Model Railway Forum

The northern loop lines have been laid in their entirety. The tracks have a number of kinks and wiggles, mainly due to inaccurate placing of the threaded rods. Again we see the problem of working from theoretical plans. There is no switchgear as yet, nor point motors; they will belong to wiring up. The next stage of the work will be the northern sidings.

The work is documented on flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/53775591@ ... 3524354145 Pix 271-8.

Cheers,
Artur

Amazing layout - was there ever a track plan?

Fantastic. Some of the threaded rods look mighty close to the track. Have you checked the clearance with you widest rolling stock?

Thank you for your compliments, gentlemen. There are detailed track plans, Bulleidboy, generated with Corel Draw and published on flickr:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/53775591@ ... 6833141776
A bit out of date, coz since I started work actually building the layout rather than theorising, I haven't kept them up, but the gist of them is unchanged.

Wtd, if I may be permitted a short preamble, when I was working out how to support the southern loops above the northern sidings with only 8 cm height difference, I had to do without transverse bearers. The first scheme, later discarded, was to have a number of those slotted-metal-battens-you-screw-to-the-wall-and-hang-shelf-brackets-on across the lower tracks, supported on threaded rods. The boards would have been hung between these, top surfaces flush, by means of metal fishplates. One drawback was that these metal battens only have holes in them at more or less useless intervals, so that kyboshed that idea. Supporting the boards directly on threaded rods offered the additional bonus of using the locknuts to adjust the height, so that was the way I went.

The clearance calculation was as follows: Track spacing is 52 mm (Peco Streamline standard). Minus 6mm for the M6 rods, leaves 46mm. The real-life Daylight 4-8-4 is 10 ft wide (Wikipedia), in H0 gauge 35mm. Leaves 11 mm total surplus space, i.e. 5.5 mm on each side. The sleepers are spaced from the rods by the M6 washers that can be seen all over the layout. In response to your question, I posed the Daylight on the bit of contrun2 that's already done and added a couple of pix (279/80) to the flickr album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/53775591@ ... 3524354145

I must confess I stll haven't come up with an easy answer to the concerns you and TWD expressed on the old Forum about accessibility, but at least the threaded rod construction can be taken apart if need be. I'll just have to be as thorough as possible with my tracklaying and cleaning and wiring up and make sure need doesn't be.

Cheers,
Artur

Thank you. I’m sure all will be well, but may I just add that I have a crossing onto the outside circuit that has a short brick wall oposite it. All of my locos ( 100 ish) miss the wall as they swing onto the outer circuit. That was until I purchased a King class. The left hand edge of the buffer beam clouted the wall and the loco came to an abrupt halt. I lowered that section and all was OK. Then I got a Class 40 diesel and that did the same. Wall lowered a bit more. Everything OK now.

It is where you have a rod coming off a curve that "may" be a problem. It isn’t the width of a loco or rolling stock but the overhang on curves that can be a problem.

Quite right about the overhang, Wtd. Pic 279 shows just such a situation. I still have to test for the overhang of long coaches, especially American ones, inside the curve. If I do discover any such anomaly and there isn't room to realign the track, I'll have to see if I can't relocate the post (pic 276). Failing that it'll mean a route restriction. It would certainly make operations a bit more interesting.

Cheers,
Artur

What ever the outcome you have done a fantastic job.

The northern siding tracks are complete. Point motors still have to be wired up, which will have to wait till the design of the control panel is settled. All sidings have been tested for clearance and electrical reliability. The track will not need any further wiring, as the whole grey area is powered from one pair of wires, cabbed to either the clockwise or anticlockwise controller via a DPDT switch. The next track-laying job will be the reversing loop, which will complete the grey area in pic NL293y.

Cheers,
Artur

The work is documented more fully on flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/53775591@ ... 3524354145

The last tracks in the dark green section of the layout have been laid and fixed in place. Now I can finish installing the point motors, wire up and test electrically throughout.

Let me here express my sincerest thanks for all the good advice and kind compliments I have received from other members over the course of the project so far.

The work is documented on flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/53775591@ ... 3524354145

Cheers,
Artur

Finally made a start on constructing the control panels for the hidden tracks. The northern loops, northern sidings and southern loops will each have their own probe and stud panel with guides for the probe to avoid clumsiness. It's all still only at the design stage just now but I'm reasonably confident it'll work.

The work is documented more fully on flickr (pix 309y, 310y, 311y): https://www.flickr.com/photos/53775591@ ... 3524354145

Cheers,
Artus