KingEdwardII

Phil, That's my approach - I find it makes getting the track geometry right much easier, especially for curves and the related cutting Yours, Mike

I am curious that you prepare your plans on paper. This seems like a lot of work when you need to modify the plans as you have shown in your last posts. I choose to use computer programs for these purposes largely to make the work of redesign and editing simpler and faster. I assume that you have chosen not to use this approach for very good reasons - can you say something about this please? Yours, Mike.

John, do you have interference from other WiFi systems in your vicinity? You might be able to see this with your PC or Smartphone, where there are apps available that will show you all the WiFi networks and info like which channels they are using. Or perhaps interference from non WiFi devices broadcasting in the 2.4GHz band, which would show up as noise. Yours, Mike.

One thought for you concerns modelling a suitable station. One of the more interesting stations on the Leeds - Carlisle railway is Skipton. Even more so in its pre-Beeching form, with the lines to Ilkley, Grassington, Colne still in place, in addition to the Leeds, Bradford, Carlisle and Morecambe links still present today. Not too large - 6 platforms in total - but a good variety of different types of train from the small locals up to the mainline London - Glasgow expresses. With the space that you have available, a substantial through station is practical and there would be plenty of variety possible. Yours, Mike.

While across the way, the main line tracks have 14-coach "Cornish Riviera Express" flying through ... maybe even hauled by my namesake

Indeed, although once we are talking about modelling a station on the 4-track section of the GWR main line, I note that we are a long, long way from "Minories". ;-) Mike

I too have a Prodigy PA2 system, but I am in the process of moving away from it. The PA2 is fine as far as it goes, but you need to select a system that will work best for your needs. One simple problem is using the PA2 to control turnouts as well as locos. This can be done with the PA2 handset, but I find it very clunky switching back and forth between accessories and locos and there is no display of the current state of a turnout. The standard PA2 handset is also a wired one, which can get a bit clumsy with a 2 metre cable snaking about back to the controller unit. My longer-term goal is to control the accessories via a touch-screen monitor attached to a Raspberry Pi system, and control the locos through a wireless handset - "look, mum, no cables!" ;-) I am also thinking about using the computer to provide further automation of some train movements, which gets me into occupancy detection and feedback. For this, I first need a controller which supports a suitable computer connection. The PA2 system does support a computer connection, but the necessary cable has a hefty price - > £50. The PA2 has provision for a wireless handset, but it too has a hefty pricetag. The PA2 is also a very closed kind of system and there does not seem to be a good approach to adding detection and feedback. So I am looking to replace the PA2 with something much more computer-oriented and supporting detection and feedback. The current front runner for me is the Digikeijs DR5000, although I am aware of a number of other systems that would provide what I need, some of which are considerably more expensive. One advantage of the DR5000 is that it is relatively open and supports the use of equipment from other suppliers, such as handsets. The NCE systems seem more on a par with the PA2 - relatively old school in terms of design and connectivity - and I am not considering them. Mike.

Richmond in west London is today peculiar in that it has a set of terminus platforms serving a double track line and a pair of through platforms serving a double track main line, but there is no connection whatever between the terminus platforms and the through platforms. Unsurprisingly, it was not always like this and more varied modelling can be had with the track plan of the 1930s, where the lines are all connected and there are goods facilities on both the up and down sides of the station, long since built over. However, such a plan looks rather large to my eyes! Mike.

Indeed. Aberystwyth until the Beeching axe in the 1960s was a substantial 5 platform terminus serving 2 single lines - most certainly qualifying as "the far reaches of the GWR"! Summer services were quite extensive, given the holiday resort nature of the place. Mike.

Yes, the AD-2FX looks like a good cost-effective solution. Regarding the DR4018 - I think it is possible to locate the unit a long way from the turnouts. I have cable runs of over 2.5m using 0.5mm2 3-core flex and I'm pretty confident that I could double the length of the runs if required. Mike.

