5 times longer in coming than Brunel took making the real thing!

 Well, this is my 4^th attempt at starting my layout thread.  So if Robert’s gremlins are having the day off, it works & you are all bored to death, then blame Brian (HenryParrot) for his kind help and encouragement. I can’t believe it’s nearly 12 months since I joined the Forum, so here goes.
 
Looking through other threads, it would appear my modelling life has followed a lot of other members, with short periods of modelling interspersed with long interruptions from the other demands of life.  In our 38 years of married life, we have never been in a house longer than 5 years, so no sooner had conversion of walk in wardrobe or spare bedroom begun than another move was on the cards & all plans had to be scrapped.
 
How we ended up in S.A. is another story – suffice to say that I decided to call it a day at 50 & because of my wife’s severe Rheumatoid Arthritis we wanted to live somewhere warm.  One of the reasons why I picked our current house was – four garages!  One normal double + one extra large double with doors both ends.  These let us store all our furniture & belongings while we worked on the house.  After a few years settling in, I decided it was time to put a lifetime’s worth of study, planning & collecting into practice & get cracking with my railway.
 
I bought a shed & that cleared out all the gardening tools & boxes of stuff yet to be unpacked that I haven’t got the heart to throw away.  Then I extended the smaller garage to match the larger, tiled the floor, put in a ceiling & extra lights & electrics.  Even leaving a walkway for access to the other garage, this has given me an area approx. 5M x 5M.
 
 
 
 
 
This is the room just after being finished.  The door on the right goes to my bathroom & the kitchen (so no need for the rest of the house really!) & the door on the left goes through to the other playroom (cars & motorbikes).  I decided to leave the garage door (just fitted some windows) so this can be opened for extra light.  It’s South facing so never gets too hot.
 
 
 
 
 
The door on the right is the railway room.
 
I didn’t come to S.A. to spend hours in a garage, & I wanted to keep the room as clear of clutter as possible.  There was an area at the back of the 2^nd garage, North facing & sheltered & not being used.  So I put up a car port, tiled it & this has made a great place to work.  I bought 2 stainless steel tables from a café that was closing down, & these have made ideal workbenches.  Even now in the middle of Winter it’s warm enough between 10 am & 4 pm to sit & work.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
This is my view from the workbench.
 
My small branch terminus to fiddle yard layout survived the container journey quite well, but when it was offloaded I stupidly put it on the floor in the corner of the garage while more pressing matters were dealt with.  The removal guys thought this would be a good place to lay paintings down, so that put paid to most of the tall structures.  Later, we found that the gardener thought it made a nice seat (don’t ask, this is Africa) & that finished off signals, trees & telegraph poles.  Then our St Bernard pup thought she’d have a go at landscaping & took a nice chunk out of the embankment.  I did think of scrapping it, but the track was OK & converting it to DCC has taught me a lot.  My proposed plan incorporates a branch so it has survived, although most structures will be replaced.
 
 
 


One corner of the layout that survived undamaged - down by the loco shed (scheduled for repaint)




This is the plan that I intend to use.  It was designed for 'N' but I can just squeeze it in the space I've got.  I like it because it gives plenty of operating interest - a factory, a wood yard, the small branch to the dock & the branch to my existing terminus, which I think will call 'Easewood'.  I've studied plans for a lifetime & haven't found one I like more - you'll see it's from 1979!


Baseboard building is now underway.  The main station, goods yard & loco shed will be on flat baseboards, but from the dock end of the platforms will be open plan because of the multiple levels - track down to road, down to quayside & down again to sea level.  I was originally going to do a double 'roundy roundy' with another through station representing the LSWR junction, but progress to date being so slow I thought it was getting too ambitious.  I've now decided on a single 'roundy roundy' with hidden sidings at the opposite end to the junction, but I'll extend the branch to incorporate a small through station on the way to Easewood.  This will be over the main-line hidden sidings.





A couple of pics of Easewood:





The gangers have just finished the new point work at the station throat.  The off duty loco man is telling them that up North they paint their locos Red!  The gangers (one of whom is obviously an alien - must re-do those eyes) think he must have had too much nutty slack in his tea - who ever heard of Red locos?

The loco area is to be all rebuilt with an ash pit, coal stage etc & the track re-ballasted with ash.

Well, I've just checked &, apart from 2 frights when I clicked 'insert photo from gallery' & it just took me straight to the home page, everything appears in order.  So no excuses, got to keep the momentum up now.  Hope no one has slit their wrists yet - Brian - you asked for it!

Very nice, wish I had that sort of space. I know what you mean about short periods of modelling interspersed with long interruptions from other demands of life..... so what bike(s) do you have in the other playroom:cool wink

Now that is a super room for a layout, and a great start you have already. Repairing that missing chunk should be no problem, from the looks of what you have accomplished already.

Enjoyed reading all of this, so keep the postings coming.

Wayne

Hi Nick.  These are my current bikes.  I've had the Firestorm since 1998 & brought it over from the UK - still has 'get out of jail fee' UK plates!  When I'm stopped I say I'm touring!  I've never kept a bike so long but I really like it.  Misses out at top end (240kph max) but a great all rounder.  I took it to the Nurburgring 3 times before coming here.  I bought the Blackbird here.





