Langford Lane & Marlingford - GWR 1940s Oxfordshire

[The Great Bear]

I've made a start on the goods yard. The goods yard at Kidlington had an unusual layout with a loop around the goods shed, to gain access to the siding beyond the shed. Later on, in the 1920s, a bacon factory was built to the south of the station and another siding added. All the sidings run across the approach to the main station building. All in all pretty silly,  but part of the appeal of the location.

First, the goods shed has been built, save the roof and some details.




When I built the baseboards I was intending to stop at the goods yard and leave out the bacon factory siding, as the bacon factory would be in the middle of the lifting section and at the time that seemed too difficult. I'm now had a play to see if I can get this in, and avoid the goods yard being atop a cliff on two sides. The bacon factory will add some operational interest, of course. (Not that I really know much about that traffic, mind you.)

 

My lightweight addition to the existing lifting baseboard section, not pretty but works so far

The excess of insulation board for the shed floor has finally come in handy, rather than getting in the way

 

The bacon factory I only have a couple of photos of, one in the distance and one of it being demolished so it will be a lot of supposition, this is a very rough first stab and showed I needed to narrow it a bit to get it to fit.

I will make the mainline cutting shallower so the factory looks plausible next to it, but that's not an issue, my glueshell method of construction comes apart pretty easily and quite a bit hopefully can be re-used, the skin and the grass, based on experience of previous abortive work.

 

And some more photos showing the overall station area...and the overall mess, bits piled up on the other sections...

 

Yes the loop around the shed did run perilously close to it, that's what the photos show.

 

 

Next will be fixing the track in the yard and doing the surface for that, I'm intending to put a skim of DAS over the foam.

[The Great Bear]

After a year I've managed to finish building all the signals (well there is one left, but I have run out of parts) and got them placed on the layout, following a discussion with the Stationmaster in my layout signalling topic on their placement.
 

 

The one on the left was built a long time ago, before I got the confidence/skill(?!) to try putting several balance arms on one side

The signals just fit with the lifting flap raised!

 

The next job is to fit the servos and wire these up and others I missed before, then back to the scenic stuff.

Edited April 12, 2015 by The Great Bear

[The Great Bear]

 

Jon 

 

In some cases the FPL lever at the ground frame was painted as a release lever but not always (depended on the method of release) otherwise all rather nice and not a bad choice of blue - reasonably good match for the real thing (on the Western)

 

Ages ago now, when I wired the frame (as photo above) for the branch line terminus up I got the operation of the FPL levers wrong, which I've just fixed - so that the lever would normally stand reversed to lock the points. I'm wondering, does the same apply to ground frame release lever or is that released by reversing the lever?

 

Thanks

 

Jon

[The Stationmaster]

 

 

Ages ago now, when I wired the frame (as photo above) for the branch line terminus up I got the operation of the FPL levers wrong, which I've just fixed - so that the lever would normally stand reversed to lock the points. I'm wondering, does the same apply to ground frame release lever or is that released by reversing the lever?

 

Thanks

 

Jon

Ground frame FPL levers on the Western (Great or Region) seemed to invariably stand normal with the points bolted.  The only GF levers I have come across  on the Western which stand reverse with the frame locked are, very occasionally, levers operating signals or slots (on signals). 

[The Great Bear]

Ground frame FPL levers on the Western (Great or Region) seemed to invariably stand normal with the points bolted.  The only GF levers I have come across  on the Western which stand reverse with the frame locked are, very occasionally, levers operating signals or slots (on signals). 

 

Ah - thanks. How about the release lever in the main frame (the one I have as brown and blue)? I'm guessing the GF is locked when that lever is normal, then.

[The Stationmaster]

Ah - thanks. How about the release lever in the main frame (the one I have as brown and blue)? I'm guessing the GF is locked when that lever is normal, then.

You are correct sir.

 

The Western tended to release ground frames in one of two ways - one was to use a release lever (which seems not to have been so common in new work from the mid/late 1950s on) while the other was to use an Annetts Key release instrument which sat on the block shelf.  Operating the lever or the instrument released the Annetts Key and turning the key to the released position back locked the release lever/instrument.  The key in turn released the ground frame and when any ground frame lever was reversed (or put normal if it stood reverse with the frame locked) the movement of the lever backlocked the key into the ground frame.  All nice and straightforward.

