Brixington Town 2.0

[dale159]

Note - The first 14 and a bit pages of this thread detail my first attempt at a layout - Click here to skip to the first post of Brixington Town 2.0 started in April 2020.

 

 

 

Well, the time has finally arrived for me to make a start on my new layout based in our garage.

My new layout will measure 4800mm x 2320mm (about 15'8" x 7'8" in old money, I am building in metric because if i'd done it in imperial the layout would be 16 feet long which would leave me unable to open or close the garage door!) The boards for the layout measure 1200mm x 600mm of which there will be 3 on each side of the garage with the ends of the layout being formed of boards 600mm x 1160mm which narrow to just 200mm across the back wall and door, with a lift out section across the door.


Here is my plan as described above, there is currently no track plan as yet but I know roughly what I want to do. It is also my intention to make the layout exhibit-able when complete for which I also intend to construct a pair of 600mm boards to expand the width if at an exhibition, purely to give more operating space, and the reason the lifting section appears to be in two pieces across the door.


So here is the emptied garage with the walls painted white, a latex sealant paint on the floor, 3 new strip lights and a load of new shelves to take most of my stock on the left, the frame on the left is one I built a few months back as a sort of prototype board frame which I will modify to match the rest, I have previously built 6 of these for 2 work colleagues both of whom were very pleased with the finished product.

Board Construction

Boards are constructed using a 4x1 timber outer frame with 3 evenly spaced 1^1/2x1 cross members, top surfaces will be 9mm MDF.


Here is the prototype board, first modification is the 2 large holes in each end, done with a 63mm hole saw, I figured that I could pass electrical connections through them as opposed to them dangling beneath where they would be liable to get damaged


First 3 board frames complete, I will be adding blocks of square timber in each corner to increase the rigidity as well as form part of the system to hold the legs in place which I will detail when I get a set made up.


The 3 boards bolted together, the middle board of the 3 will have 4 legs and the outer 2 piggyback off either end and will have their own legs on the outer ends, as well as being bolted there is a ledge made of a length of 1^1/2x1, again I will get a better picture of this when I have some legs to stand it on.

This is all the progress for today, hope to have further updates in the next few days.

Dale

Edited July 24, 2021 by dale159

[Tase]

Great start Dale. Looking forward to watching this progress.

[MattWallace]

Woohoo! Another larger layout!

 

Looking forward to seeing it develop!

 

Matt (who used to be in the Garage but now has ideas above his station in the loft!)

[dale159]

Evening, firstly thank you for your comments, always welcome.

 

Here is some progress from this afternoon, quite a few photos, almost amazed by how much I've achieved today! 

 

 

Joining boards together -

 

Accompanying each set of legs on the end of the board is this baton on which the next board sits and attaches with 4 M8 bolts, I may also explore the possibility of locating with dowel into the baton

 

 

Legs -

 

The first 8 legs cut for the 3 boards built yesterday, each measures 1050mm.

 

The leg set up is quite simple, legs are held together with a cross member top and bottom, all joints on the legs are PVA'd as well as screwed.

 

And as if by magic there were soon 4 such structures which meant it was time to -

 

Put together what I'd built for the first time, It stands on its own 8 legs like a very odd wooden spider!

 

The bottle of PVA at the back is weighing down that corner as there is a slight twist in that board although this will be rectified when the top surface goes on, the middle board also has slight lateral twist but again the top surface will pull this straight.

 

The legs fit the board between these 2 blocks using the top cross member as a stop

 

Those big holes -

 

The 63mm hole is plenty big enough for a 20 way connector, I am looking to use these or something similar from Maplins, pre-wired versions are also available which is what I intend to use as my soldering skills are not up to soldering to 37 way D connectors.

 

Worth double checking -

 

Just to make sure my calculations were reasonably accurate I measured the length of the layout then put this tape measure up the wall to the height of the board and then closed the garage door, plenty of clearance, the end of the layout will be about 250 from the door.

 

Final job for the day -

 

While I had the circular saw out and it was still daylight I cut all the pieces for the next 3 frames which will go down the wall on the other side in the same fashion to what I've already built.

 

I like to measure progress judged on the size of the pile of sawdust I've created! I'd also say the enormous blister on my finger from the screwdriver is a sign of a good days work!

 

That's all for today, next update will probably be Sunday evening as I am now working for the rest of the week, but then the layout isn't going to fund itself now.

