Seasons Change

[MIB44]

Looking back now I realise that it was Christmas 2004 when I first bought a Hornby 'Thomas The Tank' trainset for my son and used the track from it to construct a basic oval layout with a single siding. The board was oval and only just bigger than the first radius curve track, but I managed to fit a station, signal box, level crossing, water tower & coal yard on it. Two tunnel entrances and a small hill helped to disguise one of the curved ends and was complemented by some trees & undergrowth. As my son is severely disabled the layout included lots of lights, a steam sound generator and a pull operated relay switch to stop/start the trains.

 

Even though the layout was based on 1st radius track the width was a bit of a problem for storage and I often wished I had made it in two halfs (a pity as the board was acftually made from two pieces of chipboard screwed together on a 2x1" frame!). It lived in the spare room on top of a wardrobe for much of the year but we did enjoy the occaisonal running sessions when time allowed. Below is a picture of the final time we operated the layout before I stripped it down for parts for the new 'expanded' layout!!

 

 

 

Over the years other items of rolling stock had been purchased (Hornby RailRoad range), along with a Hornby 'Christmas Special' set that included an oval of 2nd radius track. The germ of an idea started to form about creating a larger twin track layout capable of running the greater variety of stock and split in to two longer, but thinner, boards.

 

After a busy summer construction finally started in December 2010 with a basic frame of 3x1" topped with some off-cuts of chipboard leftover from a house project.

 

 

 

After playing around with various combinations of points I settled on a plan that had a small engine servicing siding in one corner and a goods yard/cattle dock in the centre, with a cross-over to allow access between the loops. Track is all standard Hornby, laid on cork sheet and pinned down.

 

 

I wired the two loops seperately, along with a circuit for lighting, and brought these all back to a set of phono sockets on the front of the layout. My DC & DCC controllers all have Red phono plugs on them and the 12v accessory transformer has a White phono plug.

 

 

 

 

Metcalfe card tunnel & platform kits were then purchased and used to create the first tunnel mouth and a scratch-built cattle dock (using altered Ratio fencing) & coal stage (using the cut-down Peco coal stage from the first layout!) produced.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This brings us to about the end of January 2011, so I'll keep on adding to the post bit by bit until it gets back to 'real-time'!!

 

 

 

Thanks for looking.

 

 

 

Tim....