Woodburn / Longwitton (was Billingborough)

[Richard Hall]

7 minutes ago, richbrummitt said:

They are near J5 of the M3 but I am regularly up the M40/M42/M6 to Bury then M62 to Huddersfield across country on the M1/A43/A34 back from Wakefield. 
 

Currently with some N gauge track on (pinned, not glued) and partially painted. Track could be included or not. See picture. 
 

Sent you a private message. 

[Richard Hall]

I have been immersing myself in Longwitton and discovered some fun things:

 

1. There is a bridleway that runs straight through the station site and then follows the course of the old tramway which led to Longwitton Colliery, a small drift mine which closed in the 1890s. A field trip beckons. Apparently the remains of the platform are still there, along with the road bridge (thankfully not infilled like so many).

 

2. The station had probably the smallest cast iron gents urinal I have seen, about the size of a telephone box.  When I needed a slightly larger one for "Stobs" I was surprised to find that no-one has done the wall panels for these Victorian conveniences as a brass etch.  Maybe I should have a go. I can't think of any way to reproduce this other than etching.

 

3. Concrete sleepers in 1952! Awkward, Easitrac concrete sleeper bases are only available with flatbottom rail.  Am I obsessed enough to start glueing bullhead chairs to Easitrac sleepers?

 

4. A grounded 4 wheel coach body in use as a store, believed ex North British but all pre-grouping coaches look the same to me.  If anyone has a slightly substandard etched coach body that they wish to dispose of, I'm interested.

 

Even a small and insignificant station will turn up items of interest if you look hard enough.

 

Richard

[bécasse]

5 hours ago, Richard Hall said:

Concrete sleepers in 1952! Awkward, Easitrac concrete sleeper bases are only available with flatbottom rail.  Am I obsessed enough to start glueing bullhead chairs to Easitrac sleepers?

There was a lot more concrete-sleepered bullhead rail track installed on secondary routes and branch lines in the 1950s than you might imagine. My recollection is that the sleepers were embossed DOWMAC but it is a long time ago and sometimes recollections that old get mixed up.

 

An essay in 3D printing perhaps?

[Richard Hall]

A bit of planning: big thanks to @richbrummitt for these lovely baseboards. 

 

 

Five coaches and a tender loco (Rothbury race day special) fit comfortably into the shorter of the two storage loops: ideally I'd like three loops but I don't really have the space without resorting to unhelpfully sharp curves.  Maybe a traverser or even a train turntable would work better? I'm also wondering whether I can shuffle things a bit closer together in the scenic section and have a short section of embankment: I rather like to see trains running above ground level. Lots to ponder here.

 

Richard

[Izzy]

I’ve tried both traverser and cassettes, the latter being ‘interesting’ as needing to be curved of course, and simple loops are far easier to  cope with, much less hassle. Although not through pointwork, by pushing gauge widening to the limit ( 9.7 or 9.8mm wide - can’t quite recall now) I have been able to get all my 6- coupled steam locos around - don’t laugh - 11.5” curves, so something more sensible such as 18” should be possible to allow another line in the storage loops on the outer edge. Simply offset the blade deflection the opposite way so the inner road doesn’t suffer too tight a radius deflection. This can be used for all curved pointwork if needed. I just use A blades. In Templot just use an opposite handed turnout and curve it. 
 

Bob

[Richard Hall]

14 minutes ago, Izzy said:

I’ve tried both traverser and cassettes, the latter being ‘interesting’ as needing to be curved of course, and simple loops are far easier to  cope with, much less hassle. Although not through pointwork, by pushing gauge widening to the limit ( 9.7 or 9.8mm wide - can’t quite recall now) I have been able to get all my 6- coupled steam locos around - don’t laugh - 11.5” curves, so something more sensible such as 18” should be possible to allow another line in the storage loops on the outer edge. Simply offset the blade deflection the opposite way so the inner road doesn’t suffer too tight a radius deflection. This can be used for all curved pointwork if needed. I just use A blades. In Templot just use an opposite handed turnout and curve it. 
 

Bob

 Just been looking at this now with a sandwich in my hand.  Advice to everyone: if you are self-employed, do NOT keep model railways at your business premises.  I have spent half the morning messing about with Templot instead of earning a living.