 

Again any comments and encouragements welcomed.

 

Dale 

 

 

 

 

[d winpenny]

My sort of layout I will be watching with interest

 

David

[dale159]

Here as promised is today's update, quite quick tonight as essentially its a duplicate of what I had already built to run down the wall on the other side of the garage.

 

Today I have constructed the next 3 boards shown in bits at the end of my previous post.

 

Again with these boards there are some twisting issues, the nearest one being the worst so far, but it does square up with some brute force so no big worry.

 

The two piles of completed frames, I did a test by bolting one of the first batch in place of the most twisted one just to see how interchangeable they are, good news is that they went together and the bolt holes even lined up.

 

The next job, which I'm hoping to get done on my day off on Wednesday, are the two boards for the back corners which will be sort of L-shaped. Quite a few items to be moved about first though, the third bicycle that has appeared is only temporary and the other two hung from the rafters will be on their way to the shed at some point in the near future as well.

 

That all for today.

 

Dale

[dale159]

Some more progress from this morning and earlier this afternoon

 

Corner Boards

 

Today's project was to fabricate the two boards for the back corners of the garage.

 

First the all the required lengths of timber were cut and laid out on the ground

 

Then screwed together, this board frame was very much trial and error, in fact I had to cut 27mm of the length of one piece and re-drill two holes due to a measuring error!

Across the back wall the layout narrows to just 200mm, this should be wide enough for 3 tracks if necessary whilst also gives better access to the workbench below

 

Second corner frame completed without such problems and in about a third of the time taken by the first.

 

At this point I decided to have a test fit of what I'd done so after much moving of the many things that live in our garage that seldom get used

In this photo the corner board in only being held in place by nuts and bolts attaching it to the other one, I haven't made a set of legs because of the work top underneath which will be staying, instead I intend to put up a 2x2 baton on the wall, however were I to take the layout to an exhibition they would need their own set of legs so I will at some stage build a set for them

 

Second corner put up, again only held in place with nuts and bolts to the adjacent boards. The two corners are yet to be fitted with any supporting blocks in their corners and also I will be adding a 45 degree length of timber across the inside corner as per the plan in post number 1, although I may round off the corner on the top surface.

 

A thought towards exhibiting - your opinions please

 

One problem with a 'roundy roundy' exhibition layout is of course the fact that scenic section is set up for public viewing with the operator(s) left peering over the back scene at what they are doing, now I would very much like to make my layout available for exhibition at some point but it may only be one or two a year, which has left me wondering how to set up the scenic section

 

Option 1

 

I could of course just gear it up for exhibition use, this would give me a maximum sized scenic space but means I'd have to crane my head over the back scene even when operating at home, I estimate that with a 12 inch tall back scene my chin would just about rest on the top of it. Or -

 

Option 2

By its very design my layout is modular, I could therefore gear it up so that the 3 boards in the middle could be installed either way around, I would loose a few scenic inches at each end compared option 1 giving me a straight 12x2 scenic area and I would probably need to have the same number of tracks entering from each end with the same spacing but of course it means when in the garage it would a far more pleasant operating experience, whilst there may be some complexities with electrics doing this, did I mention that I was intending to control it with a chioce of ordinary analogue or DCC, well I have now!

 

Anybody with any further ideas, suggestions or prior experience of having attempted anything like this before your input would be welcomed.

 

Cheers

 

Dale

Edited March 23, 2017 by dale159

[MattWallace]

Looks great.

 

IMHO, DCC will make the wiring easier, especially if you're going to be rotating the boards, but then again I'm a DCC evangelist, so I would say that!

[dale159]

Looks great. IMHO, DCC will make the wiring easier, especially if you're going to be rotating the boards, but then again I'm a DCC evangelist, so I would say that!

My thought for this set up was for the three scenic boards to their own separated supplies of 12v for lights and 16v for points (may use slow action motors yet) which could be fed from either end with maybe a DIN socket or similar, as for the track feeds I would build it for analogue control meaning that all the feeds would be a common positive or common return depending on orientation. For DCC its just a case of turning all the switches on, the orientation of the boards shouldn't matter on DCC, although the control panel will be upside down one way round but thankfully this is quite a way off yet!

 

This afternoon I hope to install the baton across the back wall, possible update on this later.

