Wynsloe Road - layout design changed and thread moved

[Ray H]

More recent posts on the follow up design can be found here. 

 

The C J Freezer layout design that I'm trying to use as the base for a small portable layout - SP48, from 60 Plans for Small Railways - incorporates a three road sector plate, hidden behind the backscene.

 

I'm trying to compress the design to fit onto two 4ft long boards and also want to add a couple of additional hidden storage roads behind the station.

 

My first attempt at doing so used a "Y" point immediately adjacent to the sector plate with one arm leading to the scenic section and the other to the additional storage sidings (again hidden behind the backscene) as shown below.

 

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Having printed the layout plan full size and populated it with some rolling stock it is clear that it needs further enhancement. The first involves the fiddle yard where I think the Y point adjacent to the traverser needs to be replace with plain (curve) track leading to the scenic section.

 

Logic suggests that having laid the sector plate tracks and aligned them to the exit road (roughly in line with the centre track of the sector plate), I should then be able to add a second exit track (connecting to the two hidden storage roads behind the station) that effectively aligns with the sector plate track nearest to the baseboard edge when the centre track of the sector plate is aligned with the main exit track.

 

I've seen a layout with a single track sector plate that has numerous exit tracks but I don't recall seeing a multi track sector plate with more than one exit track. Has anyone achieved this and did it require anything specific to do so?

 

Other deficiencies noted include a bay platform that is not long enough to accommodate a 2-car DMU and allow access to the adjacent siding. I can lengthen the bay road but that will limit room for the station building - the adajcent siding has the cattle dock but I propose to use it to store coaching stock at times as well. The road to the shed is also too shot to accommodate shed and coaling stage and the signal box I plan to use is a bit of a tight fit. The signal box is a bit of a squeeze as well and the platform needs widening but I need to sort the sector plate out first!

[Sam*45110*SVR]

Now I'm no expert but if it was me I'd move the shed to the far left and put the goods shed on a spur from the coal line into some of the open space at the front. A quick couple of minutes on paint shows what I mean.

[Ray H]

Thanks for the suggestions. At the moment the scenic part of the layout is taking a temporary back seat to the fiddle yard design because I need to have that design correct so that I know how much space I have for the scenic area and how the scenic break will be arranged.

 

I have aspirations that the layout may at some stage in the future hit the exhibition trail. As a result and having operated a colleague's layout at shows I'm very conscious of the oft pregnant pause between train movements whilst casettes are changed or in my colleagues case whilst the train exits the scenic section stage left onto a sector plate, the sector plate's position is changed, the loco is moved to the other end of the train manually (ready for a later move), the train is then driven along the back of the layout into one of three hidden sidings, sidings which are covered in part of the scenery and thus not a practical place to swap the loco from one end of a train to another. The route is reset for the next train to propel out of the hidden sidngs along the back ofthe layout onto the sector plate, the sector plate is again re-aligned and a train finally returns to the scenic part of the layout, possibly as much as a couple of minutes after the last one left.

 

Getting away with that kind of interval without a train movement on a large layout may just be possible as the veiwer has a much wider area to survey. However, on a short layout where the scenic area is about one square metre, I doubt it will always be possible to hold the veiwer's attention for that time - especially that if the younger viewers. This is why I want to have as much stock readily available on the baseboards as is practical. Hence my desire to add the extra fiddle yard sidings remote from the three road sector plate - and I'm not yet totally convinced that the sector plate won't grow to have four roads so that there's even less of an excuse not to have a train ready to depart almost as soon as is reasonably possible after the previous one arrives without the whole thing looking like Liverpool Street's infamous jazz service! It may not be prototypical but I am a firm believer in keeping things moving to keep the viewer interested. With that in mind I am still seeking confirmation that it is possible to have two tracks leading to a multi road sector plate with trains able to move freely over both aligned routes without difficulty.

 

I had thought of moving the goods shed to the other end of the layout but then realised that the coal yard would probably need to be vacated just to shunt the goods shed. I can alter the angle of the bridge if I get rid of the "Y" point adjacent to the sector plate - I can't think of a show stopping reason for part of the bridge not spanning the bottom left corner of the sector plate. I think this should improve the alignment of the bridge and also ease the positioning of the signal box.

