Westcombe

[Matt Roe]

Hi everyone,

 

Been lurking on here for the last 9 months or so, found this site on my return to modelling after a gap of about 15 years - thought it was about time I joined in!

 

Background

 

My entrance to the hobby started on my 8th birthday with the Hornby Midnight Freight set, and that started 10 years of modelling and trains...

 

In 1996 once I'd finished my GCSEs I dismantled my 8-year-old 5' x 6' round-and-round layout and set about cannibalising all the parts into a 6' x 1.5' end to end affair - by the time I went to university I had got as far as building the control panel and motorising all the points - it didn't get much further, and spent most of the time in the storage area of the loft.

 

Last summer my brother decided to embark on his first layout (as kids our Dad seemed to think it necessary to ban him from the hobby!) For both of us space is limited, and for this reason my brother chose N, but with plenty of stock in my parents loft I stuck with the familiar 00.

 

Back in the autumn I took a trip to my parents and duly collected all the railway bits from the loft, much to my Dad's enthusiasm - I think he just likes looking at all the empty space!

 

Once I'd got all the bits home I set about powering up the boards and then remembered what a pain cleaning track was - when I had found the trusty Peco track rubber it didn't take too long before I got the tracks shining and trains running again.

 

Being an inquisitive technical sort of person (it helps when you earn your crust as and Electronics Engineer!) I was keen to see what all the fuss was about with this new fangled DCC malarky. So I bought a Roco Multimaus from Ebay & popped down the local model shop to procure a handful of decoders to 'chip' my locos. After a bit of messing around with CVs etc I decided that DCC was definitely an improvement & I was hooked once again - let modelling commence!

 

A New Layout

 

Sadly I didn't take a picture of the old end-to-end layout (I took it apart a few weeks ago to make space in the office), but before Christmas it became apparent that Layout Number Three would be required - for primarily the following 2 reasons:

 

1) The layout was all Peco Code 100 flexitrack and I wanted to give Code 75 a go;

2) Whilst in my 16 year old mind a 6' x 1.5' end-to-end was ideal it needed 3' fiddle yards each end and my 31 year old brain told me that I would never in a million years have 12' of continuous space to have a layout - and even if I did, my wife would never let me keep a layout that big!

 

Plan

 

Prompted by my brother I realised that there is something quite endearing with a continuos run, and if done well it would be possible the have to great 'angles' and provide good scope for a variety of modelling. So a trip to Beer resulted in me picking up a copy of CJ Freezers classic '60 Track Plans for small locations' and after flicking through the pages for inspiration along with some messing around in AnyRail I came up with this:

 

 

It's based on Plan No. SP5 and I've modified it so that is slightly larger. The 4 boards will be slightly L shaped, to keep the length down to around 3'6" and to make the track cuts slightly easier. Overall it will be 5'6" square - or to be exact 1700mm square. It's designed to fit over a standard double bed, and will allow me to 'play trains' in the guest bedroom - when not in use I will stack it in a purpose built rack.

 

Track

 

I bought a load of Peco Code 75 back at the start of the year, most of the points have to be small radius to fit in the space. It will be DCC throughout with a main bus and dropper wires from the track. I plan to motorise points with slow action type motors, I initially had decided upon going with Traintronics, but have changed my mind several times and settled on Tortiose ones. I plan on using the Dapol motorised signals because they tick enough boxes for me.

 

Control

 

I'm happy with the Multimaus and like having a handheld controller with a good old fashioned rotary pot on it. I've got a cheap DCC booster from Tam Valley Depot that should be adequate to supply everything, with a laptop supply serving as the PSU. For the accessories I intend of using the DCC output from the Roco booster, along with a 16v ac bus to provide the 'grunt' for all the point motors, signals and lights.

 

Having seen nothing suitable on the market I plan to design my own DCC accessory decoder that will kind of do everything; it will control 4 slow action points, 4 Dapol style signals, and probably something like 16 lights. It will have route control, delays etc and hopefully make everything easy to control. Although slightly excessive I will have one of these DCC accessory 'motherboards' per board and just pick off what I need - I will build them myself so the cost will be low enough. By using a board-per-board I will only need to have a 8 pin DIN connecting baseboard to one other - simple ;-)

 

Baseboards

 

I will use a monocoque style construction for the baseboards - with Barry Norman style plywood beams for the sides and supports. 6mm birch ply with 12mm for the joining ends.

 

With the weather being so bad I've decided to take a few days off and make a start (after 9 months of planning!), so I picked up nearly £150 of birch ply today & look forward to making a start tomorrow!

 

I'll keep you posted on my progress...

 

Thanks for reading,

Matt

[jcm@gwr]

Hi Matt,

 

Welcome to the forum.

It's good to see another GWR modeller here.

Looking forward to the photos.

 

Good luck, Jeff

[Matt Roe]

Thanks Jeff.

 

I made a start last week - by first printing out a full size plan:

 

 

and decided that it all looked good and so I'd best make a start.

 

After figuring out all the relevant measurements I set about cutting up a load of 2"x1" and some strips of 6mm ply. I made up a couple of the simplest side beams and was impressed with the result:

 

 

I pinned and glued the beams together and once the glue had dried I was surprised at it's strength! I picked up a second hand 05 Jack plane and so planed do the top and bottom faces of the beams. I then cut the 12mm end plates for the boards and set about fitting the C+L Baseboard Dowels.

 

 

I had heard that they were tricky to fit, but thought I'd give it a go. I had to use a 1" Forsner bit instead of 25mm because Axminster Tools had run out of the 25mm ones, and used a hand drill on the first set and (probably because I rushed things) found it had to get a smooth alignment. WIth a bit of help from a friend with a workshop we managed to sort things out, and we used a bench drill to make the rest of the holes. After trying several methods, for the quickest and accurate fit I found it best to fit the female half (the hole) first with screws and then epoxy the male half in with 5 minute stuff. Clamp it all together, leave it overnight and then drill the pilot holes and screw in the male half.

 

Took a lot longer than expected, but that included drilling & cutting some slots for the wiring connectors to go through, a 6mm backing plate is fixed to one side so that the mating socket can be fixed in place.

 

 

Now - hopefully I'll find some time to make some more beams in the next week or so!

 

Thanks for reading,

Matt

[Jules]

Look forward to seeing this develop - can't have too many GW layouts! Like the baseboard construction - I will have to give that style a go next time I build a layout.