Building a switching layout (Part 9) The Yard addition

My switching layout is operational for two years now. I haven't shown it at many shows since, due to time issues. Last autumn I thought that it would be time to attend a couple of shows in France and Germany for the upcoming month. So my first appearance was at the RAMMA Show in Sedan in mid-october 2019. Although I enjoyed operating the layout I found that something was missing to my enjoyment. A neighboring layout almost had the same size as mine, but he had continuous running through an oval with a narrow yard, connected to his layout. My layout only has a short cassette which serves as a drill track for a locomotive and only one (!) car. In fact I only switch the same cars over and over again, except when the big 0-5-0 comes and swaps some cars.

Shortly after the Sedan Show, I headed to my local lumber yard and bought me the required plywood sheets for my new extension of the layout. The days after the show I already made plans how the extension would look like. With measurements on hand, I ordered the sheets cut up, so that I only had to assemble the different segments.

The layout consists of two 90cm (approx. 3 feet) segments, so I build the boxes for the yard to match their size. As I adopted the 90 cm length as a standard for my future show layouts, the yard and future oval will always match whatever layout I would use.

The yard will have a total length of three segments. These will not be needed with my actual switching layout, so I concentrated on only two segments. To save space I used a PECO medium radius 3-way turnout on each side of the yard.

This minimal configuration gives me plenty of storage space to turnover my rolling stock during operations.

I powered the turnouts with surface mounted motors for easy maintenance. Two power the motors I used PECO switches. To install the switches, I had to drill and cut appropriate holes into the baseboard.

 After the wiring was finished, I attached 3mm MDF boards to the sides of the segments. These extend 3cm above the baseboard and prevent rolling stock from falling off the sides. The yard will not be scenicked and its only purpose is to store locomotives and rolling stock on and beside the tracks.

The yard sections rest on a 30 cm deep IVAR shelf from IKEA. The shelf boards give me additional storage space for boxes and stuff needed.

When using the yard as an extension to my switching layout, the original cassettes serves as drill track for a locomotive at the end of the yard. To save space, the 3-way turnouts are located at the edge of the segments, so the cassette is very useful here.

To save on set-up time I installed alignment dowels on all of my segments. To allow multiple configurations I copied the location of the dowels on the cassette to the curve as well as the straight yard sections. Now it's possible to set the layout up in a straight line, as a U or inverted C or as an L, depending on the available space at a show.

With continuous running in mind, I chose to use a 20" radius for the curve. This is tight, I know, but with short switchers and freight cars, the tight radius curve will be no problem.

The new configuration was tested at two shows in December 2019. Some minor issues were corrected and some improvements made and now the layout is ready for the next upcoming shows in 2020 and beyond.

I spent the days between Christmas Dinner and New Year's Eve Dinner to build the third yard segment, which may be inserted in the center of the yard. This, of course in anticipation of the run-around situation for the next show layout.

To avoid tearing up the tracks at the edges of the segments, I always solder the rails to screw heads and cut them later. This makes for a perfect alignment and together with the alignment dowels on the segments I've never had derailment problems.

Stay tuned for more updates.

 

Building a switching layout (Part 6) Ballasting and ground cover

Ballasting

I ballasted the track with a grey blend mix from Woodland Scenics.

After the ballast is leveled between the ties, I wet the whole area with wet water from a spray bottle. I use distilled water with a few drops of Isopropy Alcohol added. You could also use a drop of dishwashing solution, but it tends to bubble if you add too much.

With a pipette or eye dropper, I drizzle the scenic glue onto the wetted ballast. I usually use matte medium or carpenters' white glue thinned 1:7 with distilled water and again a few drops of Isopropy Alcohol added to make the glue creep between the ballast.

Extra care should be taken on turnouts. After the glue has dried, the points and closure rails may stick to the ties. Also the switch tie may have bonded to the subroadbed.

To avoid glueing the moving parts of a turnout, I simply don't add glue to the switch tie area. If the rails and ties are weathered or painted, this isn't visible right away, especially if the turnouts are farther back. The crossing above will be located behind a building, so it cannot be seen anyway.

While the glue sets, I add fine turf and static grass to the ballasted area. This of course only on indutry trackage or rarely used tracks.

Asphalt or tarmac

For some time now, I use 3mm cork sheets under my tracks or to model parking or loading areas and roads. It lifts these spaces above the surrounding subroadbed.

I painted these areas with Heki Asphalt Paint. This paint is thick enough, so that normally one coat is sufficiant.

Another advantage of cork is, that you may scratch out small pieces to represent potholes.

The area between the rails is filled with wall compound. Before it hardened, I scribed the flangeways free along the rails.

Potholes and asphalted cobblestones

As already mentioned before, potholes are easily modeled using cork sheet for roadbed.

On my loading area between the tracks, I wanted to represent a special kind of road damage. Many loading areas and street used to be laid out with cobblestones, which were simply covered with asphalt, to achieve a smoother surface. Unfortunately, heavy traffic and the weather caused the asphalt to break occasionally. These broken asphalt bits were torn away over time and exposed the cobblestones underneath, causing a rather bumpy road surface.

To do this I randomly cut out some more or less round shapes from a Vollmer cobblestone pattern styrene sheet using a pair of scissors. Then I placed the pieces on the cork and traced the outlines with a black permanent marker.

With a chisel blade, I carved the cork out following the outlines.

The styrene sheet is approximately 1 mm thick, so it gives a nice recess.

