The Diddington project

[wiggoforgold]

This weekend has been a busy one for Diddington. The new substructure for Diddington mark 2 has been completed.

The old Diddington was never intended to be portable: however, it was made in sections to allow it to be moved from the garage where it was built, to the railway room. The fact that it could be dismantled in to sections allowed it to be taken to a couple of shows, though that was never the intention.

Diddington mark 2 is unequivocally a permanent layout. The boards will be laid on a rigid substructure to  keep everything level. The removable legs of the original version have been done away with. The boards simply sit on the substructure, so that they can be easily moved around for construction and maintenance. There are adjusters at the foot of each leg, to allow for fine adjustment when the boards are in place. The spacings of the legs have been influenced by the need to store various items of musical equipment under the layout.

The new substructure has been built off the wall of the railway room. The main component is a pair of longitundinal “L” girders, glued and screwed from 18X69 pse, which run the full length of the layout. The ends of the substructure are screwed and rawl plugged to the walls. The longitudinals are screwed inside the ends. Blocks were fitted to the L girders at strategic places, such as the ends, to provide a location for screwing the girders together. Care was taken at every step to make sure everything was square and level.

The centre pair of legs are bolted to the layout, rather than screwed,  so that they can be removable to allow for items to be moved under the layout for storage.

 

 

 

I need to complete the painting of the end wall of the railway room.  After that, completion of the new loco shed area, which is currently a scene of devastation as I had to forcibly remove the old turntable pit as a first step to installing a new, working one.

 

Alex

 

Edited April 10, 2022 by wiggoforgold

[MrWolf]

That all looks rather damn spiffing old man.

 

I like the idea of a semi permanent substructure to lay the boards onto.. it's a step forward from what I built with storage bays underneath. Fortunately the memsahibs musical  instruments pack down small and (probably even more fortunate for anyone listening) I am no longer able to play the guitar.😁

 

I am seriously considering securing the layout to the wall though.

 

[wiggoforgold]

Progress on the loco yard. The old shed has been removed, the holes filled with card, and the ground is being built up with Das. The new shed, modelled on Huntingdon East, is temporarily in place to check clearances. The old turntable pit has been removed, and a new section of baseboard cut from 6mm ply, left over from the original construction. The new, working, turntable is a laser cut kit from Kitwood Hill models.

Alex

[Mikkel]

Looks great Alex. How are you finding the turntable, does it work well?

 

[46444]

Great work Alex. 

 

The Huntingdon East engine shed looks brilliant as does the turntable. They set the scene nicely.

 

As always good to see some Ivatt 2MT action.

 

What could possibly go wrong? 

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

 

 

[wiggoforgold]

25 minutes ago, Mikkel said:

Looks great Alex. How are you finding the turntable, does it work well?

 

Hi Mikkel

I'm very pleased with the turntable. I haven't properly wired it up yet, as I'm going to wire it in to the board. It doesn't have any indexing, that has to be done by eye, but I'm using an old trainset controller on very slow speed, which allows me to line  it up.

The model is actually for 3.5mm scale - it's a 65' one for Durango I think, but in my 4mm world it's a 50' one.

 

Cheers

Alex

 

[Mikkel]

Thanks Alex, that's clever use of the HOn30 one.

[wiggoforgold]

One of the first locomotives built for Diddington was an Ivatt 2mt from a Comet kit. Then the Bachman one came along…. The kit built one is still with us, but was in need of a repaint, so here it is, outshopped as 46465 in plain black. 

Edited April 23, 2022 by wiggoforgold
Spelling

[stewartingram]

And a couple of pics of 46465 at Cambridge.

 

[Windjabbers]

On 23/04/2022 at 12:38, wiggoforgold said:

One of the first locomotives built for Diddington was an Ivatt 2mt from a Comet kit. Then the Bachman one came along…. The kit built one is still with us, but was in need of a repaint, so here it is, outshopped as 46465 in plain black. 

Really like that! I always thought that the 2MT suited unlined black. All very nice.

 

Best Wishes 

 

David 

[46444]

On 23/04/2022 at 12:38, wiggoforgold said:

One of the first locomotives built for Diddington was an Ivatt 2mt from a Comet kit. Then the Bachman one came along…. The kit built one is still with us, but was in need of a repaint, so here it is, outshopped as 46465 in plain black. 

