Zanussi

A long time coming, but finally managed some time laying track. The bridge is a bit of a nightmare, finally got trains to run over it but when the weather gets damp the fit goes out and it will not lie true, need some sort of clamping arrangement. So far got the lower (Branch Line) loop working and the switchback that will enclose the goods yard. Two shots, one with the bridge raised, one down.

No battle plan survives the first shot, and my plans have been back to the board so many times now it is just not funny. First and most obvious as I feared access was a huge no, I simply could not reach into the corners, in fact looking at some of the plans available I have to wonder are they designed for giraffes? So a major change is a bridging section, a two level one which will probably bite me for my arrogance, I simply could not come up with a single level one and keep my inclines below 4%. That narrowed the boards, the gift of a turntable meant I no longer needed a return loop either. Essentially I have two elevated loops to bomb my expresses around, the outer one has a spur to allow me to park up a third train. The real stuff is on the lower level Branch Line, which services docks, freight yard, engine yard and a fiddle yard which is actually taking up one of a stack of shelves. There is also a basic loop. I have broken off completing the board and the bridge section, to check my wiring plans. Breaks in the track will allow separate operations to take place on the lower level, at least two controllers will be used, one for the loop and the other switchable to the yards, the fiddle yard gets it's own dedicated controller. I have started design on the Lower Level control panel, bit complicated this first pass, hope to thin that down.

The board is now virually done and covered with 50mm extruded foam, some of which will be cut away for lew level stuff. I am now laying out track and fine tuning what bits go where. I have part of the board dismantled for better access to the difficult bits, the removed pieces are a push fit and will remain so in the event of needing remedial work later. This layout is only intended to be a first draft as a practise and to build up stock and skill.

Slow time work over Christmas, but some progress. Lost track of the number of times I altered the layout plan as I worked on the board, mainly due to realising I had dead areas that could not be seen (or reached) I also could not live without a through station and added a feedback loop. I have left the terminus vague for now.

A pause in the work, I have run out of wood, I originally planned for an 8x4 layout, I have laid board for the east Bluff and the south cove round to west incline, and there stopped. Out of budget! I am also struggling for space, the drum kit is up for sale and the guitars stored under the bench so once that is done I can start on laying and shaping foam. More track I ordered has arrived, picture included, cost me about £50 including shipping, everything in the centre and to the right is Super Four, which some know as Triang, the rest is System Six, or Hornby. I had a mixed set in my teens and it holds no fears. Adapters are easy to get or make, as it happens there is half a dozen in this pack. They track types look similar but pick them up and you notice the difference at once, System Six has a lower profile and is much lighter. I actually prefer Super Four, it is sturdier, particularly when joined, it is so easy to rip a System Six fish plate. Compatibility wise anything will run on Super Four, but some earlier locomotives cannot handle the non ferrous metal of System Six. Downside is Super Four rusts faster and easier, in theory Nickel Plate System Six should not rust at all, but it does oxidize to some degree. Super Four is particularly vulnerable on the joins, rusting breaks down the conductivity. To deal with that I will solder Super Four sections together, I will be upgrading them in the future to six. I intend to use four mostly at the terminus and the freight yard, which are planned to be linked later into a large station complex, across the door entrance.

My first layout was in the foundations of my parents house, we had no other space so my Dad knocked out a dog size hole, as the house was on a slope at one end the foundation was deep enough to walk - very carefully - crouched half over. The problems were huge, damp being the main one, particularly as my track was the old Super Four iron rails, also there was no where between the foundation walls wide enough for a loop and the temperature went from sahara to arctic. It was great, for two years I worked more than played with it, gradually overcoming every problem. I developed a fascination for electrics and engineering and left home and my precious train set after winning an apprenticeship as an electrical engineer. I entirely credit my career with that train set and it's seemingly insurmountable problems. My long winded point is there is no such thing as wasted time, just learning time, on a practical note consider 50mm extruded foam, it is firm but flexible enough to smooth out your bumps, Best of all its cheap, I got mine from Wickes, it comes in 8x4 sheets or more manageable 2x4. BTW, if anyone has a tangle of rusted steel in their foundations and a huge rats nest of wiring and dodgey transformers ripped out of domestic appliances from the dump - for God's sake do not switch it on!

