Pass me the ballast

Has been a pretty good last two weeks on the modelling front.

My staging tracks are still there which is a good sign that it may be a permanent fixture.  As I was saying to you in my previous post, I added staging even though it eats up alot of precious space I can ill-afford.
Even though I made it easy as possible to make up trains using the big 0-5-0, it became tiring to do, hence I added staging back on the baseboard.  Obviously the major benefit is that trains are all ready to go when I want to see something running.

I did make a modification.  I wasn't too happy with the length of the stub-ended sidings as I like to see more than a single unit heading at times, so I made the staging yard tracks little bigger and managed to fit in two extra tracks which means I now have eight tracks, four for up and four for down trains.  If I am going to devote this space for staging, I might as well use the possible space as efficiently as possible, which means trying to fit as many staging tracks as possible without it being too over-crowded.
All this staging is nice, however what I gained with ready-to-run trains, I lost in scenery space.  I think I now have about 30% dedicated for staging, 30% yard/operation and 40% scenery.

I also made a minor modification on the "Down" end of the yard.  I have re-arranged the point work so it is possible to have a head-shunt on this end as well, and this siding can also be used as a cattle siding, enough to fit about two or three wagons.  It seems to look good so far.  I added stud ended siding from the Goods Shed road.  This siding will only be used as a Programming Track.  I use to have the Programming Track on the peninsula, and it came in really handy.  Unfortunately this adds another point to the yard.  I wanted to adjust this side of the yard before I begin ballasting here.

Still unhappy with the flat nature of the layout, I have dropped some of the baseboards to model the undulating terrain.  Looks so much better.  I think I will have a culvert in this location, with a small water steam disappearing into it.

I have also began to ballast the yard.  The method is quite different compared to ballasting the main line. Here, I pick up some ballast from a cup and sprinkle it on to the layout.  Unfortunately I ran out of ballast to complete the yard.

I have also begun to ballast the yard.  The method is quite different compared to ballasting the main line.  Here, I pick up some ballast from a cup and sprinkle it on to the layout.  I then use a spray bottle with a real fine mist to spray a 50% PVA glue and 50% water mix with a touch of detergent on to the ballast. I think it looks quite good.  May airbrush "rust" mixture over it later.

Head Shunt on Down End of yard with new siding for "Programming Track"

Possible Cattle Loading siding

Ballasting

On a side note, today marks the day we left for our 4 week holiday to Poland last year.  Their railways are quite fascinating.  It's pretty much a working museum.  One revenue service is hauled by a steam loco.  The experience of walking into the round-house at Wolsztyn with those giant steamers being worked on and the scent of coal and oil was just an incredibly amazing experience.   Do see the complete video below to see some of their amazing rolling-stock in action.

"Staging" back on the agenda

Even though I made it as easy as possible to place consists on the track before running a train, it eventually became tiring to do.  So I have now re-considered staging.
I have done away with the peninsula I had and the shed looks so much bigger, moving about is alot more easier, so placing staging at that location is out of the question.

The challenge was to find a suitable location and staging has to serve both clock-wise and anti-clockwise movements.  Further, trains should run the entire circuit of the shed without going through a scene twice.
I find it quite amazing in this hobby the number of challenges I encounter.  Alot of people out there think we play with train-sets but the amount of thought and problem-solving that goes into it is just amazing.  I am always impressed with Craig's schematic.

One of the issues I had with my previous attempts at staging was the incongruous site of having all that track and wagons at a "prime" viewing location as well as the huge consumption of real-estate.  I would need to hide staging, however this comes with its own challenges, of easy access to the wagons and locos.

I began to experiment with what was possible if anything at all.

I have this 1 mm sheeting that I put up a while back to block the sun rays coming onto the layout near the entrance of the shed. Given its thickness, it bends quite easily.  I began cutting about 4 inch high strips and affixed them to some 3mm MDF.  Obviously, going ahead with this idea of having staging, I would have to sacrifice some layout space.  I chose the far end of the layout for this experiment.  This meets both the conditions mentioned above.  Remember this is only an experiment.

