Maenamburi - Bangkok, Thailand c2010

[whart57]

I have posted on this before and have a blog, which I admit I have not kept up. However I have now restarted work on this layout after a hiatus of about a year while I got a club project up and running. The reason for starting this thread is that the layout has been promised for the club Open Day next April and having to report on progress is, I find, a good way of ensuring progress. A topic is better than a blog for that

 

For this opening post I will just give a broad outline of the layout.

 

It's 13'6" by 2'6" in the scenic section (4m x 0.75m) and will have a fiddle yard as well. The scale is 1:100, or 3mm to the foot and 9mm gauge, this representing the metre gauge used in Thailand. The prototype is the State Railway of Thailand in the period 2006-2016, though the livery will be the pre-2011 one. The track plan is based on Bangkok's Thonburi station, but the operation movements planned imagine this being located across the other side of the city on the Rama IV road near the freight only station of Maenam. Hence the name Maenamburi.

 

If the scale seems a bit weird that has a number of reasons. The first is that there are absolutely no commercial models of Thai railways so I could use any scale or even make one up. However most of my modelling has been to 3mm scale so I have an eye for what looks right in that scale. 9mm gauge is three quarters of a millimetre underscale but the advantages of having a tried and tested track standard along with commercially supplied wheels and gauges outweighs that. The trackwork in the sceniced areas is hand-built with copper-clad sleepers and FB rail, but the fiddle yard will have PECO N gauge points. 3mm scale also lets me get an extra carriage on trains compared to H0m, and 1:100 sounds more logical when talking about this project with people who know nothing about railway modelling.

 

I was lucky enough to visit Thailand many times while I was working, and amassed a fair bit of research material. Certainly enough when combined with the very limited amount available in books or on the internet to complete this project

 

The layout can be at the Open Day as work in progress as the purpose of that event is to showcase members' projects rather than put on an exhibition. The aim is recruitment as much as anything else. One reason for me putting this forward though is to test whether it is a feasible exhibition layout. Have I built it robust enough, can it be reliable enough, can it show something visitors might want to see. If it is, then I will certainly aim to get it out to a wider audience.

 

 

[Supaned]

Watching with interest. Thonburi is certainly a very modellable station, and some interesting operations too including shunt release (previously a Henschel shunter now a Vacuum brake only GEK Shovelnose).

 

Nice Alsthom diesel too.

[whart57]

Working on a Henschel shunter right now. I was going to use a Bull-Ant (Hollywood Foundry) motor bogie - I ordered one a few years ago with the right wheel spacing - but I am finding the six wheel bogies are not very good runners. So I am building my own works based on an N20 spur drive motor. I'll post some pics over the weekend.

[whart57]

As Supaned has pointed out, carriage shunting forms a key part of operations at the real Thonburi. The locomotive of the incoming train would release itself and head off to the depot and the station pilot, back in 2010 this was a Henschel six wheel shunter, would come and fetch the carriages and add them to the long rake in the nearer carriage siding. This siding gained water taps and carousels to hold brooms and stuff for the carriage cleaning teams. When a train was due to depart the requisite number of carriages was pulled out of the siding and placed at the platform. The shunter then returned to the carriage sidings and the train loco would come out from the shed and place itself at the head of the train. All done in a very laid back way.

 

 

Clearly I would need one of these Henschel shunters. Using a basic drawing from Ramaer's book on Thai railways and photographs to correct the significant errors, I produced the art work to create a brass etch. The main brass bodywork has been assembled.

 

 

The intention was to use a Bull-Ant motor bogie, but this didn't work that well.The design of Bull-Ants is that each axle is driven by a worm and gear, which means three worm gears. Each causes significant friction and thus impacts slow running. Additionally the rigid chassis means that really only three wheels are in contact with the rail at any one time. That means pick-up issues, particularly troublesome with DCC, and haulage issues. This shunter needs to handle five coach trains and with the motor bogie it just about manages three without wheel slipping. That's with a few fishing weights Blue-tacked to it. With a Co-Co train engine there is room for a fair bit of lead and pick-up on some unpowered bogie wheels helps with the continuity issues. Not possible with this small shunter.

