Friday 12th April 2019: the date when the track laying was completed!

It has taken around 12 months to finish this task, although it has to be said that the scope has increased considerably since the early layout designs I envisaged. Here is a photograph showing the layout.

The most recent work has been the construction of the exchange yard – which consists the three sidings in the foreground of the photograph together with the three sidings between the two stations. In reality there were many more sidings than those I could fit onto the baseboard, but it is a sensible compromise and provides the capability of having goods wagons shunted from siding to siding.

All the track has been tested and is in a working state!

Is there still room to fit in a goods siding into the GWR station along the right hand side of the layout???

Yesterday I received my order of three sets of points – allowing me to swap out one set that I had diagnosed as giving problems in the exchange sidings. I made that swap and things definitely improved: I was able to move a train through the exchange area, running it into each siding and then back out onto the Up mainline. I pinned all the exchange yard track to the baseboard and reran the tests. It appeared to be a complete success.

Perhaps I should have stopped at that stage. But being a railway fan I wanted to play with the layout and run one of the Up mainline express trains around the circuit. That was when I hit a problem. The train reliably moved out of the fiddle yard and around the curve towards the GWR General Station. But as it came along the platform line it started to struggle and it came to an unexpected halt. No amount of coaxing would get the train moving from that point onwards.

I decided it had been a hard enough session on the layout and closed the system down. Whilst doing so I hit on the probable reason for the error: the exit from the exchange yard is onto the Up mainline track and there must be an electrical polarity issue causing the express train to slow and stop as it neared the set of points that connect to the exchange yard line. As all the track now was pinned to the baseboard I decided I could not quickly try a solution to the problem.

This morning I unpinned a section of the track that leads from the exchange yard and into the Up mainline, and then disconnected that track. The result was a successful run of the Up mainline train. Hence, the solution was to fit insulated rail joiners at this position. This action enabled the complete exchange yard to be totally isolated from the rest of the layout. It allows me the options of controlling the movements in the exchange yard with the existing Up controller (but no other Up train could move at the same time) or else buying a dedicated controller for the exchange yard which will allow concurrent activity in the yard and the Up mainline. The latter should be my goal, but I’ll settle for the former for now.

Anyhow, the minor unpinning work I did today resulted in some movement of the exchange yard track, and I suffered problems running the test train through the exchange yard. Several tests later I discovered my issues were being caused by two different rail joiners that had become disturbed – right in the middle of the exchange yard. More track unpinning was needed. This evening, all the re-pinned track is working OK. I still have to lay a few more sidings in the exchange yard – so expect more fun tomorrow!

A couple of days ago I started to investigate how I might want to add some signals to the layout to make it more representative of the real thing.

I discovered that Dapol produce a range of automated signals (for N and OO gauge) that appeared to be quite suitable although they do cost over £30 each. The product description indicated how the motorised signal could be controlled on digital layouts but there was no information on analogue layouts – like mine.

I emailed Dapol to check whether they would be suitable for my layout and this afternoon I received a reply containing full details of the required wiring for analogue layouts. My thanks to Dapol. Now all I need to do is identify which signal type to select for a trial on the layout.

1. The plan is to fix the problematic set of points at the back of the Avenue Station island platform – in the track that links the GWR and LMS lines, and also feeds the exchange sidings. That can only be undertaken when the replacement set of points arrive – expected on Wednesday.
2. The full set of tracks in the exchange sidings then needs to be tested for operability and then the tracks can be secured to the baseboard.
3. Ballasting of the LMS track can then be completed.
4. It may then be appropriate to obtain an automated signal for installing on the LMS side – possibly controlling train movement out of the Avenue Station towards either Coventry of Rugby. This action would provide an indication of the technical issues and cost of signalling the whole layout.
5. Attention would then pass across to the GWR side. There is a lot of work needed on the General Station, and this may begin with the finishing of the platforms (brick sides and paved top surface) before the station buildings are tackled. Those building could well be a job for this next winter as the work can be done indoors!

The layout is currently in a state where trains can be run on most of the lines, and so there will be a lot of fun to be had this Summer in working out an operating timetable and running it.