If I could use this sheeting to hide staging, maybe it would work?  I ploughed ahead with the idea.  I came out with three stub ended sidings for up trains and three sidings for down trains (As Darren would say, "Lets not be greedy")

Once the 4inch sheeting had been erected to hide staging, the difference to the scene was very encouraging!

I think I will continue this experiment and see what comes of it.  I will need to paint the white sheeting.  I was thinking to paint them black, but other thoughts include cream, grey, green, or just leave them white or a combination?

ANZAC day long weekend

Friday
Ballasting begins.
Friday morning I felt like doing some ballasting.  Its taken me a very long time to get to this point!  Ballasting is easy to do, and easy to get wrong.  It is time consuming, however I couldn't believe the difference the ballasting made.  The layout looked more like a model of a railway rather than a model railway.  I was very happy with the results.


I began with the main line, as I will use the heavier ballast, together with a higher profile.  I was going to do the same for Road No. 2, but since this is a yard, I will use smaller ballast.  I initially was going to use the same profile height for road 2, but most yards have this road on the same height profile as the other yard tracks.  So I had to remove the 3mm cork and MDF roadbed and use 1mm plastic sheeting.  The results were very pleasing.

For rest of this day, I started painting the odd sleeper a grey to weather the sleepers.  Again, the results were incredible.  The yard seemed to have come to life.

In the evening, I wanted to use up that florist wire I had bought some time back and decided to make some trees.  It was quite difficult using the gauge 20 wire as this seems too hard to work with.  The 18 gauge wire was much better.

Saturday

Saturday was spent filling the sleeper gaps.  Thought I'd better get this ready before ballasting.
I applied paste to one of the trees I made the previous night.  This took a good hour as this tree is quite large.
I continued to do some ballasting.  I did begin using some finer ballast on the stub ended siding, but had to redo this section as I wasn't too happy with the results.
I was inspired by this photo on Andrew's blog, so I tried my hand on building a signal cabinet.  Little rough on the edges but it looks quite good on the layout.  Needs a coat of paint or two.

Sunday

As I mentioned previously, I had used 3mm cork on all roads of the yard.  As we all know, yard tracks don't have that high a profile, (as Darren lets me know) - so how to overcome this?  I didn't want to bring the main line profile down to ground level because I don't like the look.  I initially thought about filling in this area with smaller ballast, another thought was to fill in the space between tracks with 3mm cork, bringing the tracks to a constant height, but this was going to be too much hassle and may not work out well.
I finally settled on bringing these tracks, including road 2, down to near ground level.  I say near, because I used 1mm plastic sheeting.  I prefer some height compared to no height at all.  This made a big difference to the appearance and it now looks like a yard.

This afternoon I applied another coat of paste to the tree I made.  Also plugged some of those sleeper gaps.

Results of ballasting

Ballasting with weather sleepers

Applying paste to tree made from Gauge 20 Florist wire

Profile of track - heights

Signal cabinet - my first plastic built structure on the layout!

Trees painted - in progress

Tuesday Nighters & Easter Long Weekend

Was a busy week.  First I held the Tuesday nights and the usual suspects turned up.  There were some comments about the layout.  Even though I have a major railway town depicted on one side of the room and a "minor" town on the other,
it was apparent that this distinction is not strong enough with one person thinking both were connected.  Having no divider, I can see how the two locations can be hard to segregate.  So, with this in mind, I have dropped the minor town idea and will have a country scene instead.  The added benefits of this are many.  I have less track.  I have three less points.  I have more space for scenery.  My layout now is about 70 % scenery.  So far I have reduced the number of points by nine!  And that's not including all those points I had for staging.
Craig also suggested whether I was going to have it all flat and I replied yes.  But thinking about it later, the layout does look too flat for my liking, so I will be using that new space to have some sort of bridge with a river scene.  Looking up google maps, there seems to be plenty of these on the Western line in Victoria.

