MattB

In November I had the mad idea that I wanted to extend my layout from its current length of 2m to a layout that extended entirely round the room - (non scenic) Purely as somewhere where I could run trains up to their full scale speed and have break from the shunting which had been the practice from 2004. I had a room that measured 11ft by 7ft with alcove for the door. Items that could prove to me a bit of an issue included a tall bookshelf, computer desk, workbench, tool drawers and a few other boxes. I ended up moving half the furniture out and the rest went in the loft. Management had forbid me from drilling any holes in the wall at 800mm height (pictures hooks only allowed at head height) which meant I had to build the layout freestanding. I also did not want to spend too much with the aim to use spare wood and fixings that I already had. I started by buying two lengths of timber for table legs from homebase and then had the problem of getting them back home. Instead I borrowed a saw from a bemused homebase employee and proceeded to saw up the wood using a shopping trolley as workbench enabling me to fit 3m of wood in my small car and being able to close the boot. The plan was to be able to build a layout that when dismantled would be fairly portable but also rigid. The first section I built was the corner in front of the doorway an L shape section - The board is 4mm ply and the bracing is 9mm ply, this is then attached to two legs which are also braced at the bottom creating a fairly rigid structure. The second section is a baseboard that was part of an older layout - usefully this had a corner shaped section on one end and all that was missing was the legs. For the other end I made two large L-shaped pieces out of 4mm ply and braced them with 9mm ply for rigidity. I joined these together with metal joiners similar looking to fishplates and added some more timber legs. With the baseboards complete it was time to add the track... and an hour later I was playing with a 30 wagon train With the loop in place I am now able to benefit from the full potential of DCC. I have managed to get 4 different trains moving all at the same time on a single line and shunt a 5th in the sidings. For this you need eyes in the back of your head!

Well a few weeks ago I started taking apart the Bachmann Ivatt 2-6-2 Tank. After a bit of fiddling around I managed to remove the cover and then got rather worried when I saw the split chassis underneath... One hour later and about 10 screws I had succeeded in removing the wheels, baseplate, two chassis halves, the cylinders (that was a mistake and will have to glue those back) the cab and the motor. In fact the engine didn't look remotely like an engine anymore. With the engine in bits I was able to see that I required a rather small chip and ended up buying a TCS M1. At this point I gave up with this project and moved onto layout building. Last night I started work on it again as I have now received the chip. I had a look at the cab floor as a space for putting it although there seems to be a slot in the bunker if I can stretch (& disguise) the wires that far. I drilled a hole in the location of firebox as to gain wire access to the motor and soldered up the orange and grey wires to the motor pickups and covered them with heatshrink. (Tip While doing soldering and drilling it is best to not have a train running round and round as this can be a bit of a distraction) I started putting the chassis weight blocks back together making sure to remember that the red & black wires were clear. The pickups for this engine are located on the front bogie. (I have made a slight mistake with this one as I forgot to take a small power spring out that is now being bypassed by the chip wires - I am going to have to take the whole chassis apart again to get it out otherwise I will have a short circuit on my hands and a possible blown chip)

I started a new 00 gauge layout back in 2004, originally an end to end layout with a fiddleyard at one end and a runround loop on the main board. Recently I decided that I wanted the trains to go round the room and I now have a complete circuit. Layout was originally designed to be analogue using gaugemaster control but now in the process of converting to DCC - 6 engines chipped so far, the smallest being a 0-6-0 terrier. One of the big headaches was with a diamond crossover that kept short circuiting as if it was behaving as an electrofrog one. After numerous changes to the wiring I have completly removed it and altered the trackplan in the engineshed / coaling / watertower area. Ironically I now have an extra siding and the engine shed siding is 20cm longer than before. Of course I had to remove a field scenic area to fit it in but the more track the better in my case as this increases the operating potential.