 

Dale

Edited July 25, 2013 by dale159

[MattWallace]

Makes sense to me...

[dale159]

Well then,

 

A very successful day albeit with a slight mishap along the way but easily rectified

 

First the baton along the back wall was measured and installed.

 

'Whoops' I may have said! Or words to that effect, despite my careful measuring the baton was 50 odd mm too high.

 

A few holes re-drilled and the baton was quickly lowered to the correct height, fortunately most of the back wall is breeze block so the drill went straight in, only the two holes on the far left were into brick, I've used 10 5x75 screws for this, seems to be fairly sturdy.

 

With that done I decided once again to put up some boards to see what I'd created, there is two more corners to build which incorporate a lift out section across the door so will be different to those at the back, the end of the layout will be on the extreme right of this photo just beyond the light switch.

 

An odd length of timber I had in stock to show where the last 600mm would come to in relation to the door.

 

Another door clearance test using this length of timber, all is good!

 

Finally for tonight while I was on a roll I decided to put the other side of the layout up too as well as moving all the other items which will be kept in the garage to fit around the layout legs. This is the first time I have erected everything I've built so far, and I have to say I am very pleased with it!

 

Tomorrow's job then will be to design and construct the remaining two corners plus legs and fit strengthening blocks to them.

 

Dale

[MattWallace]

looks brilliant, well done - you're making better progress than I am!

 

Matt

[dale159]

Not a lot done this afternoon, had just over an hour out in the garage
 

All I've achieved today is cutting and fitting of the corner strengthening blocks to the back corner boards.

Next stage on Monday should be the fabrication of the two front corners and lift out piece.

Dale

 

Edit: Photo added

Edited August 1, 2013 by dale159

[ess1uk]

nice work so far

[dale159]

Some more progress to report from today.  Not done much this week mainly due to the weather, having to do quite a bit of carpentry outside due to the space taken up by the layout!

 

Front Corners

 

This afternoon I have cut and assembled to two corner boards for the door end of the garage, these to boards are different from those at the back as these will have to incorporate a lift out section which will be 1 metre across and will also split in 2 pieces so that he can be extended if the layout goes out to exhibition

 

Also not pictured I have assembled 2 further sets of legs one for each of these boards as well as fitting square blocks in their corners

 

The obligatory garage door shut test! Passed with a fair margin to spare although not nearly as much as I initially measured, not sure whats gone on there as the layout is exactly the length I designed it to be! (not the best photo as taken one handed on my phone whilst holding the garage door in place with the other hand) 

 

You may also notice that there seems to be a piece missing across the corner, well yes there is but this will be fitted as part of the lift out section, then the idea is to somehow cut the bit for this board away in an attempt to make the 45 degree angle fit a bit better.  That's the plan anyway. Job for Sunday!

 

Dale

[dale159]

Some good progress made today my friends!

 

More work on the front corners

 

After Thursdays session spent constructing the front corners and their legs today's first job was fit each of them with their extra 2 square blocks to hold the legs in place as per all the other boards and then attach them to the layout

 

The Lifting section across the Garage door

 

The gap to be bridged!

 

The two outriggers on the sides of the two corners brings the gap I have to bridge to exactly 1 metre, also these have both been fitted with a baton to support the lifting section, which will not be fitted with any legs.

 

It is my intention that the lifting section will be in two pieces which are bolted together. This is so that if the layout were ever exhibited a third piece could be inserted between them to give me more operating space that is not available to me in the garage.

 

My plan was to make the lift out section in one piece including the two 45 degree corners which would temporarily have been fixed into the side boards as well before separating with a saw afterwards

 

Frame constructed with the 2 45 degree sections placed on top for measurement

 

I cut the 45 degree angles using the bevel function on my electric saw.  Unfortunately and for reasons I can't figure out none of the beveled cuts I made were very square meaning that most the sections did not fit correctly. So I took the decision to cut the two length of timber in half and build the two halves separately.

 

Warning - The standard of carpentry in the next few photo's is not pretty! Please avert your eyes if you are easily offended by what can only be described as bodging!

 

Also the fact that the drill fell through the workmate and straight down onto the chuck snapping my 4mm drill bit didn't help matters.

