Eastdown Terminal Facilities

The last month or so has seen me pre-occupied with getting settled in the new house, but it has also seen me dive back into the Southern And Central with a vengeance. The below picture shows most of track down along with the Peco turntable well in position. Electrical will be next....ugh, my pet hate...again.

After being put back together and tested, module 1 was joined to the empty module 2 which then became the Eastdown Terminal Facilities.

While scaled back from my original design, there is still enough room for a smallish turntable, 3 bay roundhouse and engine maintenance building. I will try and squeeze a bit more in if I can, but for now that will be plenty. The turntable has been weathered, and almost completed (I haven't fitted it properly, nor motorised it yet). My next post will cover this in more detail.

Update

As promised here are a couple of updates including a quick video of a moving train. As you can see, quite a bit of progress has been made and I am very happy with the way it's looking.

I actually started this post a year ago (wow) and not much else has happened since, as I have been a bit busy moving into a new house. But things are beginning to get back to normal, although me and my trains now share the garage with 2 cars; I will start posting more images again soon, especially as I plan on starting module 2 (mostly engine facilities, including a turntable) very, very soon.

From zero .... to trees

So in an  effort to save cash I decided to have a crack at making my own trees.

Really simple. All you will need is some rope, thin gauge wire, brown spray paint, ground foam, hairspray and an electric drill.

1. Bang a nail into a fairly stable piece of timber;
2. Nip the head off of the nail. (be careful here else you will pierce your hand if you forgot you did it)
3. Cut off a length of wire and fold it around the nail once, so it is effectively folded in half, separate the two pieces of wire.
4. Pull your rope apart and snip off bunches of strands with a pair of scissors. You don't need to undo these bunches too much; lay them between the two lengths of wires wrapped around the nail.
5. Shove the ends of the wire in the drill and press the trigger gently. The wire should spin around, taking the rope with it and get tighter and tighter. When it's tight enough that the rope is all splayed out in individual fibers you can undo the chuck and slide the wire off of the nail.
6. Take your scissors and trim your tree into as natural a tree like shape as possible.
7. Spray all your trees evenly with a fine coat of brown spray paint.
8. Once the paint is dried, spray your trees with hairspray and sprinkle ground foam over them and voila! a tree is born.

Ballasting Completed

Time for a quick update.

This job, that of ballasting, has taken several months; done in between a bit of this and a bit of that.

As you can see, I went with a blended grey courtesy of Woodland Scenics. I researched this for quite awhile and in the end just went with what I liked the look of, rather than anything prototypical.

While I was doing this I also installed some street lights, ones which look much better than what I have on the overpass; so one of my next jobs is to replace them! Ugh...

Currently I am onto the next bit of track-work, which is painting the rails, something which I decided to do after taking some close up videos of moving trains.

The shiny silver look of the tracks looked completely unrealistic when viewed from that angle. You can see some of the track I have painted on the left and I think you will agree, it looks way better. So over the next couple of weeks I will do the rest.


All going to plan, my next post will include be a video of a loco actually moving.

The Far Yonder Hills

Just a quick update to show you the completed hills, tunnel portal and blending of the highway; although after taking the picture I notices a couple of gaps I need to fill. Obviously applying paint and other scenic materials are yet to be done, that will come a bit later once the ballasting of this module is complete.

Right now I am installing the missing 2 switch motors, wiring up the last of the signals and thinking about where and what lighting to install; which I think will consist of a few yard lights and a couple of lights on the station platform. In between all of this procrastination I am now also applying track ballast...I will post some updated pictures once this is complete. As an aside, next to wiring, applying ballast is my least favorite part of model railroading! It is a long tedious and laborious job and will take me weeks to complete...ugh!

Rock Making 101

Here's a quick and dirty post on how to built rocks using a cheap and easy technique.

In the past, I made rocks from Woodlands scenics rock molds, and simply cast them using plaster of paris. However since I don't have the molds anymore, I balked at spending $20 per mold and after doing a bit of research decided that a bit of trial an error was called for.

You will need the following.

1. Some rocks! Don't use smooth pebbles, you want something with some obvious definition. Tree bark could also work for this.
2. Plain old aluminium foil.
3. Plaster for the casting, I use whatever I have handy.

