Holman's End(ed) - A defunct topic on a defunct layout!

[BG John]

As if I'm not building enough layouts at the moment, here's another one. I've got something larger planned for my Dapol Kent & East Sussex Railway Terriers, but it will be some time before I can make progress with it, so I've started on this quick little one to give them somewhere to run for now.

 

Having scrapped Ingeltyme, the OO layout I started the Christmas before last, I had the baseboard available, and this seemed a good use for it. It's currently in the workshop having a backscene added, and then I need to make the fiddle yard. This will be another of my layouts built on the cheap, as I'm reusing materials I have lying around, and the track for the station was given to me. I may have to raid my stock of Peco Code 100 OO track bought (cheaply of course!) on eBay for the fiddle yard, but I'm still planning that. There's no track plan for this layout, as I'm making it up as I go along, and the whole thing is pointless anyway!

 

The baseboard was built from ply recovered from an old wardrobe I found in a shed when I bought my current house. There's an account of building it here.

 

 

The backscene has had a more adventurous life, having spent 2½ years being dragged around the UK when I was travelling. The back section used to be the rear door on the wooden top I built for my trailer, and the right hand end was the front door. It's actually shuttering ply, so not the best quality, but it's well varnished, well seasoned, and nice and dry after being stored in the house for some years. There are some holes that will need filling, but it should serve the purpose for long enough. These two pieces have now been screwed in place. The fiddle yard end is another piece of ply that is yet to be fitted, and will need to be cut to give clearance when I work out where the tracks will go.

 

 

 

 

The fiddle yard will be a two track sector plate, and I'll probably use a Lazy Susan bearing from Station Road Baseboards for the pivot, and two of their little wheels to run the other end on. This will mean raising the track above baseboard level, so I've cut some expanded polystyrene for the scenic track bed. It should make for quiet running.

 

The scenic area is 42" long, 13½" wide at the fiddle yard end and 24" wide at the far end. There will be a platform long enough for a Terrier and two bogie coaches at the back, with two sidings at the front. Track is some short lengths of Peco I was given, that need a bit of TLC. The fiddle yard needs to be 36" long, but the baseboard is 5" short, so the sector plate will have to overhang the end. I want to experiment with gravity shunting for running round trains, but if it doesn't work I'll have to resort to some other devious method to avoid handling the locos too much.

 

 

 

The entrance to the fiddle yard will be hidden by a rather large bridge. Colonel Stephens lines weren't known for large road overbridges, but there was a really weird one at Melverley on the Shropshire & Montgomeryshire Railway that pre-dated the Colonel's interest, so I'm assuming that this line was built on the trackbed of a closed, or never completed, mainline railway. It's set in around 1905, so this may be a temporary terminus, until the line is extended, hence the lack of a loop and the need for gravity shunting.

 

And the name? It's the end of a line built and managed by Holman Fred Stephens!

 

Edited November 27, 2017 by BG John

[BG John]

Like all the small layouts I'm building at the moment, I'm regarding this one as a scenic test track where I can run locos and stock as I build, renovate or buy it. I'm just adding fairly quick basic buildings and scenery, that I can upgrade or replace later when I have enough stock to operate it. I started on the station building with this in mind. It's based on the buildings on the Selsey Tramway, as they are much smaller than the ones on the Kent & East Sussex, and even the narrow gauge Rye & Camber, so fit in better on a layout of this size. The basic shell is a single thickness of Bonio packet, covered with scaled up Scalescenes 4mm corrugated iron. The door and windows are a bit more sophisticated, and are the first ones I've produced with my Silhouette Portrait. The door is cut from 20thou plasticard, and each part of the windows is two thicknesses of 10thou. 10thou cuts almost right through, but 20thou needs the parts to be snapped out. I'm quite pleased for a first attempt, but hope to improve future versions.

 

 

Last night I decided I wasn't happy with the building, so bunged it together and knocked up a quick roof, to use it as a very short term mock-up. I've got some corrugated card to build the proper version, and will add it to my multi-scale and gauge building programme. I'm making buildings in the most practical and straightforward order, so am jumping around between various layouts at the moment (a 4mm broad gauge building is next when I've finished writing this!).

