Loctern Quay stock and operation

Once I had completed Loctern Quay and taken photos for submission to the competition, I had a little over a week to prepare for its first exhibition. Now I have plenty of locos, Loctern needs three for full operation but I didn't have a problem finding enough to cover with a few spares...

It is nice that Loctern Quay is quite a different theme to Hexworthy, and locos that may not look at home in a preserved setting can find a home here, such as tramway (skirted) locos. As a shunting layout good slow running is important, particularly for the shunting loco - three of these locos use Minitrains chassis which give very good running.

Most of my wagons are grey, similar looking, and other than some different loads, not easily distinguished. To make shunting more interesting I wanted to increase the variety of wagons, so built up these four kits I had in stock. The two on the left are 009 society kits, nice and small. The L&B van is a Parkside kit (an old one from a friends un-built pile) in passenger stock green since it has vacuum pipes. The lovely little gunpowder van from Narrow Planet is tiny, but as yet I haven't figured out how to fit couplings...

The rest of the fleet are existing wagons, selecting a range of wagon styles, and adding variety with distinctive loads. Some are resin castings from Anyscale Models, some items from the bits box, and a couple of tarpaulins thanks to a creme egg. I spent some time checking and adjusting couplings to make sure they work reliably, and other than a couple of troublesome trucks they did at the show.

The last job was to create a way to make operation interesting. I took a photo of each wagon, and printed out a simple card for each of them which was then laminated. There are cards for 18 different wagons which allows some spares, in operation 12 are on the layout, of course if a wagon is swapped out the card must be swapped too. The display board is simply made from foam-core board making them easier to see and follow, like those things you get in Scrabble. At each end there is a pocket to store cards for wagons in the fiddle yard (off stage) or to be left in the yard, while the cards for the train to make up are displayed in the centre.

So operation goes as follows:

1. A train is pushed into the rear siding from the sector plate, the loco decoupled and parked between the buildings
2. The cards for the wagons in the train are shuffled with those in the "Yard" pocket. Four cards are drawn and placed on the display board "to dispatch" in a random order
3. The shunting loco in the head-shunt is used to make up the new train in place of the old, which is made more challenging by the constraints of the siding and head-shunt lengths, and because all the wagons do not fit in the front two sidings. Indeed if too many wagons enter a siding the uncoupling magnet makes them tricky to get out!
4. When complete, the shunter withdraws and the train engine couples up and takes the train back to the fiddle yard
5. The cards for the wagons in the departing train are swapped for those in the "Off-stage" pocket, and the procedure repeats from step 1...

Initially we had just 3 wagons left in the yard but in practice we found 4 wagons in the yard as well as 4 in each train worked best, adding that little extra challenge. At home if a train does not need to go to the sector plate a train of 5 wagons can be "dealt", for more of a challenge, but this means the uncoupling magnet for the train loco is under the first wagon.

So after a busy but productive few days here's the layout on display at the show. The fold-out legs and lighting were easy to set up and worked well. As well as the wagon card display there's a short description of the layout on the right. The operator sits to the left front of the layout which allows easy operation and interaction with viewers, indeed the wagon cards encouraged interaction - viewers were invited to pick cards at the appropriate time, and having done so I found they lingered longer to see the train made up.

Thakeham on show!

EXPO-NG proved to be an excellent show, as usual. I'll post some pictures of the layouts in due course, but first an update on how Thakeham performed!

Set-up didn't take too long, the simple stand and light made a big difference, finished with a name-board and simple information display. Operation was from the right-side so I grabbed the end of the table of challenge entries, and pulled up a chair! That left time for a quick look round and a visit to the 009 Society sales stand before the show opened...

My 6-year-old boy was insistent that he wanted to come and help! I wasn't sure how helpful he'd be, but in fact he proved quite competent at operating - when he wasn't too excited! Here he is loading the wagons, a somewhat fiddly job.

I was helped by the Sussex Downs group; Simon Wilson, Phil Savage, and Mark Holland all did turns at operating that gave me comfort (and sanity-restoring) breaks and so I managed to see a lot of the show in short stints, so thanks to all. Mind you they were only to quick to give the controller back when I returned! Here's Phil at the controls while viewers wonder where the sand loads went.

To my relief and surprise the layout performed very well. There were a few incidents of loads sticking in the wagons resulting in derailments when unloaded, traced to an oversize load, plus one occasion of the loads jamming in the chute (gravity failure). We learned that if the rod was not pulled right back hard the loads may not be pushed off the magnet. And the act of loading up quickly took practice! However the unloading generally worked smoothly and attracted interest. The Hudson performed smoothly all day, as did the Lister when given a run in the afternoon, but the O&K had an occasional sticky moment in one direction which I shall have to investigate.

I may not have won the challenge this year but I am still very pleased with the layout: it's my first ever (almost) prototype model, it looks good and works well. It attracted lots of nice comments which is very encouraging, so thanks if you were one of those that made them! There were even some potential show invites so there may yet be more to come from this little triangle.