 

As mentioned above I envisage the siding at the back of the bay being used regulalry for a carriage siding which leaves me having to find a home for the cattle dock. The stub siding in front of the main platform at the station building end was my prime candidate for that although CJF seems to suggst have the goods shed there (albeit alongside and not over the track) and the bottom most siding being just more wagon storage space. Presumably, wagons would be exchanged between the two sidings possibly using a loco otherwise just running around a set of coaches to do the odd shunt.

 

The more I think about the operational scope of the layout the more I like the design. I can leave the cattle dock where CJF intended and I can then use the coaching stock that would otherwise be stabled on the siding to run market day only passenger trains whilst the cattle are being unloaded or loaded on the dock!

[Brian D]

Ray,

Isn't the run-round length on the loop a little restrictive in terms of the number of wagons you can run round and then shunt into the goods shed (I have indicated the section in red) or is that part of the plan? - i.e. an aweful lot of shunting.  Alternatively, the goods shed siding needs to face the same way as the coal yard and factory but I still see this run round limit as restrictive (or am I missing something).

Regards,

Brian.

[Ray H]

I started off with the idea that I'd plan around small radius Streamline points to save space but having printed the full size plan and populated it with a few bits of rolling stock I began to have doubts that chopping one foot off CJF's original idea was a practical proposition.

 

Throw in about £110 (minimum) for points, probably half that again for plain track not to mention the cost of the baseboards and the costs starts to mount. Then I looked a little closer at the collection of medium radius points that I had all but rejected from an earlier layout. They weren't perhaps in as bad condition as I thought.

 

 

Furthermore, I'd dearly like to be able to run 3 coach trains plus small tender engine. An eight foot long layout looks less and less attractive. The picture shows the tight squeeze to get two coaches in the bay, the narrowness of the platform as initially designed and the problems locating the engine shed.

 

I'd already noted Sam's suggestion of repositioning the Goods & Engine sheds but hadn't spotted the resultant shrunken loop so thanks for spotting that. I was beginning to wonder whether freight trains would prototypically arrive at the platform, run round and then shunt from there because I think any compressed platform length is liable to create an even more compressed run round loop.

 

Mix all this lot in a pot and the result is an ongoing attempt to revisit the plan based on three baseboards rather than two and to extend CJF's original plan rather than compress it. After all, if I need to have three baseboards I might as well have them as long as I can.

[Chimer]

Provided the end of the curve from the station is parallel to the track from the hidden sidings on the left, and the tracks on the traverser (which is what you've drawn though you call it a sector plate) are the same distance apart, it should work OK, though you'll need to think about how you feed the power to the tracks on the traverser (unless you go DCC I suppose).  But don't forget you need to be able to push the traverser far enough forward to allow the back track to engage with the track to the station - on your plan it looks as though that isn't quite possible, and you need  to move the backscene and the factory forward a couple of inches. 

 

Hope this helps ....

[Ray H]

It is a sector plate even though I've not shown the ends of the two outside sidings curved - I wasn't too sure how to do this to get the right radii on the curved ends in AnyRail.

 

I'm reasonably confident that it will work and the fact that the two tracks off the sector plate need to be further apart provides room for the backscene supports. I was just fishing to see if anyone has done anything similar before I try to re-invent the wheel so to speak.

[Ray H]

 

Here's a quick re-think, again based on small radius points and sticking within the 8ft overall length, I've even managed to shave a couple of inches off the width.

 

The vertical line in the centre is the baseboard join and shows that there needs to be some further adjustment to ensure points don't span that baseboard join.

 

The Goods Shed, Loco Shed and Signal Box are now to scale based on RTP items (or kits) that I'm thinking of using.

 

The Loco Shed is still not in an ideal place. One possible option could be to change the adjacent right hand point with a left hand point facing the opposite way but this could make the layout seem even more overcrowded than it is because the loco shed would then be opposite the platform.