So as you can see, the only outlay is for the plaster and the foil, which is free if you pinch it from the kitchen when no one is looking.

Firstly, grab your rock and wrap it nice and tight in the foil, you want to try and smooth the foil out as much as possible and as tightly as possible.

Once that's done, it's a matter of releasing the rock from the foil as gently as possible, this can take a bit of wrangling and messing about and it will lose some shape, but you can easily squish the foil back when done.

Lay your molds on a flat surface, depending on the rock they may not sit straight, so you might need to support the molds with something; using the rocks just released from your molds should do the the trick, although I didn't find I had to.

Mix up your plaster so it's fairly runny and pours easily and gently fill the molds. If you've done it right, they will self level.

Let them sit for a few hours and then peel off the foil.

As you can see, they look pretty rockish, and once painted will be as good as what you would get from the Woodlands Scenics molds. I had no problems with the foil sticking and in fact was able to reuse it multiple times.

The real advantage of this method is that the variety of rocks you can create is limited to only how many rocks you can collect!

Highway Overpass

One of the problems I knew I would have to deal with building a long skinny shelf layout was how to handle the termination of the layout. The mainline at Silver Springs just ends, and I wanted this to be disguised.

After a lot of tooing and froing I had decided to disguise it with a highway overpass, specifically the one sold by Rix. However this kit set has a couple of limitations.

1.The price and since I would need 2 to make a double lane highway and a 3rd to increase the length, I was looking at well in excess of US$100 for a few pieces of styrene.
2.It is straight and I really needed my overpass to curve across the section of track that one day will extend to a staging yard.

So with these limitations in my mind I decided that I would attempt my first scratch built structure.

While I don't have an exhaustive list of supplies, I can tell you that basically my overpass consists of about 90% Evergreen styrene of various types with the remaining being the highway railings from Rix which they supply separately. The street lights came from somewhere in China and cost me the ridiculously low price of $4 and were freight free to boot. A quick and dirty calculation tells me that all up I spend about US$50, so a significant savings to create something that I think looks better than the packaged one.

All up the project took about 4 weeks to complete and I am very happy with how it turned out! If you want any further details feel free to post a comment.

I have to say this; if scratch building is something that scares you (like it did me) find something simple to build and have a go. Yes you will make mistakes, but the feeling of satisfaction when you have finished is far greater than building something from a kit.

If you notice closely the picture gives a bit of a clue as to the geographic location of my layout location. It's not for any particular reason that I chose this area other than I once (briefly) lived not far from it. I am not, repeat not, trying to replicate this part of the world.

The next part of this project is to add the hills around the fake tunnel portal so it all blends together nicely...oh, and add some vehicles!

Wiring Module One - Turnout Control

My initial intention was to not wire my turnouts at all and to use manual throws, since the width of the modules meant the turnouts were all within easy reach. That changed once I saw my first N Scale manual throw; way, way out of scale! One of the reasons I chose to use Code 55 was because of the more realistic profile and the turnout throws were just going to ruin the effect!

Tortoise slow motion switch control motors were my first choice, but the price bothered me. To purchase a single motor in NZ was going to set me back close to $40. Way, way too expensive for my taste. So after researching for awhile, I found an alternative motor made by an Australian company called DCC Concepts (their link is in the resources pages on this blog.). Their Cobalt Blue motors come in a few different flavors, including ones with DCC Decoders already built into them. I came close to going this route, but after mulling it over, realized changing turnout direction using my handheld throttle would just be a pain in the backside.

I eventually settled on a cheaper version, which has a cost of about $24, and meets all of my needs. DCC Concepts also supply all of the parts necessary to make a control panel, and so I bought a bunch of switches and LEDs, and then popped into a local engineering company and had them cut me some sheet metal plates for mounting everything too.

Installing the motors under the bench was relatively simple to do, and with the neat spring clips, there is no soldering required either; just pop the appropriate wire into the clearly labelled hole. I have 5 wires going to each switch motor. Power from the control panel, dcc bus power and the wire from the turnout frog (the green wire in the picture).