 

I think the solution is to build a bespoke chassis. I'm a great fan of the chassis design Geoff Helliwell has developed for the 3mm Society. For those who don't know him can I say that Geoff is the most innovative model railway technician I have ever come across. If he worked in a mainstream scale I'm sure he would be much better known. Geoff's design uses the N20 motor which comes with its own gear box and Geoff has designed, and had etched, a gearbox using nylon crown and pinion gears to turn the drive through 90 degrees so that the motor can turn the wheels. Geoff's designs were marketed through the 3mm Society and I modified one to drive my Thai 158 set.

 

 

Not easy to see the gearing but this 158 is the quietest and most controllable bit of motive power on the layout. So a design based on Geoff's principles has been made and work commenced on replacing the Bull-Ant bogie.

 

 

A little bit of slop, a few thou at most, in the driving axles will allow them to stay in contact with the rails more which should mean that just having four driven wheels will be more effective than the six of the Bull-Ant. The next week or so should see that tested.

 

[whart57]

I've been working on the chassis for the carriage shunter this week. So far the frames have been cut out from thickish nickel silver. I used to sweat two pieces together but I have found that bolts through the drilled out axle holes work just as well. Frame spacers are made from pins from salvaged 13 amp plugs. I have a small Peatol (now Taig) lathe and that lets me face off the ends accurately square and to the right length, give or take 0.1mm. In this photo I have put the gear train in place just to check everything is in the right place. When the chassis is complete the gears will of course be inside the frames.

 

One axle will remain unpowered. As the wheelbase is very unbalanced I couldn't see how to power all axles. However the wheels will still be picking up the volts. To do this they had to be made conductive down to the axles. Well nearly, there is a plastic sleeve between axle and wheel. Each wheel is a 3mm scale wagon wheel with the plastic tyre knocked out and replaced by a brass disc turned as accurately as possible to the correct diameter. As the difference between a tight force fit and a loose push fit is beyond the capabilities of my lathe, the tyres need securing with solder.

 

I don't really like outside frames on models because of maintenance issues, but there really is no alternative with 9mm gauge and stock to mainline dimensions in a larger scale.

 

I hope to get the motor plate fitted and the frame blackened this weekend.

[whart57]

I should perhaps show what is actually happening on the layout at the moment. I have started work on the scenics from the outsides in. That means the ends of the layout are much further advanced. In the first contribution there is a pic that shows how the entry from the fiddle yard is shaping up. Like the real Thonburi this is a single track line, somewhat overgrown, with huts and other buildings pressing in on the line. At the other end the layout ends by passing under a motorway bridge. This too is taken from Thonburi, though the interpretation has differences.

 

Until 2004 Thonburi was a terminus on the bank of the Chao Praya river. Then it was decided to expand the neighbouring Siriraj hospital and then Prime Minister Shinawatra insisted that the state railway "donate" land for this expansion. Unfortunately the land wanted was that of the approach to Thonburi station. The line was therefore truncated and the small halt of Bangkok Noi upgraded to be the new Thonburi terminus. Fortunately the connection into the loco facilities was just outside the "donation" so loco servicing could continue at Thonburi. The headshunt is however on the other side of an overhead motorway bridge. My headshunt is under such a bridge and the bridge forms the scenic break.

 

This is where the Maenam bit comes in. At some point I would like to run freight as well as passenger trains and there are none of those at Thonburi. Not least because the goods facilities are now the foundations of Siriraj hospital. Maenam however is a staging yard for container traffic to the river port and tank wagons to a Shell distribution depot and and oil refinery. Maenam too has a road overbridge at the end of the station yard, only here the tracks go on to the river port. The line to the refinery branches off before Maenam station however. So my layout design keeps that as a possibility, and for the moment the other tracks under the bridge are used for stabling the various freight wagons I am building.

 

 

The car parking, containers as storage sheds and the cast concrete bollards are taken from Thonburi though. I have plenty of 1:100 cars as a few years ago I bought a bag of a hundred on spec on eBay for something like £15, hoping that at least some would be usable. Turns out most of them are. As I have so many though I am quite happy to disassemble and repaint some. The brightly coloured taxis of Bangkok are an essential requirement though I have to admit I haven't got the pink right yet.

 

 

They all need the Taximeter sign putting on the roof, which will get done when the place where most are to go has been sceniced.