 

I've (possibly temporarily) removed the bridge which CJF uses as a scenic break because I'm worried that the road gradient may be too steep if used in the manner CJF shows. That said, it could be re-instated to scan the entire layout (rather than just the scenic break that CJF shows) with a track down from the bridge to the coal yard. I did have an idea of having a restricted loading gauge under the arch over the factory siding so that I could only shunt with small locos, I still like that idea but I think it would look strange if the same dimensions weren't then used for the coal siding arch.

 

I have yet to decide how to show the station building because there is little room left by the time the bay platform has been extended to accommodate a two car DMU. I'm not sure whether the design lends itself to a station in a cutting with the station building at a highter level (reached by bridge from the platform) and the backscene effectively being a retaining wall although that idea would allow me to have a road with low relief buildings over the extra storage sidings behind the station. Would that not then seal the fate of the layout - it would have to be urban rather than rural?

 

The next task will be to see what thinks look like using medium radius points many of which I think I have in stock.

[Ray H]

 

Here's the latest version, still with two 4ft long boards. The width has crept back to 2ft but the points all now have a minimum radius of 3ft and except for the curved point providing access to the loco shed I won't need to buy any.

 

The downside is that the layout won't take anything more than a two coach train and loco (possibly with a tail van).

 

I've extended the factory so that it now hides the scenic break and avoid the complication of the bridge.

 

I'm not convinced about the position of the loco shed but anywhere else (that I could thinlk of) would compromise the lengths of sidings. That said, I probably wouldn't have a loco shed at all save for the fact that I made up an old Airfix kit that I found in the loft when I started modelling again. It is/was my first (and so far only) attempt at weathering of a building and I reckon that the safest place for it is on a layout!

[jon_1066]

What about putting the engine shed where the topmost siding is above the station?  Straighten that siding and put the engine shed on it.  The current engine shed location could then become the coal yard and you could add a cattle dock where the coal yard currently resides.

[Ray H]

What about putting the engine shed where the topmost siding is above the station?  Straighten that siding and put the engine shed on it.  The current engine shed location could then become the coal yard and you could add a cattle dock where the coal yard currently resides.

 

Thanks for the idea. I was thinking of using that siding for stabling parcels stock on from time to time, moving it into the bay when I wanted to access the cattle dock. I supose it wouldn't be unheard of to put a cattle wagon or two in the siding and then put a parcels vehicle on on top thereof. I presume cattle wagons only used the cattle dock for short periods and were seldom berthed adjacent to the dock for long periods or even overnight.

 

I did also think about putting the loco shed adjacent to the top siding (in front of the back scene) but the required extra point would severely reduce the already limited length of the siding so I discounted that option.

[Chimer]

Returning to the sector plate issue .....

 

It is a sector plate even though I've not shown the ends of the two outside sidings curved - I wasn't too sure how to do this to get the right radii on the curved ends in AnyRail.

I'm reasonably confident that it will work and the fact that the two tracks off the sector plate need to be further apart provides room for the backscene supports. I was just fishing to see if anyone has done anything similar before I try to re-invent the wheel so to speak.

 

Now I can see why you were wondering if it would work - I certainly can't sort out the geometry in my head.  I think it might be possible if the sector plate rotated about the centre, but then you'ld have issues with the right hand end swinging into the scenery when the bottom track was accessing the extra hidden sidings.

 

Going back to my original misapprehension, it would be far far easier if you did use a traverser!!  All nice straight lines .........

[Ray H]

Snip

 

Going back to my original misapprehension, it would be far far easier if you did use a traverser!!  All nice straight lines .........

 

My concern with the use of a traverser is the potential to have two tracks loaded with stock over-hanging the front of the layout when the traverser is set to link the traverser track nearest the factory to the track to the extra storage sidings near the front edge of the layout. Equally, a traverser potentially takes a lot more setting up than a sector plate. The traverser mechanism also adds more weight to the layout. That said, a traverser would mean one less point and provide a little extra storage because the outside of the two extra storage tracks could align directly to the traverser.

 

To set up the sector plate I think that I need to lay the track to the scenic part of the layout first. I'd then lay the centre track on the sector plate so that it is straight and aligned with the track on the main baseboard. The sector plate pivot point would be on the centre line of this track.