By far and away the most difficult, fiddly and time consuming part was wiring up the panel. I bought LEDs and switches from DCC Concepts also; the switches are great, each DPDT switch has a circuit board attached making power and led connection simple. The LEDs, well let's just say I dumped the lot and bought some cheaper dual color LEDs from my local electronic shop. The main issue with them is that they are far too bright for a control panel. I want them to be an indicator, not an INDICATOR!!!!! I also found them way too easy to blow; whereas the cheaper, not as bright alternatives seem a lot more stable. I'll put that last issue down to my electrical ineptitude that I have mentioned before.

The panel come up really well (other than the scratches which I have to repaint), it is easy to understand and functions exactly as is required.

The last step of this project is really just the detailing of the turnouts. I am going to use non functioning switch stands, but I will be doing that way off in the future...other projects call first!

Layout Update

So back to my haphazard posting!

Several months have passed and while I haven't made massive progress, I have made some. The first structures are now placed, the first one is my depot, passenger and freight, followed by a large industrial building which I have heavily modified to be a low profile background building.

All of these buildings have their lighting installed as you see below. I am really pleased with how they look, obviously there is no detailing done yet, but that sort of thing is the stuff that I like to do bit by bit.

You  might have noticed the signal light in the bottom picture! It's a model power signal which I picked up off of ebay (not sure if they are still in production), there are actually 3 on the layout now. I have them wired through the switch motors and they indicate whether the main line is cleared. I thought about wiring up block detection, then did the maths and thought about it again; way to expensive and way to complicated. This looks ok, and adds a bit more interest to the scene.

Also completed is my first road, which will eventually lead to a fuel loading depot. I'll get into that a bit more in my next post, along with my method for creating roads. I am currently working on creating a highway overpass which will span the entire width of the layout. I was going to purchase the Rix overpass, but after looking at the price and what I would get for my money (approx $100) I decided I didn't like to get royally ripped off, so I am scratch building my own. It's an evening project and I don't have much to show yet, so will hold off on posting any pictures until I have the supports all finished at least.

Wiring Module One - The Basics

It seems to me, that if there's one thing most model railroaders don't enjoy, it's wiring! I'm no exception, although I have to admit to feeling a certain amount of satisfaction when you flick that switch and electricity goes to the right place!

To date, wiring the module has been the most lengthy, and complicated task I have undertaken so far. It still isn't finished and is probably a good 6 to 8 weeks for being so. As I mentioned in a previous post, the Cricket World Cup has started and that has most of my attention at the moment.

I am going to break this post into two parts. This part will cover off the basic steps I followed and the the second post will cover off the switch motors and control panel, which was the most labor intensive of the two stages.

I read an enormous amount about DCC and the correct way to wire; so I tried my best to follow the guidelines suggested by others. First of all I am going to admit to a cardinal sin. I did not solder all of my track joints. I am going to simply justify it by saying I am not a sadist and couldn't think of anything worse. Yes it may cause me problems down the line, but I tried to mitigate the decision by soldering way more feeder wires than necessary.

Feeder wires, if I am correct, are the key to DCC success. The more of those going to the track the better. The rule of thumb is one per track section, and while I didn't quite go to that extreme, mainly because of the amount of sectional track I used (thanks Atlas), I have made sure that there are plenty of feeders nonetheless. My module has some 36 pairs of feeders, I think it will be more than ample. I have been running trains for a few weeks and so far no problems.

I also decided that all of my turnouts would have their frogs wired also, so that's another 8 pairs of feeders for those. I'll detail that a little more in my next post.

The pictures below shows the wiring (unfinished) under the module, there's a bit of tidy up needed, but hopefully you get the gist. The homemade bus bars (just terminal blocks with jumpers across them) worked as well as I could have hoped and I avoided the ridiculous expense of proper bus bars! My multi-meter and I have spent numerous hours on the floor checking every connection and thankfully (and to my surprise) they all worked!

Under table Wiring

DCC Panel and Switch Panel Wiring

As my layout is designed to be relatively easy to move, there are simple plugs which connect the various wiring between modules. One connection for track bus, one for turnout power and another for lighting.

As of yet I have yet to wire in any lighting supply, but I intend on getting that provisioned for soon. All lighting will be LEDs and will be run from a seperate 5v power supply, which should be big enough to power half of the entire layout. While I don't intend on installing lighting just yet, I figure it's better to have it ready to go than try and mess about doing it when the layout is more or less complete; the less time spent on the floor the better and I couldn't think of a bigger disaster than banging my head and dislodging half of my layout!