Remote Unloading

With loads that can be popped into the wagons while hidden under the hopper, I need a way to unload them at the other end of the line - inside the tipping shed. Of course the other end of the line is the far corner of the board - OK, it's only about 3 feet away, but out of reach from the operating position, so how can I do it remotely? You might be expecting something clever, mechanised, automated, finely engineered ... you may be disappointed!

I made up a lever with a cross-bar from offcuts of plastic sprue and plasticard, with a neodymium magnet at each end of the cross-bar. This was meant as a mock-up ahead of making something stronger from bits of rail and copperclad board, but it worked fine as it was! The lever is mounted into the centre of a couple of chutes made of plastic, pivoted on a paper-clip wire, and has a length of steel wire fixed to the bottom end, a coating of graphite lubricant for Kadee couplings keeps it all moving smoothly.

 

This chute contraption is mounted into the board next to the track inside the tipping shed. From below you can see the steel wire-in-tube curving round to meet a wooden dowel, to which it is attached using an electrical choc-block connector, the screw is an end stop to limit movement. The dowel runs across the board to poke through the fascia next to the switch panel, the off-cut of MDF seen here is a more solid mounting than the foamboard.

 

Having considered gears and levers and even motors, I settled on this as the easiest method, and amazingly it works! About an inch of travel of the operating rod moves the lever through a little over 90 degrees.

 

So this is the view from behind the back-scene as a train enters the tipping shed, note the essential "buffer stop" (every millimetre of this layout counts so the loco is run against the stop). On the left is the chute and the lever is about half-way down through its arc towards the wagons.

 

Looking from above (shed roof removed), once the lever has touched the tops of the wagon loads when pulled up brings them with it - remember the small magnets set in their top? When the lever reaches the top of its travel the cross-bar recesses into the "hoods", which push the loads off the magnets, whereupon they drop down the chutes.

 

All that is then required is to collect them in a tub, and repeat... I made up 5 pairs of wagon loads, so the process can run for a good, er, 5 minutes. Fortunately I can reach the tub to retrieve them from the operating position!

 

Wagon loads of sand

The Thakeham Tiles railway only ever needed a couple of skip wagons, though there seemed to be one or two "spares" in the siding by the engine shed. Now I have plenty of O14 wagons from Landswood Park, I even have skips, but they are "weathered" with coal or manure, and that didn't seem appropriate for Thakeham! So another triplet of the lovely KB Scale Hudson Skip plastic kits were made up, with small strips of lead on the underside and in the bottom of the skips to add weight.

Time is running short now so I needed a way to paint and weather them quickly. First they were given a coat of red oxide primer (blu-tak in the bearings protects them), then a thinned wash of rusty brown. While that was still tacky weathering powder was stippled into the paint to give a varying texture and colour. The photo below shows the result of this, and a wagon still in primer. As I'd forgotten to add the lead before the primer this is clearly visible too.

 

After that well thinned dirty black was applied around the axle-boxes, coupling pockets, and the skip "rocker" to suggest grease seeping through the rust. For a relatively quick method the results were very pleasing, and prototypical as the skips used at Thakeham seemed to have no sign of paint left on them!

Finally a little dilute PVA was applied followed by the sand where it would collect on the frames and stick in the bottom of the skip (and hide the lead weight!). The two wagons the line used were for different colours of sand, which I have represented. These two are coupled together semi-permanently with the link and pin supplied in the kit, and Microtrains couplers on the end, the third skip will mostly languish in the siding.

 

The Thakeham line existed for one purpose only, to move sand about, so the wagons need loads to carry! Rather than loose loading them (I don't want sand in my locos mechanisms!) I made up these simple false loads from offcuts of foam-core board shaped to fit in the skip, and a carved hump of expanded polystyrene. The black dot in the top is a small neodymium magnet, of which more next time...

 

These were finished with a coat of brown paint and a couple of layers of the coloured sand again over PVA. Here they are seen loaded into the skips via the access hole inside the sand hoppers, next to the control panel.

Haywards Heath Show!

Well I got there in the end! After a few frantic days and a couple of late evenings getting everything ready, the layout up to a reasonable standard, the stock in good shape with the right couplings fitted, and the loco's serviced and tested, the day finally arived for Awngate's first public appearance!

The trestles worked well, and were tidied up with a drape as you can see below. The trains performed well, but the uncoupling was a bit hit-and-miss. I got some more magnets to try. Other than that the only problem was a point failure - the blade came loose, but I managed to get it back in place and super-glue it. Lots of people made nice comments, and there was a lot of interest in the fiddle yard! My friend Steve helped out with the operating, getting very engrossed in the shunting (see second picture) - thanks Steve.

The rest of the show was enjoyable too, you can see more photo's here:

http://campbell-modelrailway.fotopic.net/c1663884.html