Baseboard construction completed

After some serious joinery work over the Christmas period the baseboards are finished. Well almost - the cross-bearers are not installed yet as I don't want to have them under the boards where point motors are to be installed. So I need to complete the track plan, which needed to be modified because of the space available (see here for details) and because of my misunderstanding of Peco track geometery (see here for more details but basically Peco SetTrack radius 3 is too large to fit on a 600mm board).

I've also bought four sheets of Sundeala board from Alton Model Centre to top the plywood boards - I'll pin these down shortly. Anyway, here's a photo of the four boards joined up:

I thought the bullet-style cabinet makers dowels would be tricky to fit, but in fact they went in very easily (with a tap from a hammer) and work really well. Purchased from Station Road Baseboards, which so far has provided a good service (I also got my adjustable feet there).

Next step: transcribe the track plan from XtrkCad to a large roll of wallpaper on the baseboard to make sure everything will fit - I'll use point temptates downloaded from this useful site - inexplicably they are not available from the Peco web site.

Slight design flaw

Measure twice, cut once, as the saying goes.

Baseboard construction is under way but flooring the attic has taken precedence as, well, no floor, no layout. So I thought I'd just measure out the attic space to see how the layout will fit.

It doesn't. I'd previous measured the floor area, but (of course) much of the floor goes under the eves of the house and isn't really usable as floor space. I have about 1 metre less in three directions, so the layout as planned won't fit.

As it happens, I've only started on the four main boards, which will fit, so these will the the total extent of the layout. It's back to XtrkCAD to jiggle the plan while losing 600mm at either end.

If I'm making such a stupid error now, Lord knows what other daft mistakes will be made along the way.

Watch this space...

Turntable at Beattock

What's a suitable turntable to use? The obvious choice is the Peco NB55 model, and according to the catalogue is "based on a Ransome and Rapier 73ft well type turntable, supplied to many railways both at home and overseas." In other words, it's generic.

The turntable deck is 151mm (6.1 inches) diameter. It's just too big to fit comfortably on the layout, according to XtrkCad. The turntable at Beattock was "a balanced 54ft unit from Cowans Sheldon nearby at Carlisle" (source: LMS Engine Sheds, Vol 5). So it was 19ft (36mm in N gauge) smaller than the Peco effort. It was probably only used to turn banking engines - a Duchess or similar would never have fitted on it.

Re pictures, there aren't any. The only source I have is my North from Carlisle video (B&R videos, vol 33) which has a scene where they turn CR439 class 55234 prior to towing it off to be scrapped. You can see that it's a well-type table, but barely long enough to squeeze the tank onto.

My plan, such as it is, is to buy a secondhand Peco version on eBay and cut it down. I suspect I'll need a few goes at this, hence using the cheap option.

***Update: the video source is Cinerail's North From Carlisle, not B&R.

Baseboard redesign issues

As I noted in this post, I'm planning to have a cantilevered board at either end, to allow the trains to turn 180 degrees and trundle into the fiddle yard. These boards are designed to be 600mm wide (roughly 2 feet) - same width as the main boards.

I also want to use as large a radius of curve as possible to minimise loco running problems. And eventually I'd like to run my locos with the scale-size leading bogie wheel that GF and others now provide (although the smaller size wheel still look pretty good). So large radius curve will help.

The largest standard Settrack curve is Radius 3 (product number ST-17), which is 298.5mm (11 3/4in) radius. This 'should' fit my baseboard. But it doesn't, according to XTrkCad. I checked with the N Gauge Yahoo group, which confirmed this - radius measurements are to the centre of the track, not the outside. Why does no-one tell you this?!

Anyway, the simplest solution is to make the cantilever boards 50mm wider at the back (hidden side) of the layout. Minimum of difference in construction, and little (if any) additional cost.

Beattock track plan

I've found no definitive plan of Beattock station as it was for most of its operational lifetime. The key sources are Alan Kirk's article on Beattock Station Modellers' Backtrack Jun-Jul 1993, Branches & Byways: Southwest Scotland and the Border Counties by Robotham, and LMS Engine Sheds Vol 5 by Hawkins & Reeve. All of these place the turntable close to the engine shed, but Hawkins & Reeve state that the turntable was moved to "the southern end of the down platform" in 1899.

A visit to the British Library showed that the turntable was indeed near the engine shed in the 1870s, according to a six-inches-to-the-mile map (which I forgot to record and will have to revisit to record the source and date).

I assume, therefore, that the three sources all use this old map as the original.

I have, however, a video of Beattock station in the 1950s & 60s (Great Steam Routes: The West Coast Main Line), which shows (fleetingly) the position of the turntable. Another video (North from Carlisle) has better footage of the turntable itself but the location is less discernable. 

So it's possible to guesstimate where the turntable was.

I've used XtrkCAD to plot the track plan, allowing for some simplification and compression (otherwise it's just too big and unwieldy) - operationally it should be fine.

The overall track plan (omitting some sidings and structures) looks like this:

 

The baseboard will be made up of four 4 x2 boards, with two 2x2 boards at either end as turning circles. I had hoped to squeeze it all on to four boards, but the boards then become too wide, or too short to create the visual effect I'm after.

It's basically a glorified dumbell layout - allowing long trains to run through uninterupted if desired, but goods shunting, banking and a branch line to maintain interest.

The station throat, goods yard and engine shed complex in detail looks like this:

There are plenty of points to install, and I'll need to check whether these coincide with baseboard joins or bracing.