After several years of planning numerous layouts on paper, I have finally placed track on board and started on building my first "official" layout. Admittedly the source of inspiration was not some spare time or spare room at home, but a little son who loves seeing the trains running and tries to give them a helping hand (like father, like son apparently - I loved my family's first train set to bits - literally - which is why my dad bought us the 1 gauge Marklin set since it wasn't so fragile). The layout should hopefully protect the trains and track a little better (especially with a nice piece of Perspex across the front).
Like all of us though, I suffer from a distinct lack of room. With 2 fully used bedrooms and the third filled with computers, work files etc., my "train room" is the far corner of our lounge (or it will be once I move it from the middle of the room). This is where it is great having a wife who fully understands (or I hope she does) and it's very much a family thing . . . I am doing it for my son Benjamin, so that he can enjoy the trains (I am, believe me . . .)
I also suffer from wanting my layout to have everything on it - bridges, tunnels, reversing loops, shunting yards, stations, villages, mountains, multi train operaton, at least double tracked, alternative routes, etc.. The problem is a layout like that wouldn't fit into the corner of our lounge (or the lounge itself for that matter), so there needed to be some compromise.
The other thing affecting my layout is the fact that I am working with C Track (which has nice lengths like 172.8mm and points that turn by 24.3 degrees) which clicks together really nicely and exactly (you can't just pull the track together a few millimetres and hope that the track doesn't unclick somewhere else). It's okay if you are building a simple oval or whatever, but when you start putting in some twists and turns it starts getting a bit more complex to work out. Thankfully a couple of years ago, I spent my Christmas holidays on the computer and worked out a track layout program on Excel (calling up the remnants of my trigonometry from high school).
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An overhead plan view. (dark blue = upper level, magenta = lower level)  |
BR 89 still at the staging point.  |
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The layout has developed a bit since the original Excel version above, but in essence it is the same, with two loops, a bridge, two tunnels, room for a village in the middle, alternative routes achieved using the double slip at the bottom of the picture and a few more sidings . . . all on a 940mm x 1200mm piece of board (and yes, this is HO scale). If there is an error in the design, it is probably the steepness of my gradients, since one loop is 1200mm above the other loop at the top end of the picture. To try and lessen the steepness, the double slip points at the bottom of the picture where the two loops intersect are 40mm above the base board (almost half way up the hill).
In building the layout, I’ve gone for polystyrene. I’ve tried framing, mesh and plaster with good results, but I had some polystyrene sheets left over, so decided to go that way with this one. I’ll give you the final conclusion once I’ve finished, but at the moment creating the gradients for the track out of polystyrene has been easier that columns of wood, although a lot messier.
Wiring was next up and there was a lot of it, because ultimately I want this layout to be computer controlled and therefore my s88 needs to be wired to 16 contacts around the layout (who said digital layouts only need two wires?!). It would help if I used my brain and got a computer cable for the sixteen strands of wire, rather than doing individual wires across the layout, but oh well, that's why we get into hobbies to learn that there are better ways to do things second time.
One thing that I have done with the wiring though (which may or may not prove to be wise in the end) is I have kept the wiring above the base board so that the wiring doesn't get caught on anything when moving the layout to exhibitions and I'm not doing a Michael Angelo impersonation reaching up underneath the layout while trying to tighten the tiny screws in the plugs onto the wires . . . 4 wires later and the arms are history!
Marklin Insider Loco (BR86) progresses through
the Double slip switch.
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The rear of a BR 89 consist (more like a flat deck ; ) )  |
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Track down and all wired into the s88 and computer . . . now to see if it all works and whether the computer routines will be interesting to viewers with trains moving in and out of sidings as well as around the mainlines. Sure does work, although I have had a few problems with the 24194 contact tracks (radius 1 curves), with the contact on the outside of the curve not working 100% (especially on gradients). At the moment some temporary cardboard inserts are making them a bit more reliable.
Glue down the polystyrene, paint the interiors of the tunnels with black
water based paint (with the white polystyrene it has actually come up looking
quite authentic as a as a sooty blotchy charcoal at the entrances and is
certainly is dark further in where the light doesn’t penetrate) and
start on the scenery. Thankfully I can’t spend a lot of time on it
at any one go, which gives me time to step back and think over what would
look best before launching into it. Benjamin’s blocks are coming in
handy too, to simulate buildings and other items that will be eventually
on the layout – hey, I’m building this layout for Benjamin,
so I’m sure I can borrow his blocks for a while . . .
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