There are some sites that I find myself returning to time after time. Vibrant sites with lots of new ideas and a great wealth of modellers, who love to share. My favourite message board is to be on and partake in is RMWeb.
There is always a project or layout build under way that has something to give you. Today I’d like to point out two projects on RMWeb that I find really interesting for a number of reasons.
Built in 7mm scale as a basic garage-garden-garage line; the garden section is in effect just a single track with a couple of sidings and scenery provided by mother nature. Control is planned to be a mixture of DCC and RC.
The Scenic modelled section is to be situated within the garage with a cassette fiddle yard on the other side. The garden will include a viaduct but be fairly basic for the sake of ease of building and getting something up and running quickly and to reduce maintenance.
The model depicts a small corrugated Goods Shed and two sidings, with the tail-end of the Head-Shunt also represented, the Loop being ‘off stage’ so to speak. This is a classic Inglenook type ‘shunting plank’ and will give somewhere to have some fun with ‘shunting puzzles’ and to test new stock whilst Down Ampney is being built.
Conclusion
While both are 7mm O scale layouts, the standard of modelling is very high, while the area and layout being modelled is small and simple. Lots of working potential too.
Well its a very warm day in Ballarat, and my son and I are off to the local pool. Hope you’re having a great day where you are too.
If you have not seen a tuning fork layout, it is a very simple 1 turnout operation. If you are still not seeing it in your mind, think of the letter ‘Y’. Most of the layouts I’ve seen assume either a mainline and a siding, or two sidings. However, that does not mean little operational potential. I found a video by Thornapple River Rail Series on YouTube [Link is below] this week and it got the creative juices flowing.
Image 1: The location of the facility from Google Maps
The kicker is that the second of the spurs is used to allow switching to take place on the spur itself. Before you do any more reading watch the video (It is 18 odd minutes long but if you start at about the 4:36 minute mark you’ll get the gist pretty quickly).
Video 1: thanks to Thornapple River Rail Series
Operations
If you start at about the 4:40 mark into the video you’ll see the following occur:
Loco and first three cars cut off from the train
Same pulls forward of the spur switch, and reverses across Viaduct St SW toward the plant
You’ll notice the second spur on the outside of the plant as the train pushes back toward the plant
Once the roller door comes up, the train pushes back into the dock area, picks up the outbound cars, and pulls forward again to clear the switch for the spur
Next, the outbound cars get pushed onto the exterior spur
Inbound cars get pulled forward onto the spur again, the switch is reset, and the inbound cars are pushed back into the dock
Loco cuts off, pulls forward to clear the switch, and once changed over, pushes back to hook on and pump up the air on the 3 outbound cars
Pulling forward the loco and three outbound cars cross over the road and re-join the train
Just to add the cherry on top, the train then reverses back to the yard with the engineer riding the caboose
Now all of this takes between 10 – 14 minutes of video time. But what a fantastic way to spend your 5-20-5 minutes of daily modelling / operating time (read a post on that concept here).
If you want to make it last a little longer, first re-arrange the incoming cars into the order as required by the plant. Additionally some cars may not be unloaded yet, and they need to be moved off-spot, and then back on again with new inbound cars. Some cars may need to be left off-spot on the exterior spur for the next switching session.
Layout idea
While I mainly model in HO my true passion is 0 scale (and bigger when I can manage it). Alas I have not the room for a big layout to run those sized trains – yet.
Image 2: The complete layout (click for a larger version of the file)
For an 0 scale layout I cannot think of a better idea. You could easily do that in 12 feet and no more than 12 inches wide. If you really had the room you could do it in 18 inches wide and go nuts with weathering, winter trees as in the video, and the knocked over Armco barriers. Glorious! The big gotcha here is that the switching lead ahead of the switch has to be longer than 2x the maximum number of cars you switch into the dock. Don’t forget to add a loco length on top of that too.
So if you switch in 3 cars and out 3 cars you’ll need to have six spots plus a loco length to allow the switching to take place.
Hope that this gets your creative juices flowing. And thanks to Thornapple River Rail Series for posting the video. I am going to be looking through a bunch of his videos now for other similar ideas for my layouts in the future.
It’s a sunny and pleasant Saturday afternoon in Ballarat, hope you’re enjoying your day where you are.
Andrew's Trains 