 

The only problem with using a release instrument instead of a lever was that it in turn required to be electrically locked with a lever/levers in the signalbox frame - the use of a release lever allowed that to be done mechanically but it still required electric locking on the release lever because of its control over the Annetts Key instrument.  An alternative - which doesn't seem to have been so common on the Western but was perhaps more so in earlier years (?) - was for the release lever in the frame to release the ground frame mechanically via a rodding run but obviously that was not practicable for something like a mid-section ground frame.

[The Great Bear]

Here's something new and a bit different. One of the attractions of the line I'm basing my model on was the inter-company workings, so here's one:

 

 

The train in question is the night mail from York to Swindon. Except that it isn't night. Replicating that properly may come. Probably post war it should be a B1 at the head (or the C1 be in plain black) but heck it's such a fine loco and a great model, who cares?!

 

Model now safely back in box for safe keeping!

 

Thanks for looking,

 

Jon

[The Stationmaster]

The York - Swindon must have had a lovely history loco wise.  Ar one time the Swindon end was worked by GC Atlantics although I don't know what had preceded them.  They were, it seems, replaced by the ex GN C1s but alas I don't know what - if anything - came between them and the B1s which I remember on the job in its final years.  So not so much an excuse rather a tiny hint of a time warp

[The Great Bear]

The York - Swindon must have had a lovely history loco wise.  Ar one time the Swindon end was worked by GC Atlantics although I don't know what had preceded them.  They were, it seems, replaced by the ex GN C1s but alas I don't know what - if anything - came between them and the B1s which I remember on the job in its final years.  So not so much an excuse rather a tiny hint of a time warp

Can't remember where, but did read reference to B17s? Well, as that's another fine model (albeit the wrong tender for non GE ones) that's what I've assumed... 

[The Stationmaster]

Can't remember where, but did read reference to B17s? Well, as that's another fine model (albeit the wrong tender for non GE ones) that's what I've assumed... 

Could well be Jon as they were at several GC sheds.

[leftwinguk]

Hi Jon,

 

Found your thread through a link on someone else's layout topic - as I was looking for something to read at work.  It has been a thoroughly enjoyable perusal of your work, from the early days with Marlingford up to the present day with Begbrooke.  Your work on getting the signals right is commendable - and it looks as if your modelling skills are most definitely improving all the time.  As someone else mentioned, the backscene and the embankments work well together - not too much of a contrast between either - so the eye is fooled.  Will enjoy reading about further developments - even as an Eastern region follower, and modern image modeller!

 

Best Wishes....

[The Great Bear]

After several years being mothballed under assorted pieces of carboard, wire, track and the like, traffic has finally returned to Marlingford. (The original intention of keeping it open to "play" with succombed to it being a convenient big area in middle of the room to dump stuff.)

 

The first test train actually ran a couple of days ago, but no photographer was present, so here's today's test train. The PW needs some attention in areas, running is not smooth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The autotrailer is in a bit of a state, 3 years I made a start on the Dart Castings upgrade kit, then decided to build Begbrooke. Whether I still have the parts and the instructions I'm not sure (especially the latter). The loco isn't my work, by the way, found on Ebay - labelled as a 14xx. As the last 517 in service, 1159, worked the Woodstock branch, this was a lucky find. Not sure how accurate it is, but to my untutored eye, it looks near enough. With a TCS decoder and keep alive it runs over the setrack without stalling, albeit at times with a wobble.

 

Nice to have the branch back in action, like finding an old friend.

 

Nonetheless, there's still work to do on the mainline station. Not the finishing straight, but the bell's just rung.

 

Thanks for the interest shown

 

Jon

Edited June 5, 2015 by The Great Bear

[The Great Bear]

I've been working on the lever frame for Begbrooke. DCC Concepts Cobalt-S levers as used before. Wiring up 46 levers and trying to interlock them is proving slow progress.

 

The interlocking is done by looping wires through the contacts on the pcbs of the relevant other levers. Hence the the long wires on top of all the others.

 

I've managed about a quarter so far, trying to wire things up as fully as I can, doing as much locking as I can - the plan attached. (I don't profess it to be complete or accurate, just as much as I could get my head around even with a lot of help a while back from the Stationmaster.) I may skimp on some of the steps, lock signals to the appropriate route etc and the FPLs and maybe skimp on the ground discs to simplify the rest of it.