 

Very nice work Alex and good to see 46465 in the flesh so to speak at Taunton this morning.

 

The Comet version certainly has a finesse over the Bachmann RTR version.

 

Glad Jonty Jarvis was in the vicinity to capture the 31A resident in person.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

Edited April 29, 2022 by 46444

[wiggoforgold]

Upwell Drove hasn't been run since the Manchester show in December 2019, so I thought it was time to check everything. I am pleased to report that after a bit of track cleaning, everything- locos,track sections and point motors worked, so we are in business.

Alex

[46444]

5 hours ago, wiggoforgold said:

Upwell Drove hasn't been run since the Manchester show in December 2019, so I thought it was time to check everything. I am pleased to report that after a bit of track cleaning, everything- locos,track sections and point motors worked, so we are in business.

Alex

 

Great news Alex.

 

Hopefully this means some Ivatt action in due course... ;)

 

Looking forwards to a photographic update.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

[wiggoforgold]

5 hours ago, 46444 said:

 

Great news Alex.

 

Hopefully this means some Ivatt action in due course... ;)

 

Looking forwards to a photographic update.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

Only the class 2 though, not the class 4 which is too big for the headshunt.. I reckon a 78xxx would fit though 😊

 

Edited May 25, 2022 by wiggoforgold

[46444]

23 minutes ago, wiggoforgold said:

I reckon a 78xxx would fit though 😊

 

Absolutely...

 

I believe this will be the Spring 2023 RCTS/Ian Allan Special sponsored by Hornby.

 

Apparently a Kettering 15B resident has been requested along with motive power from Cambridge 31A to deal with high demand and much frothing...

 

[LNERGE]

[wiggoforgold]

1 hour ago, LNERGE said:

That's an interesting plan Richard. When is it? After the line between Huntingdon East and St Ives was closed presumably? I remember standing on the old down platform at Huntingdon East looking at a train of road railers that had been parked there.

Alex

[LNERGE]

I'll send the rest of the plan after work tomorrow. It implies the line to Godmanchester became a siding.

[wiggoforgold]

That fits in with what I remember. I think there was a track in place on the bridge over the Ouse to Godmanchester until August 1961.

Alex.

[LNERGE]

[billywhizz]

Hi. Only just come across this thread. The layout looks fantastic and captures the atmosphere of the area really well!  Interested to see how you had used DAS around the point work and weathered the track, but sadly the photos have not been restored back yet. Fingers crossed they will reappear at some point! 
looking forward to seeing more of the layout. 
 

Regards,

Bill. 

[wiggoforgold]

My model of the “gas house” referred to in the diagram posted by LNER GE

[wiggoforgold]

I’m building new control panels for

Diddimgton. The plan is to construct them at the same time of the layout with everything being wired up as it is installed, thus the basic panels are being built at an early stage. There will be two panels, the driver's panel which has the section switches set out geographically and a separate signal box panel, where the switches are arranged like the levers in a signal box. The levers will be appropriately colour coded, and numbered to correspond with the signalling diagram.

Edited May 29, 2022 by wiggoforgold

[spech]

On 25/05/2022 at 07:14, wiggoforgold said:

Upwell Drove hasn't been run since the Manchester show in December 2019, so I thought it was time to check everything. I am pleased to report that after a bit of track cleaning, everything- locos,track sections and point motors worked, so we are in business.

Alex

This model was the highlight of my day at Manchester; I absolutely loved it. I came back a few times in the hope of expressing my appreciation and asking a couple of questions but you always seemed to be busy having your ear bent by somebody else. I hope you're considering bringing it back this way some time. 

[wiggoforgold]

5 hours ago, spech said:

This model was the highlight of my day at Manchester; I absolutely loved it. I came back a few times in the hope of expressing my appreciation and asking a couple of questions but you always seemed to be busy having your ear bent by somebody else. I hope you're considering bringing it back this way some time. 

Sorry I missed you at Manchester. We had a very enjoyable time. Who would have thought back then it would be the layout’s last outing for a couple of years? No plans to venture that far north again at the moment. I’m down in the South West, so Manchester was quite a trek. There will be developments reported here though.