 

Anyway, I reckon that if I pull down the overall radius a bit from the current 28" I can fit in a third loop on the outside using curved three way points at each end: building those will be good practice for Woodburn which has one at the entrance to the goods yard.  Just for once I have the luxury of not trying to fit too big a prototype into too small a space. Why people bother with O gauge I have no idea.

 

Richard

[Gordon A]

If you moved the back scene of the station away from the inner edge of the base board you would have some additional space for storage loops?

[GER_Jon]

At this rate I expect the track will be laid by sunday😀

[Yorkshire Square]

Think about offsetting the centre of the track circle in relation to the layout circle. Then the train will come from the back of the scenic section toward the outer edge of the baseboard and then back again. Makes it a little more interesting visually:

 

http://www.2mm.org.uk/layouts/brafferton/index.htm

[Richard Hall]

We had a good discussion today at the Norfolk AG meeting about various aspects of the layout: height, backscene, lighting etc. I have been playing around in Templot again to get that third loop in and ensure the baseboard joins don't get in the way. There are six boards but I plan to permanently bolt them together in pairs to reduce the number of baseboard joins and associated trestles.

 

 

I think this is getting fairly close to the final track plan. I could pull the circle radius in a little further in pursuit of the suggestion from  @Yorkshire Square but things are getting a bit tight in a couple of places already, and I don't want to lose too much scenic depth between the trackbed and backscene, so I'll probably leave it as it is. Next stage is to order a pile of track components and see if I can get some turnouts assembled.  Can I get something running by Christmas?  Probably not, but hopefully I can at least get some track laid. 

 

Still pondering the concrete sleepered BH track_ do I make up a drilling jig for the sleepers and use pegged chairs, or will plain chairs glued to the sleepers be strong enough? I'll need about 1.2 metres of concrete sleepered track, assuming the line reverted to wooden sleepers beyond the crossover (I haven't found a photo yet).

 

Richard

[Jan W]

Richard,

 

I think @Yorkshire Square didn't suggest changing the track radius but shifting the whole track circle towards the front of the layout like this:

 

 

Jan

[Richard Hall]

16 minutes ago, Jan W said:

Richard,

 

I think @Yorkshire Square didn't suggest changing the track radius but shifting the whole track circle towards the front of the layout like this:

 

Jan

Thank you Jan for a very useful suggestion. I was trying to leave a bit more space than that between the trackbed and the outer edge of the baseboard, which is why I was thinking I would have to reduce the radius. But looking at your redrawing of the plan I think that might work very well. There is still enough room in front of the storage loops for tea mugs, dead locos, inedible sandwiches on paper plates, and all the other stuff that seems to accumulate during a show.

 

Richard

[Richard Hall]

I was hoping to get started on track construction this weekend but due to postal strike only one of my two packages from Shop 1 has arrived so far.  Still I managed to do a couple of useful bits starting with this;

 

 

Concrete sleeper bullhead track and it turned out to be very easy.  Just slice the rail fasteners off with a scalpel, revealing a hole which will take a pegged chair. The chairs are a slightly loose fit in the holes which opens up the possibility of gauge widening on curves, not normally an option with plastic based track.  So then I wondered, can you do the same with wooden sleepered Easitrack BH?

 

 

The answer is yes: the two chairs nearest to the camera are pegged chairs.  There is probably enough slack in the holes that you only have to replace the chairs on one side for gauge widening purposes, still a faff but worth looking at for those of us who don't have the room for wide sweeping curves.

 

Richard

[Richard Hall]

The other thing I wanted to look at before starting construction proper was pivoting point blades.  Longwitton has some very long curved points and the clearance between switch and stock rails might get a bit marginal.  Pivoting blades should help with that.  I found a soldered construction N gauge point that I built a long time ago and had already used to develop the tiebar design that I ended up using on Longframlington and Stobs.

 

 

For the pivoting blades I glued two PCB sleepers back to back, drilled them and then soldered in lengths of very fine copper tube (says 0.8 x 0.25mm on the packet but seems more like 0.9 x 0.4).  The pivots are nickel silver wire bent 90 degrees at both ends and soldered to the blades.  