 

 

Locking table v6.2.xlsx

[The Great Bear]

Well I'm just over half way through this at lever 25, but progress is slowing to a crawl. Levers 25, 26, 27 which control the double slip have a lot of other levers (up to 10!) that need to be at normal before they can be released. Of course it doesn't work first time and i have to go through desoldering then remaking and double checking each connection etc. Getting through the wiring spaghetti can only be done in short chunks without getting indigestion!

[The Great Bear]

Given the frustrations mentioned above I am going to explore doing the locking above by computer, with a lot simpler wiring. OK so maybe this means I am bit soft and not a "real" modeller, but lounging on the sofa with the laptop and a beer/wine to hand doing this seems much more convivial than on my feet in the shed, trying to work my way through the tangle of wires, soldering iron in hand, sweat dripping from my furrowed brow. 

[The Great Bear]

After a couple of months' break, back to the "shed"...

 

As per the post above I'm reworking the wiring of the lever frame to use computer control. I bought a cheap Windows tablet/laptop (Lenovo MIIX3 10") and am running JMRI on it. I set up a control panel for my layout in that. JMRI is linked to my NCE DCC system using a usb to serial lead. The levers in the lever frame are connected to NCE AIU units which basically just sense whether the lever is on or off. In JMRI the state of these sensors can then be monitored and routines ("Logix") used to control the "turnouts". (Both the points and the semaphore signals are "turnouts" as far as the program's concerned.) At the moment the logix routines simply sense whether the lever is on or off and move the relevant point or signal accordingly. In due course I can add to these routines to make them conditional on the state of other levers and hence do the interlocking. But for now I'm just going to get the frame set up, then clear up the mess and back to the modelling.

 

It may not be obvious from the photos below, but this so far is a lot simpler. Most of the wires are simply the supplied wiring harness from the levers to the PCBs, For each level two wires connect from the PCB to the AIU, one to the ground, one to each sensor input on the AIU. (There are 14 on each unit). The wiring from the levers is arranged so that when the lever is pulled back from its normal position (ie a signal is pulled "off" etc) the current is on and the sensor activated. The only slightly complicated bit of wiring is the facing point locks. I could have done these via the logix as above but that would have meant shelling out on another AIU unit. So instead, the current from the signal levers is routed through the contacts for the FPL lever; if the FPL lever is in the locked position that turns the current off and so moving the lever doesn't change the sensor.

 

The "shed" computer with JMRI running. (Also being used to control my Sonos music system.)

 

One thing I am being quite conscientious about is labeling the wires, in case on becomes detached I can work out where it went

 

The NCE AIU, a bit of kit that converts the lever position into something JMRI can use. The red LED indicates that a lever has been pulled back from its normal position.

 

So far so good...except...the lever I just wired up wasn't working correctly, it wouldn't lock in position. The beauty though of using these DCC concepts levers is I can just unscrew the adjacent levers and replace the faulty one, not have to mess around trying to fix a bit in a mechanical frame.

 

Hopefully the above is not too technical! Any questions I can try and answer but I'm by no means an expert in this!!

 

Thanks for looking

 

Jon

[The Great Bear]

Finally, all signals, points and levers wired and working. Time for a train then...

 

First though, an overview of where the layout's got to - whilst it is tidy:

 

My "signalbox":

 

Levers set:

(The distant one doesn't do anything nor does the other one with the masking tape, both off stage but included to give the complete frame and in case I add them later somewhere.)

 

And now the train:

(Had better do something about the refuge siding starter post!)

 

 

 

 

 

The signals aren't perfect, some don't move as much as they ought and they seem to wander a bit despite adjusting the servo controllers but I'm going to stop worrying about that for now and get on with the scenics and hopefully keep things tidy enough to run some trains.

 

(By the way, my photo hosting company's site is running slowly at the moment so hopefully these photos appear ok, in reasonable time.)

 

Thanks for looking

 

Jon

[Twright]

Truly amazing work

[The Great Bear]

A couple of photos of recent progress, finishing the stationmaster's house, adding scenery to the up side and details to down shelter building. The lamps are working lamps, from DCC Concepts.

 

 

 

On to tidy up and add scenery to the down side and sort out the goods yard.

 

Thanks for looking,

 

Jon

[NHY 581]

Sublime.

[The Great Bear]

I hope you have had a good Christmas, all. Thank you for following my progress - the "likes" and other feedback are encouraging and helpful and very much appreciated.

