Holcombe - an SDJR branch line terminus

[RobAllen]

Placed baseboards in position and printed out at 1:1 scale a track plan that I thought showed promise, inspired by Harlequin’s picture, but with an extra siding. Immediately obvious that I didn’t pay attention to the point made much earlier about keeping away from the edge and the goods shed clearly can’t go there.

I would prefer a through-road good shed as I like the look, so am going to try moving track around.

 

Related, I used a 60cm radius curve for the flexitrack curve on the grounds that it’s not as tight at setrack. Is it okay for flexitrack though or should I use a less-tight radius?

[tom s]

ith Guess it's a straightforward fix

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Make sure you've room between the goods shed and the cattle dock for vehicular access. Regarding buildings vs fields; the former can be crammed in more, to good effect, maybe with some forced perspective or made to HO rather than OO. I can feel a Father Ted joke coming on; those cows are small because they are far away...

Edited December 3, 2023 by Peter Kazmierczak

[phil_sutters]

Why not have the goods shed through line on the edge. That would put your road access on the platform side of the shed and leave you room to get your road lorries and cattle trucks through with ease. Your option two puts the through road in the middle of the shed, when it would be to one side with the platform on the other side. You can see the Highbridge shed in my album above.

[RobAllen]

Had another play in RailModeller Pro and took some inspiration from the Sturminster Newton which had its goods shed and dock at the end of the loop. Map for context:



Obviously, Sturminster Newton is double track with two platforms, so I took out one of them and lost the down platform and came up with this.

I wish I had Harlequin's artistic skills to fill in the surroundings!
 

Edited December 4, 2023 by RobAllen

[Chimer]

On 03/12/2023 at 18:46, RobAllen said:

Related, I used a 60cm radius curve for the flexitrack curve on the grounds that it’s not as tight at setrack. Is it okay for flexitrack though or should I use a less-tight radius?

 

Given radius 4 set-track is 57cm, I would use that in preference to trying to get flexi smoothly round at 60cm.  I'm sure it can be done, especially if you use an appropriate tracksetta and a single length of flexi, but I wouldn't trust myself to avoid a kink.  

[RobAllen]

18 hours ago, Chimer said:

Given radius 4 set-track is 57cm, I would use that in preference to trying to get flexi smoothly round at 60cm.  I'm sure it can be done, especially if you use an appropriate tracksetta and a single length of flexi, but I wouldn't trust myself to avoid a kink. 

I'm planning on using bullhead and increased the radius to 65cm on the latest plan. I'll look into tracksetta.

Update: Looks like tracksetta only does 24" (61cm) or 30" (76cm), so no choice for 26" (66cm) or 28" (71cm).

Edited December 6, 2023 by RobAllen

[KingEdwardII]

1 hour ago, RobAllen said:

I'll look into tracksetta.

I simply use the 1:1 printouts and place the track on top of those. This has the advantage of allowing for variable-radius curves, especially useful in handling transitions to/from straight track. XTrackCad and other similar tools have support for creating such curves. I don't think tracksetta can really handle such variable radius curves. This approach also allows for curves of any radius.

 

Yours, Mike.

[Harlequin]

It's not difficult to curve flexitrack to 60cm radius while avoiding kinks at the joins.

 

[RobAllen]

3 hours ago, KingEdwardII said:

I simply use the 1:1 printouts and place the track on top of those. This has the advantage of allowing for variable-radius curves, especially useful in handling transitions to/from straight track.

 

3 hours ago, Harlequin said:

It's not difficult to curve flexitrack to 60cm radius while avoiding kinks at the joins.

Good to know. I'm currently printing out the latest version at 1:1 to put out and have a look at.

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Rob, it's your layout and you can plan it however you like. BUT, will a runround loop and a couple of sidings maintain your long term interest? Just a wondering...

Edited December 6, 2023 by Peter Kazmierczak

[KingEdwardII]

5 hours ago, Harlequin said:

It's not difficult to curve flexitrack

One trick on joining flexitrack on curves is to pre-bend the very end sections of the rail, so that they don't have the tendency to go back to being straight. You can do this with a suitable pair of pliers and some gentle persuasion. This avoids any kinks at the join. It's particularly important if the join has a plastic insulating fishplate, since these are nowhere near as rigid as the metal ones.

 

Yours, Mike.

[Harlequin]

37 minutes ago, KingEdwardII said:

One trick on joining flexitrack on curves is to pre-bend the very end sections of the rail, so that they don't have the tendency to go back to being straight. You can do this with a suitable pair of pliers and some gentle persuasion. This avoids any kinks at the join. It's particularly important if the join has a plastic insulating fishplate, since these are nowhere near as rigid as the metal ones.

 

Yours, Mike.

 

And/Or stagger the rail joins by a couple of sleepers.

 

And don't use pins to hold the track in place because they allow the track to move slightly after you thought you'd fixed it. Get everything lined up nicely and then glue the track down.

 

Edited December 6, 2023 by Harlequin

[RobAllen]

2 hours ago, Peter Kazmierczak said:

Rob, it's our layout and you can plan it however you like. BUT, will a runround loop and a couple of sidings maintain your long term interest? Just a wondering...

This is a key question. I don't know.

However, it's fascinating how what feels like acres of space seems so much smaller when you actually try to put track and buildings into it!

