Cadbury Bournville

[flexible_coupling]

That colour combo of sleeper/chair/rail looks excellent. I'm blindly guessing that you'll be adding more "darkness" between the sleepers etc. as ballast is applied?

[hartleymartin]

Have you seen this webpage?

http://www.miac.org.uk/bournville2.htm

 

Take a look at Hudswell No. 14. If you squint, it kind of looks like the Ixion Fowler that is coming out.

 

A couple of the Cadbury vans look a lot like X-framed vans that you can get from slaters, and in one background picture there is even an open truck lettered as "Cadbury Bournville"

Edited July 31, 2013 by hartleymartin

[peter220950]

That colour combo of sleeper/chair/rail looks excellent. I'm blindly guessing that you'll be adding more "darkness" between the sleepers etc. as ballast is applied?

 

 

Correct, I am presently laying the main track on 3mm foam, laminate underlay, and then ballast with either granite or ash depending on location. If the ballast is stuck with latex rather than PVA it retains some flexibility and the whole trackbed is more resilient. I have done some samples to see which colour I'm going with, the sidings will almost certainly be more ash than ballast, and a bit overgrown, but the main track was quite well maintained. I will also probably opt for smaller sized granules for the black ash, given that most ballast is around 2" down.

 

 

The other advantages over PVA are that it's much easier to remove if you need to do any re-laying, it doesn't turn granite ballast green, and it dries matt, so doesn't show up on the ballast and sleepers. I won't be doing any of this until the whole thing is wired and tested.

[peter220950]

Have you seen this webpage?

 

http://www.miac.org.uk/bournville2.htm

 

Take a look at Hudswell No. 14. If you squint, it kind of looks like the Ixion Fowler that is coming out.

 

A couple of the Cadbury vans look a lot like X-framed vans that you can get from slaters, and in one background picture there is even an open truck lettered as "Cadbury Bournville"

 

 

Yes thanks, I do know the site, and indeed have original sepia prints of some of the photo's they reproduce. I was tempted by the thought of the Ixion Fowler, even though the Hudswell never worked at Bournville, it would suit quite well though....

 

The wooden Cadbury vans were mainly ex-Caledonian I understand, and were used in the later years for storing 'crumb' (like dried condensed milk) at Waterside but were mainly burnt on site, though I think the underframes may have been re-used (possibly on the steel replacement internal vans). One or two remain in preservation, some at Severn Valley Railway.

 

 

 

I have three Slaters Midland Railway vans built and awaiting paint which, as you say, are quite close. I then have to sort out what I'm going to do about the transfers I need for both loco's and stock.

[Poggy1165]

Gladiator did a limited edition of those Caly vans. Whether he has any left I don't know. They are a resin body with whitemetal parts to add. Not got around to building mine yet, so can't say if it is an easy build. The instructions are terse, but there are good drawings that do help a bit.

[peter220950]

Gladiator did a limited edition of those Caly vans. Whether he has any left I don't know. They are a resin body with whitemetal parts to add. Not got around to building mine yet, so can't say if it is an easy build. The instructions are terse, but there are good drawings that do help a bit.

 

 

Thanks for that, it's still listed on the website but notes only 5 left as of Nov 2012, so I will give them a ring to see if I can get one reserved to pick up from them at Telford.

[peter220950]

Just called in at C&L' (what nice people), as I'm in the area on hols, and picked up 2000 2 bolt chairs for completing the trackwork in the Private Cadbury Sidings.

 

I already have enough of the MR 4 bolts for the main line, (I hope, at £21.00 per 500!), no bullhead rail in stock, but I have some left for the moment and can pick up more at Telford if it's back in stock by then.

 

It's only when I paled at the price of the chairs and rail that I realised how much track costs nowadays, it's been a long time since I bought any. It's not any cheaper to make your own, but I do think it's a better finished result, and points are definitely cheaper self-build. - So I can hopefully hit the ground running when I return home. After I've mowed the lawn, laid the patio, shifted 2 tons of soil and relaid the rear lawn.........................

