Track Template is ready for construction

After finishing the prep in the house for the arrival of our Au Pair and a bit of a chill afterwards, the last few evenings have been taken up by preparing a more detailed and thorough track template onto which I am going to build my track work.

This is the track template as it stands. I have tidied up the geometry of most of the curves and have added 3.3mm regular sleepers in black and 4mm turnout timbers in green.

I am planning to get it done in one hit and hopefully build it as the lengths bullhead rail come thus keeping track joins to a minimum to increase the rigidity of the track work, well that's the plan anyway! Being a DCC controlled layout there will be a minimum of cuts in the rail, as there will be no isolating sections, just the ones needed at the baseboard joins and on the point work.

The only experience I have had of making any track work is at Cardiff MES, of which I am a member, and have assisted in producing a couple of points on a complicated section of track on the approach to the station on the layout that is currently under construction.

I am a bit of a perfectionist and with the aid of my template I'm sure I will be able to produce some good quality results if I take it one step at a time and don't rush things.

All I need to do now is persuade my find to print it out full size as he did with the track plan and the building will commence!

The track layout of Tower Street station can be found here.

Progress at last...

What with the lingering cold weather, a busy family schedule and our rental house needing a complete redecorate, the layout has been on the back burner for a few weeks.

During this time though, I have managed to get the image file across to my friend Andrew Denholm, who has done a splendid job of printing a full size plot of the layout. This will be used as the template on which I will build the track. I mistakenly left in the shaded footprints of two Class 121s and a class 108, which were covering two of the turnouts. I will be need to print out the portions on an A4 sheet and tape them over the offending areas.

The plot arrived on Monday night and was duly unfurled on the floor to check it out, it happens to be millimetre perfect, more perfect then the boards cut by B&Q on they're super duper vertical saw table thingamajig!!

The plan was laid over the top sheet of the left baseboard, taped down and cut using a knife, thus leaving a mark on the board where the curved edge should be cut, the line being overmarked with a pencil. The plan was then taped to the inside face of the bottom sheet of the baseboard and the pencil line repeated.

I have not yet decided how I am going to cut the boards. Ideally I would clamp both boards together and cut them together allowing the both curves to match.

As can be seen in the picture above, I have achieved good results with my domestic (green, as opposed to the industrial blue) Bosch jig saw, which has a good range of blades to choose from, but the one problem I have is that when cutting anything over about 15mm the blade tends to bend a little, resulting in out of square cuts, seen below on the 25mm MDF that makes up my workbench.

                                                                                                                                                     

The alternative would be to make a template using some spare laminate left over from a previous customers job to use with my router, the only difficulty being that the template needs to be cut 8.5mm inside the finished edge to allow for the offset created by the routers guide bush.

The end of our kitchen worktop was created in this way. I spent ages trying to find the centre of the radius on the curved unit and couldn't find one, it then dawned on me that there was no one single radius, but the curve was constantly changing template. (Who designs a kitchen unit without a fixed radius and supplies it without a template so that the kitchen fitter, in this case me, needs to make a bespoke template wasting time in the process??? (Rant Over!)) So I set to creating a template scribed from top of the actual unit, subtracting the 8.5mm clearance needed  for the guide bush and came up with the result below.

As I am typing, the second option seems more and more like the one I need to pursue. It will take more time but it will mean that when trying to mate up the top and bottom boards with the bendy MDF side rail I will know that they are identical and won't have to faff about trying to match two bards that are out of square with one another.

Update to follow...

Tower Street Station Track Plan

This is the proposed track plan of the Tower Street Station Layout based on the track plan at Abingdon Station, a typical busy GWR branch line terminus with ample provision of goods yard facilities, which will add to the operational interest of the layout. The plan has been mirrored to suit the location of the layout within our hobbies room and has been compromised in a couple of areas to enable it to fit. The headshunt will remain and will extend onto the traverser to enable longer trains to be worked in the goods yard while keeping the running line free for passenger traffic.

The layout will comprise of two main baseboards, each being 1200mm wide and a traverser fiddle yard also 1200mm wide. The baseboards will be of monocoque construction using 9mm plywood for the tops, bottoms, which will have holes cut out for access, and sides. The side on the left hand baseboard which curves will be formed from bendy MDF while ends of the baseboards will be formed using 20mm thick oak plank left over from flooring our hallways and living room.

All trackwork on the baseboards will be hand made using code 75 bull head rail and copper clad sleepers and ballasted using C+L Finescale 2mm ballast for the running lines and ash ballast for the goods yard and headshunt.

At the moment the plan is to use proprietary kits by Wills, Ratio and Scalescenes for the buildings and accessories including a couple of items from Hornby's Skaledale range and to slowly replace these with scratch built items as my skills develop and time allows.

At the moment an interest in Green Diesel era motive power collides with an enthusiasm of GWR rollingstock and liveries, running sessions at home will not prove a problem, but if the layout ever gets to the exhibition circuit, as is hoped, then investment in GWR motive power will be needed!

The layout will be operated using Bachmann's wireless Dynamis DCC controller and will use a control panel, yet to be designed, for point and signal control. One of the members of Cardiff MES, of which I am a member, has developed and produced a point and signal machine, the signals to be used will be Ratio kit items.