I decided to use loft board instead of Ply, hope it does not bite me! The reason is portability from the shop to shed, loft boards come handily packed for the car boot and are a doddle to handle and chop up with a jigsaw. I have fixed them to existing bench support with decking screws - expensive but worth it, and I love the hex drive. I made a start on the West and south side of the layout, keeping a broad mind, I am prepared to make drastic changes if it all looks too cramped. I am laying out just enough track to give me the outer measurements. I have more track on order from E Bay, bargain hunting and squeezing pennies late into the nights. Like the power supplies seen here, a job lot sold as seen, found in a loft. I stripped and cleaned them and was pleased I only needed to reject one. I will test them with an actual track and engine and keep the H&Ms and sell on the Triangs if they pass. the slave units I will keep, they do not go for much and I can see them being useful for lighting controls later on. Since I plan to eventually move to DCC five main controllers should be ample for a couple of years. The engine is another case of bargain hunting, and the only rolling stock I have so far, I got lucky, it is a beautiful 0-4-0 of the right period (WWII) - well sort of, probably not many left around be then! Boxed with crew and some bits I am not sure of, look like pipework. For £10 a lovely start to my budget railroad. At this rate I hope to have a couple of basic loops running by Christmas and crack on with the elevations over the holidays. I also need to take a long hard look at the electrics, This business of isolating cross overs for instance, I do not remember that requirement from my long past building days, I will be making my own isolating circuits and controllers so need to rig up some tests. One thing I am finding very irritating, and I bet I am not alone, my wife keeps bringing up my re-discovered hobby and takes malicious delight in bringing it up as proof of my decline into dementia. That I can cope with, it is the inevitable response.... "Oh we had tons of that railway stuff he could have, but I think we left it in the loft at the old house!"

Hum, a dry fit of the board made it clear the entrance was rather cramped, so I shrank the left hand curve by six inches, I have also abandoned the "bay," to be rigid the board would be thick and heavy and would need supports, not what I want. I hate to give up the moorings though so I have added a small canal and dock, though any buildings will have to be two dimensional. I have extended the terminal come fiddle yard to help me build up stock, I have also added a direct link to the freight yard so I can cruise two trains and still run shunting ops across the board. It gobbles up model space but I can fit a village on the headland, lighthouse and pub, an old castle, radar station and few bits here and there. Beside the freight station and terminus. Hope to have at least some of the layout up before Christmas.

Finally I have at least a starting point I am happy with, though if the finished result looks anything like this I will be astonished. I have taken the plan shown earlier and tweaked it, I got rid of the turntable due to expense and a lack of locomotives to use it - maybe later. A fiddle yard is spurred off at the top which will be modeled into a terminus. An option is to make it two level and run a through track overhead to cross the door and complete the shed circle. But not for some time. The bay and harbor area are lift out, or perhaps hinged, that will be the last thing anyway. I have added a full elevation at the north end of the track and a half height at the south end to break things up a bit, I modeled this in SCARM as an exercise in learning new stuff, I have not got the hang of some of the fiddly stuff yet, but SCARM gave me a better idea than XTRAC of the balance between train tack and modeling area and has forced me to cut back all over. Hopefully I have it enough right now to give it a go. The freight yard lets me show off some tanks and trucks, I might even sneak in an armed train such as the one Spike Milligan speaks of in his autobiographies. The harbour and bay will give me a little scope for small Naval Craft and I have picked up a natty RAF recovery set that will be posed in the lighthouse car park picking up a crashed Spitfire. I have a Chain Home Radar station as a nod to my Dad and to give him something to criticize as he used to erect them. Any other aircraft will be posed in flight above the board. The town scape backdrop allows me a final touch of an air raid with search lights, flashes and the glow of fires. I will use perspex sheet to screen it.

After a lot of sketching I came to the conclusion the only way to keep everthing reachable was to run around the perimeter with a lift off section (or run end to end, which I do not want) After more browsing I came across this solution which I like, there are still "shadow areas" but all the points and sidings are in reach, the modelling remains an issue so I will try to use lift out sections in the hard to get to areas. I am not going to build as is, I want my own layout, also while re-sketching this into XTRAC I found some odd differences, things not meeting, sidings going off at the wrong angles and so far, but I will use it as a base design as it is very scalable (time wise) and I thing lends itself well to two levels. http://www.freetrackplans.com/1027-Storiths.php

Checked out some larger layouts to see how they get over access. Surprising a lot do not, a typical layout might include a duck under area, but even so the builder would have to reach across a typical loop of about 4 foot, implying they actually have all round access. Good for them. I don't. One shed layout caught my eye, the track runs around the perimeter with a lift out section at the door. Nice, but as a starter with only a few bits of track looking to build my stock up over a couple of years, a rather large chunk of space, Keeping the option for liftouts in mind I am going back to basics and taking over the whole shed, the music gear can go into the loft. Armed with a tape and pencil I established that 2'6" was a comfortable max reach to set down and tweak models and scenary. Any more and there was too much risk of damage to anything closer on the board. Here then is the cleared shed...