There was alot of talk about what I should do with the peninsula.  Some suggested converting that area to staging.  The problem with this is that this spoils the approach scene into the yard.  Another issue is that I will need to have two points here, one for trains that travel clock-wise and another for those that travel anti-clockwise, to enter and exit staging.  I don't think I will pursue this.  I only run one train at a time anyway, or maximum two, so staging is not a requirement on this layout.
In other developments, another point has been made into live frogs and the home signal on the down end is now in place.  Will need to make up two signal circuits, one for the major aspect and another for the low-speed, before these searchlights are lit.

Home Signal into yard - Down End

 B60 waits in road 2 for opposing traffic.

Rust On The Main Line

Rust On The Main Line

Yesterday, the weather was abnormally warm for this time of the year.  Actually it hit 31.3 C.  This inspired me to get out the airbrush and do some rusting of the side rails as I cannot bear looking at those unrealistic shiny sides.  Using my previous mix of humbrols, I got cracking.  Unfortunately on two occasions I forget to add the cover to the cup where the paint is kept on the airbrush and most of the paint landed on the concrete instead.  The hardest part when it comes to airbrushing is the preparation and the cleaning of the airbrush after, which takes alot of time.  However, the speed of execution and end result make it all worth while.
I also managed to paint my I and QR wagon which I had built awhile back but never got to painting.

In real life rust has different hues, and hence track can be grey, dark-brown, brown to reddish brown. Here are some pictures. I think it came out quite good and will look better when ballasted.

Freshly "rusted"

Before

After

This week, the dirty dozen will be heading to my place as I host the Tuesday Nighters.

Op Session Border District - Sat 05Apr2014

Op Session Border District - Sat 05Apr2014

Yesterday Anthony held an ops session on his layout called Border District.  Anthony trialed the concept of having two man crews which was quite good.  One member being the driver, the other the guard.  Lucky for myself and Andrew, we had some good
movements - such as a fast freight, and few passenger runs.  Shunting was minimal.  However, Darren was tasked with being the yard pilot at Tatiara Downs which is always a challenging job.

Here are some photos of the session.

On my own layout, I now have the ability to switch off the detection circuit so the signals don't drop to red whenever a train passes.  I have done this because when I have trains running continuously I don't have to keep switching the signals back to a proceed aspect.

Added more trees to the layout after adding paste to them.  I still need to paint them and add foilage.  Used the concept developed by Geoff of Splitters Swamp Creek fame.

Still need to create two signal circuits for one of the home signals.

Really need to focus on getting my skills up on working with styrene so I can build some structures.

I have rationalised my trackwork, now looking at rationalising my rollingstock.
Will focus on running more four-wheelers rather than bogie stock.

Another week gone and end of March '14

Had quite a constructive week.

Power-routed another set of points, this one the approach to the main station.
Fixed my blown bi-coloured LED.  This was really frustrating.  After installing, testing revealed only one colour was working.  Had to un-solder and wire up another LED and during this time, the search light head came off as I tried to place the LED into the head!  It's time like these I think is this all really worth it.  Utter frustration.  Soldered another LED and all was good.  So far the most challenging has been the signalling on the layout

I now have all my signals up and connected to a detection circuit.  The only one remaining is the approach from the east.  This will require two signal circuits created, one for the low-speed and one for the main head.
Was a very wet week.  One side of the layout faces the shed's roller door, and this section is open to the elements.  Gave some thought on how best to fill this gap.  Eventually settled on 3mm MDF covered with 1mm sheet.  This should stop the MDF from getting wet, but I am not sure how well the 1mm sheeting will stand up to the hot summer sun which rises from this side.

wet week - source: bom.gov.au

I am rethinking the Flour siding, looks to cramped for my liking.  Most likey I will do away with it and have a dock road to shunt the Perishables siding.  I had to be honest to myself and although I would like to have another industry here, it just doesn't look right.  This leaves me with three shunt areas if I include the sidings, and three shunt areas at the minor location.  The minor location is worked by the pilot from the major location.