 

The second sector plate track is laid parallel to the first from the pivot point end until fairly close to the scenic section end of the sector plate. This track then needs curving away from its centre line (and from the centre track) such that when fixed the end aligns with the track on the main baseboard without infringing the minimum radius curve dimension of the curved part of the track on the sector plate.

 

The second track on the sector plate is left aligned to the (initial) track on the main baseboard to allow the track to the extra sidings to be laid and aligned to the sector plate's centre track.

 

The sector plate's centre track is then re-aligned to the original track on the baseboard so that the third track can now be laid on the sector plate in a similar manner to the second. This final sector plate track is initially aligned with the track to the extra sidings.

[Ray H]

I just cannot settle on a plan. Every time I think I'm there I find a reason to alter it, sometimes only minimally, others quite drastic.

 

For example, facing some enforced rest in an effort to resolve a swollen leg problem I have been sat in front of the PC all day today. I made one false start on a plan with a distinct relationship to Andrew's Glen Roy, found something else to do for a while and later picked up CJF's small plans book intent on having another look at the plan above. Unfortunately I opened the book at an L shape plan not too dissimilar to that below. I tweaked it to replace the shed and turntable with some additional siding space to give me more opportunities for shunting and having added a couple of factory sidings in front of the fiddle yard didn't like the idea of a fiddle yard tucked away in a corner behind said factory.

 

As a result the plan below has been developed. The station board side of the U is 8ft long, (and 18ins wide), the factory side is 7ft by 1ft and the fiddle yard a shade over 7ft by 1ft (depending on how much I can encroach upon the space over the domestic manager's desk!

 

 

I have a few ideas and a few questions.

 

The branch track disappears behind the factory (or possibly a bit sooner). I'm minded to have the branch track on a slight downward gradient from the station and the track to the factory sidings on a slight upward gradient to break up the flat earth look of the layout. Does this seem a sensible idea or am I simply storing up possible problems for the future?

 

John Flann's system for freight handling on his Hintock layout has a certain attraction. I think it works for him because he has a number of siding berths for his wagons, recently suggesting that he could have up to 40 wagons on the layout (and over half on the scenic section). I added the factory to give me an excuse to run more than just the daily pick-up freight (or two) although I suppose that I could make that the Goods shed area and have a factory alongside the track in the top right corner.

 

My current thinking is to have the coal yard in the relatively short siding a the right hand end of the station run round loop.

 

CJF seems to favour locating cattle docks at the end of the siding parallel to the bay platform although I have seen them at the end of the siding at the left hand end of the station run round loop. However, I was thinking of using this siding space as a parcels bay. In the plan cribbed from CJF's book this siding is used as the coal yard. That seems odd to me with the prospect of coal dust being blown across onto the platform. Was there more than an isolated example of this arrangement (if at all)?

 

There is space to add a further siding towards the front of the layout. It would add further scope for shunting but it would cramp a design that is already quite busy. Any views on this?

 

The layout will somewhere in the north Bucks area where I can take advantage of the close proximity of Wolverton Works (in the early sixties) to run a wide variety of stock on running in turns - I believe Wolverton had stopped dealing with locos by that time but I plan to use a bit of modeller's licence to surmount that problem and the occasional appearance of the London Midland liveried Class 153 that I think has a most attractive livery (which is why I bought one)!

 

My models (including some bought since then) haven't turned a wheel since the autumn of 2012 so I'm desperate to get something built as soon as I'm a tad more mobile so that I can run some trains again.

 

The latest plan is a shade larger than I originally thought of although the baseboard surface area isn't that much greater. I should still go in a car if needed but the U shape may make it a non-starter on the exhibition circuit if the standard of the layout every reached that high.

 

Comments and suggestions would be welcome.

 

Many thanks

[Ray H]

 

I hope I'm there now, at least I plan to start building baseboards within the next few days unless  the vibes are negative from this esteemed audience.

 

Part of the reason why I've stalled for so long is that I couldn't decide whether to go for an end to end or a continuous layout. Having been bitten by the exhibiting bug since rekindling my interest in model railway operation (and, hopefully, scenery!), I've been trying to arrive at a design that would fit the space that I have and yet will be available for exhibiting if it actually gets to a suitable standard. This has been tempered with somewhere that I can run trains continuously for testing and just watching trains go by, perhaps when doing a bit of other model related work.

