Page 24 - January February 2012

Learning Curve
In October 2011 I attended my first Model Railway Show as an exhibitor and came home worn out but happy.
This was the third show organised by Felixstowe Lions Club and, attending as a punter, I found that they lacked variety, there being a large Gauge 1 layout taking up most of the centre of the hall, a slightly smaller N gauge on one side a and few N and OO layouts.
Having retired just before last year’s show, I decided to enter a small switching layout in On30, thinking that it wouldn’t be hard to have it built and running in a few months. I contacted the organiser and, while awaiting his reply, scribbled a few rough sketches. I should point out that over the last 40 years I had designed and built stage sets both as an amateur and recently professionally.
The Lions jumped at the idea, especially as there would be no travelling expenses; I live about 300 yds from the venue. So I measured the car to see what was the maximum size that would fit in the back. It then occurred to me that if it needed to travel any distance it had to fit through the door of my motorhome and so I ended up with a board 54" × 24". Construction started and soon the backdrop was in position, a hole for a traverser was cut and track laid on the visible section. I thought, this is easy, why hadn’t I done it before. Then suddenly time was running out and silly mistakes started to show up and have to be rectified; the buildings, made from Clever Models cardboard kits, were taking far longer and needing more strengthening than I had envisaged. The organiser phoned up and asked if I was still coming and could he have a brief description and name of layout to go in the programme. I hadn’t decided on a name or even a location, but as the buildings were mainly brick and a bit misshapen it became Kingsport, Essex County, Mass. from the Lovecraft horror books and the railroad became the Miskatonic Valley Railroad.
Roger Brooks
We then went on holiday and I realised that the show was only a fortnight after we returned. That fortnight seemed to fly by, and so the final Saturday arrived with me still not having done any name signs or worked out an operating sequence or even run a train. So I plugged everything in, put a loco on the track and started to run it through a sequence; needless to say it ran a short distance and stopped. I hadn’t cleaned the paint off that section of track. That was fixed and I tried again; this time it ran into a crossing where the road was higher than the rail. And so the hours passed with me cleaning track and repainting sections of plaster that had been scraped down to clear the outside cranks and skirts of the Davenport. I decided that I had done everything I could and would have to tell people it was a “work in progress”, but I would run both engines one more time just for fun. Again all worked fine going through points, picking up and dropping cars, so bringing that loco back I sent out the other one. It ran fine through switch onto head- shunt, changed switch, all went dead. Worked OK one way but not the other; at this point I became disillusioned but after cleaning everything again and picking ballast out from under the blades it all started to work again. I tried both locos, Porter 0-4-2 and Davenport Gas mechanical, and everything worked fine. Finally, just to see it run, I put the Galloping Goose on the tracks. Of course halfway through it stopped and a meter showed no power at feed to that section; a dry joint had come apart, but after it was re-soldered everything worked fine. Next day my son and I set everything up and apart from having to clean the track again and another dry joint everything ran perfectly for about six hours and I learnt a lot.
I’m now hooked and am looking for other shows to go to (if I can get invited).
E
PB F D
BC PA
A
T1
T2
S1 S2
S3
24 inches
55 inches
A–F Visible tracks PA PB Switches T Traverser tracks S Storage tracks
Area visible to public Uncouplers
24 ROUNDHOUSE