 

So much for holidays

[hartleymartin]

I found it to be much the same when I hand-built track for a layout some years ago (60-odd yards of it!) At the end of the day, the big savings were made on building points, not plain track. But it did mean that we were able to have Code 100 track for O scale standard gauge and made to represent the desired prototype.

[peter220950]

Two weeks on from the last post and return from holidays, there has been some progress on the layout, but not as much as I wanted, the reason being the garden works. The patio slabs are now laid and await a radial ring of pavers before a larger ring is laid for a surround to the new lawn. This work, and moving all of the spoil from the garden, have meant only half a day at a time modelling, and then I was usually too kna*****d to do much.

 

 

The track to the end board has now been wired up and all of the track ends tidied up. I have put temporary pcb operating bars in, with the intention to put something more accurate in when it’s all tested. I have run a loco over this track and much to my surprise it seems o.k. – particularly as there is a lot of bending of track to get the levels correct. I think on reflection I should have either gone 4mm to ease things or built the layout 6 metres longer!  Much of this track is at the back of the layout as viewed by the public, and will be hidden by undergrowth etc. so there shouldn’t be anything too traumatic in level changes for them to see.

 

 

The section of track leading up from the fiddle yard has been made and templates printed ready to build the pointwork  on the last Waterside board.

 

 

I have built a plywood jig for a half length of track, it’s around the 60’ track panel length and I put a nick in the rail and apply a cosmetic joiner before turning it through 180 degrees and building the other half of a standard metre length of track.

 

 

I have also spent some of the idle time considering the buildings on Waterside, the most prominent of which is the unloading canopy. I have got an approximate idea of size from OS maps and photographs. Behind the triangular roof apex of each section is a curved corrugated iron building stretching back.

 

 

Counting bricks in the support to these buildings indicated a span of around 35 feet, which ties in with the largest Nissen huts which had an internal span of 30 feet. From this I have drawn up and made a mock-up of the canopy in greyboard to get an idea of the finished article, before committing to a ‘proper’ build. The curved sections behind the canopy are intended to span over the fiddle yard at the rear of the layout and hide the lower track and storage areas.

 

 

This gave me a quandary as to how to achieve the necessary curved sections, fortunately I had been given a section of curved mdf, used for making column casings, by a fellow club member some years ago, and had put it away ‘because it might come in useful one day.

 

 

There wasn’t enough for all the buildings I need to make, and the cost of buying new sections was prohibitive, so I tried damping the greyboard and laminating two sections together and clamping them onto the mdf as a former.

 

 

This has given a solid 4mm thick structure to which I have tried out a bit of corrugated iron cladding and the results look promising, though I need to make the bolt heads smaller.

 

 

I have also put together some sections of corrugated iron to try casting sections in resin, so I have two possible options.

 

The other structure on the canal side was Sparreys Wharf, another corrugated iron building which is a bit further along the canal.

 

 

Again I mocked up a card structure to check if it looked o.k.

 

 

and then put them both on the boards to get some confirmation that it was going to look something like the original. Given the compression of length and space I’m quite happy that it should look the part.

 

 

 

And no – the water won’t run out of the canal through the holes in the board, I think I may have solved my earlier quandary regarding not having any joints in the canal. It’s early days yet but I found clear pvc on the roll in Dunelm a couple of weeks ago and bought a metre. I have found that it takes cellulose paint well and if applied on the underside a mottled mix can be applied which is glossy and looks good on the other side, it really needs to be more brown, but I was really only seeing if the paint bonded to the plastic well enough to use it.

 

 

My thoughts are to keep it rolled up until the layout is erected, then roll it out onto a thin supporting layer to give a flat smooth canal that can be as long as I need, in one section.

 

Hopefully next week will see some more progress on the final Waterside board, but once again garden work and Telford may intervene a bit.

