Virney Junction - Scenery ongoing

[Brian D]

 

There I waited for a considerable time for the person to cut the 2440mm by 1220mm sheet of 12mm thick MDF into the manageable sizes that will both fit in the car and form the shelving under the rest of the baseboard supports. The best part of a further hour had elapsed by the time I returned home.

 

Indeed, Ray.  I had the same problem waiting for my "cuts" when lining out the inside of my shed.  It seems there is only ever one person trained to use the cutting machine and he/she is with another customer/on a break/hiding (delete as appropriate) 

Regards,

Brian.

[Ray H]

I managed to sneak a few hours in the garage on three different days during the week. As a result the furthest (8ft long) baseboard support from the back door on the right hand side of the garage is now complete and as the picture shows, piled high with all sorts that was previously elsewhere in the garage. The end of the support structure is just visible beyond the black bin bag (that is covering a compressor used in connection with a nail gun that I have (and which will also be going in due course).

I've transferred the lengths of timber that were previously resting on the floor onto the new support.

The home made Heath Robinson shelving unit that was previously home to the bits of hardwood that are now boxed up ready for collection has also disappeared. The 2" square vertical supports for that shelving can be seen near the camera. Some will be cut down for legs for the remaining support.

I now have a reasonable sized working area which should come in handy when baseboard construction starts.

A friend called round during the week and will be taking the numerous bits of hardwood that are still taking up a lot of room. He's also expressed an interest in most of the machines once I'm sure they're no longer needed for the baseboard build.

Further progress in the carpentry department will now have to wait whilst I draw out the track plan in Templot. This is because the baseboard support that will be nearer to the camera on the right hand side of the garage has to be tapered to provide a decent size gap in front of the door.

The most recent plan was drawn up using AnyRail and Peco point templates whereas I plan to build my own points to a slightly different geometry so I need to check that everything I hoped would fit will still do so.

Away from the garage I have fitted a sound decoder and base reflex speaker to a recently bought second hand green Bachmann Class 24. I plan to fit a similar speaker to my green Bachmann Class 25 as well as I'm sure this will improve the sound quality. That loco and speaker are on the bench at present.

[Ray H]

Although I should probably have started on the station, the layout of the fiddle yard is still niggling me.

 

All the points on the layout will be hand built and I have managed to standardise on a V5 crossing giving a consistent 26.7" radius on the divergent route on both schemes below. Larger radius points will be used on the visible section of the layout.

 

The "Buckingham" branch station will be alongside the fiddle yard (on the inside of the oval)

 

The version above involves a couple of double slips but has the advantage that trains can reverse in the four arrival sidings in each direction. Running round is also possible although of course the rest of the siding on which the train is reversing must be clear as must one of the other sidings. The terminal sidings provide additional holding room and will accommodate a two car DMU at least. Their presence tends to mean that the top and bottom sidings ideally need to be kept free of berthed trains. However, that means that there's almost always a siding clear for running round reversing trains.

 

The second version does away with the double slips and restricts reversal to the two centre sidings.

 

I've managed to significantly add to the length of two of the lower four through sidings and not so significantly with the remaining sidings. I've lost a couple of the terminal sidings but the increased length of the through sidings allows two longer trains to be berthed on each (albeit that the top and bottom sidings will still generally need to be kept free to allow usage of the terminal sidings).

 

I don't envisage too much running round or excessive reversals because this would involve too much man-handling of brake vans on freight trains and I want the fiddle yard to take care of itself as much as possible once operation of the sequence starts. There will probably only be one hauled passenger train, the remaining passenger services will be formed of DMUs.

 

The box like shape at bottom left of each drawing is where the door is and the access flap will be.

 

Comments would be welcome on the merits or otherwise of both designs whilst I develop the rest of the layout plan so that I can then work out the individual baseboard sizes and order the relevant material to make a start on baseboard construction.

[Ray H]

There were a few areas where I wasn't too happy with the first version of the completed Templot plan seen above.

The main branch station - Buckingham - was encroaching too much into the operating area whilst at the same time being too close to the fiddle yard.

The single point at Padbury was too close to the end of the sidings at Buckingham with the result that shunting of Padbury's siding would involve movements along the single line adjacent to the sidings at Buckingham. That is hardly prototypical! The end of Padbury's siding would also be very close to the backscene if it was to have capacity for more than a couple of wagons.