 

 

[Supaned]

oooh! I spy a GEK shovelnose......

[whart57]

18 hours ago, Supaned said:

oooh! I spy a GEK shovelnose......

 

Well at least one is essential really. It would be like a GWR branch without a Pannier.

Edited December 9, 2023 by whart57

[whart57]

At this point I'd better post the trackplan. This is my working plan, minus fiddleyard, though the actual reality differs in small details, mainly as a result of easing a couple of curves and avoiding sudden reverse curves. That meant a couple of points had to be moved an inch or three. In terms of topology though, the plan is accurate.

 

 

Obviously there has been some simplification. The loco shed has three roads instead of six and there aren't tracks that go all the way through and further. Similarly there are fewer carriage sidings and of course the whole thing is about a quarter of the length it should be. However the main features needed for operation are there.

 

Except one. On the real Thonburi there is no direct route from the loco headshunt to the station. Locos leaving the shed have to reverse in the headshunt and then reverse twice more to execute a sort of 'Z' manoeuvre in front of the signal box. I felt that was too much of a complication

 

Looking at the plan now, I am amazed at the number of hand-built points I made. They are all functional but I don't think they would have been if I'd followed the original idea of laying track to 2mm FS standards. However tracklaying was completed sometime ago and things have moved on

 

I don't have a fixed plan for the scenic treatment, and any plan is in my head rather than on paper. In broad terms the left hand end is traditional Thai, the right hand end more modern Bangkok. I'm not intending to model either Thonburi or Maenam beyond the railway fence - or where the fence would be if Thai railways had such a thing. The former track maintenance shed at Thonburi has been modelled along with a couple of the squatters' shacks.

 

 

The rest of the buildings come from elsewhere in Bangkok. Currently under construction is a temple based on one on the Rama I Road, a row of shops from a Sukhumwit soi - one was a fish and chip shop though I think mine will be rather more Thai - and a Starbucks. I have a building site and plans for a modern shopping mall and office development. My company didn't have its own office in Thailand (at least not before it was taken over by IBM) so I'll give it one.

 

But there's a few years work there.

Edited December 9, 2023 by whart57

[stivesnick]

The layout is looking really good and I look forward to see further developments.

 

Nick

[whart57]

This station sign on the platform of Thonburi station (still there in 2016), shows the history and why the layout at Thonburi is the way it is.

 

 

According to this sign Thonburi is another 0.866 km. Talingchan is the junction with the Southern Line which goes from the main Hualamphong station (for the moment) to Malaysia and (almost) Singapore.

[whart57]

The chassis now moves under power. Still needs pick-ups fitting to be truly independent but a test using croc clips to the motor wires suggests the running is OK. The front axle, the unpowered one needs to come down about half a millimeter though. It will be easier to adjust that than to mess with the driven axles since the gearing seems to be fine.

 

 

The excess bits of axle also need trimming but tests suggest that 1.5v is enough to get this chassis crawling. That seems good enough.

 

I now need to consider how best to make the adjustments before moving on to fitting the buffer beams and couplings.

[whart57]

As might be obvious, all locos and rolling stock for this layout will need to be built specially. Choosing the locomotives is not a tricky exercise. Two obvious selections present themselves. One is the large class of Alsthom Co-Co diesels supplied in the 1980s in four very similar batches. I think the main differences are the power plants under the covers and some other technical hardware, not things to worry us in small scale modelling. These Alsthoms turn up everywhere. And another class that turns up everywhere are the General Electric Co-Cos that first appeared back in the 1960s. Aside from their ubiquity and longevity they are also - now - uniquely Thai. General Electric hoped to sell a lot of this metre gauge diesel but in the end it was only three dozen or so to Thailand and the Philippines. The Filipinos scrapped theirs in the 1990s but the UM12cs, to use their GE monicker, still soldier on in Thailand.

 

Other loco classes were associated with Thonburi, such as some Bo-Bo diesel hydraulics supplied by a German consortium which were the mainstay of the Kanchanaburi and Nam Tok services for a dozen years but while I'd like to build one of them, that is low on the list of priorities. And then of course, Thonburi shed stables the small stud of working steam locos kept for special occasions ............