 

 

Nice and simple, appears to work well and should be robust enough.  Obviously I'll have to dig some holes in the trackbed to provide clearance but that is no big deal.

 

Now it's back to painting wagons while I wait for rail and chairs to arrive.  I'm planning to get all the track built over Christmas, then sort out the baseboard carpentry and start tracklaying early in the New Year.

 

Richard

 

Richard

[Richard Hall]

And so it begins.

 

 

This will be the fiddle yard entrance at the Scotsgap end.  Hidden from view, so plain PCB construction, no chairplates and every second sleeper omitted. So far, so good: my test wagon runs through all the crossings although tight in a couple of places where the checkrails need a slight nudge. Pivoting blades next. I realised that I hadn't filed the insides of the stock rails as I usually do at the blade ends, but the blades won't be permanently attached until the turnout is removed from the template, so I can tickle them up with a file at that stage.

 

Should be fun working out where all the insulation gaps go, but I'll worry about that when I come to it.  I have two of these beasts to build (opposite handed), then the crossover in the scenic section which will be fully chaired, mixture of brass chairs on PCB sleepers and plastic on plastic. I haven't tried the brass chairs before but they look very pretty.

 

Richard

[richbrummitt]

The brass chairs are great. I’ve found they sometimes need a little bit off the underside of the base to match up well with the plastic/etched chairs. You can easily measure how much by threading rail and measuring over the total height of rail in chair with calipers. 

[Caley Jim]

9 hours ago, Richard Hall said:

Should be fun working out where all the insulation gaps go, .......

I Hope this photo of one of mine (on interlaced sleepers, a mixture of PCB and Easitrac) might help.

 

The red 'circles' are the gaps.  Crossings A and B are always the same polarity which is set by the TOU at 1, the inputs to the switch being from the outer stock rails.  The polarity of C is set by the TOU at 2, which switches it between crossings A and B and the lower stock rail, i.e. one input to the switch from the crossings and one from the lower stock rail.

 

HTH,

 

Jim

[Richard Hall]

A few days off work, so a bit more progress on the three-way "Scotsgap" turnout. First set of blades now in place:

 

 

Turning it over reveals the blade pivots and tiebar.

 

 

Tiebar is made from two strips of PCB with a bit of 2mm square styrene strip sandwiched between them. Once I am happy with the blades, the protruding ends will be bent over 90 degrees to secure them. Here is one of the blades:

 

 

Pivot is soldered to the outside of the rail, tiebar dropper to the underside.

 

In theory, if one of the blades gets damaged (not unknown) I can simply snip off the bent over ends, lift out the blade and drop in a new one. I'm not sure I'd go so far as having a spare set of blades for exhibitions, but some rail, a file, N/S wire and a soldering iron would have the layout up and running in a few minutes.

 

One more tiebar to do (I already have the second set of blades) and loads of insulation gaps, then I can get on with something else.  Rothbury end yard turnout, probably.  My bottle of plastic solvent was getting a bit low so I tipped in some stuff I inherited from my late father.  The resulting mix won't touch Easitrac chairs, so I can't really do the fully-chaired crossover or the concrete sleeper track until I have the right solvent. (Butanone from memory.)

 

Richard

 

[Richard Hall]

Slight change of plan as I was missing one of the pages from the template I printed out at work for the second 3-way, and the home printer and I do not see eye to eye most of the time.

 

So having established that my not very good plastic solvent will stick Easitrac chairs to styrene sleepers, I set about the first half of the big curved crossover in the scenic section.  First stock rail and frog in place, second stock rail being "charged" with chairs. 

 

 

The mixed PCB / plastic construction is similar to the method I used to build the pointwork for "Longframlington" but with brass chairs instead of chairplates.  I think they will look rather nice when finished: here is a rather cruel close-up of the frog area. The crossing nose is supported by a flat piece of nickel silver: I tried using an etched chairplate but it proved too fiddly.

 

 

As usual I haven't ordered enough components: I thought I had enough brass chairs for two turnouts, but I think this first one will use them all up. 

 

It just occurred to me that it will be much easier to cut, fill and sand the insulation gaps in the PCB sleepers before I add any more rails.  In fact it would have been better to do them right at the start.

