Another layout that's got me thinking!

Whilst on a visit to a local model shop at the weekend I picked up a copy of the April 2008 Continental Modeller which i obviously missed first time around. In it there's an article on a French layout named Pempoul (metre gauge in 1:50 scale) built by Gordon and Maggie Gravett. The scenery on Pempoul is fantastic, i had seen pictures before, and when i saw the article that explained some of the Gravett's methods i had to buy it!

Some pics of Pempoul on these sites:
Crawley MRS
World Rail Fans
RMweb

I've just noticed it's going to be at ExpoNG (Swanley) later this year so will be able to take it all in then!

Two things in particular stand out for me, firstly the grass. This is done using a Noch Grasmaster which electrostatically charges the flock powder so that it stands on end when dropped into some adhesive on the layout, the difference between this and the old puffer bottle for flock is quite noticable. This looks particularly good for representing fine grass, but i think for the more moorland areas i'll stick to longer carpet underlay to achieve the more rough look.

The only thing putting me off getting a Grasmaster for PnC is the £100+ price tag... some experimenting with a balloon and something to rub it on before i go down the Noch path i think!

The other thing that struck me about Pempoul was the colouring and the fact that it's so subdued. Layouts with bright colours on stick out like a sore thumb, both vegetation, buildings and other scenic items need to appear more subtly coloured. After all they are being viewed at well over several hundred scale feet away most of the time so they should appear in model form as they do in real life over this sort of distance, not how they do when viewed up close.

Upon realising this i looked back through my modelling books and found a useful introduction to colour in Dave Frary's How to Build Realistic Model Railroad Scenery. However i feel that this is an area that military modellers generally achieve much better results than railway modellers, so i will be looking at this source for more information.

Pempoul has also made me think about baseboard construction, it's boards are 4 and 9mm ply around an extruded polystyrene core. Extruded polystyrene is not the white polysytrene used typically for packaging in the UK, but the coloure foam you can get for housing insulation (amongst other thigs). An example of it in use on a layout is this shot of the latest section of County Gate under construction by John de Fraysinnet.

Whether this approach will be lighter than the initial thought of ply and foamboard formers i'm not sure, but i believe it will be infinitely stronger due to it's more solid construction. The only area i can see being an issue is mounting the point motors, this could be done by having cross braces etc. where these are needed and mounting them on these. American modellers use this material much more than us in the UK, i'll try and find some info on mounting point motors from some US sites.

Hopefully i can find out more about the construction of Pempoul's boards at Swanley.

And a brief update on the Roco... it's been run in for about 5 hours now, and it will run soooo smoothly and will crawl round my circular test track even when controlled by my old H&M clipper, so it will be 10 times better when hooked up to DCC!

Improved running

One 009 myth that i'm keen to dispell in the operating of this layout is that the running is poor. With the quality of mechanisms nowadays it is possible to obtain very small gauge locos which will run smoothly. Unfortunately at present 009 isn't that well served for ready to run prototypical chassis, with the 009 modeller having to rely on converted N gauge chassis (often inside framed), etched brass kits or using HOe mechanisms.

Roco 0-6-0 tender loco source: http://www.roco.com/

I have just bought one of the latter, a Roco 0-6-0 tender loco (shown above) which has outside frames, brass flywheel and complex valve gear, therefore something prototypical and suitably large for a railway in the Scottish Higlands can hopefully be built on it.

I'm not 100% sure what will be built on this, but it is likely to be either an entirely freelance loco, or a standard design from either Hunslet, Hudswell Clarke or Manning Wardle reproduced from the reproduction Catalgues i've got from Plateway Press. At present the thinking is to produce a large tank loco (2-6-2T or similar) and use the tender for another project at a later date.

John de Frayssinet has sucessfully used these chassis under his Manning Wardle and "Russell" Backwoods Miniatures kit based locomotives on County Gate, so if all goes well with this one then i might buy some more and make a small loco stud of 3 or 4 locos out of them.

The running is extremely smooth, and will give a much more prototypical feel than the stock which earned 009 it's undeserved reputation amongst other modellers all those years ago. Hopefully the running can even be improved upon slightly by the addition of a Zimo DCC decoder which will allow me to limit the top speed and give more fine control of the speed of the loco. More on this once the loco has arrived.

For other wheel arrangements i shall be looking into using several sources of loco chassis, the first being converted Japanese N gauge locos (Tomix, Kato, Micro Ace etc) with dummy outside frames, all these run superbly, much smoother than European N gauge stock.

Converting a Hollywood Foundry Bullant to outside framed is another option, as done by Steve Fulljames in his Fairlight Works blog. Due to the size of the motor unit it will have to be housed in a saddle tank of some description, but i've found quite an attractive one that used to run in Borneo which was produced by Manning Wardle.

And finally by producing my own etched chassis and having a go at using these as a base for more complex locos if nothing else is suitable, of course with this method running properties are down to the construction which is an area that i feel i need to develop a little at present.

Update - i've just received the loco, i' m VERY impressed with it. Straight out of the box it runs smoothly and steadily. It will get down to some impressively low speeds out of the box too! Now just to finish running it in and to fit my decoder to it.