 

 

[3 link]

Hi Peter,

 

Could you please tell me what supplier you use for your choice of ballast, as like yourself I am fed up with the granite type that turns green. And thanks for the tips regarding weathering the chairs and rail sides before fitting, learn something new everyday.

 

Regards,

 

Martyn.

[peter220950]

Martyn,

 

Still undecided on the ballast front, mainly due to uncertainty on which colour I want to use but it's still likely to be granite. I think it's almost certain to be Woodlands Scenics in some form, probably the grey for the main line and black ash and grey for the works sidings, which were quite well kept. Size is also an issue, I think that what is sold as O gauge ballast is just too big, my understanding is that it should be 2" or therebouts, which comes in at just over 1mm. This is borne out by a photo taken at Weymouth a couple of weeks ago.

 

 

The medium Woodlands scenics notes on the back of the pack that it scales at 1.6" to 2.4" in O gauge, which seems to be the way I shall go for the main line.

 

The factory sidings look to have been mainly fine ash so I will probably drop down to the fine for these.

 

 

 

The question of green colour seems to be due to the reaction between PVA and granite, I am now a convert to using a 50/50 latex and water mix instead of PVA as it dries matt and doesn't cause these problems. Coupled with the flexibility it gives when track is laid on foam and the ability to lift it more easily if re-modelling track Iayouts.

 

[3 link]

Peter,

 

I am glad I am not the only one who spends so much time trying to get the permanent way right, on my last 7mm layout I ended up using 4mm granite ballast. That was then set the usual way with PVA and to tone down the green " tint ", I lightly airbrushed the whole track with a mix of brake dust/track dirt/etc.  The only knock on effect was that the sleepers I had so carefully coloured had now taken on a consistant colour .

 

I have also built a similar track jig for the standard track panels see below,

 

 

What I do and I might be teaching granny to suck eggs here , when I am track building I only fix one rail to the sleepers in the jig and then gently place that panel in place on the baseboard. At this stage the track panel is very flexible but without any drag like you get from normal flexi track when you try and put a curve in it. So once you are happy with the position, just fix the other rail in position with the help of the track gauges and job done. You probably know of this method, but it might be of help to someone hopefully.

 

Regards,

 

Martyn.

[peter220950]

I agree with your method - for curved track.

 

The section I illustrated was a straight piece connecting the fiddle yard to the rest of the layout, I otherwise do as you suggest for anything else as I find that the minute you try to bend the home made flexitrack the sleepers go all out of alignment anyway. - Your jig looks better than mine, I have suffered a bit in that the hardwood sleepers I am using are all subtly different in width, so its a bit of a squeeze to get them into the jig as the spaces were obviously made with the narrower sections.

 

Are you using plastikard for the spacers? If so how do you get on with gluing the chairs down? I presume you must be more careful than me as I would probably end up gluing it all together the amount of Butanone I get through .

[3 link]

If you are using the C & L sleepers I came across the same problem regarding their width only later to be informed that 10% are 7mm and the rest are 6mm in width, it does say on the packet but who looks at the label . So in the end I set the jig up for the 6mm width being that there's 90% more of them, the rest I put to one side to use for building turnouts.

 

As for the jig it is made out of perspex, but I still find I have to be careful as it does seem to get slightly tacky with the butanone.

 

Regards,

 

Martyn.

[asa]

Peter

I'm really enjoying your build,it's an interesting subject to model and I look forward to the finished article.

And your track looks first class by the way.

[peter220950]

Peter

I'm really enjoying your build,it's an interesting subject to model and I look forward to the finished article.

And your track looks first class by the way.

asa (and others)

 

Many thanks for the words of encouragement - I suspect it will be a long haul, though being able to use 3 boards as a small shunting layout should help keep me focused on completing the whole layout. One of the purposes of putting the tread up was to make sure I kept my head down and actually finished something for once, the house is full of 'nearly completes.'

[peter220950]

Well it’s been a month or two, (four!), since my last posting so perhaps I should update on progress of Bournville a bit.

