Hundred Acre Sidings and Hazelgrove Junction

[MichaelW]

Back in February I travelled up to Scotland to visit Model Rail Scotland for the first time in many many years.  As part of the nostalgia trip, I rejoined the 009 Society after a break of several years.  Jump forward a couple of months and I was helping a friend (also a member of the 009 Society) operate his 009 layout at the York show, and talk turned to the local group.  I was quickly persuaded to attend their next meeting, so the following weekend I turned up to see what they were up to.  Pretty soon I got involved in discussing a plan for a modular layout, and a promise that I would get involved and build a module.  Or two.  

 

Jump forward a couple of months and when I arrived at the next meeting sat across the end of the hall was a row of 8 (I think...) modules.  After a little bit of discussion, I ended up with two modules, and the opportunity to plan out the basic electrics for each module and the connections.  By the time I'd driven over to my girlfriend's that evening I'd got a basic plan for the modules.  She was a little surprised when I arrived with a couple of boxes with track in, and promptly christened them track-in-a-box!  

 

Having got them home I played around with some oddments of track recovered from a previous project, and came up with a couple of track plans.  I took advantage of a trip to B&Q to get a couple of tester pots of suitably coloured paint, so track-in-a-box became track-in-a-box-with-sky!

 

So, the thoughts for the pair of modules are to do one as a fairly simple junction, but as there will be no continuation of the apparent 'mainline' to scenic it as an abandoned line, with the stub of the junction being used as a siding serving the local farm (so an area by the track for carts / tractor & trailer to sit, perhaps a ramp for cattle).  For want of a better name I've christened it Hazelgrove Junction (perhaps the nameboard will be just visible in the undergrowth...), and the track will look something like this (oops, just noticed that the track into the backscene had been moved before I took the photo):

 

 

The second module I want to have a bit more interest, so will have a loop and some sidings off it.  I envision it serving some industry or other, tempting to make it a timber yard of some description (either raw logs being loaded, with scope for some goods traffic for incoming supplies; or a saw-mill, with scope for logs in, cut timber out, wood-chip out, and some goods traffic again; or something else entirely.  It's a bit trickier to fit everything in, but I think a plan like this would be good:

 

[Physicsman]

Evening Michael.

 

Just noticed you'd started this thread so popped over to see what you were upto!

 

Good to see your modelling mojo is on the up. Have you still got the 4MT?

 

Jeff

[MichaelW]

Morning Jeff!  Thanks for the first reply

 

You're right, I am starting to get enthusiastic about modelling again, and the small size of these modules (they're only about 2'6" by 1') means I may actually finish one at some point!  

 

The 4MT is still about, it had a trip out to the club the other week and had a trip around the DCC layout there (it did look out of place among the modern diesels), I don't think it'll make an appearance on here, but I do keep sketching out plans for possible 4mm layouts to run it on.  One day...

 

Some progress on the modules - I've managed to lay the cork, these sunny afternoons when it's too hot to do anything are useful for getting on with stuff.  Today will be marking out for the track, maybe a bit of painting of the boxes if I get the chance...

[MichaelW]

I managed to get the outside of the modules painted in the end.  Having gone looking for a dark colour (ideally black) I found something slightly different to try:

 

 

Yes, it is supposed to be purple!  It needs a second coat (in fact, I've done a second coat on one end, and it does make a big difference, and it looks wonderful!) but you can already see the depth of the colour.  

 

Not much progress inside, but I did find time to mark out where the track needs to run at each end of the modules.  As seen at Hundred Acre Sidings:

 

 

The markings are there for two reasons - one to make sure that the track ends up in the right place at each end of the module, secondly so I can make sure it goes back in the right place when I decide to lay it for the final time - having had droppers soldered on, and holes drilled for point motors etc...

 

 

Edited to add the (correct!) second photo.

[MichaelW]

Having been away for a weekend, I came back with many sketches of how to treat the modules scenically.  The best pair can be seen in the photo:

 

 

Hundred acre sidings will be a logging camp, with a log pile, some sort of hut for office / mess room etc. and plenty of bits of wood strewn about the place.  The kick back siding will be for off-loading goods, or filling wagons with wood-chip or stacks of brash.  The two main sidings will have a crane between them to allow the wagons to be loaded.

 

Hazelgrove Junction (the diagram on the right) will be much more rural in character, with plenty of grass etc in sight.  The branch line will disappear into the undergrowth, with room for 2 or 3 wagons on relatively clear grass for the farmers to load (or unload) with their produce.  Some hardstanding around the siding will give space for tractors / carts to get to the wagons, and a cattle ramp will allow the farmers to use the cattle wagons I've been building...

