Twentieth-Bagginess

TTA

I've built three TTA wagons, all are variations of PsiborgVIP's design.

They represent the fuel, CO2 and molasses prototypes. 

I've seen TTA diagrams vary between 7200 and 7400mm.

BR Standard Van

A ply sided, standard van was built in a very similar way to the VEA vans (also without external bracing).

I believe it is generally considered easier to model in larger scales but the nature of LEGO limits modelling smaller details.

Lego dimensions
Cmglee, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

VEA

Many parts of my railway are the result of a series of happy coincidences. The VEA van was the first piece of rolling stock I tried to model on an existing prototype and was done by eye. I have built one in Railfreight red and grey and one in Railfreight Distribution grey and yellow.

I have included renders because of my lack of photography skills

The body ended up being 1:48 long, not far off of the Class 08. If anyone has the true width and height of the body, I’d be interested to know.  The measurements I’ve seen online only give an inside and an overall width.

Working retroactivity, here is a technical drawing with scale measurements laid over the top. Each unit refers to 1 LEGO stud. The tool is provided by Sariel, a LEGO Technic builder.

And here are a couple of renders of variations with wider doors that are somewhat more true to scale.

I would like to build some more, maybe with one with a darker shade of red and one in Departmental olive. Were they any other special liveries? 

What a beautiful layout.

Can I ask how you work Glentogle sidings? I saw you mention it's a through station but I can't see that you've built any extension yet. Do you need to leave the train on the running line getting cars in and out of the goods shed/loading dock? 

TTA (still waiting for parts for the ladder to arrive) and VEA running as tail traffic

EDIT: I don't know what happened when I was designing the molasses TTA livery, the blue stripe should be wider.

Sorry for the poor photography

Three TTA variations, two VEA liveries and a VAN are on the layout today

5 minutes ago, Dagworth said:

I used power bogies on my 20, the only thing I don't like about is is that the battery box is a different grey to the rest of the body. It uses the older infra-red control system.

 

Andi

I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you were talking about LEGO. Do you have a thread? 

Thank you 5Bar and Dagworth 

I would love a class 20, but only if I can squeeze 2 motors into a 1:50ish frame (around 35 studs). LEGO designing can be surprisingly complex but it’s very forgiving when you want to change something :D 

Class 08

Currently the only loco running on the Stoney Vale branch line is a Class 08, based on a popular design by Masao Hidaka. I have added rear lights and adapted it to run on LEGO’s newer Powered Up control system.

The battery/control box and motor take up significant space internally, but there is room for cab detail. Side rods are a common part produced by third parties but LEGO has recently produced their first example with the release of the Orient Express set.

The motor drives the centre and front axles (in yellow) through a series of bevel gears. The rear axle (in red) is driven through the side rods.

The model’s scale varies:

Control

LEGO’s Powered Up system can be flashed with a custom firmware, PyBricks, and python scripts can be run locally on the hub.

I wrote a script that communicates with a physical remote control and allows 8 speed steps in forward and reverse.

Scale speed

Some of the motor’s in LEGO’s Powered Up range include a rotation sensor. This allows the control script mentioned above to calculate the real speed of the model.

Angle

At full power, the loco runs at a real speed of 0.3m/s around a Radius 40 loop of track. Considering the scale, gearing and size of the drivers, that is a scale speed of nearly 40mph, which much too fast, even for a Class 09. In the control script, I limit the 8th and final speed step to 0.137m/s, or a scale speed of 15mph.

Parts have arrived for new rolling stock.

Operating

Sessions begin and end with 4 of the 6 spots in the goods yard occupied, shown here with tan plates.

An inbound train arrives with 3 wagons, shown in blue.

The loco, in black, runs around and the trap points are thrown.

The inbound cars are placed where specified for unloading and the loco waits with the outbound cars for departure.

JMRI OperationsPro

I used JMRI OperationsPro to keep track of cars and generate switchlists. I took me a long time to get it working correctly but I’ve recently started adding extra details like custom loads.

Current Backstory

The Stoney Vale branch line brings goods and passengers into the town of Stoney Vale. The unique geological features of the area attracts tourists, made building a large station impossible and doesn’t allow road access. Many short services, such a loco and three wagons, DMUs and wagons running as tail traffic, are required to keep up with demand.

Track Plan

It's an inglenook variation. 3/3/3+3&loco

Trains come into the station from the east. Passenger trains pull into the upper side of the passing loop, goods trains pull into the lower side. On the far left is a head shunt and two goods sidings. The head stunt and the goods sidings can hold up to 3 cars each (shown as grey/tan plates). The lower side of the loop can hold three wagons (grey plates) and a loco (black plate). After the loco from a goods train has runaround to begin shunting, the trap point is thrown and the upper side of the loop is cleared for a MU passenger service.

The 6 spots can accept different cars: 1 takes fuel tanks, 2 takes fuel tanks and mineral wagons, 3 takes mineral wagons. 4, 5 and 6 take vans and flat cars.

The track is placed on five 48x48 stud, 38.4x38.4cm, baseplates, for a total size of 192x38.4 cm. The track joints line up for me to split the baseplates and stack them for storage.