 

I spent the tail end of the summer, remember that?, doing garden stuff for SWMBO so most of August and a fair bit of September were written off from a modeling perspective, and September saw Telford, which is always a distraction, with lots of shiny things to buy. I was quite disciplined this year but still managed to end up spending a few weeks after messing about with things unconnected with Bournville, I have also been working more on the Leamington Club layout which is being readied for going to our Exhibition in March.

 

So what of Bournville? A lot of boring repetition stuff with the track laying and point construction for a lot of the time, so I didn’t bother posting more of the same, the result is that the rear half of the layout, 5 boards in all, all now have track laid, wired and the track on the boards individually tested with a DC loco.

 

 

I will now re-test in connected sections once there is DCC power to all of the boards at once. This work represents more than half of the layout, as the front half only has four or five points to build, in comparison with the eleven at the rear, and considerably less plain track.

 

The mounts are all fixed for the point servos, and I have now received the initial batch of servo’s ready to fix, at around £14.00 for ten they should prove very cost effective, assuming that they function correctly, that’s the next test.

 

 

The sheer repetitive nature of drilling and tapping the mounts just took a lot of time, with little to show at the end of it. It takes an age to get to a stage where anything can be run.

 

Having spent several hours drilling and filing the  plug and socket connectors and drilling the covers to take a 3.5mm bolt I find it has taken three days of working time, time better spent on building the layout and stock, but I hope it will mean a smoother time when it comes to setting up and running - a lesson to all thinking of building anything bigger than a small shunting plank.

 

 I have also fixed positions for the ESU Switch Pilot Servo Controllers and associated Switch units for the three central rear boards. Once these were fixed I could measure up the lengths of wire required to connect them all up and I have now ordered servo extension leads to suit, the cost of these from Hong Kong, is ridiculously cheap.

 

Once I have bought a further Switch Pilot Servo I can get points working, which makes the testing much easier than using croc clips to change frog polarity. The tie bars are currently just copperclad but I intend to use proper etched bars once the track is all tested and working properly. The purchase of suitable threaded bolts, spacers, and wing nuts have provided a system of mounting for the units which allows replacement in an instant.

 

 

The original plan was to use Switch Pilots everywhere, and if there were only one or two points on a board I was going to use the plugs and sockets of the proposed wiring scheme to carry the control wiring across board joints. Thinking time, while laying concrete in the summer, persuaded me that this was not particularly elegant or cost effective, unfortunately I had ‘adapted’ about ten of my proposed plug and socket combinations before coming to this conclusion, more abortive work, but again hopefully a better end result.

 

The new thinking is that any board with three or more points will have its own Switch pilot, boards with one or two will have individual servo controllers, which I have sourced from Coastal DCC, these are around £12.00 each and then require some form of frog switching. Initially I have purchased a ‘Frog Juicer’ which comes in at around £10.00, but may also try a relay as a cheaper alternative which is in the £3.00 region.

 

 

OCD kicked in again in October with the purchase of an extension reel to power the boosters and controller, it had to match the yellow of the support work so a quick strip down and a squirt of Ford Daytona Yellow was the order of the day, (more on colour coding later)

 

 

 

 

Plugs and sockets.

 

On the Leamington Club layout, mentioned before, we have successfully used Click 3 pin plugs and sockets to connect boards. They have proved durable and substantial enough with only a minor problem of the socket covers flipping off if the plug is flexed. I see no reason to change these as they are easy to wire and withstand the rigors of exhibition use, with a retaining clip to stop them coming apart. The revised wiring scheme is now much simpler and isn’t far from the ‘two wires’ ideal of DCC. In fact I could have kept to this ideal but experience says that it’s a good idea to keep point and signal control separate, so that in the event of running into a point set wrongly the resulting short circuit will not prevent the point being re-set.