[MichaelW]

A real burst of enthusiasm (two posts in two days!) has lead to a significant amount of progress on Hazelgrove Junction.  So much so that I forgot to take photos till almost the end.  I began the day with a painted box, cork in place, and an idea of a track plan.  With a little bit of effort, I got the track fitting as I wanted, and started adding droppers to the bottom of the rails.  I decided to try a new technique with the track this time - as there are quite a few curves in the track, rather than use track pins to hold it in place, I used the droppers.  I did have to add an extra couple of droppers to the track to help hold it in place, but it seems to have worked quite well.  With the track restrained, I could attack it with paint.  First of all a coating of grey primer:

 

 

Then a good spray with Halfords camouflage brown, with a little bit of khaki to provide a bit of relief.

 

 

Once this has had a chance to dry, we can carry on and add some ballast...

[MichaelW]

Even more enthusiasm on Sunday meant I made a lot more progress with the modules.  I started the day with a little bit of track cutting and laying, finishing up with a complete track plan for Hundred Acre Sidings:

 

 

The wagons were there to check the smoothness of the track - turns out I didn't do too badly with the laying.  

 

Having been out in the garden creating big piles of weeds for a couple of hours, I carried on with soldering droppers onto the bottom of the track, and drilling holes in the baseboard for the droppers and point motors.  For motors I prefer to drill a large hole under the tie-bar, and then disguise it with a piece of paper - this way you don't have to be too accurate with the initial hole (though that doesn't mean I didn't have to re-drill one that 'moved' in the initial drilling).  This resulted in the top looking like this:

 

 

And just to prove the droppers are in place at this time:

 

 

Post lunch I took advantage of the lovely weather to do a bit more painting, first a coat of primer:

 

 

Whilst that was drying, I had a look at Hazelgrove Junction.  Lifting the track off we can see two things - the droppers soldered onto the bottom of the track, and the unpainted sleeper shadow on the trackbed:

 

 

I quite like the method that Larry used on his Greenfield layout for ballasting, so the next step is to liberally spread pva over the track bed:

 

 

With droppers already soldered on, putting the track back is slightly frustrating as you have to get all the droppers in the holes - if you're not careful the first ones you put in pop back out before you get the last ones in place.  Eventually all the droppers are in place and you can push the track home:

 

 

Finally, a covering of ballast, carefully tamped with a finger, is added, and it starts to look a bit more like a bit of railway:

 

 

Back outside, the primer on Hundred Acre Sidings had dried, so it got attacked with a good covering of Brown spray paint, followed by a little bit of relief provided by a light drift of Khaki - though that seems to have mostly landed on the baseboard, not the track.  I did make one mistake in the painting, I forgot to set the points to ensure the white of the paper wouldn't show that badly, I should have changed the points after the primer so the area under the tiebar got at least a little bit of paint.  Oh well, I'll just have to touch it up later:

 

 

Finally, with the aid of a sock over the end of the hoover, I tidied up the ballast on Hazelgrove Junction.  Now, with the thick plastic sleepers of the Peco track, this method does leave the track floating on top of the ballast bed, but at least this is a start (and I find it makes the rest of the ballasting easier to do).

 

 

[MichaelW]

As I said at the beginning, I've been allowed to plan out the electrics for the modules, part of which is defining the connections between the boards.  As the modules are being done as DC, this is a little more complicated than a pair of single core jumpers that the DCC crowd allegedly get away with.  After quite a bit of thought, I've come up with a plan, and with a little more, a way to wire the modules so there is plenty of scope for interesting operation.  

 

This evening I put that plan into action for Hazelgrove Junction, and built the wiring loom for it.  I think this loom will be repeated on each module, so a little thought and care tonight should mean it's a lot easier next time.  So the bottom of the module now looks like this:

 

 

Now all I need to do is connect all those lovely droppers to something useful...

[MichaelW]

It's been a while since I've done an update, and for a change that's mostly due to spending time working on the modules.  So what have I been up to?  Well, on Hazelgrove Junction I have completed the wiring, both on the board:

 

 

And for the control panel:

 

 

This was then quickly tested with my last purchase:

 

 

Hundred Acre Sidings have also progressed to a similar state, firstly with ballast being applied:

 

 

Despite using the same technique as on the other module, the ballasting doesn't look anywhere near as good:

 

 

Underneath the wiring has been completed, this one looking rather more complicated:

 

 

And a control panel built:

 

 

These were completed just in time (as in, the soldering iron was still warm when I packed it) for the South Yorkshire group's August meeting, where we had 4 modules with track and electrics lined up.  At first we were happily running trains on our own modules, and after a bit of removing paint from my track, that included running trains between my two modules.  Having decided that the track on one end of Hundred Acre Sidings was set too low, a quick shuffle of modules meant we got a level joint, and could run a train across three modules (not under a single control, but still...).  No photos I'm afraid, my camera didn't seem to be able to believe what it was seeing, and blurred everything!