The "square" area at bottom left is where the garage door will open - I'd have drawn an arc if I'd worked out how to do that in Templot! The other lines represent the boundaries of the central operating area based on 610mm wide baseboards that I know I'll have to exceed in places. Once again, I'd have drawn the likely curved baseboard edges instead of straight lines if I'd understood how to do that.

Eagled-eyed readers may also have noticed a revision to the left hand end of the fiddle yard. This reverts to the design in the earlier AnyRail plans and was necessary to allow the sector plate beyond Buckingham's platforms to be angled sufficiently to open up the gap between the corners of the two baseboards to make access to the centre of the garage easier.
 

 
The later version of the plan tries to address the initial problems. Moving Padbury's siding to the inside of the curve (using a 1:10.25 angle on the common crossing to keep the radius of the divergent route above 24") also makes shunting easier if manual uncoupling becomes necessary.

The baseboard adjacent to the rear garage wall - on the left in the above plans - will probably become wedge shaped to assist in opening up the access gap into the centre of the garage and to provide somewhere to fit back of the Virney Junction's up platform. That said and depending on how hard I find it is to do so (when I eventually finalise the baseboard design), my current thinking is that all the baseboard edges will be curved on the operating well face.

The next task is to divide the 17ft long garage into sections somewhere approaching the individual conventional baseboard length of 4ft.

I also need to decide whether to leave all the track level or whether to have the branch at a different level.

[Ray H]

I recently purchased the above loco from Andy P of this parish and very nice it is too - humble apologies to Andy because the picture quality is appalling whereas the quality of the loco itself is so much better! There are a further two locos heading my way from the same source in due course.

Anyway, the loco arrived and I thought I'd give it a spin on Wynsloe Road - that layout seems destined to only get used for testing fresh arrivals these days. The loco didn't like what I thought were third radius curves (or thereabouts) on the layout. The leading axle kept taking frequent deviations from the specified route.

The track plan for Virney Junction does not include anything less than a 24 inch radius curve. I began to be concerned that this might not be large enough for the 9F and was about to print out part of the Templot plan to gauge the size of the two baseboards nearest the garage door.

There was no point in doing so if the 9F couldn't negotiate the 24 inch curves on the lifting flap across the doorway. Consequently, I fired up AnyRail, created a 24 inch radius curve, printed it off (and stuck the pages together) and laid a piece of flexi-track over the plan on the floor - the biggest (and tidiest) flat open space currently available off carpet. Could I push the 9F round the curve without mishap.

I needn't have worried as the loco seemed quite happy although I'll accept that being pushed by hand isn't the same as being (electrically) driven round the same curve.

I can now press on with tweaking the sleeper spacings around the turnouts on the Templot plan and then print some pages off so that I can assess the size of the last few baseboard supports that I need to build.

There's just a chance now that baseboard construction itself may start later this week.

Previous images have shown various pieces of timber and (remnants of) sheets of material lying around the garage atop the baseboard supports that I've just built. My current thinking is to try to utilise as much of this as I can to free up the space that they currently take up and to economise on costs of construction. The pending baseboard construction looks like being a bit mix-and-match as a result!

[Ray H]

I finally managed to snatch a little time in the garage today, initially to do something for the good lady but when that virtually came to nothing (save for increasing the amount of stuff that I've currently got to find space for in the garage) I managed to spend a little time on the baseboard support construction planning.

 

I'd previously printed off the part of the track plan that will be in front of the garage door area via Templot and loosely taped the pages together. Armed with that part of the plan, a ruler, roofing square and a couple of pens, I set to work in the garage. However, I had to move a fair bit around before I could do that. I then placed the plan on the floor and was able to work out roughly where I think the ends of the baseboard supports should go and mark that on the floor.

 

The Buckingham branch sector plate tracks are the three parallel tracks at a slight angle to the garage wall and on the right hand side of the pointwork at the start of the main fiddle yard. I was and am still hopeful that these can be angled slightly more to increase the gap between the corners of the baseboards. The gap will currently only be a little over 2 feet.

 

I shall print out a couple more pages of the track plan and play around with a paper template of the sector table to check that.