I'm aware that I overthink things too 🙂

Edited December 6, 2023 by RobAllen

[Peter Kazmierczak]

The third word should be YOUR layout, Rob.  🙃 Can never get to grips with keyboards...

[RobAllen]

22 minutes ago, Peter Kazmierczak said:

The third word should be YOUR layout, Rob.  🙃 Can never get to grips with keyboards...

 

I had guessed :) 

Everyone's thoughts are very much appreciated though, but as our American friends would say, I know that the buck stops with me!

[RobAllen]

I've decided to go DCC for this layout, so will need to decide on a controller at some point too. The new Gaugemaster Infinity is one option. I guess NCE is another as lots of people seem to like it. Research is required!

In the meantime, I took advantage of the Rails advent day offer a few days ago and 6 decoders have turned up.

 

Most of my locos are pre-DCC-ready, so I also need to get sockets that I can wire into the loco and then plug these in. My thinking is that one day sound will be in my future and I understand that I need to replace the entire chip for that, so making that easier for future-Rob would be nice.

Back to track planning, following Peter's comment, I've reinstated the kickback siding on the far side of the curve. Holcombe had a brewery, so that's an option for the industry that might live there. Or maybe I'll put in an engine shed. Who knows?!

 

[KingEdwardII]

3 hours ago, RobAllen said:

so I also need to get sockets

You don't need to use sockets on your locos. It is possible to directly solder up decoders to the wiring on the loco. This may also be easier, since older locos did not make any allowance for the installation of decoders and you may have trouble finding a suitable space - made even harder by the presence of a socket. But as you observe, having a socket does make exchanging a decoder much easier.

 

One item you will probably need for direct wiring is some small diameter shrink wrap, to avoid any length of exposed wire that might touch other conductors or exposed metal. It might also be necessary to have shrink wrap when installing a socket, since the socket location may not match existing wiring and require some extension pieces.

 

There are various threads on rmweb that deal with installing decoders on older locos which may be of assistance. I did some direct wiring on a vintage Hornby County 4-6-0 - the wiring was easy, finding a good location for the installed decoder, much harder.

 

Yours, Mike.

[Izzy]

I'd also suggest hardwiring the decoders. If the locos are pre-DCC with no lighting etc. then only four wires are used, red/black to the pickups, orange/grey to the motor, the rest are surplus ( I remove them because you have to isolate them to prevent issues and it saves space).  With a 8-pin socket, which can take a chunk of space, when you fit a sound decoder the speaker wires will be separate so there's no advantage there. 

 

Bob

[RobAllen]

Built a couple of stock boxes from a Hobbycraft storage box and  some foam board to transport my dad's locos to my local model railway club. 

 

 

Only a fiver for the box, so figured it was worth trying if only to keep the locos safer until I sort out a display cabinet. 

One downside is that the lid doesn't latch, so I may explore other options as and when I need more. As I'll be putting them into one of those collapsable crates when transporting, it won't matter too much anyway.

[Izzy]

I use a similar system but using A4 size Really Useful boxes as they have locking lids and are stackable. The ones I use are able to take two trays of 4mm stock. Not sure if Pacific type locos or long coaches would fit though. (I actually use them for storage of a lot of my modelling bits besides stock).

 

 

 

 

Bob

[RobAllen]

British Finescale point ordered to play with. Is there a preferred bull head flexitrack that matches with it?

[RobAllen]

Another thing that I'm thinking about is the backscene. As Holcombe is a town, the scene immediately behind the station really needs to be country town. That's going to be hard though as I'm not an artist!

One idea is to have a set of very low relief buildings along the back - possibly with a wall that marks railway property. An issue with this is that if if the station building is right at the back, then what goes behind it? Maybe I need the station building further away from the backscene, but there's not much width as it is.  

Other options are to move the station building away from the back. e.g. Wells has the station building on "this side" (but no run-around loop) or maybe put the the station building at the end of the platform as per Bridgwater but that station also has no runaround and two platforms.

 

Any thoughts and ideas would be appreciated.

I was doing okay until I started thinking holistically. It's hard!
 

Edited December 14, 2023 by RobAllen

[Chimer]

Perhaps work on the principle that the town is your side of the baseboard, access the station yard via a level crossing on the curve, then just set a stone wall in front of an open countryside backscene, maybe with a few trees between the two to disguise the lack of depth?  Low relief would have to be the backs of buildings as there's no room for a road in front, and there's always an issue where a  low relief building meets the backscene.  I think the 3-D to 2-D transition is one of the hardest things to get right, and really applaud those who do it well.

[Harlequin]

The problem is the lack of space and then the normal urge to splay the station out towards the buffers in the standard way, which eats up that space.

 

(You could seriously think about changing scale. TT:120 was designed for you! 😉)

 

If you stick with 4mm scale then you could possibly make a different station plan that optimises the use of the space and solves your backscene problems: Have the goods handling on the far side, splay some of the goods yard into the corner, where there's space and keep the buffer end of the station tightly packed to fit your long thin main board (three tracks in parallel, from the back: goods siding, run round loop, platform line). That would have the advantage of producing a unique plan with more SDJR "quirkiness". It might even be possible to squeeze a small engine shed on the spur off the run round loop, Lambourn-style.

 

Hmmm...