On another note; I purchased an F3A Kato Loco from eBay, which supposedly came with a factory installed decoder. Unfortunately I was sent the wrong model. The seller offered me a partial refund which I used to buy a Digitrax DCC board and I spend a frustrating couple of hours trying to install it. Eventually I succeeded, but it will be the last time I ever do that! The instructions were simple enough, but boy was it fiddly. In future I will make sure any Loco I buy comes with the DCC board installed already.

OMG I'm Back!

Wow, almost 4 months later and time for another post!

A thousand apologies, but in between starting a new job in October, Christmas and New Years and my beloved game of Cricket (Go the Blackcaps) the limited time I have had available to me has been spent at the beach or actually working on my layout as opposed to writing about it!

Now, I'm not promising any future surge of blog updates, but I will get a few more out over the next couple of weeks catching everyone up on progress.

This first post back is just a quick update really and as you can see from the below post, there has been quite a bit of work done.

Completed Trackwork

All of the track work has been completed! Trains run! Woohoo!

Probably the biggest single achievement to date IMO. One small snag though, I discovered that 75% of my hoarded rolling stock will need to have the wheel-sets replaced with low profile wheels. Luckily I hadn't started converting couplers yet (I will be using knuckle as opposed to the rapido type which most of them have), so by replacing the entire truck assembly I can kill two birds with one stone. Long term project! I have enough that are fine to keep me happy for the moment.

Completed Track-work

I also attempted to DIY some under track decouplers using rare earth magnets as you can see in the bottom picture; while they aren't particularly obvious from the photo, basically the magnets are attached to a washer in opposite polarities. It's pretty hit and miss, and my advice to anyone thinking about doing it is don't bother. before I ballast, I will take them all out. It was a good experiment, but not a keeper.

DIY Under-track Decoupler

You may also notice the control panel on the fascia, which while wired and powered up, is not quite hooked up to the Cobalt Blue switch motors; I will detail that a little more in my next post, though suffice to say, while completely unnecessary, I have decided to install them on all of my turnouts, just because they are cool and because I hate the look of the manual ground throws for N Scale. If you're wondering what the wires poking out of the track-work are, those are the feeds for the turnout frogs that have not yet been connected to the switch machines.

Currently I am working on building the first few structures (i'll show those in another post), and will start ballasting in a couple of weeks.

Laying Track

After many, many months of planning and building bench-work the first section of track has been laid on the Southern and Central. It's been an expensive month! I don't even want to total up what I have spent, but it's well over $500! Eek....shhhh, don't tell the Mrs.

The section in question is the main line leading into the (as yet unnamed) lower deck terminal. Due to the issues surrounding Atlas and their supply of code 55 flex track, I have been forced to use sectional track for now, which actually hasn't been the biggest problem in the world, though I do wish I was using Peco code 55 since it is available in large supply from nearly everywhere. Much of the track I have managed to get my hands on has come from the US; thanks to Ebay and NZ Post's excellent US post forwarding service that they offer.

Track and track-bed is secured using white glue, with pushpins used to temporarily hold the sections in place as you can see in the pictures below. Once dry the push pins are removed the track is nice and secure. In the past I have used track pins, but to be honest I found them more trouble than they are worth, and inevitable I end up make a fist of it. Glue is a little more permanent, but then I am not planning on moving anything (hopefully).

Track glued and held in position with pushpins.

I am wiring for DCC, which I will be controlling using an NCE Powercab (again, thanks Ebay, effectively half the price it would have cost me had I bought it in NZ).

I love the walk-around controller, and the face plate which I can easily plug it into! I will definitely get some more panels for the other modules. Because the controller is not hard wired, when I am not using it, it can be safely secured, an added bonus. I will eventually pick up a pocket that it will sit in and attach it to the fascia.

The uncovered holes on the fascias will ultimately be covered by small control panels for turnout control; I am going to use aluminium or acrylic panels and micro switches. I will detail that further when I install my first turnout mechanism, which is probably going to be a cobalt switch machine, since they come from Australia and are a damn site cheaper than tortoise. I am still mulling over whether I will use the DCC versions or just the standard versions. It doesn't seem practical to control these from the powercab, so the DCC version just seems like overkill to me, but for an extra $3 it seems a shame to not use those instead.