 

 

 

Here it is on the layout, with a bit of wood as a temporary platform. The Colonel didn't have any clerestory coaches, and this one would probably have still been in mainline use in 1905, but you know what they say about gift horses! It needs some restoration to make it usable for now, and I have a cunning plan for it for later on.

 

[BG John]

I started on the sector plate this morning. My supply of suitable materials is running low, so I'm using offcuts of shuttering ply for it. I need to experiment with my idea for gravity shunting, so it probably makes sense to use what I've got until I know if it will work. Once I've got it working, or given up on the idea, if I think the results are too rough and ready, I can build a final version using better materials. The deck in the picture is cut to fit on the baseboard, and laid roughly where it will be pivoted. The gravity bits will go on top, and overhang the end of the baseboard, in a cunning way I'm not telling anyone until I know it works! I did a quick experiment with the coaches I have, and they respond to gravity in a way that shows promise!

 

This is a view of the scenic area, with the station building and my two coaches to give a better idea of the size. The coaches were a bonus included with the free track, supplied by a very nice RMwebber, who saw an opportunity to clear part of his loft. Neither are suitable as they are, but I have an idea for converting the flat roofed one to something similar to the K&ESR bogie coaches. My ideas for the clerestorey are rather more ambitious, and won't happen yet!

[Edwardian]

Oh, this I hadn't spotted before.  Look forward to seeing this one grow.  First class work on the platform shelter.

[Nearholmer]

Likewise!

 

Your 'recycle and get on with it' approach is great, and I shall follow with interest.

 

Kevin

[BG John]

Oh, this I hadn't spotted before.  Look forward to seeing this one grow.  First class work on the platform shelter.

Grow? It won't being growing. It's far too heavy already, and might do me a nasty injury getting it out of the workshop, through several doors, round a tight bend, up the stairs, doubling back on itself in a small space, and trying to get it to its new home without trashing the other layouts on the way .

[Northroader]

Enjoyed picking this one up. Watching with great interest. You're a jammy devil with those coaches!

[BG John]

Enjoyed picking this one up. Watching with great interest. You're a jammy devil with those coaches!

But what do I do with this one that came with them? I can't imagine the Colonel running boat trains, especially to a sleepy place like Holman's End!

 

[Nearholmer]

Hmmm ......

 

With a lot of razor saw work, and some beading doilies made using that silhouette cutter, I think I can imagine that coach being transformed into the KESR Pickering steam railcar, which had a roof profile that would normally be a bit of a pig to make, but could be approximated from those domed-ends.

 

K

[BG John]

Although a few sheets of plain plasticard may be an easier starting point!

[Nearholmer]

Well ........ Maybe.

[AdamsRadial]

If the Colonel had reached Richborough Port with the EKLR in time, the cross-channel services might not have ended after the repatriation of the stock from the Great War, and who knows what might have been trundling to and fro across the Monks Wall?

 

Also, though they weren't carriages, a lot of foreign waggons or vans were supposed to have been stabled on the Tilmanstone line adjacent to the site of the early Northern connection to the EKLR, perhaps a coach or two came across with them.

[BG John]

WW1 is some future event that no one in Holman's End has any idea is coming I'm afraid. They've only just got over the end of the Boer War!

[AdamsRadial]

In that case Holman has only just finished his apprenticeship at the Neasden depot

 

I am a bit like you, I also have 7mm stuff which includes some Lima SNCF coaches which made me want to do something with them. I thought of modelling TF1 at Richborough, with the ferry as a large floating fiddle yard that had stock vanish into it, was then floated away, turned around, and re-berthed against the tracks. It was a scheme which never got past the water-on-the-floor stage. I did have a model of Eastry South and Hernden sidings which used gravity-shunting. That was good fun, though not exactly realistic as I was trying to ignore the fact that a Lima 0-6-0 4F looked nothing like an Ilfracombe or an O class. I used the choke cable from an old car to brake the train so that the loco arrived and moved to where the wagon was that was to be rolled into the sidings, I would push the choke cable in so that the end of it rose up between the tracks and lodged behind the leading axle of the wagon, run the loco and train forwards, then change the points and pull the choke cable back, letting the wagon run into the sidings.

Edited January 27, 2016 by AdamsRadial

[BG John]

In that case Holman has only just finished his apprenticeship at the Neasden depot

The second one!

