Jameston & Leven River RR

[flubrush]

This is an S scale layout which I've been working on since the early Spring. 

 

 

The layout is 12ft long and up to 15" wide

 

The back story is that an exchange point was set up in the River Leven to transfer minerals from sea-going vessels to shallow draft rail road barges to allow the materials to be shipped further upriver.   Once the harbour had been established,  other small industries sprang up around the pier to make use of its services.  These industries also made use of the barge connection to import materials and export products via the barge connection.

 

The track is scratchbuilt using Code 82 FB,  2mm ply ties,  home made tie plates and Andy Riechert's small 0/S spikes (Proto:87 Stores).  The track design was done in Templot and all the track was built off the baseboards on 3mm cork bases with the Templot printouts stuck to them.   Every tie is spiked so tracklaying was not a quick operation. :-)

 

Just this last week I've managed to modify some baseboards from a previous aborted project to use under the track.  The main modification was to raise the track base using thin ply sheet and 44mm x 15mm softwood strip to provide relief to allow modelling of the pier and the barge jetty.   The barge itself will be removable and act as a form of hidden siding.

 

 

 

Two shots of the layout with the track parts laid temporarily in place.  The space in the foreground of the upper picture is for the pier and will carry two tracks.  The space in the foreground of the lower picture is for the barge and its loading bridge.

 

 

This slightly closer shot shows the trough down the rear of the boards to accommodate Tortoise motors.  I had originally intended to use servos to operate the pointwork but I had a pile of Tortoise motors salvaged from a layout some years ago and thought that I might as well use them since I could find space to hide the beggars. :-)   The point motors will be hidden by low relief buildings and I might have to saw a few holes in the ply backscene if access is too restricted with the buildings in place.

 

The reason for the ply backscenes is that the boards are designed to fold up into a box for transportation - you can see one of the partly fitted paste table hinges on top of the backscenes in the lowest picture.

 

The next work will be to fix the track down permanently,  get it wired and get the Tortoise motors fitted.  DCC will be used with sound chips in the locomotives.

 

Jim.

[NSR]

I like the design very much as it reminds me of a similar layout I was involved with some years ago which had plenty of operational potential.  One question regarding the barge.  Will it a permanent fixture or moveable?  Ours was in O gauge so it had to be fixed due to the sheer bulk.  In S gauge, if it is light enough, there could be a spare unit so that they would be the equivalent of cassettes in a staging yard.  Looking forward to following the construction.

 

Ken

Edited August 29, 2016 by NSR

[flubrush]

I like the design very much as it reminds me of a similar layout I was involved with some years ago which had plenty of operational potential.  One question regarding the barge.  Will it a permanent fixture or moveable?  Ours was in O gauge so it had to be fixed due to the sheer bulk.  In S gauge, if it is light enough, there could be a spare unit so that they would be the equivalent of cassettes in a staging yard.  Looking forward to following the construction.

 

Ken

 

The barge will be removable to do the crane shunting of stock.    I've got a daft idea to actually load the hopper cars at the dockside with some form of conveyor system and the loaded hoppers will have to be emptied off the scene.   The size of the barge will be about 24" long with two roads holding three cars each,  so it shouldn't be too much of a handful.   I might get round to building a second unit if it makes life easier. :-)

 

Jim.

Edited August 29, 2016 by flubrush

[DanielB]

Now this is very cool

[Nearholmer]

Very good looking layout.

 

I built an H0 Maine waterfront scene many years ago, and, if I hadn't wandered off into other scales and prototypes, a New York car-float operation was next on the list ....... it's the ideal form of visible fiddle-yard.

 

Kevin

[flubrush]

Very good looking layout.

 

I built an H0 Maine waterfront scene many years ago, and, if I hadn't wandered off into other scales and prototypes, a New York car-float operation was next on the list ....... it's the ideal form of visible fiddle-yard.

 

I've actually progressed a bit from the pictures above although it won't look like it. :-)  But all the track is now stuck down on the trackbed,  all the rail joints are done at the baseboard edges and the DCC track wiring is installed. Next job is to start installing the Tortoise motors.   I'm also starting to look at what buildings will be placed on the leftmost board behind the car float,  hence the request for info in my other thread.

 

Jim

[flubrush]

Things have moved on,  albeit a bit slower than I had hoped.   First I had to modify the Tortoise motors to fit in the trough at the back of the layout.

 

 

This meant chopping off one of the mounting lugs and adding sections of alloy angle bolted to the motors' cases.

 

 

Here are some of the motors fitted on one of the central boards.  The turnouts were operated by plastic rod in tube under the baseboard top with a point operating unit under the tiebar with a pin which located in the PCB tiebar.   This was the system which held things up since my use of a second layer of baseboard top on top of the original top created installation difficulties.  However,  with a lot of gritted teeth I got them all installed. :-)     The two small circuit boards in the picture are single frog juicers to feed the crossings on the diamond.  I started working out a powering system using relays,  switches,  etc., and gave in gracefully to the juicers. :-)   I'm using the switches in the Tortoises to switch crossing polarity on the turnouts,  so the bit of twin and earth on the backscene is a local DCC bus for these switches.

 

 

This is a picture of the boards now installed on the back wall of my bedroom showing seven of the eight Tortoises installed,  the eighth being on the baseboard behind the lens.

 

Next was to start looking at getting something running on the layout and that wasn't quite straightforward either. :-)   the first loco to be chosen was my American Models GP9.

 

 

This is the loco as it comes with sprues of detailing to add to give permutations to cover different phases of the locomotive.

 

 

However,  the first job is to fit a DCC chip.  You would think that,  with an S scale full high hood body, there would be plenty of room,  but a chunky can motor and two high gear towers take up a lot of the available real estate. :-)

 

 

So I've opted to fit the Tsunami chip and two speakers on a strip of Veroboard to fit (just) in the top of the hood

 

 

And here's the board clipped temporarily on the side of the underframe to test things out and to try and get the Tsunami programmed properly.  There's also another job to do,  and that is to machine the wheels to suit my self-guarding frogs.  The frogs were designed to match Code 110 wheels and the wheels supplied with the locomotive are closer to Code 125.  So they will all need a visit to the lathe to get their width down by 15thou.   Then I might get something running. :-)

 

Jim.