 

By doing this it meant the short gap left here previously was not filled

 

The completed bodging, short of sawing that excess piece off. These pictures also why I have had to build these boards like this, I could have just made them square and added the 45 degree sections afterwards but some blithering idiot (not sure who that was, honest!) drilled a 63mm hole in the end of the connection board right where the lifting piece adjoined it.

 

The end result is this joint on the left and end, but it does pull out flush so when the top surface goes on all should be OK.

 

The finished lifting section with the G-clamps removed, I think I will put in a length of 1x1^1/2 across middle of each section, this also should alleviate the gap on the left hand end

 

So the with all that done I couldn't resist clearing as much of the mess as I could, taking the two bikes down, laying the stepladder down on its side

For this photo of the completed loop, taken whilst leaning over the roof of mothers car!

 

Next jobs are - fitting pieces mentioned above to lifting section and fitting some sort of locking mechanism, I decided against using dowels as there is the risk of them getting broken in storage or transport.

 

Next update in about 10 days as I've got a full week at work followed by a long weekend in Scotland by going up and back by rail while the powers that be fly up and back.

 

Dale

[dale159]

A couple of odd jobs

 

I'm back from my trip to Glasgow and with one further full day off before I head back to work I made it a day of modeling spending a few hours of this afternoon doing a few minor jobs to the layout.

 

First job was fitting a pair of cross braces to the lifting section complete with wiring holes,

 

Fitting this brace to the left hand half of the board would also be used to pull the outer frame into a slightly better shape, whilst its still not perfect its better than it was before, photo towards the bottom of the previous post

 

Two more wiring holes drilled in the back corner boards (and two more on the opposite side) in preparation for fitting of -

 

The 45 degree section across the corner

 

An overview of the completed job.

 

And that is 99% the major carpentry completed, next stage I suppose is fitting of top surfaces, the bikes have to disappear of to the shed first as they will be in the way once top surfaces are fitted, although there are some minor repairs to the shed to be made in order to make it a bit more watertight. A job for Sunday hopefully.

 

Dale

[dale159]

Another thought towards Exhibitions

 

Had an hour or so spare this afternoon so I built the two extra exhibition width expansion boards.

 

Quite a simple set up here just a pair of 500 x 200 mm boxes with a single cross member in the middle.

 

With bolt holes and large wiring holes cut to match the inner ends of the other boards.

 

The boards from both ends in their elongated exhibition set up,

 

This means that in an exhibition situation the central operating space is now just under 5ft wide as opposed to about 3ft 6 in the garage, the extra room will be useful for tables of stock which as you can see all lives on the shelves and chests of draws in the garage.

 

Also I must work out a method of fitting a pair of legs to each of the two rear corner boards, I can't use my usual technique on the inside leg because I foolishly drilled a wiring hole right where I would like to attach the supporting block.

 

Dale

[dale159]

Thinking ahead to track laying

 

No further carpentry to report i'm afraid but I have been busy on XTrkCAD, now that I have got to grips with how it works, designing the fiddle yard.

 

My fiddle yard will essentially be half the layout, the left hand side as you look in through the garage door.

 

For me there were a few important requirements to consider with the design.

 

1. Maximum storage roads as possible in the available space
2. As many roads as possible long enough to accommodate a 2+8 HST set (have quite a sizable fleet, ranging from Intercity Swallow right up to the current CrossCountry livery, so not all would appear on the layout at once)
3. Ability to store multiple shorter trains in longer roads both on DC and DCC
4. Access to/from as many storage roads as possible to/from the running lines
5. Points to be no smaller than Peco medium radius for smoother operation, including the use of 3 way points

So here is what I have managed to come up with

I have managed to squeeze 9 roads into a 600 mm wide space, using 3 way points at each end to bring nine tracks down to three to go around the curves, the inside curve has a radius of about 50cm which is comparable to Peco 3rd radius

 

All 9 roads are long enough to store a 2+8 HST although if doing so in the very bottom road the power cars would foul the points into the two spurs out to the corners.

 

Electrically I intend to break each road up into 3 or possibly 4 sections for DC running to store things like DMUs or light engines, obviously for DCC just turn all the switches on, I may also incorporate some crossovers between roads in certain places for extra flexibility but I don't know where yet, I might have a go at kit bashing a scissor crossing using Peco points and a diamond crossing.

 

It is possible to access/exit any of the nine roads to/from either of the two lines towards the scenic section.