 

Carriage stock is a different matter and for that I needed to consider what sort of services my Maenamburi station could realistically have. The starting point is the real timetable from Thonburi.

 

 

Not many trains, but some variety. Of note are the Comuter (sic) trains to and from Salaya. Salaya is a small town some 10-15 miles west of Bangkok. Its station lies on the main line to the South and Malaysia but commuters can save themselves twenty minutes or more travelling to central Bangkok by taking a train to Thonburi and crossing over on a river ferry. Funnily enough these trains didn't start running until after the powers that be added a fifteen minute walk between station and ferry .......

 

The Ordinary trains, i.e. Third Class only trains stopping at every station, are on two routes. One group of trains take the Southern Line as far as a suitable end point, the other route is the one to Kanchanaburi, the crossing of the river Kwai and then up the Death Railway as far as Nam Tok. The rest of that notorious line to Burma/Myanmar was abandoned though recently part of it has become a footpath and memorial. Thousands of Thai labourers also died alongside the Allied POWs building it.

 

So for carriage selection, third class open carriages - open because the air-conditioning for this tropical country is open all windows fully - and a Japanese-built railcar set for the "Comuter". That did however leave out something I not only wanted to have, but also felt would be essential if this layout ever did make it to a British model railway exhibition, namely a Thai Class 158 set. My first railway journey in Thailand was in a Class 158 and I was also able to persuade someone to modify their CAD files to produce a Thai variant of the 158 through Shapeways.

 

I'll pick the story up again later.

[whart57]

So here's my thinking, but first a railway map of Thailand:

 

Thonburi is on the West side of Bangkok and was the original terminus of the Southern Line (red on the map). This line was the fourth line to be constructed after the Northern (blue) and Eastern (green) lines and Thailand's first railway, the now defunct Paknam Railway. Until 1926 the Southern line was isolated from the other two main lines, which given that it was metre gauge and the other two were standard gauge was just as well. The British chose metre gauge, much influenced by their use of it on the secondary lines in India. In 1926 the Chao Praya river was bridged and the decision taken to narrow all the standard gauge lines.

 

The Paknam Railway was metre gauge too but never formed part of the national network. It was turned into an electric tramway in the 1920s and survived until about 1960. It's terminus was next to the main Hualamphong station however.

 

Now I have quite a fertile imagination when it comes to thinking up might-have-been railway lines as layout backstories, so this is the one here. The Paknam Railway is brought into the national network through extending it to Chonburi. Instead of being an electric tramway it becomes a fully fledged line that is later extended to Pattaya and Rayong and forms the SRT's South Eastern Line. Loco facilities to serve the line are built at Maenamburi where the freight line from Makkasan to the river port makes a junction. However the last bit of line to Hualamphong was truncated in the 1990s back to Maenamburi.

 

So the services we see - and I have to kit out for - are:

 

• Ordinary trains to Chonburi, Pattaya and Rayong made up of third class open carriages.
• A "Comuter" service to Paknam operated by diesel railcars

And then, as this line would pass the new airport at Suvarnabhumi and the attraction of tourists to Pattaya

• A "Rapid" service to Pattaya operated by a Class 158 unit.

One thing that arrived in the post a couple of weeks ago was an etch for a pair of Class 1200 railcars, which I will tackle in the new year. A suitable number of 3rd class carriages of two different types are in hand.

 

 

A Class 158 set is about 90% complete and just for variety - and frankly the hell of it - I built a couple of the ex-Queensland Railway thirds that were acquired in the 1990s. A full blow-by-blow account of their construction appeared in Continental Modeller a few years ago. A friend in the 3mm Society had a copy of a Queensland Railway stock book which gave me the necessary information. My two ex-QR carriages are posed by the track maintenance shed.

 

 

 

[whart57]

Chassis sorted out, sits nicely on wheels, still good slow running, top speed is a bit low for a general loco, but not for a shunter. Body fits neatly, now for pick-ups and couplings.

 

[Supaned]

Re the Alsthom diesels, as built they had SEMT-Pielstieck engines , which many of those remaining still have . SRT undertook some rebuilding with newer power units in two distinct groups - one group had an MTU fitted, these carry a blue stripe around the body to indicate this , whilst the other group had a CAT engine fitted, these ones have a red stripe around the body.