A recent minor layout redesign of the LMS track saw the introduction of a terminating line on the outside of platform 2 of the Avenue Station. Originally I hadn’t intended modelling that short line because I did not want to join the LMS section to the GWR mainline – but once I had decided to add more track in the centre of the layout it made sense to add the additional short line into the station.

The photograph above shows the new line with the DMU standing at the bay platform. The introduction of this line left a large gap between it and the raised ground I had already modelled. Therefore, I had to move the retaining brick wall across by 1/2″ and fill in the gap using polystyrene and polyfilla.

The line which joined the two railway companies is shown in the photograph passing the rear of the Avenue Station. The set of points at the back of the platform 2 building feeds the exchange yard where goods wagons were interchanged for onwards dispatch across the country.

Today I discovered a problem with the track alignment on the GWR through ‘Up’ mainline – on its exit from the General Station.

This came to light when running a castle class train on that line at slow speed. The final carriage of the train derailed as it passed over the first set of points going out of the station.

Upon closer inspection of the track in this area I could see that the rails going into the points (where the locomotive is positioned in the photograph above) were at a slight angle to the rails in the points. Using just the last carriage to traverse the points showed it derailing because of this small change in direction.

There was no other solution than to take up that portion of track and relay it. This task required the other (platform) track to be taken up. Both sections had to be un-pinned to half way along the platform length. The track entry positions were then ‘smoothed’ and held in position with drawing pins whist the track was pinned down once more. This was a difficult task due to the fiddly N gauge rail joiners – the set of points could not be moved as they were held in fixed position due to the point motor under the baseboard.

The work proved to be productive, and the train now functions properly at any speed through the station’s Up lines.

Yesterday evening I realised the reason for my electrical problems in the new exchange sidings. It was being caused by the use of electro frog points: one group of points faced southward; the other group faced northwards. There was no ‘air gap’ between the two groups. When one set of points was switched it would (correctly) change the polarity of the upstream rails – and this would obviously affect the movement of any locomotives in the upstream area.

The solution was to install rail insulation joiners between the two group of points. This sorted most of the issues, although I was still left with one outstanding problem. However, analysis of that problem using a length of wire to bridge across the problematic sections of track fed by one set of points has led me to believe it is being caused by a fault in that set of points!

Just when I thought I had come to an end with buying more track…

So today has been a frustrating day. My attempts at powering the exchange sidings has hit the buffers!

I had previously determined two locations where the power feed cables should be attached to the layout. I connected the cables to the track and then to the ‘Up’ controller, and then tested the layout. My test locomotive would progress only so far before it came to an unexpected standstill.

After a few scratches of the head I had a Eureka moment – I had mistakenly connected the lines to the ‘Down’ controller! What a mistake to make, although you have not seen the spaghetti under my baseboard that is my prototype wiring attempt. It was a simple error to correct but that did not fix the problem. I could see that the locomotive was attempting to go in the wrong direction in certain sections. That’s when I realised my second mistake – I had attached the cables to the lines the wrong way around. A fundamental mistake and one which I can only put down to the long elapsed time since I last did any wiring on the layout.

I circumvented that error quite quickly but the locomotive would still not act as I expected it. More investigations will follow tomorrow.

I am awaiting a delivery of a few power feed cables that will enable me to connect the exchange sidings to the controller. There are two places where power needs to be provided to this section of the layout in order to enable engines to be controlled within the forward and reverse facing sidings.

Once I have received the cables I will fit them to the track, drill holes in the baseboard for the cables to be fed underneath, and then join those cables to the wiring of the ‘Up’ GWR controller.

After the wiring has been connected the track will undergo an integrity test to check an engine can navigate along all the exchange sidings and pass across to the LMS and GWR tracks. If those tests are successful then all the track in the sidings will be pinned to the baseboard. Ballasting of these new tracks will be a future project; the priority for ballasting is initially to finish the LMS lines and then the GWR mainlines.

Today was used to prototype a wooded scenery for the northern end of the layout.

The photograph above shows the initial work on building up the ground in order to form a visual barrier for the trains that exit the frontal viewing area of the layout and enter the rear fiddle yard (on the left of the photograph). Polystyrene sheets are being used to form an embankment.

Having slept on it I now dislike the extreme height of this embankment – it looks unrealistic – and intend to reduce it to possibly just one layer of polystyrene.