 

I've finally gotten around to finishing the goods shed, which was started well over a year ago, by adding the roof. I made a stab at modelling the roof trusses and purlins, as the latter can be seen in photos, sticking out through the top of the wall.

The trusses were done in card, the purlins are styrene strips.

 

Here's the finished building.

The facia board through which the purlins stick out proved to be a right pain as despite marking things out I'd not fixed the purlins equally and so had to cut out the slots and fiddle by trial and error. In hindsight I should have made this bit first then fixed the purlins.

 

As can be seen I've also done some work on the goods yard surface and the inset track that runs across it. Also, yesterday I made the cattle dock. For that I had intended to use the Ratio one and indeed bought such. The dock isn't clearly shown in any of the photos I have but the fencing appeared to be 4 rail wood fencing not the concrete posts and steel rails of the Ratio model so I ended up only using the gates from that. Rather wasteful, but the other bits have been stored away for use on any future layout.

The points need a bit of work, adding a bit more ash ballast and painting/weathering. Despite a lot of trial and error mixing a bespoke brew I am not convinced about the colour of the yard or the texture. (The surface is DAS with a few sprinkles of fine ballast on the wet paint.) I need to add some variety - some experimentation called for. In the meantime any tips would be most welcome. Despite searching on here it's not something covered widely - yes found some threads eg http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/98889-goods-yard-das-clay-question/  which are a start.

 

I've had a go at the inset track where the various sidings and cross the access to the station building. Close inspection does it no favours! The track running next to the goods shed I simply painted the ash ballast my earth colour. I am minded to do the same with the points in front of the goods shed up to where it joins the bay line (which is ballasted normally.)

 

Finally, here's an overview of progress.

 

Aside from trying to improve the surface of the yard, the next steps will be to add the scenery leading up to the station on the inside of layout ie the bottom left of the above photo.

 

Once again, thanks for the interest shown and I wish you all a happy new year.

 

All the best

 

Jon

[john flann]

Jon, just seen this thread of yours and thoroughly enjoyed following it through.

 

A very credible story as are the scenics nicely done. I've also admired your workmanship in the signalling department.

 

I look forward to seeing the continued process.

 

Every good wish for 2016.

 

John.

[The Stationmaster]

Jon,

 

I'm not sure if the sprinkled sand works - looks far too big to me.  Some sort of texture in the paint might be better or indeed when we think about it is there actually anything in a goods yard ground surface which is big enough to show up individually when reduced to 4mm scale.  I'm not at all sure of the answer but first, I think, should come the question - sorry.

[The Great Bear]

I've started on the final bit of scenery, to the "south" of the station, including the bacon factory. Below are some shots of the work in progress, testing things out with a draft print of the backscene and a mock up of the factory.

This section is on the lifting flap and the backscene is a removable section. To the right, my old loudspeakers will support shelves for much needed storage space above the end of the storage tracks.

 

I will make the factory a couple of centimetres smaller in the final version to give a bit more room on the baseboard in front of it, but I don't want to reduce it too much to keep the proportions of the building right and keep its impact, it was a large building.

 

A couple of ground level shots just to get handle on how things look close up

The trees I hasten to add are not my work but Elm trees bought from the Model Tees Shop.

 

 

As there wasn't a bridge in this location, there's no ready made scenic break. but with a bit of tweaking and detailing the way I've done it doesn't look too bad, I think.

 

The hanging basket liner grass needs a trim. What also is readily apparent is that this lot is a different colour from the stuff used before, despite being the same make. A lot of the stuff in the shops now doesn't seem to look like grass at all, this was the best I could find. In hindsight should have bought in bulk when I got the original supplies. So, I'm going to have to resort to colouring this somehow. Initial goes with aerosol spray paint (Ford Laurel Green, Ford Juice Green) have looked a bit too bright/not dark enough and generally clumsy. Some more experimentation is in order. I'm pretty happy with the colour of the rest of the cuttings so if I can I'd rather fix this bit, plus less risk of messing things up. I don't have an airbrush, well not yet. I've been putting off getting one, thinking I'll make a mess, but this might force my hand. Any ideas as to how to fix this area would be welcome, what colours to use.

 

Aside from the grass colour, this area I think is coming together.

Edited January 10, 2016 by The Great Bear

[The Stationmaster]

Jon would acrylic work on that material?