 

The Click sockets contain three brass junction boxes and a loop connection, it was this loop connection that I am using to secure the cover plate. A hole is drilled in the cover, above the loop terminal, and the terminal screw is removed and replaced with a longer bolt through the cover. The pins and sockets have been modified by swapping male and female pins between plug and sockets to provide sets that will not connect to each other, even though the two outer connectors are always going to be black and red DCC feeds. The remaining centre pin is held in reserve but may never be used, though the two per board could run a further separate power supply if required.

 

 

The sockets are mounted on patresses that hold the plug away from the underside of the board to allow them to be disconnected, pieces of ply and softwood were cut to fit into the board matrix, and the socket positions set out to minimize the length of cabling between boards, more mind numbingly boring repetition work.

 

 

In the DCC ‘Bible’

 

 

 there is a wiring diagram for a reversing loop (which requires the use of a power booster to switch the current) which is almost exactly the same layout as Bournville.

 

 

By moving the section breaks to half way up the end loops it means that the layout can be wired with one power booster for the front half and one for the rear, though in fact the controller alone could be used on one half to save the cost of a booster, were it not for my desire to separate the signaling power bus.

 

Practically this means that there are now only four wires to each board, two for the booster and two for the control of points and signals from the controller. Instead of a power bus I am using the track as the bus, bonding all joints and looping from one track to another, Two wires then pass into the board track power socket.

 

One of the ZTC boosters I have was without its housing box, so I took the opportunity to use some old office desktop units I had ‘acquired’ to build a couple of plug boxes. The units originally had two power outlets and a couple of sockets for telephones, they comprise a section of aluminium extrusion with sliding switch and socket panels. I have one on my workbench which has been adapted to two sockets, a 12v supply for testing and an amplifier for an MP3 player, with speakers built into the rear, there’s also a conversion of one to a four way unit, again showing that it pays to look at everything with a view to using it on the railway!

 

Having stripped a unit down I found that the booster would fit in, with a bit of surgery, and would also accommodate two power sockets, one for the booster power transformer and one for the controller transformer, or as a spare outlet.

 

 

 

The booster was fitted and I was sufficiently convinced to build a second unit to match, (OCD again?) If operating ‘Waterside Lite’, the three rear boards, as a home or small exhibition layout, I can just use one of the booster units to run the layout.

 

 

The review of control systems caused me to think ahead a bit to transport and storage of the controllers, a spare Ikea box, which was to have been the basis of my stock storage before they discontinued them, was divided up with 4mm ply and some foam lining inserted. A tray of plywood has been made to fit above the controllers to hold the connecting leads, and a lid keeps the dust and dirt out while it’s stored in the roof.

 

 

 

October also saw the purchase of another useful piece of kit for the terminally sad, a Dymo label maker was purchased whilst on offer in Aldi, and has proved a Godsend. The labels are formed on heat sensitive paper or plastic labeling, available in different colours, and is great for noting servo numbers and addresses, boosters, cables, controllers and plugs.

 

 

I mentioned colour coding earlier. Much of November was spent considering how the layout boards would be identified, with ten boards it seemed logical to number 1 to 10 but given that there were point motors and accessory decoders on most if not all of the boards I decided to number from 0 to 9, thus a point or decoder on board 0 would be address 01, 02 or 03. Similarly Board 6 would be 61, 62, or 63. I don’t think it’s likely that there will be more than 9 decoders on any board so it should work fine.

 

For no particular reason I can think of I also decided that the boards themselves would be allocated a colour, the six intermediate boards will be Red, Orange, Yellow for the front, Green, Blue and Purple for the rear, with the ends being Black and White and Silver and Gold. I think this will be useful for identifying things like protective end plates.

 

I was intending to code the wiring loom plugs, but the simplification of wiring has meant that all boards have two sockets, all control bus sockets are wired in the same way, and the two track power bus feeds are not interchangeable with each other, but will connect to any socket on their set of boards, so there is not now any need to code them.

 

Valuable modeling time has also been spent on starting to put a layout manual together, but I think, from past experiences, that it is time well spent. Each board has a listing with the track layout, wiring details and decoder numbering all recorded. In addition the operating manuals for equipment used are all kept in one place, which allows reference should there be any problems when exhibited.

