esngblog

Next job, the point motors.  The switches are just recessed into the baseboard.  All the switches come off my old ‘Earl’s Wood’ layout.  I think the little plastic push button switch is about 50 years old and came from an early OO layout build with my dad.  The layout is wired in two sections to allow two trams to the on the move – left half and right half. The slide switch allows power to the sidings to be routed to either controller.

And all the point motors fitted and wired up and working.  Again, all from old layouts.

And the controller rewired with a decent lead to connect to the layout.

Since the above, I’ve run a quick rattle can coat of sleeper grime (masking the points) over the track, and am ready to start some scenery.  I will first lay out the roads, including the sections of track that include the track, then ballast the remaining track.

A cartoon ‘borrowed’ from RMweb.  I rather liked this!

A quick update on Kuritu II.  Not much work done, as I’ve spent a lot of time putting up a fence at church, hedge cutting and shredding the prunings.  Plus, of course, rugby and a football match on television caused a diversion.  Well, they all went to the tip this morning, and it was back to work.

All track is laid…..

For those of you who thought that we had left Europe.  I bought some contact adhesive off Amazon over lockdown.  Made in Germany, and half the text in Greek?  Go figure……

And here we see the first tram around the layout.  A few hesitations over the Peco points – they are a bit old, and I may have to add microswitches for the point blades.  We’ll see if I can clean up the contacts after painting the track and ballasting, that normally gums everything up.

Next job will be to fit point motors and a couple of isolating switches.  Then to plan the location of the road and buildings, and get scenery under way.  I do need to build a sort of mirror image baseboard as the lighting rig, but that can wait.

Last time I showed a picture of a naval ammunition carrying railway in the USA.  This article explains it in more detail.

Paul also posted this on the ESNG Facebook page.  It would make an interesting model and cause just a little comment at exhibitions…..

A spare trestle from the original layout made a set of legs for the new one.  Hinged at the back, making it easy to fold up and transport.  And a shelf for controller and tea cups.  I think that this layout will almost entirely be built from the old layout, and things that are out of the scrap box – though I may need a few scenic bits and pieces.

And with the layout on top.  I may need to add a clip of some kind between layout and legs, as although the whole thing is very stable, you can tilt the board by leaning on one end!

And the first track down.  Very much as planned, but using a medium radius point on the loop, and changing the siding alignment slightly.

Next challenge – how to lay the 150mm curves at each end, and in one piece?  Turned out OK, cutting a cardboard template for the curve (that is the same at each end) and taping the track in place whilst the glue dried.  I also cut some additional sleeper ties under the track to make it easier to bend.  I’ll try and do the other end later, then some power feeds will allow me to (hopefully) run a tram.

Meanwhile, Paul has rebuilt his railway yet again….

A preview of my revised model railway layout. Still working on new wiring and other modifications.

I’m still fettling point blades for the Minories, but I thought that I needed a diversion.

You may recall that I got Kuritu up and running during the first lockdown last year….

I then ran into the problem that a 6′ x 2′ layout is really just too big for my loft – and to fit Minories and my American layout in as well.  (Help, my loft is beginning to look like Paul’s lounge or Mr Atfield’s house.)  Further, getting this lump of a layout out of the loft and to an exhibition would be just too difficult.

I began to wonder whether to rebuild it, and save my favourite bits on a smaller layout.  So I carried out some radius trials with Peco track.  My trams happily went around curves of about 120mm – 150mm, similar to Tomix and Kato tram track radii.

So I took the bull by the proverbials.  I had always far preferred the narrow, urban, side of the layout to the rural one with the tram sheds.  I stripped all the usable scenics off the rural side, then put a saw down the middle of the layout, leaving the city street intact.

So far so good.  I could then make a smallish 4′, 5′ or 6′ x 10″ wide layout, perhaps with a fiddle yard at each end.  However, I rather liked the idea of a roundy-roundy line, like the original Kuritu.  And frankly, although the scenics still look good, the baseboard was getting a little tired.

So, back to the drawing board, and a little design later I came up with this layout.  1000mm x 400mm, using some Peco Setrack points that I had around.  The curves at the end of the layout are about 150mm.

I like this design a lot – I can run 3 or 4 trams on it – and it could be DC or DCC.  There will be room for most, if not all the buildings from Kuritu, though I shall have to redo the road system and pavements.

And as of this evening, here’s the baseboard nearly complete.  Mostly odds and ends of 6mm ply that was around the loft.  I’m hoping that the board doesn’t warp – I built it on the floor and screwed the board to the loft floor to keep it flat.

If all’s well, I have material for some legs for it, a lick of paint, and we can lay the track.

Meanwhile, Martin is making good progress with his new layout, though he seems to have got a little distracted in planning the scenery and playing with the containers!