Page 7 - NMRA Roundhouse November-December 2018

track on 18” ends, 36” minimum main line radius.)
• The mill had to feature several huge buildings, which I wanted to be arranged in at least a reason- ably plausible manner in terms of the flow of materials.
• The amount of switching work
and the desire to have an industry switcher pointed to needing the
mill trackage to be segregated
from the main line.
• The amount of traffic and the need to exchange between the main railroads and the industry switcher meant the module also needed a reasonable amount of yard trackage. • The whole thing needs to be trans- portable in the family car with the seats down, not needing a hire van.
The various needs resulted in quite an unconventional arrangement.The initial module design ended up as
two modules. The first is a T shaped module consisting of four 3’ long boards: two are 2’ wide, and two taper from the 2’ down to the 18” (single track) and 20” (double track) modular ends respectively. The boards of this module box together neatly.
The second module in the initial de- sign is only 18” long. It usually fits on the 20” double track modular end of the other module and simply has the main line passing through and the mill lead track ending, but the modu- lar joint allows the lead track for the mill to be extendable (or to be used in other modular configurations.)
Looking at the boards, the 2’x3’
board at the West end of the T contains
all the large structures.
The main line runs from the South to the East, with yard tracks
along the South leg and
the lead track headed off East.
for me the tight mill pointwork I would need to fit in the throat on the central board. Ian took that board home and it returned a few months later with some fabulous custom pointwork, which really improves the look and flow of the throat.
The module appeared next at the Armitage meet in September 2016, with all trackage functional and the
industry switchable, and the frameworks of the main mill buildings in place. Most of the images accompanying this article were shot at that meet.
I had suspected that during the build that I was being optimistic that the yard capacity
I had planned on would cope. At this meet it quickly proved that it was far too small, as you can see on at least one of the images the yard ended up frequently clogged. I therefore need-
With such unconventional board shapes I was very lucky that Mel Rogers agreed to build the boards for me. They really are excellent and have provided a very solid base to work off.
The main line and yard tracks (Ambit Yard) were installed ready for the Chri- stow modular meet in May 2016. This allowed the module to function as a basic industry destination.
Luckily at this meet, Ian Smith (anoth- er member of our RS Tower crew along with Mel) kindly offered to hand build
ed to extend it further if the industry was to operate smoothly. Happily the meet also proved I had space in the car to transport another board, so an additional 36” x 18” board was ordered from Mel, to extend the yard tracks South by a further 36”.
Martyn Read
December 2018 - ROUNDHOUSE 7