Rail 200 challenge - getting started

With the plan decided, final adjustments to the positioning of the points was made - with a layout this size a few mm either way can make a difference to how the layout works.

The straight track here is offcuts of code 100, I've yet to cut any track. The medium radius point on the front track was in stock from a previous aborted project, I could use a small radius here but medium matches the 3-way and fits. It won't be fitted until after the challenge anyway. 

Track positions and key marks such as holes for point tie bar operation were pencilled onto the board. I've also thought about anywhere I might want an uncoupling magnet - I'm not sure what couplings I'll use yet, not having used OO for a long time, but the previous aborted project had used Kadees so they are most likely. I need to look into NEM fitting Kadees for more recent acquisitions though. 

I then drilled the holes and used the jigsaw to cut out openings at the possible magnet locations. Magnets won't be used at all of these - it will depend what couplings are used and where works best - but easier to cut openings now! 

I found a strip of 6mm MDF about 160mm wide and long enough to form a backscene along the rear and both ends. The height limit for the challenge is 140mm above the baseboard surface, so I cut the backscene boards to 139mm (to be safe - my cutting tolerances aren't perfect!). Holes were marked and cut out for all the tracks, in case any are extended in future. 

I found some small section strip wood and cut small blocks to support the backscene - the rules say any backscene must be fitted within the perimeter of the board. The blocks were glued down 6mm from the edge, then screwed. Then the backscene boards were screwed onto them from the outside. 

Small screws were used to join the corners - a delicate job screwing end-on into 6mm MDF, but it worked. If desired in future, the whole backscene will be removable by taking out these external screws, and could be replaced with a taller one.

I still have a tin of very pale blue paint, picked up cheap in B&Q dirt cheap as an excess of someone's colour mix and was used for Loctern Quay. A quick couple of coats and it's done. 

Rail 200 challenge

To mark 200 years of railways, Peco have launched a micro layout/diorama competition. For £30 posted you get the baseboard kit, a length of track, and it comes in a large cardboard box that can be used to store/ship the finished layout. It seems these have proved popular as the first batch of 200 sold out within days, and several more batches have been release (probably as fast as the supplier can make them!). Now, I didn't order one straight away as I don't really need another layout, but I do enjoy a challenge and it seemed a shame not to take part...

The flat-pack baseboard is laser cut from good quality 9mm ply. The straight track to use for the through track of the "modular" category, or you can build any scene you like and enter the standalone category.

Assembly is straightforward, the four bracing pieces slot into the underside or onto the ends of the board with a little PVA. There were just a couple of splinters to file off but the parts are cut with great accuracy and the fit is precise.

One of the ends had a slight bow (see the gaps in the slots). I don't have a big enough clamp to hold it while the glue dried...

...so I drilled a pilot hole and put a countersunk screw to hold the end tight to the deck. I also put one into each side beam (bottom left and bottom right) in case pulling in the top allowed the bottom to move out, and for good measure three screws the opposite end to match. These may not be necessary, but assembly including the screws was no more than 30 minutes. 

Now I just need to decide what to build. I've doodled a few plans, of which more later, but here's some of the inspiration that may be used...

Rebuilding the "ultimate" fiddle yard

Last year I adapted the fiddle yard for Hexworthy to suit its new location, but that has limited capacity and is only intended for home use. You may remember the sliding and rotating fiddle yard built for Awngate, the plan was to use that for Hexworthy too. Of course, it wasn't that simple... Hexworthy has a deeper baseboard, originally overcome by adding battens under the fiddle yard, but that wasn't an elegant solution. Also, when revising the home fiddle yard I'd changed from using split hinges to dowels and catches for board joins. Also, the wiper contacts with microswitches hadn't proved a robust and reliable way to power and align the tracks, and since then I'd come up with a better solution. So, a significant rebuild was needed...

The existing fiddle yard was dismantled, parts of the frame were reused but the plywood ends, front, and rear were cut from offcuts in the garage to suit the deeper board. This took a bit of thinking as rather than building a baseboard and then fitting it with a fiddle yard, I was building the existing fiddle yard elements into a new frame - so had to take great care to get the surface height correct. 

The rotating deck (top) is unchanged but the lower sliding part was trimmed. The larger of the trimmed material was attached under the ends of the top rotating deck forming a protruding lip to pass under the edge of the fixed part of the deck.  Lower cross-beams were added underneath for the runners. The rotating deck is then bolted to the lower sliding deck as before. 