Desk fits snugly under module! Note the holes in the fascia.

My next post will detail the wiring process a little more, since by then my trains will be here and running! How exciting...

Completed Benchwork

After many weeks of bashing about in my garage, I can finally sit back and go ...phew!

All the benchwork for the Southern and Central (excluding the helix, which will be a project for next year) is now completed. Over the last couple of weeks I completed the 3rd module, which will model a fairly deep ravine and mountain side in the lower module and a bay in the upper module. 

Probably the biggest challenge was to get these modules to marry up, but with a bit of huffing and puffing they do, and pretty much perfectly, although I am not completely happy with the height of the upper valance, so in time I will add a wider valance.

The other issue I had to deal with was gradients. Because I wanted to get the lower deck main line as high as possible before reaching the helix module, thus eliminating some of the helix work, I used a gradient of about 3%, which isn't particularly high, but I didn't dare go any steeper than that. The branch line in the upper module has a gradient of about 4.5%, way too steep for any serious train lengths, but since it's a branch line I figured it would be ok. I plan for that line to connect to a coal mine or quarry.

While the plan is to now install these in the spare bedroom, I think before that I will start running the wiring beneath the layout, just because of the ease of access. I will be installing an NCE DCC system, so it's just a matter of running the bus wires underneath and adding suitable plugs and sockets between module. My next update will document how I've done that and hopefully will show the modules installed in my "train room"!

Backdrop

Sorry this is bit late, but took me longer than I had anticipated...that's becoming a bit of a theme I realize! My impatience to complete keeps writing checks that reality can't cash!

I am fairly happy with the completed backdrop, I think it came out well considering I have very limited artistic skills. All I can say is thank God for YouTube.

I thought I was ready to lay track, but my decision to go code 55 has bitten me on the bum, as Atlas have still not sorted out all of their manufacturing issues, in particular code 55 flex track is as scarce as hens teeth. I considered (briefly) going to Peco, but joining the pieces of Atlas that I have to Peco was going to be a pain as the rail profile is completely different.

So I guess for now I will probably start building the next module!

Short term I have some track, so I may start laying some of the yard track. I do want to draw out all the track and planned structures first, so that's something I will be doing over the next few weeks.

Better Late Than Never

Well it's been a lot longer that I thought between posts, but finally I thought it was time to report some progress!

I am still working in the garage which is not ideal, a bit too cold at this time of the year, so not as much has been accomplished, well not as much as would have liked.

The bench work for the first 2 modules of my layout is now largely completed. I say largely, because there are a couple of minor things that need to be done such as fit castors to the legs which I have been putting off!

I am currently working on getting the backdrop right and this has been an ongoing mission. You can see from the picture that I have some basic hill shapes and the little dots are trees, all individually stamped with foam rubber cutouts. I still have a lot more trees to do, and I would love to get some clouds up on there. My intention was for it to just be a basic blue background, but it was not at all satisfactory so I have been teaching myself some rudimentary painting skills. I think it looks ok, though the picture does not do it justice, so I will take a couple of close up images next week and post them.

The other thing which I have completed is the coved corners, after all the world does not have corners! If you are wondering how I achieved it, well it was easy in the end. Some think cardboard, glued with contact adhesive and plastered over to hide the seam as much as possible. I think it came out as best as could be hoped and certainly looks a hundred times better than it was. I found the corners cast weird shadows that just ruined the effect!

By the way, the gap in the middle of the picture is where the modules join, can't be helped!

Over the next few weeks I will get the painting completed, the castors fitted and make some adjustments to the base itself for where there is a slight gradient (which I really should have planned for a lot earlier). Once that's done, I should finally be able to sneak the whole lot into the house....though now I am thinking about building the 3rd module since I am on a roll!

My Rant

Time for a bit of a rant...and this is directed entirely at local hobby shops in New Zealand...though it might also apply to other countries.

I love this hobby, it's a lot of fun, but boy oh boy do I worry about its future. Every train show I go to I see less and less young people, of course what this means is there are less and less opportunities for products to be purchased, so hobby stores stock less, and ultimately manufacturers build less and sell at a higher price. It's a bit of a downward spiral.