Iain, There is an unstated part of the problem here, that any solution must cost sigificantly less than the DR4018 - and the DR4018 is already a very cost-effective accessory decoder typically in the low £30's. Since you have some existing DR4018s, can I ask whether you have any pairs of turnouts like crossovers that need to operate together, which are not already operated from the same channel on the DR4018? If so, then you can change these to use a single channel, freeing up a channel for new turnouts. I have done this for all my crossovers and a few other cases, so that I have substantially more MP1s driven than I have DR4018 channels. My other thought is that to beat the price point of the DR4018 you may need to consider kit-built approaches such as those available at MERG or Rocrail. Unfortuantely I have no experience with these. Yours, Mike.

I think there is a problem having the sidings off point 6 and also trying to treat the whole of the section from point 5 to point 8 as the reversing loop. Let's assume that a train is making some movement between point 5 and the sidings. Now see what can happen if a second train is permitted to travel on the track from point 8 towards point 6 (I'm assuming that it gets stopped short of point 6 by a signal, say). In this case, the first train needs the polarity one way, while the second one needs the polarity set the opposite way - a clear conflict. I can agree that the reversing loop section must be capable of holding the maximum length train. If the section from point 8 to point 6 is treated as the reversing loop, to avoid the conflict, one approach that retains the sidings might be to shift point 6 nearer to point 5 - e.g. flip from using a LH point to a RH point - making the section from point 8 to point 6 longer. Another approach is to prevent separate train movements between 8 and 6 and 5 and 6 - e.g.interlock points 8 & 6. Yours, Mike.

I think that you could simplify things a little by only treating the upper half of the reversing loop as a reversing loop - i.e. only the section between point 6 and point 8. That means that the sidings off point 6 are always at the same polarity as point 5. I think that would make your concern about the sidings go away. Would that work for you? Mike.

Wordsmith, How you wire up your track is partly dependent on what you want to achieve. So, for example, if you want to have automation, you are going to need some form of occupancy detection. One form of occupancy detection is based on monitoring each section of track for the current taken by a loco. The more sophisticated forms of this detection include getting info from the decoder which enables identification of the decoder address and hence the identity of the loco. If you want to go down this road then each section of track needs its own separate feed that can be monitored independently of any other section. If you're not doing this, then you have more freedom in how you organize the wiring. Clearly, getting a good feed to the track is top priority. Personally, I have not found that there is overmuch wiring involved in having feeds from the DCC track bus to each track section, but I recommend using a quick and easy method of connecting the droppers to the bus. Yours, Mike.

Yes - avoiding joints on sharp curves is something worth planning for. Avoiding sharp curves at all is an even better idea, although the cramped spaces we have for our layouts can make this difficult. I imposed a minimum 500mm radius on my OO layout and only approach that in siding areas - running lines are 600mm or more. Yours, Mike.

Since I have a signalling challenge to come on my layout, can I ask how you are creating your signals? Are you using kits or are you scratchbuilding? And how are you doing your actuators? Yours, Mike.

If you're using DC, then in effect you're really only needing to power 1 loco in each section of the layout. If you want to run multiple locos, they have to be in different sections, separately supplied and controlled. Modern loco motors typically take no more than 1.0A (OO gauge and below) and so this is the current that you need to supply to each section. This is different to DCC where there is the potential for multiple locos running off the same supply. I always recommend using multi-core ("stranded") cables. They are much more flexible than solid core and are easier to solder, when you have the need. 0.5mm2 wire is rated to 3A (this is equivalent to 20AWG or 16/0.2) and this should suit your needs. You can buy reels of this wire, although my approach is to buy mains flex of this size, since it is relatively cheap, colour coded and easily available. The only reason to use anything larger is if you have very long runs of wire and where voltage drop might become significant. The term "bus" in relation to wiring really applies to DCC rather than DC. In DC layouts, it is necessary to run separate wires from the control panel (or whereever your control switches are located) to each track section. In DCC, a single pair of wires can in principle be laid around the layout and short droppers taken from these wires to the track where required. This pair of wires is termed the "bus" since it serves many places on the layout - and yes, it is kind of equivalent to bus bar wiring. Yours, Mike.