 

I used the choke cable from an old car to brake the train so that the loco arrived and moved to where the wagon was that was to be rolled into the sidings, I would push the choke cable in so that the end of it rose up between the tracks and lodged behind the leading axle of the wagon, run the loco and train forwards, then change the points and pull the choke cable back, letting the wagon run into the sidings.

Interesting. I'm planning a tilting track that I hopefully get the hang of tilting at the right angle so that stock stops where I want. But I need to build it first to see if it works, then scrap it if it doesn't!

[AdamsRadial]

My method was a bit hit and miss, sometimes the stock just wouldn't roll when I pulled the choke cable, and I ended up tapping the baseboard with my fist just like you have to when a loco won't start. The tilting track idea sounds as if it should work.

[BG John]

It's where the tilting bit joins the level bit that concerns me, as rail won't bend vertically to give a smooth transition. That's why I need to make it to try it, as my quick test just holding a couple of bits of rail led to derailments.

[AdamsRadial]

You could cheat and have a motor in the coach and treat it as a loco

 

Thinking about this, I suspect you're going to end up having the initial gradient fixed and then tilt the fiddle yard either level to keep the stock stationary, or downwards to align with the sloping track when you want the stock to roll or the loco to haul it in.

Edited January 27, 2016 by AdamsRadial

[BG John]

You could cheat and have a motor in the coach and treat it as a loco

 

Thinking about this, I suspect you're going to end up having the initial gradient fixed and then tilt the fiddle yard either level to keep the stock stationary, or downwards to align with the sloping track when you want the stock to roll or the loco to haul it in.

Extra motors mean extra sections and wiring! Anyway, this is supposed to be a short term layout until I can build one with a runround loop, where I can run stock as I build it, and I'm not building anything especially for this one.

 

It's only 6ft long, and I don't think I have the length to do clever things with gradients. If if was longer, I'd do something different.

[John R Smith]

Gravity shunting is one of those things which works very well on the prototype (or did) but it is very hard to pull off in model form. For a start, all of your stock has to have the same mass/frictional resistance coefficient so that it will roll on the same gradient and for the same distance when it arrives on the level. Then of course you have no convenient shunter or guard to apply the brakes at the right moment. And if you adjust your stock so that it is perfectly free-running (pin-point bearings, perfect set-up, lube and so on) they can be a pain in other ways - especially when trying to couple 3-link or screw couplings and the single wagon keeps wandering off.

 

The real wagons and coaches back in the day were hard to get going, but once they did move they were scarily unstoppable. We used to move 6-wheel milk tanks at Totnes with a pinch bar between the tyre and the rail, and it is surprising but you can do it. And once they were moving, you had to be very careful - you had to use the brake to stop them again!

 

John

[BG John]

I started quite a long running topic on it a while back, and it made me give up on the idea! So I'm not going to read it again, and just do a few experiments. If it doesn't work, I'll have to use a stick to shove stock out of the fiddle yard. I suppose it's a bit like a pinch bar, but applied in a different way!

 

I'm planning to use Dingham couplings. I was fairly happy with 3-links in 4mm scale 30 years ago, but they drive me nuts in 7mm now!

[Nearholmer]

BGJ

 

Yourself and Edwardian have set me off on micro-layout thoughts again. Have a look in my thread at what I've mocked-up.

 

Kevin

[BG John]

BGJ

 

Yourself and Edwardian have set me off on micro-layout thoughts again. Have a look in my thread at what I've mocked-up.

 

Kevin

Those small radius points and tight curves are very tempting. Are they available in O-MF?

There's so much potential with small/micro layouts, which is why I'm building enough of them for an entire model railway exhibition at the moment!

[Nearholmer]

BGJ

 

The radius isn't as tight as you might think: 38"

 

Which is +/- next door to no different from what the Peco small radius ones are going to be, when they eventually arrive.

 

Those Y's are c9" overall, making them smaller than a medium radius 00 turnout!

 

k

[BG John]

If I had room for another track, I could re-gauge a Peco OO point. I've got some waiting for the next O-16.5 layout. I'd have to lay the visible track with Code 100 rail to match, but I've got a stock of OO track to pinch that from. As long as my Terriers will go round the curve, everything else would only run on the straight. It's useful that Code 100 OO flangeways are close to O-MF! That may be an answer if the gravity shunting doesn't work, but it would be a tight fit.