One of the reasons I left the UK was all the nonsensical hysteria about speeding & the proliferation of cameras.  It is changing here but it will be a while before it gets as bad as the UK.  Every Sunday morning here is like Mad Sunday on the IOM - game on!

Nice pictures Kaiser.Looking forward to lots more too as the layout develops.

Cheers,John.B.

It was worth the wait, Kaiser.  Thank you.  :thumbs

Great start Mal, well done for perservering, well worth the effort.
Apart from what must be a very steep gradient on the branch down to the docks I DO like that layout plan and look forward to seeing it develop.

… and while we're taking about our other toys… here's mine.

DL650 Vstrom… 'cause I like to go to out of the way place at sane speeds…

Hey guys - maybe we should start a bike thread? :hmm  Like your Beemer Nick, but I never managed to get on with shaft drive.  That 1100S is one of the best looking BM have made - love the pipes under the tail.  Marty - rode a VStrom around Kyalami a few years back.  Great bike & very popular here as there are lots of off-road trails.

Marty - there is about 9 feet on the dock branch to take the tracks low enough to pass under the main line.  Do you think that will be enough?  I'll start the drop immediately after the switch to the docks, & I'm thinking of extending off the side of the baseboard there so as not to waste those first 5 feet.  All gradients worry me, but the Easewood branch will have about 4 meters to climb to clear the hidden sidings - I think that will be OK.

Thanks for everyone's comments & encouragement!

Mal

I like that plan.  Lots of trackwork yet it's nicely spacious. I wouldn't have thought a fairly steep incline to the docks would be too much of a problem if you are only shuffling a handful of wagons up and down.

Cheers
Dave

If your new layout  matches the standard of your old one the building of it should be a treat to follow:thumbs

The Norton picture takes me back to the days of my AJS 600 twin and the Triumph Bonneville, great machines, smooth as silk and could be ridden very quietly. I say quietly because I used to pride myself on being able to move through the country side swiftly but quietly.

[user=2]Robert[/user] wrote:

 I used to pride myself on being able to move through the country side swiftly but quietly.

Poacher eh!!!

"One of the reasons I left the UK was all the nonsensical hysteria about speeding"

I wish the bikers wouldn't put their heads in my lane when they are doing their speeding on blind bends.
We have a harvest of organ donations every bank holiday in Wales.

There's a difference between speeding, i.e. transgressing an arbitrary & in many cases inappropriate speed limit, & dangerous driving, i.e driving like an idiot. The trouble is that it's now PC to class the former with the latter, i.e. bollocks.

Don't get me on my soap box! 

Mal

Well, while you guys have been jolling it up at the Cornwall show (& a great success it seems to have been - well done!) some of us poor isolated Southern Hemisphere colonials have been battling with the last days of Winter.  Here's Sandra braving the cold two days before Spring & hoping for warmer days ahead:



On the railway front, I've run out of baseboard wood until more funds are forthcoming, so have been doing some wagon & building er … building.  I got some Bachmann cattle wagons to save kit building - here's one next to a more dimensionally correct Coopercraft that I made some years ago:



I've re-wheeled & re-lettered the Bachmann, & although the inaccuracies don't bother me that much, to be honest unless you're going to run the Bachmann as is 'out of the box' by the time you've bought the transfers & the wheels & messed about you might as well make the kit.

The Mogul in the background is just about to run around the afternoon through coaches from Ottersford.  The bare space in the foreground is the site for the cattle dock.

I've had a delivery of track & have started laying out for Ottersford - it's made me realise what a mammoth task lies ahead with ballasting, wiring etc before anything can actually run.  However, constant reference to the Forum helps me realise I'm not the only one with ambitious projects in hand.  Unfortunately, Cindy, my beautiful St Bernard (see previous pics) has just been diagnosed with Lymph cancer at 5 years old, so I've not been in much of a mood for serious concentration.



Question - I notice when opening my new delivery of points (I know a GW man shouldn't call them that) that there is a dangly wire:



I'm running DCC - is this something I should be concerned about.  It must be a new thing as my last delivery didn't have them.

Sorry the here about Cindy Mal not easy when a family pet becomes seriously ill like that.

Re the points never seen a dangly wire must be a new thing not sure what thats for is there nothing on the instructions saying what it is.

Brian

Ditto from me as regards Cindy.We lost Pip this time last year,and Holly fell very ill just before Christmas.They're just like members of the family in my eyes!

Cheers,John.B.

I think the dangly wire is connected to the live frog, to allow switching of polarity when the point changes. A quick test with a multimeter will confirm.

Stu

Yes, that wire is for frog switching.
http://brian-lambert.co.uk/Electrical-2.htm  down the page to  Live frog (Electrofrog) points

Even this site has some info
http://www.peco-uk.com/imageselector/Files/Instruction%20sheets/Code75ConTurnoutInst.pdf

it refers to concrete points but the principle is the same.

Sorry to hear about Cindy.