T for Trip Train

An arrival into the yard sees a T class up front.  The T class loco has been detached from the rest of the train and now have picked up loading for "Melbourne Yard".  Here we see the T leaving the yard.

Two Departures

Having enough loading for the North East and Western Lines, a B and T Class was dispatched from Dynon.  Once at the yard, they were separated and coupled to their respective trains, the B assigned to the Western Goods due to the larger loading and the T class to the NE goods.  Here we see them both on their way.

Some more ballasting and point modification (Take 2!)

I am now at a stage where I am satisfied with the track layout.  I have begun ballasting the yard.  I have used Woodland Scenics very fine grey ballast (code is B75) to depict the ballast used at yards.  I will be airbrushing the ballast with a rusty colour as currently the ballast looks too "new".

I am pretty happy how it has come out, especially the rust of the rails against the grey ballast.  I think I will also use the air-brush to do the rail sides and at the same time the ballast.

With the points, the modification I made previously unfortunately caused more issues than anything else, especially for my small wheel base locos, such as the Y and T.  I have now gone back and re-soldered the jumper wires as was provided by Peco.  I am not sure how secure the soldering is straight out of the factory, so anyhow I have re-soldered the jumpers under the frog to the four points that I stuffed.

Modification to Peco Code 75 Electrofrog Points

Since I will not be power routing the frogs on my points, I made some minor adjustments.

First thing that needs to be done is add jumpers from the point rails to the stock rails.
Second, remove the Peco wiring directly under the frog.
Third, for longevitiy of the connection, replace the current Peco jumpers and solder new jumpers

See photo of the modifications carried out.
One doesn't need to power route your frogs nowadays given the high quality of our modern model locos.

Let me know what your thoughts on this modification are.
Thanks

Schematic Diagram of Track Plan

Here is a schematic diagram of the track plan of my layout. Being a shunting layout, you can see there is quite a bit of track. However, I added two additional tracks to make it look and feel like a major yard. This enables me to have plenty of shunting-centric operation with a smallish footprint. However, I do sacrifice operating on those lovely scenic layouts I have visited and seen. As usual trackplan subject to chance without notice LOL.

Happy Easter Everyone. I thought I would share with you some photos of my layout. The first and second photos show a goods train coming into the yard. This train will be broken up and the wagons will be shunted to the respective departure tracks.

Bye now

The World Is Yours

I came across a fantastic piece written by Linn Westcott which I thought I had to share with you all. The biggest impression was Westcott stating "avoid the cliche" with your model railway. No doubt you too will go away all that more wiser after reading this article.