The fixed decks at the end were attached ensuring the height matched the scenic baseboards, and overhanging the protruding lip from the rotating board. The rotating and sliding assembly was then attached via ball-bearing drawer runners to two cross-members, packing under the ends of the cross-members being used to level and match the height. Surprisingly, I managed to get the height matched and a free moving traverser. Previously double-stacked runners had been used to allow the deck to move either forward or backward far enough to rotate, but here I've simply used a single set of runners so the deck must be pushed back to rotate, the fixed deck being cut away to facilitate that within the limit of the runner span. The shelves were recovered from the first incarnation.

Another tricky job was fitting the dowels in exactly right place to get the baseboard aligned and connected to the main baseboard. Again, using a wood template, I got there in the end. The fixed end decks are recovered from the old fiddle yard but still needed trimming as the end plywood was thinner! Nothing seemed simple here. 

Despite the back-to-front build I managed to get the fiddle yard constructed to fit to the Hexworthy baseboard, with a deck that slides to align tracks then slides right out to allow the deck to rotate. The rotating deck with end-gates that also lock the rotating deck to the sliding deck is pretty much unchanged, but most of the rest of what is seen here has been modified or reconstructed. Yes I do seem to over-complicate things! Next up will be the latching and electrical system.

A new fiddle yard for Hexworthy

Hexworthy was designed to use the same exhibition-friendly fiddle yard I'd made for Awngate, but that is large and not pretty, so for home use a compact fold-away fiddle yard was built with a simple 3-road sector plate. It's seen here before the boards were painted grey. The frame attached to the layout with split hinges front and rear for a rigid joint, and the board rotated around the vertically-mounted flat hinges to stow inverted over the layout. 

It worked very well being tucked neatly out of the way when not in use. However, after redecoration and reorganisation of the room the layout is tucked into a 6' space between a wall and a pillar. This means neither the fold-away nor the exhibition fiddle yard fit in the 18-in or so gap. 

My solution is a new home fiddle yard fitted around the pillar, which gives me the extra length needed to hold a train. 

A sheet of 5mm ply and off-cuts of softwood were assembled into this odd-shaped baseboard. It was a tricky board to make as there's no real datum, most of the side protruding above the board while none of the battens are full depth. The end is 3" by 1", the inner battens 2" by 1", and the thinner diagonal batten will I hope help resist any twist. The curved slot is for the sector plate. 

The split hinge alignment and joining method previously used worked well but getting the pin in and out was tricky and involved a pair of pliers, plus it would have required more height to the corners of the board. The club layout has adopted over-centre catches with alignment pins which are really easy to use, so I thought I'd give them a go. I bought packs of each from Station Road Baseboards. 

I got what are described as "bullet dowels" which have reasonably tight tolerance while being easy to fit, just needing a hole through the ends. The problem was I realised the ends of Hexworthy are just 3mm ply over 5mm foam-core board, which wouldn't be substantial enough to hold them, so I stuck blocks of softwood behind the foam where the holes would be. The boards were then clamped together, and pilot holes followed by the 7.5mm holes to take the dowels, the locations of the holes being dictated in part by where I could fit the blocks. The dowels then hammer into place, although where the dowels passed through the foam into the blocks I used a sash-clamp as a kind of vice to squeeze it into place, ensuring it didn't tear the foam apart instead. 

Fitting the catches was also limited by the existing boards, fortunately there are softwood blocks in the corners of the Hexworthy board but existing screws had to be avoided, and the end fascia panel had to be trimmed to fit around the catch. It would be much easier when building new baseboards to think about the locations of these catches first! Nevertheless, catches were fitted both sides. 

You may notice that the dowels and catches are handed, I'll have to adapt the exhibition fiddle yard to use the same attachments and this means only one more dowel set and catch set is needed. 

The new arrangement is much easier to connect and release, especially when reaching behind the layout on the shelf unit. The connection is not as rigid as the split hinge, which allowed one end of the layout to be lifted without any bend at the join, but having got the catches as tight as I could it seems good enough and the dowels make for just as good alignment. 

Now I need to fit the sector plate and tracks, although it might be a couple of weeks. Next weekend Loctern Quay will be at Uckfield, which looks to be an excellent show as always. Do say hello if you're there. 

Back-scene boards, legs and lighting rig

I prefer a layout to have a back-scene, even if it is plain, it is rather like framing a picture. On the face of it adding boards to the back and ends of the challenge boards is simple enough - 3 sheets of ply (left over from Hexworthy) cut to size, and joined by strip-wood at the corners outside the ends. I also added "wing" strips to neaten the front edges.