Minor revisions to the track plan

Following discussions on Narrow Gauge Railway Modelling Online i've decided to alter the trackplan for PnC slightly to reduce the bend in it and move away from the "L" shape towards something more gentle, perhaps a 45-60 degree bend rather than a 90 degree one.

It was pointed out to me that it would open up the area where the layout could be viewed from, and i think that this might help create a more realistic layout too, with better viewing potential for exhibition visitors.

Also discussed was the construction of the baseboards, i think due to the size of the layout (and my car's boot!) i'm going to limit the boards to 4'6" x 2'6" and have 4 boards, two for the goods yard and tidal inlet and two for the station and plockton scene. Due to the size the weight might be an issue, so i started to think of ways to save weight, one way would be to make "hybrid" baseboards and use ply or similar for the fascia boards and then use foamboard or blue foam for the contours and runnning surface. Hopefully that should keep the weight down whilst not compromising strength.

Will revise the trackplan soon.

Trackplan!

I've finally had time to sit down and sketch out a rough track plan. At present it's not been drawn to exact scale, but just to give an idea of what i'm thinking of.


Here are the explanations corresponding to the numbered items on the plan:

1 - Hotel/Lodge - this building i already have, it was built for me by a friend, and will make an attractive addition to the moorland area of the layout.


2 - Tidal Inlet with steel trestle bridge spanning end. This is supposed to be reminiscent of this inlet at Plockton. The structure i will be using is based on a lower version of this Austrian bridge and is produced by a company called N Brass Locos.

3 - The Vital Spark sitting at the "old quay". I love the Para Handy stories and had to include a Clyde Puffer (The Vital Spark) on the layout. I plan to have an operating mineral chute on the layout which will allow trains to discharge their load into the hold of the Vital Spark. The Puffer is based on the Dean's Marine kit, and is currently being built for use on Dunbracken but will be removed when PnC is started.


4 - Goods shed. This will be based on a combination of Irish prototypes with a curved corrugated roof similar to the Ratio carriage shed.

5 - Signal box and cattle dock - these will sit at the end of the platform for the goods shed.

6 - Castle. This will be a ruin of a small castle based on Castle Moil from the Isle of Skye.


7 - Beach with culverted stream from hills at rear of layout. This area is based on Plockton.

8 - Boat yard workshops, this is another building built for me by a friend, it was used on a previous layout and will be reused on PnC.

9 - Water tower - for this i have a very quirky prototype from an Irish line to use which was a cylinder lying on it's side with two domed ends and then sitting on a stone base.

10 - Steamer - this represents a small ferry vessel which would probably be sailing to the Hebrides, Ireland or to another Highlands port. At present i'm not 100% settled on a prototype, but it will be propeller driven.

11 - Station building - to sit opposite the ends of the lines running into the platform, from this building a short glass canopy will protrude out to the ferry steps and part way down the platform. This building will also contain an office for the ferry terminal.

12 - Church - probably based on the White Washed church seen in many photos of the West Highland line.

I realise that this trackplan is quite complex, but i think it will allow for some interesting operation. I wanted to give the feeling of the line once having operated to the yard and the "old" quay, and then having been extended to the "new quay", however with limited space here the run round facilities at the yard were still used. It's taken me a long time to get this plan to the state where i'm 100% happy with it, and i think there will only be small revisions to it now.

Making Tracks

I don't want this blog to start by solely being about what i'm going to do on PnC and moaning about how i think some commonly used products don't help realism of modelling, reading back through this is how it comes across to me. I don't want it to be of this opinion, what i'm trying to get across is that i'm by no means a fantastically talented modeller, but i want to try and create as realistic a layout as i am capable of, to do this i'm planning on using some different materials that suit my method of working better, and hope to share these with you as i go through both the planning and then construction stages of the layout. The thing i really want to create is the atmosphere of the line, and this may mean lots more scratchbuilding than i've done before to avoid using things like a GWR/LMS/Wills Freelance signal box for example, but this is something that i'm looking forward to.

One of the first products i found when investigating for PnC was Fast Tracks - this is an American company who produce... err... track making bits and pieces.

Their products i'm interested in using are:

Micro Engineering Spikes - actual spikes to spike the rail to the track rather than use chairs. This seems to have been common on many Irish lines, and therefore has been adopted for my PnC due to their similar nature (rolling stock, operation etc).

Micro Engineering Spikes source: www.handlaidtrack.com

The Tillig track i've used on Dunbracken gives a good effect of trackwork as can be seen below, but i would still like to try using more finescale appearing trackwork on PnC.

Parkside Dundas Vale of Rheidol guard's van sitting on Tillig HOe track on Dunbracken.

Wood Ties - actual wooden sleepers which will give a more realistic colour than pcb or rtr plastic sleepers. Some pcb sleepers will have to be used in the production of points, but this article is very useful for combining the wood and pcb and getting an even result from both mediums.

Wooden Ties (sleepers) source: www.handlaidtrack.com

PnC is very much inspired by Irish narrow gauge as well as Welsh and Scottish, and there is a photo of the Tralee and Dingle Railway which shows some very nicely wooden coloured sleepers with some light rust and grime staining. I think that to achieve this it will be much easier to start with wooden sleepers in the first place. At present Fast Tracks are the only i company i have managed to find that produce sleepers precut to close to 009 standards. They also produce some very useful looking point building tools which may come in handy when trackwork construction starts.