I glued the cobbelstone pieces down into the recess and painted them a light brown/kakhi color.

Then I filled the edges with wall compound and touched up the paint.

Now the loading area looks a bit worn out from the heavy traffic.

Next step will be weathering and detailing.

Stay tuned!

Building a switching layout (Part 2) Planning and painting

After all the track and turnouts have been wired, I hooked up a simple transformer and made a couple of passes through all the turnouts and spurs. I used one of my analog Walthers/Life Like P1K Alcos with one 50' Boxcar to see if there are no dead rails.

 I laid all the track and turnouts on cork roadbed, not for sound reduction but only to get the track raised above ground level. The wider strips of cork will be my roads.

I did not build the tracks to fit along the structures that I would use. This would be too simple. Guess I'm joking here. I already regret my decision. This implies that I have to build all my structures to suit my existing track arrangement. It's like on the prototype.

To start with, I measured my available spaces between or next to the tracks and fashioned paper templates with the footprints of the future buildings.

Except for the footprints, at this stage of construction, I had no clue of what buildings I would put there. I relied completely on my considerable stash of scratchbuilding material and leftovers from previous kits.

In the meanwhile I filled the screw heads and sanded the facia and valance smooth in preparation of the painting. The backdrop already received a coat of sky blue. To some the sky might be too "blue", but most of what you see there will be covered with backdrop buildings anyway. I like the strong blue color because the sky is actually blue on the photos and not grey or white with a backdrop that is painted with a lighter color.

The access to the staging yard cassette will also be hidden by a corner building and a highway bridge.

Most spur tracks will only hold one car plus engine.

A bird's eye perspective of the layout. The lighting fixtures are behind the upper valance.

You don't need as many clamps to hold the sideboard until the glue has dried, but I had enough of them at the club, so I probably did a bit of overkill. ;)
 

That's the staging area which basically hides a turnout to form a runaround. Because of the turnout, there is not enough room left to switch cars, so I added a short (2 car length) extension.
 

I usually paint my fascia and valance black. It makes a better contrast with the lighted interior of the box. This is the left side view of the layout....
 

..and here the right side. I also recessed the turnout controls to avoid damage during transport and operation.

Thanks for following and now it's time to build some structures.

Building a switching layout (Part 1) The Boxes and laying track

It's been a while since I went to shows with a layout, so I thought it would be time to build a new switching layout to take out to train shows or at the club. So here's the steps from building the box to the finished layout.

My layout segments basically consist of four C-shaped five-ply wooden brackets, spaced equally to the desired length of the box. My boxes are 90 cm long. The depth is 50 cm with a useable subroadbed of 40 cm.

The most critical part of the assembly is keeping everything square. This led to the design of my lasercut C-brackets on sale at Trackside Miniatures

The brackets are held together with the subroadbed, two longitudinal boards on the back plus the valence and fascia boards. A piece of 3mm MDF is used for the backdrop

The recessed valence hides the lighting fixtures.

After sketching the track plan on the subroad bed I cut cork sheets to size and glued them down over the drawing.

The track arrangement is based on the all-time favorite Box Street design by Jack Throllope

When laying track I always screw the layout segments together and lay the tracks. At the joints where the tracks cross the edge I drill 2 mm pilot holes under the rails and insert short brass screws. I clean the screw heads with a few passes with a metal file. Then I heat the screws with a soldering iron and apply a liberal amount of solder to the head.

After all screw heads are tinned, I lay the tracks across the edge. I need to remove a couple of plastic ties where the rails touch the screw heads. I glue my track either with silicon caulk or carpenters white glue. After the glue has dried I heat one screw head and the respective rail with a soldering iron and apply more solder if necessary. When the rails have cooled down I separate the layout sections by cutting the rails either with a razor saw or a cut-off disk in my rotary tool.
The soldered railheads are very sturdy and easy to align during set-up.

To speed up the process I now also use pattern makers alignment dowels in the end boards. This makes aligning the tracks obsolete.

The back side of the segment reveals the upper and lower boards. There are at least 10 cm between the rear of the backdrop and the back of the box. Plenty of room for hiding the power cords from the lighting fixtures, mounting transformers or power supplies etc.

Before attaching the turnouts I drilled 10 mm holes in the baseboard for the actuating pins of the turnout motors. I used left-overs from my home layout, two Blue Point switch machines and five RixProducts Pivoting Turnout Linkage (#628-0006). The Blue Point Switch Machine is actuated by a simple push rod to the layout's fascia. The adjustable throw rod holds the switch points in positive contact with the running rails to prevent derailments. A DPDT snap-action toggle switch inside the compact plastic housing changes electrical connections to the turnout frog to prevent stalling of locomotives.

Both the Blue Point switch machines and the Rix Pivoting Linkage are push rod actuated and install with two wood screws under the baseboard. The actuating pin is pushed through the hole in the switch tie. A bit of individual adjustment might be needed.

To complete the track-laying process I soldered feeder wires to every rail section, which means that every piece of rail between two rail joiners gets a separate feeder wire. From experience I learned that temperature changes, humidity and dirt and grime from operation has a negative effect on conductivity. The current flow from one rail section to the other through a rail joiner might be interupted after a while. And believe me, it always occurs at a show, when your layout is surrounded by visitors, when a locomotive stalls or the engine sound starts up again because of bad power supply.

Well that's it for now. Keep watching for updates