 

I rather enjoy building pointwork.

 

Richard

[Richard Hall]

Looks like four sprues of brass chairs will not be enough for one turnout.  I should probably have counted chairs rather than guessing, but that would require a greater talent for forward planning than I possess.  This is starting to look like a rather extravagant way of building pointwork at £4 per sprue, but Peco N gauge points are nudging up towards £20, so maybe it's not so expensive really.  I'll keep telling myself that.

 

Thinking ahead, I'm going to have three different rail heights to contend with (plain PCB, chaired PCB / Easitrack, concrete sleeper bullhead) so I need to start pondering what is going to go underneath the track.  Maybe two different thicknesses of card?  After previous disasters I will very thoroughly seal it with gloss varnish before I glue anything to it.

 

Richard

[Caley Jim]

7 minutes ago, Richard Hall said:

After previous disasters I will very thoroughly seal it with gloss varnish before I glue anything to it.

A good coating of neat PVA will seal the card. 

 

Jim 

[Richard Hall]

Slow progress the last couple of weeks but I now have the first of the two fully chaired turnouts for the scenic area.  Needs a little bit of tidying up but should look quite pretty once painted and ballasted.

 

 

The second one is now underway, incorporating a few lessons learned from the first.  I'm going to try fitting the checkrails to the chairs before soldering the stock rails and chairs to the sleepers as a single assembly.  I had a lot of problems sliding the check rails in and bending the ends with the stock rails already fixed down.

 

The motive power department has just discovered that someone is offering 3D printed bodies for a J27 and G5 via Shapeways.  N gauge rather than 2mm of course, but potentially interesting if I can identify a suitable chassis.  I wonder how an M7 compares to a G5 in terms of coupled wheelbase. I know the driving wheels are larger.

 

Richard

[Donw]

Good progress Richard.  What Bob (Izzy) said about curved turnouts is correct. Full size the main line will maintain its curve and the diverging route will curve away from it so on a curved turnout with the diverging route on the outside, the diverging route will just have a larger radius. If you are using templot so can see the difference. It avoids tightening a curve through the main route of the turnout.

 

Don

[nick_bastable]

On 02/12/2022 at 17:42, Yorkshire Square said:

Think about offsetting the centre of the track circle in relation to the layout circle. Then the train will come from the back of the scenic section toward the outer edge of the baseboard and then back again. Makes it a little more interesting visually:

 

http://www.2mm.org.uk/layouts/brafferton/index.htm

Built for the GJLC and displayed at Oxford if its the one Im thinking of,  best feature was it was set at about 5' high making watching trains very nice

Edited January 17, 2023 by nick_bastable
pps

[Stephen Freeman]

On 06/11/2022 at 17:04, Richard Hall said:

This keeps happening to me.  I find a nice little station to model, get as far as posting my intentions on the Internet, then start having second thoughts. Last weekend I was up North and had a couple of hours free so I walked along part of the trackbed of the Rothbury branch. My interest in the railways of this area goes right back to 1977 and seeing Ian Futers' "Longwitton" at an exhibition, after reading about it in the Railway Modeller. I had forgotten just how much I love this part of the world.

 

A couple more nudges to derail my plans: Sovereign Colliery Junction in this month's RM, and seeing Ballyconnell Road (3mm Irish and gorgeous) at the Spalding show.  Now I'm pondering circular layouts and wondering whether West Woodburn (on the Morpeth - Reedsmouth "Wannie Line") would make a good subject, seeing as the entire station and goods yard curves through ninety degrees.

 

Main disadvantage is that like my currently stored and unfinished Waverley Route layout "Stobs", a circular model won't fit in the small house where I live.  With "Stobs" I made the mistake of building the baseboards so big and heavy that the thing needs a crew of roadies to transport and erect it, which killed my idea of working on sections at home and then taking them to my workshop for running sessions.  Time to start looking seriously at lightweight board construction.

 

A Templot session beckons...

 

Richard

Sovereign Colliery graces the latest 2mmFS  Magazine, fine layout but I do have serious reservations on the signal placement. Far too close to the OHLE if you ask me, anybody climbing the ladders would be at serious risk of electrocution I think!