As the title suggests I've been kicking this idea ar dfor a long long time! Now that I'm getting ona bit it's finally time to take action. As I write I have several boxes of track, other bits, some rolling stock, a room almost clerared - I'll post in 'Location, presently - and three more boxes of stuff winging their way from Hattons, a Spanish electronics on-line shop and, of course Amazon ... All i need now is to drive 100 miles and back to my 'local' LeRoy Merlin shop to collect a load of battens and an extra bit of MDF (Mrs Simon saw the first batch and instantly ordered more shelves be built ...)
The location is an underground store room in a block of flats down in town - I live in amediaval cottage high inn the Pyrenees where I have very little room indeed - especially as I share it with a a large Husky dog and and even larger Alaskan malamute!
So, here's the plan and a few points from the original design - C J Freezer's I guess.
So what you have is a point to point terminus to fiddle yard with an crossomg at an intermediate station, all curved aound itself into a high-level low level spiral. Points to note:
- There's a 'spur - at 'A' on my plan - that makes a continous loop n teh low level for 'testing' purposed, i.e. watchung trians go by while you have a cup of coffee. On thinking about it I plan to isilare thias spur as a refuge for an 14XX and its autocar push-pull train that can also run around te line after reversing at the passing loop - I'll discuss this later after intro¡ducing the 'prototype' i.e a fictional station at a real loation based n some 'what if' ruminations about the line's history - the Bishop's Castle railway and the Minsterley Branch of the GWR/LNWR line from Shrewsbury to Welshpool, if it had happened that way
- The original design had a small turntable in the turminus and a larger one in the fiddle yard so that larger tender engines could 'go to the junction' to turn - in my plan there's no room for a turntable but the 'history' - see above - did envisage a triangular juntion beyond the crossing loop so engines could legitimately run light the full lenght of the line there and back again
- There's a long uninterupted line from the terminus to the passing station, so that I can set a train running 'up' on that while I simultaneously start a train 'down' just from the fiddle yard to the passing loop, so two controllers are in the plan.
- I bought a job lot of Fleishmann Profi track to get me going. This included four curved points and six three-way points, of which three are damaged. Hence I've used curved points extensively - after a change of plan after discussing the project with The Central Committee the original 'phase 1', which was just a simple terminus to fiddle yard, I've aquired three more curved pints for the intermendaite station. I've seen comments here that folk shoud ac¡void curved poubts but I've tested mine and they don't seem to cause derailments and they save so much space I donpt thnik I'd have a viable railway without them - debate please!
- Plan A was to have the goods siding in the passing station accessed from a headshunt, a bit of a fetish of mine, and bought the extra set of points for this. But since then I¡ve been wprried that this will be very short and I've also spotted an very empty corner on the high level line, so I'm adding a private siding with a feature such as a brickworks - there was one on other branch line nearby - or a small factory, etc.
Regs
Simon