 

The second image shows where I currently think the ends of the baseboard supports will be and the angles that the baseboard edges will take. It also shows the track bed that will be on the lifting flap in front of the door. I'm a little concerned that the lifting flap may be a little bit on the lengthy/weighty side and haven't completely ruled out making a two part flap. Both parts would be hinged on their respective baseboard ends and come together in the middle of the curve and be supported by a single leg hinged to the underside of the left hand part of the flap. However, this is likely to be a last resort because I've made sure that the track at the baseboard edges is at right angles to the edge and splitting the flap into two would re-instate a break on a curve, something that I have been trying to avoid.

 

Finally and because I know that pictures of floors and baseboard supports aren't that compelling I've added a couple of poor quality images of locos that have recently journeyed from Bitton - aka Andy P of this parish - to Virney Junction. Excellent weathering, which is several magnitude better than the quality of the image taking looking towards the sole window in the room and enough to confuse the auto-focus on the camera.

 

Both images show the locos in the Down yard on Wynsloe Road, a yard that possesses curves that are not too attractive to at least one of the recent arrivals and a reason why that layout lays dormant save for being used to program DCC decoders and then test the locos to which they've been fitted.

[Brian D]

Hi Ray,

This is looking very good but is there still no way you can make the offending door open outwards and not inwards thus minimising some of the base board issues?

Regards,

Brian.

[Ray H]

Brian

 

Thanks for your concern.

 

The door frame would require some heavy woodwork and altering the way the door hangs wouldn't remove the need for the access flap, nor increase the size of the gap between the two baseboard ends.

 

I'm now minded to operate the layout with the door open - unless there is a complaint from the management about the noise from the sound fitted locos!

 

That is a shade safer than having the door closed and for part of the year it will allow the heat from the house to supplement the heat from the radiator in the garage (the pipework for which can just be seen in the second image in my previous posting).

[Andrew P]

Hi Ray, good to see the pics of the Locos at their new home, glad you like the weathering mate.

 

Thanks again.

[Ray H]

I decided it was time to put some more effort into building the supports for the baseboards in the garage and spent a couple of hours on Wednesday evening doing so. That seems to have spurred me on because I've been in the garage all day today and all is done save for two pieces of wood that need cutting to size and fitting. One of those is across the far end of the garage and can't be fitted until the woodworking machinery finally departs after I've done as much as I can with it to build the baseboards.

 

I've been eyeing the marks that I put on the floor to show where the access flap will go and thinking that I need to plot the open door on the Templot plan because the door looked as though it would foul the flap. I also realised today that I ought to add the incoming gas main to the plan as well. Both have now been added and the result is not a pretty site!

 

The gas main protrudes 60mm into the garage space and effectively means that I've lost the outermost of the (clockwise) fiddle yard sidings. The (house) door end of that siding would be long enough to hold a train but it has no access from the inner (anti-clockwise) track so the space can't really be used. One option could be to move everything away from the garage wall by 60mm but that means that the baseboards will overhang the framing that I've just built. Moving the fiddle yard away from the wall encroaches on the track for the Buckingham branch which is already as close to the fiddle yard as it can be if I want a little bit of scenery between branch track and the backscene that hides the fiddle yard. The radius of the curve between Padbury and Buckingham is already down to 24.8" which is much tighter than I originally hoped for. I need to do a but more work on this to see how I can best get around this little difficulty.

 

The door infringes even more - by about 85mm overall. However, I think I can recover this by juggling around with the pointwork at that end of the fiddle yard. The changes needed to accommodate the gas main help to reduce the encroachment to 25mm which limits the overall problem.

 

I'm glad I found this now rather than when I'd built the baseboards.

[Andrew P]

Hi Ray, sounds to like many minor issues, but I suspect that you will not only overcome all the issues but you could benefit from so re jigging somewhere along the line.

 

I hope so for you anyway Mate.

[Ray H]

Thanks Andy

 

I hope so. The gas pipe is something I should have noticed beforehand. I think there might be problems if I tried to tunnel through it so it looks like I'll have to go round it although I'm not sure I fancy the parallel reverse curves on each siding to do so. That said, something similar might not be such a silly idea. I could have a gradual reverse curve on each siding. That might lessen the impact on the branch station in front of the fiddle yard.

 

I'm less worried about the impact of the encroachment of the door.