So here is where the rant comes in. I walk into my local hobby shop, there are cars, planes and even boats hanging from the ceiling, but alas where are the trains? Well they are locked away from prying hands in cabinets and cupboards; there's no working layout, nothing, nada, zip....and I see this in nearly every hobby store I go into in this country. Hanging stuff off of your roof is fine when you want to put it somewhere after you've bought it, but pretty much useless if you're trying to sell it.

Wake up hobby stores! You are competing against Xbox, PlayStation and iPads! You are competing against a vast sea of competition online and most of all, you are doing the hobby a massive disservice. You need to make the products you sell more tactile, more exciting. Locking them up in cabinets is all fine and good to stop them being stolen, but then you might as well not unpack them at all from the shipping cartons!

My local store changed hands a few years back, the new owners clearly have little interest in model railroading...I know this, because whenever I visit, the owner is plonked down behind the counter working on (I assume his) remote controlled cars. I'm yet to ever see him actually out in front of the counter providing that invaluable thing called service and not once, ever has he smiled or uttered a single greeting as I entered. Is it any wonder then that I prefer to purchase online...not from them mind you, because this store (along with a good number of other hobby stores in NZ) deem the internet unworthy of their presence. Don't even get me started on the rampant overcharging...that's a whole new post in itself.

Before anyone says, "What do you know!", well I speak from experience. Before entering the dizzying, often confusing world of IT, I spent 20 years working in, managing and eventually owning my own retail stores and I now spend my days building eCommerce sites for retailers.

I, unfortunately, see a day when this hobby is but a distant relic of the past (as will be the little local hobby store) unless more effort is made to modernize and connect. Sadly, this is not a problem solely owned by hobby stores, but by nearly every niche retailer in existence. If you're going to run/own a retail store then you need to go and take a course at your local community college; customer service 101.

You all have this amazing point of difference...cool toys...every little kids dream! So use that point of difference, get the stuff out on display and get it working.

Heres a few ideas:

• Build a small portable layout. Kids (and adults) will watch trains running for hours!
• Hold regular work shops, designed especially for kids where they can come in and experience the real world instead of the virtual world. Show them how to build a model aeroplane, run a train, fly a plane...the options are endless!

... and lastly (and probably most importantly) stock some entry level stuff, cheap and cheerful, the sort of stuff that will pique interest without breaking the parents banks.

Painted Module

I ummed and ahhed, and researched and read a lot about painting the background. In the end I decided to go with a simple light blue with wisps of white, representing clouds. Long term I may continue to add to the background with photo images and building flats, but for now I am quite happy with the way it came out. I'm a big believer in less is more, and I don't really want people to be looking at the background scenery anyway, so low key and believable is what I want.

The baseboards received a coat of flat light brown latex paint, eventually it will be hidden under ground cover, and whatever else gets plonked down, so won't matter too much. I will use the same brown to make a wash with for use later on.

I gave the benchwork a coat of black semi gloss latex paint, mainly because I wanted to really frame the two levels, and I think it is very effective. I've seen greens and browns used, but for me black, really draws the eye into where the action is happening. Once flouro lights are installed above the levels I think it will look really dramatic!

One thing I will say...wow, the price of paint! So to keep the cost down, I scrounged old leftover paint (thankgod for people who paint their kitchens sky blue...yes, you know who you are!) and purchased test pots, which is a much more cost effective option.

Painted module.

I may not post much over the next few weeks as I will be building the second module, and this will largely be a duplicate of what I have already written. Winter is on the way, so it will be a mad rush to get done so I can spend the cooler months inside.

Completion of Yard Module Benchwork

So I got down to work this Easter weekend and have managed to get both the background boards and base boards into position. I've also filled the joints and given the whole thing a sanding, ready for some paint in the next couple of weeks.

I went with fairly lightweight MDF, 4.5mm for the backboard and 6mm for the base. It's a bit too heavy for the backboard, but I need the extra stability that it gives. That's going to cause some issues in the corners, since I want the backdrop to be curved, so I think I will end up using some card stock to provide the curve or find some other way of disguising the harsh edge, if I bother to curve it at all, seen some really effective backboards online that aren't curved, just well disguised, so I'm not 100% sure yet. I will experiment with some different materials and methods. The base is made from a heavier, 6mm MDF, although on reflection I could probably have easily gotten away with using the lighter 4.5mm stuff for that too.

Completed module.

