Turnout Operation

I've recently been working on motorising the turnouts. Here is a short video of the first one in action:

Below is a side view of the trackbed. The turnout is operated by a servo motor mounted by screws onto a simple wooden frame. If you look carefully, you can see the operating linkage made from brass wire. I coiled it to give it extra spring length to protect against any inadvertent over-throw by the servo. The multicoloured wires from the servo simply plug directly into the ESU SwitchPilot Servo unit, which attaches to the main DCC bus and will control all four turnouts. Since the layout is small, I'm just powering this from the main track supply.

The last view is taken from underneath (with the baseboard upside down!). You can see the functional plastruct tie-bar, as well as the microswitch installed to change the crossing polarity. This is operated by a 12BA bolt through the tie-bar. The SwitchPilot Servo unit has some "programming" buttons which make it easy to set the start and end positions of the servo movement, as well as the movement speed. The turnout is changed via the "accy" button on my DCC handset. If I get fed up of the couple of key presses that are required, the SwitchPilot unit has a band of extra terminals allowing push-switches to be wired in for each turnout.

Track 3

An update with some recent photos (of limited quality). I've just finished tracklaying on the scenic board, although testing and tweaking is still in progress.

The photo below gives an idea of the underside of the board. Dropper wires from each section of rail have been attached, but I've yet to connect all of these up. I've also installed functional tie-bars beneath each of the four turnouts. These still need to have servo motors attached - some experimenting is necessary with springing and microswitches.

Close up of one of the functional tie-bars on the workbench:

These essentially follow Geoff Jones' design in the Track book. The blades themselves are attached to cut down 12BA bolts which sit in the tubes you see here.

Track 2

Work in progress on the first turnout. The crossing was constructed separately in the Easitrac jig. Attaching all of the interlaced sleepers and wires in the correct order requires concentration. The plastic sleepers are still loose and not in their final positions. I'm thinking it will help with the other other stock rail and switch to leave the sleepers loose at this stage - in particular, it will allow me to clear a bit of space to solder the dropper wires. I'm attaching two droppers to each piece of rail as I go along - you can see some of these wires poking out from beneath the board.

Before laying the track I drilled/filed holes through the baseboard for the turnout operation. It's hard to see but I've attached a cut-down 12BA bolt to the switch blade, as recommended by Geoff Jones. This will sit in a brass tube and operate the turnout via a functional tie-bar beneath the trackbed. The current plan is to operate these from DCC via servos.

Track

At long last I've started tracklaying. Here are a few progress shots.

1. I'm using a mixture of Easitrac and PCB sleepers. So far I've glued down the PCB sleepers on the printed Templot plan. Essentially I'm following Jim Watt's practice of PCB sleepers for the switches and crossing areas, with Easitrac everywhere else. With the interlaced timbering, most of the sleepers are ordinary length. The reason for this hybrid approach is that I'm worried about the flimsiness of all-plastic points in this scale, and also the inability to make easy adjustments.

2. Close-up showing one turnout where I've used more PCB sleepers owing to the interlaced catch points (I wanted my sidings to hold as many wagons as possible!). You can see that I've started adding etched chairplates.

3. On the PCB sleepers I'm using Versaline chair plates (and will eventually use the accompanying whitemetal cosmetic chairs). Following advice in the track book I'm pre-tinning these on both sides. I used solder paint which makes this job simple. Owing to the non-standard sleeper arrangement, I'm not using the Versaline jig, just locating the chairplates by eye. I'm also not using them at their intended locations.

Left-hand Fiddle Yard

After a lengthy hiatus over the summer due to our house move, the second fiddle yard has now caught up with the first. The design is similar but not a mirror image. For one thing, there will be only a single approach track at this end.

The first photo shows the general arrangement, with some Farish Mk 1 coaches to give an idea of scale. Four of the six rollers can be seen.

The second photo from underneath shows a lesson learnt from the first fiddle yard: use diagonal bracing for simpler construction and greater strength!

The layout in its entirety, assembled for the first time in the new railway room:

 

Fiddle Yard (2)

Here is a progress update on the right-hand fiddle yard. I plan to start its left-hand companion after this one is finished so that I can learn from my mistakes. As you can see, there is quite a deep plywood frame, so as to match the scenic board. I plan to install sockets for the controller in one of the spaces underneath, and use this as the main control position (operating from the front). Spare surface space alongside the approach roads will probably see some loco storage spurs.

The turntable itself is mounted on a roller-bearing like the one shown below right. It came from Squires, I think. Six of the roller bearings shown below left are set into the framework to give the deck some free-rolling support. These came from Station Road Baseboards.

I have yet to finalise the manner of electrical connection, and to decide whether all roads should be live or not (the electrics will be dcc). Then I should be ready to attach the balsa trackbed and lay some track. I optimistically went for six roads. Between the two fiddle yards, this should house all of the stock I build for some years...!

Fiddle Yard

With baseboard construction phases 1 (scenic board) and 2 (legs) complete, I've made a start on phase 3: the fiddle yards.

I had decided that turntable style yards would be the most convenient operationally, with all locos needing to face the direction of travel (I assume there would have been a turntable at the Ullapool terminus). The first hurdle to overcome was cutting 35cm-diameter circles from 6mm ply for the turntable surfaces.

A little research showed that a practical way to do this was with a router constrained by a trammel. I picked up a cheap router for £30 which I am very happy with and has done the job nicely: certainly the loudest and most powerful piece of woodworking kit I now own! It came with a 6mm(-ish) bit so I used that. It also came with a "circle-cutting" attachment, but the maximum diameter was, of course, 33cm. So I made up a simple trammel from a scrap piece of ply, which screws securely onto the router base, and is bolted through a hole at the centre of the workpiece.

Following received wisdom (on YouTube) I made several shallow cuts rather than trying to do it in one. The vacuum cleaner attachment was fantastic at removing the sawdust as the cut progressed.

I now have two finished turntables, and their approaches. For simplicity I opted not to cut the latter out separately, so they have slightly the wrong radius, but I can correct for this with the layer of balsa I (currently) intend to lay as a track base on top. Note that the track approach is at a different distance from the front of the baseboard at each end of the layout. The approaches also differ in that one will be double track, the other single track. Experiments with Templot have convinced me that there is sufficient length to "splay out" the double approach tracks to meet the turntable at the correct angle. I'll trim the turntables down to the required width in due course.