 

I'm giving some thought to the names of the branch stations. Padbury could become Padbry whilst Buckingham changes to Buckinhum and Banbry is the new name for Banbury.

[Ray H]

The final part of the baseboard structure was completed during a short spell in the garage this morning, a spell that was lengthened when I took the opportunity to empty both the vac seen on the right in the picture below and the chip extractor, a legacy from the more active woodworking days and something that has been trapping a lot of the dust that the recent woodwork has generated.

 

Here's the offending gas pipe. The step ladders have been placed on the baseboard supports temporarily but they give an idea of where the baseboard could be positioned. In fact, as can be seen from the revised track plan further down, the baseboard will need to be built to accommodate the pipe so as not to waste the space that would have been created if the full length of the back of the baseboard had stood proud of the depth of the pipe.

 

Finally, here is what I've come up with following my latest deliberations. I've not had to make any changes to the scenic part of the layout in front of the fiddle yard nor to most of that fiddle yard. I have removed the long through siding that was previously at the bottom of the plan and replaced it with a lengthened trailing siding to the right of the pipe. I've then added a shorter through siding to the left of the gas pipe.

 

The access flap has been moved further away from the fiddle yard wall of the garage and now connects to the third and fourth track from the bottom of the plan. The downside is that this means that all anti-clockwise trains have to take the divergent route at the first point they encounter in the fiddle yard.

 

An unexpected benefit of the revised layout at the left hand end of the fiddle yard has been the discovery that the increase in the length of the turnout isn't too great if the angle of the crossings on the turnouts is increased from 1:5 to 1:5.75 but the radius of the divergent route increase from about 26 inches to nearly 36 inches. I discovered this when I thought I'd see what the impact was of trying to increase the radius of the first facing point after the lifting flap so I quickly altered the angle of as many of the remaining facing points in the fiddle yard as I could.

 

The overall effect on four consecutive points probably reduces the length of the worst affected fiddle yard siding by about 3" but I've decided that the larger radius may reduce the risk of derailments.

[Ray H]

Time for a recap

 

It is amazing where my modelling journey has taken and is taking me. Original plans to base a layout on Winslow got side-tracked and severely influenced by space limitations and the section of a Right Track DVD relating to Broom Junction. That manifested itself into the present and now stagnant Wynsloe Road layout.

 

In a step that appears familiar to many the attraction of that soon waned although it got more scenery than any other layout that I’ve ever built. Attention turned back to the original area albeit a little further west. The plans for Virney Junction detailed herein was (and currently still is) the result.

 

Would the junction retain my interest on its own? As time went by I decided that it probably wouldn’t. Co-incidentally Andy Peters (of Bitton and numerous other [model] places fame hereon) pointed me in the direction of Larry (Coachman’s) thread where the branch terminal of Delph had then sprung up in front of the fiddle yard serving the rest of the layout. Now there was an idea.

 

I decided to try and incorporate part of the single track Banbury branch into the garage layout to make more use of the junction. Initially that was just to be something to represent plain line as far as Buckingham. A few passenger trains and the trip freight working each day would add that something extra to the mix. But . . . . . Did it need to stop there?

 

There was an intermediate station with a single siding between Verney Junction and Buckingham. I was sure that I could add that and finally (just about) came up with a way of doing so.

 

I was never going to be faithful to the actual Buckingham station (or to any other station for that matter) even though Buckingham wouldn’t need a very wide footprint to capture most of it. The track layout needed some significant tweaking to fit the even narrower footprint that I had available and this left me with room beyond the station to simulate the . . . .

 

Originally my branch was just going to lead (off-stage) to the Goods Yard (at Buckingham) which was about ½ mile beyond the station. But why put that limit on it? Why not imagine that the off stage (branch) fiddle yard – a three track sector plate – simulated the rest of the branch, all the way to Banbury?

 

And that’s as far as I can realistically pretend the railway goes even if I acknowledge that there was a link to the GWR at Banbury and to Towcester and beyond via a reversal at Cockley Brake to give even more excuses to boost traffic along the branch.

 

All these ideas were flitting around in my head as I gradually found the enthusiasm to start making the major changes to the garage and its content to accommodate the layout, spurred on by Management who decided that after more than 25 years the room that I use as an office (and more recently also as a modelling den) desperately needs new furniture (if I was to continue with it as an office) and more importantly a replacement for its aged carpet.