Basically what I do in these cases of joints on curves is to gently pre-bend the rails themselves on each side of the joint. Don't go overboard - you want the track to stay in gauge right around the curve. To assist with this, I keep all the chairs intact until I'm happy with the curve on both rails and only then cut away the chairs at the join. With patience I have been able to get smooth joints on curves in this way. Yours, Mike.

I prefer to use 12mm ply, rather than 9mm. Yes, its heavier and more expensive, but I screw various items to the underside of the boards and 9mm is getting a bit thin for decent screws. It's also more rigid and requires less underframe to support it. As for the kind of ply, the Birch ply has a lovely smooth almost silky surface, which is great. I prefer this for all my new purchases, although I have used some older and much coarser tropical hardwood ply simply because I had some lying around in the garage. The Birch ply is much nicer to cut with my jigsaw. The moisture resistance factor really depends on where you're planning to have the layout. A shed, garage or attic is likely to be damp and puts a premium on getting ply that will not warp or delaminate. For me, I am fortunate to have an insulated and heated loft conversion that was previously a bedroom when my children still lived at home, so damp is not an issue - and so all the new ply I buy is that Birch stuff. Mike.

Like Iain, I am a devotee of MTB MP1 motors, driven via DR4018 units. The main wiring is from the DR4018s to the MP1s and is a 3 wire arrangement. I simply use the smallest size 3-core flex wire for this purpose (0.5 mm2), only exposing about 1 inch at each end. This reduces the wire runs to a neat single cable for each motor and it is naturally colour coded. I place the DR4018s centrally within a group of points to keep the runs as short as possible, but I do have some runs up to 2.5metre or so. The wiring for the frogs is much simpler and shorter since I link to the power feed for the droppers local to the point. Yours, Mike.

Although there are some examples of a bracket being used for main & bay platforms, I suspect that the separate starters proposed by Phil are more usual. I have a photo of Carmarthen station which shows 2 separate signals at the Aberystwyth end of the station, one for the main, one for the bay. Mike.

I can't find any more pictures of the Georgetown oven from St Fagans, but Beamish has a communal oven too with enough construction porn to enable you to build your own full size working version:

I think the first question to ask is how the branch is intended to operate - in particular whether you're planning "single engine in steam" operation, or want a more complex operating pattern. The station is quite small and so single engine might be more common in practice. This might mean no more than some ground frames for controlling things. If you're planning for multiple engines operating in the station, then the single line section is likely to be using staffs/tokens and this would typically imply a signal box somewhere near the bridge at the station throat. Another question regarding the level crossing is whether it would be gated or not. Its position implies relatively low usage by trains and there are examples of ungated crossings where the road involved is also relatively minor. If the road is more substantial, then the crossing might be gated and operated from a nearby small hut and/or a ground frame - I have seen a couple of examples of this kind in the book on the East Somerset and Cheddar Valley Railways. Mike

St Fagan's museum outside Cardiff might give you some ideas for buildings, although the number of valleys buildings is limited. They have a bakehouse: https://museum.wales/stfagans/buildings/bakehouse/ A set of terraced houses: https://museum.wales/stfagans/buildings/rhydycar/ A somewhat grand shop: https://museum.wales/stfagans/buildings/gwalia/ A workmen's institute: https://museum.wales/stfagans/buildings/oakdale/ (the last kind of building could be very large - certainly the one I knew in Aberaman in the Cynon Valley was a very substantial building) Perhaps something more like the Saddler's Workshop would be suitable: https://museum.wales/stfagans/buildings/saddlers_workshop/ Mike

Knowing something of the valleys in the era of my parents youth, I would say that the most likely building would be a chapel. You could hardly get away from them - there was one plonk in the middle of my grandparents' relatively small street. If not a chapel, then perhaps an establishment serving the alternative religion - a pub. They too were all over the place, often very simple "single room" affairs in buildings little bigger than a typical valleys house. Sadly, both kinds of place have by and large disappeared in modern times. If you want something of a business, then a small engineering works would be appropriate. Yours, Mike