I also made sure that I drilled some decent sized holes through the underneath beams on each deck, wide enough to hold the bus wires for track power and any other accessory power I am going to need. I haven't really planned that very well, other than knowing I am going to go Digital Command Control, track wiring is very much up in the air, so best thing is to plan for the unknown. Overall I am pretty happy with my efforts, considering my rather amateur woodworking skills!

hmmmm...I'm thinking I might make the second module, before the weather packs it in and it gets too cold for me to want to work in the unlighted, unheated garage, plus it will be a heck of a lot easier to ensure perfect alignment while they can be moved around easily. My next post probably won't be until next month, and hopefully it will be to display a painted (including backdrop....eeek) module.

Southern And Central Module One

I began the bench work for this module a couple of weeks ago, which I knew from the outset was going to involve a lot of trial and error, which was okay for the first module as it really was going to serve as a template for the next ones.

I wasn't sure what it was going to look like, other than some really rough sketches, or how it would behave structurally, since I am certainly no engineer. All I know is it has to be lightweight and look relatively professional. My carpentry skills are fairly weak, I know my way around a cordless drill and a spirit level, but when it comes to putting it all together it can be a bit hit and miss. My advice to anyone doing this, is not to get to bothered and just give it a go! Buy the cheapest lumber you can to start with, and be prepared to throw some of it away. Making mistakes is the best way to learn, and I'm damn good at learning!

This module will cover both levels for expediency, though only the bottom level will actually be modeled..I am going to use the top level for other "toys" in meantime. As an aside, the top level will have a harbor scene, hence the cutout in the front, this will be the quayside.

The lower level will contain the majority of the yard, there won't be much operational use to start with but it will be great for displaying the rolling stock I have and as a test bed for my modelling skills. I am looking forward to unpacking all of my equipment!

There are no names for yard or town yet, so I do need to start having a creative think about that. In the meantime my railroad is known as the Southern and Central, just because I liked the name and it's ambiguous! I don't want to get tied down to any particular geographical region.

The picture I have posted shows the module along with the size of the lumber...so I don't forget when it comes time to build the next module! What I have discovered is that at 1.3 m wide (which is how wide it needed to be to fit over my desk) is really inconvenient when it comes to buying pre-cut lumber!!!!

Layout Planning

When it comes to layout design, I work on the principle that plans are meant to flexible and changing, I don't like to be tied to them too much and after awhile I get bored senseless with the process anyway. As far as a layout plan giving me a sense of scope, and more importantly, an end goal, they are invaluable.

Knowing what I wanted and where I wanted it to go meant I would have to deviate from the layouts I had made in the past; no more square layouts, no more trains running in circles. I decided that a shelf layout would be perfect; it would minimize the amount of room I consumed and make portability less of an issue. Having said that I still needed it to be freestanding, and easily dismantled when the inevitable time comes for us to move house.

With my requirements in mind, I sat down with Atlas's model railroad planning software, Right Track and started playing with different layout configurations. I rapidly came to the conclusion that my shelf layout was not going to satisfy my sense of empire, sure there would be a nice main line run, and some switching action, but no real sense of trains traveling anywhere, and not much chance for long trains to run. I also wanted a number of different scenes:

1. A city or town scene
2. An industrial scene
3. A harbor scene
4. A yard scene
5. A viaduct scene.

All that over 2 walls of a spare bedroom, not much more than 12 inches wide...I don't think so!  I was going to need a least twice the space, at least.

The words "multi", "level", "shelf" sprang to mind, as did "terrified" and so I that was where my planning ended up, a two level layout, connected with a helix of some kind. The plan below is a pretty rough early draft of what I wanted to achieve. It's safe to say, since that draft the plan has changed a bit, and I will endeavor to get a shot of the newer plan up in my next post. I haven't done any planning of substance for the second level, since I figure that's quite awhile away, all I have is a rough idea.

What this does give me is plenty of main line running for nice long trains, some interesting switching and yard action, a turntable (which I've always wanted), a small branch line and scope for some scenic areas such as a viaduct i'm planning on building on the left hand side. With the second deck added i'll get some nice distance for my trains to run!

... so that's pretty much it as far as planning goes. In my next post i'll catch up to where I currently am, which is building the first modules (the yard area in the top right) bench work.