldn't resist laying out the current version trying out a bit of rolling stock... On the right is my Worlsley Works built Class 22; almost complete now after three years (!) and a pair of 12T pipe wagons built from the Parkisde Dundus kit. There's another 10 currently on the workbench waiting to be built... A general shot of the yard with some assorted wagons dotted around and the Class 108 standing in for the eventual bubble car. Oh O.K, the 108 will come out too. Saturday "Match Specials" perhaps? I guess I'd need to invent a football team for Avonmouth then, too! Still, now I have a dedicated modelling space I'm hoping that things will progress slightly faster than my Class 22 did. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MattWallace Posted January 2, 2013 Share Posted January 2, 2013 Looking good so far, nice to see it progress beyond the planning stage... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip52LC Posted January 2, 2013 Share Posted January 2, 2013 I will be following this with interest as for ten plus years I travelled through this area going to work. Regards Philip Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted January 2, 2013 Author Share Posted January 2, 2013 I will be following this with interest as for ten plus years I travelled through this area going to work. Thanks Philip, I'm hoping to make steady progress. Which area though? Technically Laurence Hill is in Avonmouth, unlike the confusingly similarly named Lawrence Hill in Bristol Just to further add the confusion Laurence Hill also happened to have a rather well regarded model shop called "Max Walliams". Or it will, once I've built it... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
37114 Posted January 2, 2013 Share Posted January 2, 2013 I will follow with interest as my layout is an amalgamation of Lawrence hill, Clifton down and Shirehampton. Will the 03 be renumbered 03121? I am currently scratching around for a green flower pot 03 to do 03382, the other LH stalwart. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted January 2, 2013 Author Share Posted January 2, 2013 I will follow with interest as my layout is an amalgamation of Lawrence hill, Clifton down and Shirehampton. Will the 03 be renumbered 03121? I am currently scratching around for a green flower pot 03 to do 03382, the other LH stalwart. Thanks Rob, and a very nice layout yours is too! I'm not sure yet if I'll renumber my 03, but of course it'd have to be D2121 rather than 03121 if I did! Whatever number it gets it will have a Conflat A as a runner, complete with brick. I'm just waiting for the NEM coupler conversion packs from Dapol to become available so I can build the kit with some sensible couplers. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted January 5, 2013 Author Share Posted January 5, 2013 As I said, I wanted to modify the original plan above to slew the lines at the right hand side toward the centre of the board, to help balance things out a little. Note that the plan is for a double track line, but the line has been singled so the Down (lower) line and cross-over between the Up & Down lines won't be built. I've drawn it as a double-track plan so that I can get the trackbed and various structures the correct width. With that in mind, I also started mocking up & positioning some of the basic structures. The bridge at the far end carries a road (the A420, in the real Lawrence Hill). The line will terminate here; I plan to place the stops directly under it. The bridge carrying a disused and lifted line over ours. In my reality, Laurence Hill is an ex-Midland line, and the lifted line running over it was the ex-GWR line! The rest of the line runs in a cutting, with a full-height retaining wall on the left hand (viewing) side, and the cutting on the other side getting gradually steeper (with a shorter retaining wall along the bottom) as it reaches the bridge. The 1980's stock is there simply because I could My only concern so far is that now I've put these structures in place it's evident that there is a lot of empty space to fill on the second board. I may try pivoting the plan away from the edge of the board to try and balance the space. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
class"66" Posted January 5, 2013 Share Posted January 5, 2013 Good plans you have... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium TimC Posted January 5, 2013 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 5, 2013 Always liked Lawrence Hill as a potential modelling project - I'll watch with interest. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shed Posted January 6, 2013 Share Posted January 6, 2013 Looks like a nice little project. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leon Posted January 6, 2013 Share Posted January 6, 2013 I love the look of this, can't wait to see it progress, great track plan. All the best Leon Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bartb Posted January 6, 2013 Share Posted January 6, 2013 If it is of any help I have a few pictures of Lawrence Hill from about 1989. John Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted January 6, 2013 Author Share Posted January 6, 2013 If it is of any help I have a few pictures of Lawrence Hill from about 1989. Hi John, although that's quite late for the era I'm modelling, any pictures would be great, particularly as the structures didn't change all that much. Obviously I'm not going to model Lawrence Hill exactly, but I'm hoping to get a good chunk of the "feel" of it, with a few recognisable things in there. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium TimC Posted January 6, 2013 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 6, 2013 If it is of any help I have a few pictures of Lawrence Hill from about 1989. John John Can you post them on here please? I'd love to see them (and I guess so would a few others). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bartb Posted January 6, 2013 Share Posted January 6, 2013 Here are 3 photo's to start with. John Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bartb Posted January 6, 2013 Share Posted January 6, 2013 I just remembered that I posted quite a few pictures on another topic, so if you try a search for Lawrence hill it should bring up any information on that topic. John Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium TimC Posted January 6, 2013 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 6, 2013 I just remembered that I posted quite a few pictures on another topic, so if you try a search for Lawrence hill it should bring up any information on that topic. John This one - http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/12430-lawrence-hill/ and Rivercider posted some here http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/49683-br-rationalised-line/ Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bartb Posted January 6, 2013 Share Posted January 6, 2013 That's the one Tim, well done. John Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted January 6, 2013 Author Share Posted January 6, 2013 Thanks Tim. It's no coincidence that I posted in both of those threads! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Gwinnett Posted January 8, 2013 Share Posted January 8, 2013 We had relatives living in Brizzle in the 70s and used to visit fairly regularly. Unfortunately I don't recall what trains, if any, we saw (in my defence I was only born in 69 so was too young to take notes!) but I do remember being taken to Temple Meads and also the area around Lawrence Hill. Wish I had a time machine! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sammyboy Posted January 11, 2013 Share Posted January 11, 2013 I like the idea of your station which is cut back and the line goes no further then the bridge. But where on the station is the ticket office or is it going to be unstaffed? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted January 11, 2013 Author Share Posted January 11, 2013 But where on the station is the ticket office or is it going to be unstaffed? On the real Lawrence Hill the buildings were on platform one, but the buildings were closed and the station became unstaffed. The same thing happened at Severn Beach. I shall almost certainly model the run-down and unused buildings on the remaining in-service platform, as I'm really after that "Line in decline" grot & grime look! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted January 16, 2013 Author Share Posted January 16, 2013 As the construction of this layout is going to include some new concepts and techniques, I want to give them all a try together before I crack on with building and laying the track. So first of all, I needed a small test board. Easy enough: an offcut of the extruded insulation used to build the baseboards, topped with a piece of 1.5mm cork sheet, which is simply glued down with solvent free impact adhesive. Next I needed a test turnout to put on my test board. Construction of the turnout allowed me to try out the first new tools and methods. The first was construction using a pair of crossing/flangeway gauges. These are the two pieces of brass shown in the picture. Oddly enough I've never seen these ready made for sale anywhere, but they're easy enough to make from a strip of 0.8mm brass. Building with these new gauges meant that this turnout came out perfectly first time, with no need to make any adjustments, which is a first for me! The second was a simple jig for cutting & bending the check rails and k-crossing flanges. It simply ensures that all of them are cut to exactly the same length and the bend is always created in exactly the same place. This means that the check rails align perfectly with the template: another first for me! With the easy bit out of the way I've now reached the main reason for building a test board. I intend to control the points with servos. Because the boards are constructed from 50mm thick extruded polystyrene, I'm hoping to mount the servos on top of the boards and drive the points themselves via. wire in tube. However, as I haven't used servos or wire-in-tube before, it seems like it might be a good idea to try putting it all together on the test board to see if my cunning plan actually works. I've now reached the point of trying to work out the best way of constructing the tie bar. I really don't like the standard "moving timber" method, because timbers don't move in real life and it makes ballasting the turnout a pain. Ideally I'd like to have the mechanism hidden below the turnout (and hence the ballast). I've already experimented this evening with a pair of pins bent at 90 degrees soldered to the bottom of the points, but my method proved to be unworkable. I then soldered on a "moving timber" just to see if it was as horrible as I thought it was, and it is, so now I'm back to a bit of head scratching. If anyone already knows of a good method for building tie bars in N or 2FS that doesn't involve moving timbers or impossibly fine jewellery-makers style soldering, I'd love to hear about it! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted February 5, 2013 Author Share Posted February 5, 2013 Some more progress has been made on the test piece, and the puzzle is beginning to come together. After a bit of searching I came across this and this; one quick jig later (it's becoming a habit) and some 0.3mm nickel silver wire I already had on hand and I got exactly what I was after. Obviously with the mechanism below the track and with 50mm solid foam boards I also needed to work out a way to mount the pointwork to the board. This is the easy part; I'm using 1.5mm cork as a sub-base, so I cut that away, and then formed a deeper channel below the tiebar to give it space to move, along with a channel to receive the wire-in-tube. Then I simply glued a piece of 1.5mm balsa sheet to the bottom of the turnout, above the tiebar mechanism. The wire-in-tube mechanism was hooked in and the entire turnout glued down with Copydex: One thing that's immediately obvious is that with the turnout glued down I can no longer access the tiebar mechanism should it ever require maintenance. I shall probably open out a hole below the tiebars through the full depth of the board on the "real" thing to allow (limited) access. As part of the purpose of this test piece is to try out servos for point control, I've also been busy building various bits of electronics. A 16v AC to 12v DC power supply, a MERG Servo4 board and a MERG Relay4. Now all I have to do is put it all together... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted February 9, 2013 Author Share Posted February 9, 2013 Remember when I said I didn't have to make any adjustments to the turnout? Well I was wrong. Although rolling stock would run through it just fine, it seems none of my locos would. Checking closely revealed that it was out of gauge in a few places: too narrow on the straight road and too wide on the diverging road. Still, easy enough to fix with a bit of prodding with a hot soldering iron and locos started to run through it properly. That's another lesson learnt; the roller gauges I have really aren't very good for Code 40 rail. Why is so difficult to get decent gauges for finescale N? Anyway, the purpose of the test piece was to try everything out, and so I assembled the electronic Lego into something that would give all those people who claim that they're "no good at layout electrics" a nightmare: Although it looks very complicated it's really quite simple. The servo controller is attached to the servo, and a single on/off switch is wired to it to change the points. I've exploited the way that this works by then taking a single wire from the same terminal on the servo board to the "Input" terminal of the relay board. The upshot is that when I flick the switch, both the servo and the relay activate at the same time, changing the points and switching the frog polarity. Easy! Except...the servo has a habit of "chattering" as a loco moves through the pointwork. At first I thought this might have been related to the relay board (as it is electrically connected to both the pointwork and the servo board) but the servo still chatters even if I remove the relay board. So it's probably either voltage drop or some other unintended feedback from the controller. I shall have to consult the guys over at MERG for this one! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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