 

 

So in conclusion, a lot of time spent thinking, which should prove beneficial, a lot of boring repetition work, which has to be done, a lot of fannying around with coloured labels and wires, which should prove useful if fault finding is required, and the glimmerings of an operational bit of the layout to play with, which could see less work and more play, but will hopefully spur me on to get the front half of the layout moving.

 

 

A Happy New Year to all. hopefully more progress in 2014.

 

[Jack]

October also saw the purchase of another useful piece of kit for the terminally sad, a Dymo label maker was purchased whilst on offer in Aldi, and has proved a Godsend. The labels are formed on heat sensitive paper or plastic labeling, available in different colours, and is great for noting servo numbers and addresses, boosters, cables, controllers and plugs.

You're only sad if you feel the need to label your label maker

 

I do like the look of this layout, it covers most of the essentials in life ... trains, O gauge and chocolate ... could we convince you to do a brewery extension?

[Dava]

You're only sad if you feel the need to label your label maker

 

I do like the look of this layout, it covers most of the essentials in life ... trains, O gauge and chocolate ... could we convince you to do a brewery extension?

 

The Cadburys were good Quakers so Bournville was brewery-free!

[peter220950]

You're only sad if you feel the need to label your label maker

 

I do like the look of this layout, it covers most of the essentials in life ... trains, O gauge and chocolate ... could we convince you to do a brewery extension?

 

 

Thankfully my 'other' layout, the Leamington Club layout that I work on, has just such a facility under construction, which fills the inside semi-circle at one end. It's about 10 foot across, with a small siding in, and has about half a dozen buildings under construction, currently awaiting window etches to be finalised, but you never know, the odd beer van may just creep into Bournville, in defiance of the 'dry' status of the entire Estate!

[Jack]

Good job too!

[ThePurplePrimer]

Only just found this thread - very impressive stuff.

 

Any updates ?

[peter220950]

Only just found this thread - very impressive stuff.

 

Any updates ?

 

 

It took back stage while I was getting our club layout ready for our Exhibition in March, but as soon as I've finished Ivor the Engine it will be back in progress, the intention being to get three of the boards running as a shunting plank/small exhibit while the rest is progressing. I hope having something to shunt will give some impetus to get the rest finished.

[Osgood]

I do hope your label printer has a mains adapter (some do not) - mine does not, the only very occasional use usually necessitating a new set of batteries for each label……….

 

p.s. excellent thread, thanks for sharing your trackbuilding methods!

Edited May 10, 2014 by Osgood

[Garethp8873]

Yes thanks, I do know the site, and indeed have original sepia prints of some of the photo's they reproduce. I was tempted by the thought of the Ixion Fowler, even though the Hudswell never worked at Bournville, it would suit quite well though....

 

The wooden Cadbury vans were mainly ex-Caledonian I understand, and were used in the later years for storing 'crumb' (like dried condensed milk) at Waterside but were mainly burnt on site, though I think the underframes may have been re-used (possibly on the steel replacement internal vans). One or two remain in preservation, some at Severn Valley Railway.

 

I have three Slaters Midland Railway vans built and awaiting paint which, as you say, are quite close. I then have to sort out what I'm going to do about the transfers I need for both loco's and stock.

 

The steel underframe and chassis of the Cadbury Van 346 on SVR is of a tank wagon from around the pre 1927 specification. This is the last of it's type as well and is currently being restored on the SVR.

 

As for the Caledonian Vans, only two of the original four now exist as well. The one in the photo has now been restored to the livery of LMS 304543 and the other van (278) is at the Kidderminster Railway Museum in a derelict state and awaiting it's turn at being restored.

 

If you want anymore photos of Cadbury 346, I have alot more on my Flickr page. Same goes for the Caledonian Vans.

 

Edited July 14, 2014 by Garethp8873