 

There is only one Krupp hydraulic based at Thonburi, 3107 , which is a bit of a depot pet, It does have the odd trip out on the Southern line stoppers , presumably to keep it in working order and crews current on it, they use it during floods as well as being a hydraulic it can "paddle" unlike the diesel electrics.

 

In more recent years I've seen Hitachi 4500 class and GE 4550 class working in and out of Thonburi , so pretty much anything goes loco-wise, considering it's a small secondary terminus.

 

 

[whart57]

The Krauss diesel hydraulics were the main locos at Thonburi when I first went there in 2008. In fact the two Krauss locos were the only two outside the shed except for a 4-8-2 steam engine. Cold of course. In those days the Nam Tok trains were the only services out of Thonburi. There were a GEK and an Alsthom being worked on inside and the bodywork of an Alsthom was lying in the grass beside the approach road but none active. That changed over the next few years.

 

The diesel hydraulics came into their own during the 2011 floods. So much so that the 3000 class diesel hydraulics which had been withdrawn and were leased out to an Italian company contracted to do track doubling on the North Eastern line, had to be recalled.

 

A GE 4550 was working the Southern Line service Prachuap Khiri Khan last time I was there in 2016. The new Chinese built locos have probably displaced the 4550s from the heaviest services now. They are getting on for thirty years old now.

[whart57]

Yuletide preparations plus the festive days themselves put the brakes on progress. So no further progress to report on the Henschel shunter. However three carriage bodies now have wheels under them as I completed the bogies as functional units. Still need the cosmetic axle boxes on them but these three carriages are nicely free-running.

 

I also stuck in a load more windows on the 158 set. The tinted glass is represented by photographic acetate, the sort used to mask lights. I can't remember the exact reduction figure, 10% sounds familiar. The acetate was run through the Silhouette cutter to produce exact sized panes which are then superglued in place. A bit fiddly but because the bodies are 3D printed the window openings are consistent in size.

 

Santa - aka Mrs Whart57 - left a new soldering station under the tree. Sending Santa the link to the right item on Amazon worked a treat. All set for constructing the railcar unit from the etch that arrived last month.

[whart57]

Pick-ups fitted and wired up on the Henschel shunter. Now for a lengthy burst on the club's N gauge test track. Some tweaking is going to be required though.

[Romancecar]

Absolutely stunning! I don't think I've ever seen a Thai layout modelled before and your scratchbuilding is quite inspirational.

 

I particularly love the water tower. It's a great focal point of the depot.

[whart57]

Well I took the shunter down to the club where there is an N gauge test track. Unfortunately the club used set track for this and thus the curves are a bit tight for me. OK for the N gauge guys and their RTR, and 009 and H0e is OK, but my 3mm scale mainline sized diesels and carriages won't get round. Pity. However this shunter can, so it got to stretch its legs for a bit.

 

So what did I find? Things started off well, it did about 5-6 laps very smoothly so I left it running and went to do some work on the Chesworth fiddle yard. Ten minutes later it had come to a stop. I found that the back wheels had gone out of gauge, the BTB was about 5mm. Corrected that and it ran for a bit before doing the same thing. Ran it the other way and the wheels went out of gauge faster. I'm guessing that the sharp curves are pushing the wheels over and that is causing friction with the frame, particularly as one wheel wasn't square on the axle.

 

It was also noisier than I remembered from the first tests. Examination of the gearing found that when I soldered the wires for the pick-ups I must have brought the soldering iron to close to the big nylon gear wheel as some of the teeth had melted.

 

So back home, and replacing the wobbly wheel and the big gear.

 

I took the opportunity to do a proper continuity test on electrical pickup while the chassis could roll. I have a little test track for that.

 

 

The short bit of N gauge track has two cuts in one rail resulting in a section about 15mm long being isolated. A choc block is wired in so that that short section is connected and so is the other rail. The probes from a multimeter can be screwed down on the other side. I make my locos DCC-ready by creating an 8 pin socket wired up to the appropriate standard. This is useful for testing as well as for DCC running. Inserting the legs of a 330Ω resistor into the track-side sockets gives the multi-meter something to measure. I learnt many years ago when I had a job testing long computer cable runs in an eight storey office block that testing to a short can give false results. Testing to a known value resistor is much safer.