However as usual I couldn't help but complicate matters, because I also wanted to add lighting, and some short legs to lift the model above table height. I figured it would be nice if both legs and lighting rig were attached to the board, and hinged out for use...

The result works well enough, but it was rather fiddly to achieve! The lighting rig hinges up for more height, and will hopefully have LED strips behind it that shine down on to the layout, the angled pelmet should be useful for that. It is supported by flaps that hinge down and sit on top of and act as an extension of the side wings.

A close-up of the lighting rig supporting arm shows the hinge and the support piece. When folded down the lighting pelmet overhangs the front of the layout, hopefully it will be useful as a support for a protective cover in due course.

To locate the support I simply used a small piece of dowel as a peg, that sits in a hole at the top of the back-scene/wing support, it's enough to stop the lighting rig collapsing.

The legs are made in pairs and are bolted at the top to the back-scene supports, the bolts also act as pivots. These bolts will have washers and locking nuts, once the board is painted/ A third bolt is added to hold the legs in place, and will have a wing nut. Note the power socket is now in place too.

With the locking bolt removed the legs rotate 180 degrees and stow up the ends of the layout, the locking bolt is fitted back in another hole to hold them in place.

The photo below shows the layout from my eye height, it looks neat enough despite my dodgy woodwork, and takes seconds to set up and stow away. It should work well at exhibitions, which is just as well as it already has an invite...!

Now it all needs painting. And I need to get on with some buildings.

Baseboard modules and track laying

I've finally got around to cutting the holes in the baseboard tops, so could actually assemble the baseboards. These are laser-cut MDF kits supplied by Norfolk Heath Works, as a set especially for the challenge. There are no instructions so I was a little unsure of the best order to assemble the parts, but after a dry run it was fairly straightforward, so I applied PVA to the mating edges and re-assembled.

I chose the board with the dropped front, which gives potential for a wharf or harbour. You can see the holes drilled for point operation, and the rectangular hole for an under-track magnet.

The other board has the sector-plate fiddle yard, and a number of laser-cut holes - some of which have no obvious purpose! The lower deck to support the sector plate is held by four bolts, but I've glued it in place so the bolts (which may get in the way) can be dispensed with. I've drilled another hole for point control, and a couple of curved slots under the sector plate - I'll cover this in another post.

I also cut down the sector plate, shortening it by an inch. This was necessary to fit the track arrangement. Before laying the track I stuck brown paper over all the holes, and under the points and where magnets will be installed I used a black Pro-Marker to ensure bare baseboard wouldn't show where ballast can't be applied.

Track-laying started with the three points and the short straight between them, as getting this arrangement in the correct place was critical. There are insulating rail joiners between the two right-hand points.  Next was the reverse-curve into the fiddle yard, this was really tricky and the radius here is under 12", probably about 10", but I'm hoping that with smooth transitions it will run smoothly. This layout is only intended for small locos and 4-wheel wagons after all. Then the other tracks were added, using a 12" tracksetta for the curve, and finally insulating gaps cut with a saw disk in a mini-drill for isolating sections.

The track is stuck down with PVA glue, held with track pins (the chunky ones from Gaugemaster, that can be hammered without wilting!) although these are positioned between sleepers and next to the rail to hold any curvature - not through the sleepers - and are removed after the glue has set. The track is weighted with anything heavy while the glue dries, tins from the larder are useful!

The Peco 009 track for this little layout all came from my own hoard, the points were recovered from a previous layout but had never been ballasted and showed no signs of glue residue. After a clean in some warm water and Cif, and a polish of the rail head with a fibre-glass cleaner, they looked in good shape. The track is a mixture of left-over bits, including both crazy-track and the "mainline" type, although only the tracks on the sector plate had been used before.

Extending Slugworth

It was always the plan (Joshua's plan) to extend Slugworth to complete a circuit of track. With a couple of exhibitions coming up it was time to put the plan into action.

The board is made like the main board, with a deck and bracing of foam-core, and an outer skin of 3mm MDF, stuck together with PVA and hot glue. Small blocks of wood are used only in the corners.

A couple of blocks of wood were added to the end of the layout, which has had the temporary end-stops removed from the tracks.

The extension was given a coat of the same grey paint as the outside of the layout, then screwed to the blocks of wood. Note that the extension is cantilevered from the main board, and has a tapered underside, it also has a slight curve to the end to maximise space for the track.