L-Gauge

L-Gauge is used to describe the modelling of trains and railways in LEGO. LEGO have produced a number of different train systems over the years, including 12v and 9v powered track and more recently 9v remote controlled battery power, mostly using a 37.5mm gauge. LEGO's range of track is very restrictive but there are a number of 3rd party sources of wider radius curves, points and other track pieces. Models from the majority of official LEGO train sets are 6 studs, or 48mm, wide making them rather narrow compared to the track gauge. Many L-Gauge modellers build 7 or 8 wide models to a more realistic scale. 

My background

I bought a LEGO train set a few years ago to run around the Christmas tree. I then started to read more about model railways and learnt about running trains and shunting wagons. I didn’t, and still don’t, have the space for a permanent layout, nor much space for storage. I did think several times about getting into a smaller scale but I stuck with L-gauge and now have a modular shunting puzzle that I pull out regularly for sessions. I am in no way a prototypical modeller, not when it comes to scale, location, railway or time period but I do like to read about how the railways worked and I do incorporate details that I like. Modellers license, selective compression and a lot of imagination applies.

Index

• Track plan
• Session operations/JMRI
• Class 08 - Design, 1:1 gearing, scale speed
• VEA
• BR Standard Van

Sorry Donw, I have a fairly good understanding of where stock would be set out but I’m wondering more how sparky runs their sessions. 
how many wagons are on the layout at the beginning of a session, how many on the incoming and outgoing trains, how does the train pull into the station and beginnings its shunting 

Any more information on how the goods trains are shunted/where the wagons are placed?

On 02/01/2024 at 23:09, Neils WRX said:

I must be honest I only used to take interest if the trailers had a 751 on the front… Need to buy more trailers!!!

721/757/812. And most surprisingly, that 721 isn't local to me. 

32 minutes ago, Stoke West said:

Distillers company discharged the rail tanks into their road tankers and delivered to their customers , much the same as coal factors unloaded  coal and delivered to their customers along with other traders and comodities

Thank you 

so the co2 was produced at Severn Beach? 

I was imagining a (freelance, fictional) brewery receiving co2 for carbonating the end product. 

But after reading your post, I searched around and found that some breweries are capturing the co2 from the brewing process 

44 minutes ago, Fat Controller said:

Gas was a by-product of yeast manufacture like that at Bristol, and brewing the 'mash' for distilling, like the Menstrie  one

59 minutes ago, Stoke West said:

Bath Midland Bridge Road for the Distillers Company . 70's into the 80's a weekly block load from Severn Beach to Bow out sunday evening returning in the consist of any suitable train during the week

They were only used for the distillers company? silly me, I assumed they were for delivering co2 to various industries 

9 minutes ago, ELTEL said:

On a small micro layout I built during covid which is a small sub shed based about the time of the end of steam I have as one of the stock movements one or two loaded coal wagons arrive which are stabled next to the engine shed.

 

(while no one’s looking I remove the coal load) and send the empty wagons away.

 

Looks ok to me

 

Terry 

 

 

 

Sorry if this is a silly question, but how many stock movements do you have? 

Where were distillers co2 tanks transported to? How was they unloaded?

I couldn't find a detailed write up of operations at VI, but I did watch a couple of interesting running videos. Alcanman's Palmetto Spur is a nice layout, but I couldn't fit a track plan like that in the space I have at L-gauge scale.

While I'm looking out for a big enough board, I've been running a 4-3-3 with space for loco+2 in the kickback and 7 cars. I haven't come enough any situations where its impossible to the problem.

aac, I'm not sure what exactly your link to meant to point to. It opens Google maps with many locations marked.

I also couldn't find "Palmetto Springs" but I did find "Palmetto Spur",

9 hours ago, Keith Addenbrooke said:

Most of all: have fun! Keith

That's the idea

Thank you Gordon, maybe possible was the word I should have choose rather than plausible. I'm looking for an excuse to run two locos  In this alternative universe, our fictions town is a popular tourist destination and visitors choose the more ecological method of travel with loco hauled trains coming and going often. I can also employ selective compression, every wagon or coach actually represents two or three. The goods sidings are general purpose right now but that's not fixed.

In addition, I did try to come up with a realistic scenario for a regular inglenook.

Without a runaround, wagons would have to be propelled up the line.

The mainline station would need a large siding for a goods train to cutoff the front 3 wagons and leave the rest there.

Somehow a guards van would be need to be added for propelling?

The branch line could only be served by a train heading in one direction and it would need to be a trailing point to propel back up.

But my main question is, did I break the inglenook formula with the kickback?

I'm planning a new micro layout, an inglenook BLT with a kickback for mixed traffic.

Some considerations:

• I'm using L-gauge (or Lego)
• I'm looking for plausible, rather than prototypical
• The layout will mounted on a board and mainly operated as an inglenook but the board can be moved to the floor and temporary track ran through the house for the branch line

The 3 sidings (on the west side) and the headhunt (kickback, middle, east) are sized for a 5-3-3 inglenook. Is the puzzle always solvable like this or have I introduced some chance that could break it? 

Here is a plan of the layout.

At rest, there will be 5 wagons on parked on the west, lower sidings and a shunter on the kickback.

Both goods and passenger trains will arrive from the upper, eastbound track and pull alongside the platform. 

The shunter will pull the wagons (or passenger cars) into the kickback to release the loco.

The wagons will be resorted and 3 outgoing will be left at the platform.

The loco will take the outgoing wagons off east, back down the branch line.