 

So a chassis is rolled along the track, and every wheel is tested individually. First one side, and then the other. If any pick-up is not making connection this will, well, pick that up.

 

So, now I just need to put in a new gear wheel - fortunately they are almost literally ten a penny on eBay - and then back down to the club on Wednesday for another spin.

[whart57]

Time to get back to the scenics. One thing that is a must have is a temple since that will ground the layout into its Thai setting. There are a couple of temples near the real Thonburi, a small one on a footpath behind the loco shed and a much bigger complex on the other side. There is a nice photo in Ramaer's book of a C56 2-6-0 in front of that large temple taken in the 1980s in the last years of steam and I tried and failed many times to reproduce that shot for myself. Back in 2016 I managed it, sort of. I've posted this pic on another thread  but it does no harm to post it here too.

 

That particular temple is way too big for my layout, and the other temple is too small to be the statement I want. In Christian terms it would be a cathedral on one hand and a baptist chapel on the other, when what I want is a small village church. So the search was on for a suitable prototype.

 

After many walks around Bangkok I came across one on the Rama 1 Road that seemed about right. The Wat Chai Mongkol was a small complex that contained what I wanted, namely a "typical" temple, a chedhi, a sort of spire on its own platform and a bell tower, and all in a fairly cramped space. On my last visit to Bangkok I took loads of photographs and with the help of Google's satellite view, was able to produce some sketches to work with.

 

 

Where we are currently at is that I have the basic temple and schoolroom/monk's dormitory built up in plastikard plus the chedhi and bell tower completed as far as the painting stage.

 

 

I'll come back to the challenges of building this and ways to meet them - including some home-brewed 3D printing - in the next instalment.

[whart57]

One feature on Thai religious buildings are the highly decorative roof decorations. Those and the decorative arches over doors and windows generally have a flame like motif which makes them hard enough to draw, and near impossible to cut out consistently. Technology comes to the rescue. The temple's eaves decorations have been etched in brass - there was a bit of space on a larger sheet I was preparing - and more of that later. However etching is a process with a slow turnaround because you need firstly enough items to fill the minimum size sheet an etcher will deal with, and secondly it is not a fast process anyway. So I then experimented with the Silhouette cutter. The much smaller decorations on the bell tower were produced that way.

 

Having satisfied myself that the Silhouette could make a decent stab at the flame-like shapes I wondered if the arches over the windows could also be handled that way. This is the challenge.

 

 

I figured that a lamination of two or more layers of Plastikard might give a decent result, and made up a prototype.

 

 

As these decorative features require no physical strength - they are backed by the main wall - I felt the result was more than adequate. There is after all a limit to the amount of detail you can do at one hundredth of full size. So the windows and doors on the main temple have been treated that way.

 

Now I apologise to anyone who has a deep understanding of Buddhist iconography, but I am working on my observations here. In this particular wat the main temple building stands apart on a floor of white marble with a balustrade around it. From my observations that seems to be quite typical at other wats too. That meant I had to figure out a way to make the balustrade.

 

3D printing seemed to be all the rage and my daughter was experimenting with a free 3D drawing package called Blender for other reasons. A bit of research determined that Blender could output in a format that Shapeways could handle so I asked my daughter to produce a 3D file of the balustrade sections based on photographs and measurements. That she did and I sent the output to Shapeways who then printed it out.

 

 

 

As that was successful I then set my daughter the challenge of producing the chedhi as a file for Shapeways. Chedhis are a very striking feature so could not be left off.

 

 

After all this high tech stuff, the plinth of the chedhi  was made in the traditional manner with just knives, files and sanding boards. Small beads were used for the balls in the wall decorations.

 

This temple will sit on a removable board as it is sited over a join between two baseboards. There will be a wall around the complex with decorative gates at each end of the through road. That is the next step.

 

 

[Mikkel]

Lovely work, the Thai atmosphere is already there in bucketfuls.

 

I'm impressed that you managed those flames with the Silhouette. 

[whart57]

Over the last couple of days I have built a prototype temple gate. This won't be the final version but it does prove the tools I have can reproduce the key bits.