Next the track was added. For the curve, the rail was removed from the sleepers and bent carefully in the fingers to approximately the required curve before being refitted. The sleeper web was cut under the outer rail so the sleepers don't limit the radius or twist causing gauge narrowing, the track is then glued down. A couple of copper-clad sleepers are soldered to the rail where an isolating break is required, to hold the rails, and then the rails cut in-place.

Wires were fed through from the main board, and the new track tested. Slugworth is now a continuous run!

A board becomes a layout

The next step with the baseboard was to add fascia panels to protect the foam-core board, which although surprisingly strong is not very robust. Joshua also wanted a back-scene and a lighting pelmet, for such a small layout it made sense to make them integral. The whole lot was cut from a sheet of 3mm MDF; the end pieces forming a support for the backscene and lighting, with a "lid" on top to cover the lighting. The front, rear, and end pieces were glued to the foarm-core board and also screwed to the blocks that had been set in the corners. Small strips of wood were used to help join the backscene to the ends, and blocks behind the lighting pelmet joined the top pieces together.



As you can see at this point track-laying had already started, as we'd realised it would be easier to lay the curve through the backscene and the point control wires before the backscene was in place. The curve is pretty tight, so the rails were slid out of the sleepers and pre-bent between fingers, before re-threading the sleepers back on. Track is glued down with PVA, held with a few track pins pushed into the foam-core until the glue has dried.



Point operation is by wire-in-tube, which was laid into a groove cut into the top of the foam-core board and held with hot glue. We've used the simple but effective trick of connecting the wire to a slide switch, which deals with frog polarity.

Another distraction

In my last post I referred to a couple of distractions from my usual modelling plans, this is the second one.

Having helped me with exhibiting my layouts for the last few years, my son has been saying for a while that he wanted to build his own 009 layout that could be taken to exhibitions, a small layout like the EXPO challenges. Then he found out about the Dave Brewer challenge for this year's EXPO-NG show, which is to build a layout 50cm by 35cm, and decided that he was going to build a layout to enter.

Of course what that means is that he is going to get me to help him build the layout, including advice and doing anything he deems too tricky, so the result will be a bit of a joint effort. However that does leave us a challenge in simply making the time to work on it - there's not a lot that Joshua could do without supervision, and I'm not doing anything without him.



We've been working on it for a few months now, but I'll rewind the story to the planning stage. This was mostly done full-size on a piece of lining paper, with paper point templates, and some mock-up buildings made from cereal packets. We tried out a few ideas, and even has some input from Mum, before he settled on the design he wanted.



The baseboard was made from foam-core board, which is easy to cut with a knife, even for an 11 year old. The parts are stuck together with a hot glue gun. The top is double thickness, laminated with PVA glue, and blocks of wood were set into the corners ready to screw side panels to later.



More soon...

Baseboard Finishing Touches

Hexworthy will need a control panel, and like Awngate, the best place seemed to be the front fascia. The layout will sit on a shelf and be front operated, and the fiddle yard adjoins the end, so other than the hassle of a separate control box, it's the only logical place. The panel is a scrap of 2mm aluminium from the guillotine at work, which happens to be an ideal size, but normally I'd fit it to the rear of the fascia for neatness. Here though there wouldn't be space for it to be removed from behind for access to the switches, so it had to go in from the front - so to maintain a neat appearance I decided to recess it into the fascia.



Here's my piece of aluminium, with some trial printouts of the panel layout. These aren't yet final, but show it will all fit. The fascia (bottom) has had a suitable sized hole cut out, with two other layers cut too, one to the size of the panel, and one a little smaller.



The two layers are glued behind the fascia creating a 6mm deep recess which the panel just fits, and a support which it will eventually be screwed to. These two layers also reinforce the thin ply edges so this is not a weak point. Meanwhile, the foam-core board is cut away with a knife to make space.



Fitting it together, you can see how the foam-core structure and the timber reinforcement conspire to make access from the rear so tricky. I've also added a socket for the power connections at the same time.



All fitted together. I need to drill the panel for the holding screws, when I drill it for the switches too. I've also cut and fitted the "wings" that frame the sides of the scene, and hide the untidy bits like split hinges and back-scene framing.



Talking of the back-scene, I've used some offcuts of the thin timber strip to brace it. These are screwed to the lower reinforcement, glued to the ply back-scene, and stapled through from the front. The ply back-scene is much stiffer now, with no tendency to bow.



So there we have it, one tidy looking, solid, yet surprisingly lightweight base-board. I do need to add a lighing beam - when I've decided what lighting to use - but for now I can proceed to track-laying!