[georgeT]

Hello Ray,

 

A good layout comes with plenty of planing and track drawings when we transfer our ideas out on paper they look very different to what we wanted, l know l have ruined many a layout by not planing out first, even with BS l have made some fatal errors which will cause me big problems soon, so l have to put them right, the first will be to lift the track and lay it onto a cork base,

 

George

[Ray H]

George

 

Thanks.

 

I am hoping to print off part of the Templot track plan this weekend and overlay it on the baseboard support structure so that I can get a better idea of the baseboard shapes - I want to get away from parallel sided baseboard especially as I need some parts to be wider than the others.

 

I hope that I've done enough planning to avoid changes to the most recent version of the layout shown above but I guess that only time will tell. Operationally I'm fairly happy with it because it took a lot of time to get to where I am now and as the plan is to scale I'm hopeful that it will be OK.

[Ray H]

The end of March 2015

 

The garage work has advanced to the stage where baseboard construction is the next logical step. However, the previously leisurely life of slightly early retirement has temporarily been replaced with five days’ a week worth of volunteering for a local kid’s charity to help them out of a hole. Consequently, despite the desire to see my slowly increasing rolling stock stud turn wheels again, the prospect of setting to with woodworking tools after my evening meal plays second fiddle to reading numerous interesting threads on RMweb!

 

The Along the Chapeltown loop thread relates how the freight traffic was operated on the now deceased layout. An initial part of that process involved research into what traffic might have run on that layout. I decided that perhaps I ought to do some research as well.

 

And so it came to pass that I once again visited my copy of Bill Simpson’s The Banbury to Verney Junction Branch first published in 1978, just over ten years after the branch closed. My intention was to see how much I could embellish the freight traffic of this relatively short branch to add even more sparkle to the operation of the layout.

 

I couldn’t have been more surprised even though I had only read the book a year or so earlier.

 

For a start there’s one picture in the book of the pick-up goods leaving Banbury (facing the climb up to Cockley Brake) with loco 80043 assisting an ex Midland 4F. I can’t swear to it but that picture appears to show the train with thirty plus wagons in tow! That’s some pick-up freight for a branch line when we’re used to seeing models with similar trains featuring less than ten wagons.

 

It was soon evident that with a bit of tweaking of dates i.e. emulating traffic that had long since ceased on a 1960s based layout, the world was my proverbial oyster.

[Andrew P]

Hi Ray, Maybe I should have researched Bitton a bit more, looks like your coming on well.

 

Well done mate.

[Ray H]

Possible freight traffic – part 1

 

I am most grateful to Bill Simpson’s book for the following information – any errors below are probably mine.

 

Banbury

 

During its life Banbury would have handled the following:

 

Livestock – the market was adjacent to the LNWR station; Milk; Munitions (during the war); Cheese; Leather and Coal – there were at least two agents. Banbury also played host to Britannia and Vulcan Foundries, had a brewing industry, a large Gas & Coke company and Alcan sheet metal works. There was also ore traffic from the Northampton area routed through the station.

 

Apparently there was horse traffic to and from Newmarket. What an excellent opportunity to have the odd Eastern loco put in an appearance.

 

There can’t be many types of freight wagon that wouldn’t have reached the town (albeit not necessarily by the LNWR route).

 

Farthinghoe

 

One of Banbury’s coal agents also handled coal traffic here and the book says that pink roadstone was also unloaded in the station’s single siding although the reason for doing so isn't explained.

 

Brackley

 

The book is slightly more definitive about traffic quantities here with daily business amounting to between 3 and 12 wagons for the gas works, 4 to 5 wagons of malt & sugar and 4 cattle wagons. The figures perhaps aren’t surprising when you look at the station plan and see the size of the yard!

 

Fulwell & Westbury

 

This appears to have had but a cattle dock situated on a loop on the Banbury side of a road crossing on the Banbury side of the station. There is no mention of any other traffic.

 

Beacon’s House Siding

 

This was adjacent to one of the two road crossings between Banbury and Buckingham and like Fulwell & Westbury had a single siding with provision for cattle handling (only?).

 

And so to Buckingham (and beyond).

