Page 16 - July August 1998

Thorn Tree
Flats
...NMRA
British Region
builds a
switching
layout.
Tom Winlow
2. Trackwork
In the last issue we looked at benchwork for the Region’s switching layout. We now move on to track laying and preparations for the wiring. Most people want to get track laying done with as soon as possible and get some trains running. However, track quality is critical to the success of the whole project. The frustration caused by poor track will cause you to lose interest very quickly. None of the steps involved is difficult. The key is to work carefully and follow the old adage of “measure twice and cut once” to avoid problems.
For our modules, all track laying was done by Bob Phelps. Bob works for Peco and is responsible for the design of their range of trackwork. He is building a large DRGW-based layout and has used the techniques from this layout on our mod- ules.
Trackbed and Uncouplers
Bob uses 1/8" Lettraset card as roadbed for his main lines. This is a hard card which is of accurate thickness. The mod- ules use two thickness of 1/16" Lettraset card to allow for Kadee under-track mag- nets as shown in Fig 6. The mainline uncoupler magnets are glued to drop- down flaps as shown in fig 6(a). This allows them to be lowered to avoid acci- dental uncoupling of mainline trains. The flaps are moved by means of cranked rods and knobs on the rear panel as shown. Simple catches are provided so that the flaps may be locked in the “active” posi- tion when the layout is being used as a stand-alone switching layout. Magnets on the industrial tracks are glued into holes cut in the chipboard and covered by 1/16" card as recommended in Kadee’s leaflet (fig 6b). To hold the magnets in place while the glue dries, a neat idea is to tem- porarily bridge the hole in the baseboard
What a sight meets your eyes when you get to the rear of the house. The layout is roughly oval but dominated by a huge timber trestle at the far end - over 3 ft. off the ground and 38 ft. long - a breath-taking sight! Constructed by Pete Durkin in his garage, it had been transported in two halves, on the back of a lorry. Trains ran in great variety. The Shay really looked the part, step- ping out onto the trestle. We even had a live steam Pearse Mogul. At the end all we could see in the dark were the lights running.
Saturday morning dawned fine. The ladies itinerary included the local mar- ket and a trip to Animal Farm, and the Candle Factory. The O scalers had some very fine models operating including big articulated’s, ATSF Northerns and plenty of diesels. Ken O’Shea had his RGS 2-8-0 operating with appropriate stock. Both Calder Northern set-ups ran well with Gordon Nelhams, Les Holt, Dave Theobold, Paul Doggett, Alan Lewis and many visitors running all sorts of consists. On N scale could be found Colin Raw, Dennis Armstrong, Garth Rooney, Gordon Smith and Jonathan Small - please forgive me if I have missed somebody out!
John Wright and team provided a great parade of Pennsy Power - the operat- ing turntable and loco depot is very well done, and the Duplex looked most impressive pounding along.
During the day a video team were film- ing to produce a commercially avail- able tape later in the year - look out for that to add to your collection.
My thanks to Peter Makin for coming along for the day to help me out, doing his stint as Chief Dispatcher etc.
Bring and Buy tables were active in the small room off the hall, while Tom Winlow was busy all day operating the Region modules.
Calder Flats was kept busy with com- plicated switching moves though how they managed to get the passenger consist onto the Calder Northern I’ll never know - Channel Tunnel maybe! After sampling the excellent evening menu once more at the Rose & Crown, it was back to the hall for evening entertainment by “Live Steam”. Sunday was another lovely day, the ladies trip was to the local garden centre. We of course played trains some more, to not quite so many visi- tors. But the filming went on and the day passed very quickly.
Once again a very big “Thankyou” to Derek Milby for doing such a great job of organisation. It takes a great deal of work and commitment on his part. My thanks to Alan Rodgers for doing the driving, and to everyone else who kept the Calder Northern flag flying. The next one is Year 2000 - keep your diaries ready and we’ll all meet up for another great weekend.
As well as Calder Northern’s HO and N scale modular, Eric White and Brian Neville had Calder Flats, 2 HO mod- ules with fiddle yards sprouted at both ends. Vernor Bates and Richard Smith had a huge O scale Camel Valley layout with Ken O’Shea show- ing his superb On3 interwoven amongst the standard O.
Tom Winlow showed the two Region HO modules in free-standing mode, which had come a very long way since I last saw them.
John Wright from the Northeast had brought a very fine HO modular layout featuring a loco depot of the Pennsy system, with some very impressive locos including my favourite Duplex - oh, for one in G scale! (You’d need a big- ger van, Geoff - Ed.)
Murray Reid had “Camp Four on Three Chop Ridge”, a really superb On3 logging pike complete with sound effects by PFM. This really is worth a look - a working diorama rather than a layout, it has everything and quite rightly merited a spread in Continental Modeller not too long ago. (They even play you American country music.)
“Mr. Peco” Bob Phelps had a small switching layout, to highlight Peco products naturally, but nevertheless a very nice compact layout.
From the Trade were Porter Wynn, with Brenda Porter and Mike Wynn ably supported by Bob Lever and Pete Durkin. Also trading were Ceepeear Models with Ken Needham, Totally Trains from Ross on Wye, and two new names I’d not seen before, Tom Jenkins of Workington (who had a large display of all kinds of electronic gadgets such as constant lighting cir- cuits, bulbs, switches and plugs) and The Belfast Caboose. Finally John Parker of Walsall was present, also standing in for absent librarian Calvin Everitt.
For 8.30pm on the Friday, Derek had arranged for transport from the hall to see Bob Lever’s G scale garden layout in Barrow. The transport turned out to be a full sized double-decker bus because nearly everyone had decided to come along. Bob’s house is atop a steep hill so the bus crawled to the top, rounding corners obviously never intended for such buses to go, stop- ping in the narrow road outside the house. The neighbours probably thought the bus had lost its way!
16 ROUNDHOUSE