 

Layout wise I hope to have the top surfaces on within the next two weeks, a trip to B&Q has been penciled in for Wednesday afternoon as I have 60 pounds worth of vouchers to spend after my birthday yesterday.

 

Dale

 

[Removed a/c]

Looking forward to seeing this layout progress. Looks like you have a decent sized space for your layout.

 

Regards 

Scott 

[d winpenny]

Looking good

 

David

[MattWallace]

Great looking plan, can't wait to see the rest of it for the scenics...

 

XTrkcad is an excellent bit of software, but it took me a while to get used to it.  If you're going to be running the layout using JMRI, then there is a converter that takes XTrkcad track plans and converts them to JMRI panels (that's my plan!).

 

Cheers,

 

Matt

[Steve O.]

Hi Dale,

just found your layout thread.

Looks great. I like the step-by-step approach and also the 'rotating' 3 panels for exhibiting. That's a new one for me.

Will follow your progress.

Any news on a name? Location?

Cheers, Steve.

[dale159]

Hi folks,

 

Thanks to everyone for your encouraging comments and likes.

 

 

Great looking plan, can't wait to see the rest of it for the scenics...

 

XTrkcad is an excellent bit of software, but it took me a while to get used to it.  If you're going to be running the layout using JMRI, then there is a converter that takes XTrkcad track plans and converts them to JMRI panels (that's my plan!).

 

Cheers,

 

Matt

 

Matt,

 

I don't intend on using a computer based DCC control system as I want the layout to work on analogue too so I would say it needs to have a conventional control panel, I currently have a Dynamis but I am looking into something a bit bigger, I like the look of the ESU ECoS controller but I've not seen one in the flesh or had a chance to play with one. Whilst about half of my stock is DCC my fellow modelers, who's stock may put in an appearance, do not run DCC at all.

 

I have a fair few DMUs which I like to be able to run in multiple so I am slowly converting modifying them to have independently controlled tail lights so I can switch off lights on coupled cabs, so far the Dynamis is the only controller I've used with which its easy or even possible to set up a consist and the lights. The local club has a Prodigy Advance II on which it doesn't seem to be possible to adjust the functions between trigger and latching so to use F2 which is set to trigger I have to continuously press the button letting go turns the lights off. 

 

Hi Dale,
just found your layout thread.
Looks great. I like the step-by-step approach and also the 'rotating' 3 panels for exhibiting. That's a new one for me.
Will follow your progress.
Any news on a name? Location?
Cheers, Steve.

 

Steve,

 

Thank you for your comments. I have these funny ideas some times, I have a habit of not making these things easy for myself!

 

Still no closer to coming up with a name, my well be the very last thing I decide, as for location the track plan will be totally fictitious set in the Exeter/West Country area somewhere, stock from BR blue all the way up to modern stuff, certainly more freight than we really get in this area including coal trains and intermodal's even a 4TC and 4VEP but no 3rd rail, these will be run with external diesel power!

 

I've been out in the garage again this afternoon and will post an update of what I've done shortly.

 

Cheers

 

Dale

Edited August 27, 2013 by dale159

[dale159]

A few more minor jobs

 

So, here goes today's progress.

 

The two corner boards across the back wall are supported on a baton screwed to the wall, obviously if taken to an exhibition these boards will need to have their own legs, so I made these today, I had not made them previously as I wasn't sure how to fix them on the inside, using the same method used for all the other legs was out of the question as I had drilled a large hole for electrics right where I would normally fit the retaining block.

 

While the glue was drying on the legs I tackled the lifting section across the door and how to attach it securely, I decided to use 2 M8 bolts at each end with the holes englared to M9 so that they aren't tight fitting.

 

The view from above, I will fit the bolts the other way around on a more permanent basis but this would involved removing the front section to put them in.

 

Having done that I removed the 2 front corners and fitted the two rear corners in their place in order to fit their legs.

 

The offending hole preventing the fitting of the retaining block.

 

I went trawling through the tool boxes and draws to see what I could find and came up with these M6 alan headed coach bolts and some matching nuts, I shortened the threads with a junior hacksaw after taking this photo, the outside legs are fitted using the same method as all the others.

 

Finally I put up two brackets on which to hang the lifting section when not in use, its not quite level but it does the job, I find that drilling into solid brick is a right pain, I managed to completely blunt my 3 and 4 mm masonry drills doing this.

 

Dale