[Andrew P]

Good info there Ray, very useful indeed for you.

[Ray H]

Good info there Ray, very useful indeed for you.

Andy

 

Have you come to any conclusion about your freight movements yet?

[Ray H]

Possible freight traffic – part 2

Buckingham

The distant goods yard was obviously the main freight facility for the town but there were a few sidings adjacent to the station. I need to decide which of the town’s traffic went past the station and into the yard beyond and which traffic I can handle in the sidings on the scenic part of the layout.

The town’s traffic included mail, oil, fruit and veg, coal, milk and cattle. There was a water mill – presumably milling flour – and in common with elsewhere Woolworth’s traffic was traditionally rail bourn into the town. The nearby Stowe School necessitated the operation of special (passenger) trains at the start and end of each term.

There was a milk factory at the Verney Junction end of the station although not alongside the railway. At one time it traded under the glorious name of Thew, Hook & Gilbey (and later became a part of United Dairies).

I'll position a (low-relief) factory alongside my siding on the Banbury side of the station. This will require van traffic and presumably a limited amount of either coal or oil to power the place. Condensed milk was amongst the products of the original factory.

I shall have the Padbury van – see below – as a minimum for inwards milk supplies but I’ve no idea how much more milk would be required nor how it would arrive. My options are to either use one or more tank wagons or perhaps vans from elsewhere on the branch for the arriving milk and traditional vans for the products generated by the factory. The produce going much further afield than the locality from whence the milk could be assumed to have arrived from.

The suspect that the milk products probably weren’t perishable so didn’t need to be shipped out daily. I doubt the same could be said for the inbound milk. I’d also guess that the inbound and outbound traffics of such a factory would have their own distinct loading/unloading bays.

My two short sidings at the opposite end of the station need a purpose. The mill would need grain although probably not in hoppers as the mill appears to have been a little way from the station.

There isn’t really room for covered accommodation at this end of the station so I’ll perhaps limit things to that handled by van traffic and loaded straight into or from road traffic with the occasional open wagon for a little variety.

Padbury

Again this is a station with but a single siding. The book says that it had 4 or 5 wagons of coal per week. I’ll toss in the occasional odd open wagon and/or van for other purposes. I’m undecided whether the milk referred to in the book and presumably despatched to Buckingham went by a van on the pick-up goods or used the guard’s part of the passenger service. As I generally plan to run a DMU for the passenger service I may well have a daily van from the yard as this will enable the milk to be unloaded direct into the factory.

The transhipment of Padbury’s milk to Buckingham could involve two vans because Padbury’s siding can only be shunted in the down direction. The pick-up freight will collect the empty van from the junction and will exchange that for the loaded van in the siding at Padbury and take it to Buckingham where the reverse will happen. The empty van collected from Buckingham will be left at the junction on the return.

Verney Junction

The junction was and currently still is a fairly isolated location, far more remote than Fulwell, one of the distant branch stations. The sidings that it originally had were through rather than terminal and alongside the Met tracks (representations of which are not being modelled). The few short terminal sidings could have done no more than provide the most basic of facilities for local traffic (if that were indeed their purpose).

Bill Simpson’s book actually states that the station’s purpose was that of an interchange station with the emphasis on freight. I shall probably have the occasional wagon with a load to or from the station but it will largely be used as originally intended, as an interchange station. Shunting wagons into and from the yard in the down direction could be fun.

[The Stationmaster]

Ray,

 

I suspect the milk from Padbury to Buckingham would most likely have been in churns forwarded by passenger train.  That would give the consignor(s) more options timing wise instead of relying on the branch freight turning up on time and only giving one trip a day  (milking of course took place twice a day although generally in pre-bulk tankers days farm collection was only once a day).

[Ray H]

Thanks Mike. That doesn't surprise me. I suppose then that it would have been transferred from the platform to the factory by barrow. At least it will save me having to shunt round the houses to get the wagon in and out of the factory siding at Buckingham and to uplift the empty from the Junction.

[The Stationmaster]

Thanks Mike. That doesn't surprise me. I suppose then that it would have been transferred from the platform to the factory by barrow. At least it will save me having to shunt round the houses to get the wagon in and out of the factory siding at Buckingham and to uplift the empty from the Junction.

Possibly even taken by lorry Ray.