Dammit, dry fitted my board and this will not do. For one thing my 10x8 shed appears to have shrunk and the board obscures more of the door than I planned. That I can live with, what I cannot cope with is just how deep a four foot board is! I looked at loads of examples including some wedged tightly into a space. But how the heck do the operators reach over 4ft? Checked back and the ones I was using as examples did not have access holes which I am trying to avoid for restricted movement issues I have. My conclusion - please correct me if wrong, is an access panel is essential if you do not have front and rear access to the board.

After severals attempts I realised I was not going to get an RAF base and an RN base on an 8x4 with any degree of believability. So I tossed a coin and went with the Navy base. Or rather a small port hijacked for war purposes. Central is a mole for posing a corvette, or similar sized vessles such as a Dog Boat, as the building whim takes me. Smaller docks allow for torpedo and gun boats, landing craft and so. A shallow area will allow me to add some small fishing boats, floating or canted over depending on whim again. Getting the boats in and out was a problem, I kept having to reduce the oval and make the dock outside it, or try to work in a lifting or swing bridge, until I spotted an example with a pontoon bridge. You cannot run main lines over one of course, but by making it hollow I can hide the main oval tracks in it. Artistic license on the dimensions of course, getting the corvette, which I have shown as Flower Class dimensions, in or out of harbour would be a struggle. Ideally of course the dock railway should be N gauge with 009 stock or similar to simulate a narrow gauge railway, but the cost is a lot to swallow when starting up. Maybe next time. I have also put effort into making the thing scalable in construction, so far I have bought a double oval with interconnection and siding (as new £42), enough to sort out the elevations and check the thing as a whole is viable. I will pick up a board next week, I have already used some left over roof beams from a demolished shed to make up the bulk of the base. Now I need to ponder the electrics, and look into this new fangled DCC thing, from what little I know so far I will not be able to use it on the 1st radius curves as only old rolling stock works on it.

While pondering what to layout I had sketched an idea in my mind to illustrate a wartime story which involves a small coastal forces based in Wales and a nearby holiday camp (aka TB sanitorium) which had been converted to a small RAF station for advanced flight training, the neat thing being that did not restrict me on what aircraft I could display. A rough sketch showed me the whole concept just would not work on 8x4 at 00, dropping down to N was not an option, I cannot model at that level, 1/76 is my lowest limit except for large ships. I was also uncomfortable with so many points being out of reach, access is to the top with a narrow squeeze to the right. Even with a pop out access hatch and lift off points in the tunnels I was asking for grief untangling mangled trains. So back to the drawing board.

I was somewhat amused browsing through posts to see I was not the only one intending to start with: "After 35 years I have..." Or thereabouts. I expect there is some logical math to it involving average times to leave home, get married, have kids, get rid of kids and stand gloating in one of the empty bedrooms thinking "Finally!!!" 35 years, phew. One thing I did remember was the importance of planning, this time I am going in with a clean slate, no big smelly box from Grandad's cellar packed with super 4 and system 6 and a tangle of locomotives and rolling stock picked up around the world and all represnting a fire risk, if not an explosive one. Oh no, this time I have a budget (grudgingly won) and somewhere in that three and a half decades I have picked up earnable CAD skills. I decided to be Spock and attack logically, before buying so much as an 0-4-0 and making whoo whoo noises round the room with it. Track plans were easy to find, I knew my layout restrictions (Half of the 10x8 shed I put up for the youngest when his mother became convinced he would be the next Bon Jovi and equipped as a band practice room. Now a storage area for the drum kit, six guitars, two keyboards, amplifiers and other rubbish thet never peeped anything more than "Smoke On the Water" but which I am still forbidden to boot via E-Bay, "Just in case". I pulled up my favourite CAD package (3 Dee even since I want a dual layer set) and started copying out ideas from the many, many examples on line. Frown. Something wrong here! I had diligently looked up track dimensions, and used them to produce templates. But time and again a tasty looking layout overflowed the digital board instead of staying comfortable and obedient in place as shown. Okay, be safe then, I got a set of Hornby plans which specifically use their own measurements, which I had used for my templates No chance. Not even a chance of a chance. On a 4' board who can they claim to fit a 22" radius curve branching off a siding and still room for a platform? After a couple of weeks of this I have come to the conclusion 00 scale includes some element of non-Euclidean geometry which I fail to grasp. I include a pic of a Hornby layout which I have had to chop up to fit to the claimed 10x8, other changes on the left are to adapt it to an old coaling station being used as a WWII coastal force base. I have also added an elevated spur which will form the start of an elevated section later on. I know I am too crowded, but it is a working start to ordering track and I hope to expand to occupy the whole shed eventually. Note this drawing was produced on XTRACAD software in case the fitting issues were with my 3DS Max. They were not.