 

Until now I have been unable to get anywhere combining the two. And then I thought of a colleague's small through station on a 4' x 2' board, a layout that I have recently been helping him exhibit. It features a through platform track with short (goods) bay, a run round/passing loop with no adjacent platform and a further short siding. The layout comes with a cassette based fiddle yard at each end and fits into 9' (and his small Kia car!). That was the starting point for my latest attempt.

 

I basically have a 7' sq. space although I reckon I can stretch the sides slightly. I started with a 3rd radius curve positioned as close to the outside edge of each of the side baseboards as I dare (but within the original 7' dimension). I then added a point where the curves will split into the platform and loop roads. The platform road was randomly set at a very large radius - which I can't now remember, and the positions of the curves & points adjusted about the curve's centres until all was joined.

 

I then added the loop track before inserting further points for the various sidings, one of which has a further siding off it. To my surprise I only needed a little tweaking to avoid the (station) baseboard joins. I've set these baseboards at 3' 6" x 1' 6". I printed out the track plan on scrap paper using Templot and then tried populating it with trains and a few cardboard buildings or Metcalfe models left over from previous abandoned attempts (and not necessarily going to figure in this attempt).

 

A little further tweaking and a couple of partial reprints and we have the plan above.

 

The whole thing has recently been flipped so that I have the option of reducing the length of the top right baseboard as it currently overhangs the Domestic Manager's desk by far too much. There will be an access flap below this on the right - it may just be possible to pick out a possible location of the two hinges in the plan, at the top of the board. The next board down was originally not going to be scenic but the scenic area boundary will now end at the lifting flap. The end of the middle siding (bottom right) is where I propose to put the Goods Shed and the lower siding will be a small coal yard. The other siding is just for general storage.

 

The last siding, bottom left, was originally going to be a small factory and may yet still be but I have more recently been thinking of it being a small oil terminal. It can hold four wagons clear of the adjacent point. The lower left hand side board will also be scenic and one of the two side boards will include a rail over road bridge - the other possibly a road over rail bridge. The upper right hand side board will probably also be scenic although the jury is still out on that.

 

The fiddle yard is possibly still the one fly in the ointment. I'm reasonably happy with what is shown, I can pass trains if I want there and I have enough storage for eight trains - the platform will take a large diesel, three Mk 1 coaches and a (scale!) 50ft full brake which is way above the three coaches that I was originally hoping to accommodate. The fiddle yard can also accommodate similar and the siding space is matched reasonably closely on either side of the through roads. I've had a traverser before but I think this like cassettes, which need manhandling after each train move, is what has caused layouts using these to fail to hold my interest in the past. With the present design I simply change a point or two and a train can be routed.

 

And here's the sneaky bit. The lower two side boards are matched size wise as are the bottom two (station) boards. I can remove them from the layout, add exhibition only cassettes of whatever length I wish and an exhibition manager will accept and I have a layout that I hope can exhibit. The down side then is that the layout can have no back scene otherwise it can't be viewed from inside the operating well at home and outside at an exhibition.

 

The layout's title gives a hint of the approximate proposed location on the Oxford - Bletchley line.

 

The shaded area on the left is a window ledge that is almost at intended layout height and must therefore be avoided.

 

Once again, views and comments would be appreciated.

[hartleymartin]

Going back to your first plan, you might be able to get a little more length in the bay roads by using the Peco asymetrical 3-way point.

 

Coming off the loco release road, I suggest that you use a peco small radius leading into a peco short wye point. Off this point would be the road leading to the goods shed and then another siding can be run off the run-around loop which would lead to a dock road for the goods shed.

 

The point in front of the signal box should be a wye point.

 

I prefer trying to use as many different sizes of point on a model railway. If everything is all a little too consistent, it seems to look wrong. If all the points are different sizes, it seems to just look right for some reason. Perhaps we subconsciously know that if track formations are all uniform, then we know that they were all off-the-shelf items laid together.

 

A bit like ensuring that no two wagons are identical.