Duffryn Mt. Ash - South Wales N.C.B., 1972-1980

[flexible_coupling]

The preliminary thread on RMWeb, below, covers most of the early-stages of development of the ideas and the layout itself.

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/80691-duffryn-mt-ash-south-wales-ncb-1972-1980/

I'm picking up this thread at a slightly later point of the picture. Small modifications to the layout diagram above include the removal of the coal/water/sand sections to more closely align to the "real" Mountain Ash. Rule #1 very clearly applies here - the creek should run longitudinally, the engine shed and the road running to the side are mirrored longitudinally, the wagon repair workshop would be on the other side of the creek (not connected directly!) and the whole "flow" of the layout has had a kickback siding. I spent a lot of time fiddling with the design - honestly, I knew the layout was going to be fairly simple operationally, and having the kick-back at least added a little more shunting movement. This layout is a tribute to the prototype - not a replica. I will have era-appropriate rolling-stock, and will progressively build up the "real" loco stock for the location - ex-GWR 7754, 'Austerity' No. 8, Sir John, Llantarnam Abbey, and a number of other locos progressively including a Class 03 and 08 in worn blue for the "death" of the line....

It's a rare day where I'm able to put a few hours in for my own modelling enjoyment! Today, I cut and glued the ground cork/rubber underlay, and glued down the first 21 sleepers!! I need to see a bit of progress to keep the momentum up. I plan to prep the copper-clad trackwork for the traverser and 'yard' , and might go hunting for an appropriate colour/grade of ballast during the week. I hope to be able to do the ballasting before laying rails/chairs - as per prototype - as it seems like it'll be far easier to get it all settled and looking pretty. And by pretty.... I mean ugly and muddy...




I did also purchase two (admittedly finescale O, not Scale 7) white cats to rule the shed, and a kit for a pair of cantilever toolboxes. Tiny little bags of cast whitemetal/pewter treasures.... oh, there are so many to choose from...

 

[Neil]

I look forward to seeing how this develops. One of my favourite picture books is Visions of Steam, Cavalier and Silcock, The four Seasons Steam in Industrial South Wales. It's beautiful book, more atmosphere than detail, well worth having.

 

[flexible_coupling]

I plan to start collecting books on the subject soon... so far, all of my work has been based on a surprisingly good collection of photos from Flickr and a few other websites. Playing by correspondence is always a bit fun.

Also, got up to about 40 sleepers glued down.... so many to go, and then we start on ballast... then chairs... oh dear.

 

[flexible_coupling]

Got on a good roll today, now 120 sleepers down. I made a few basic jigs to space the sleepers out approximately - I've been trying to get it a tad rough but it does look more neat-and-manicured... the ballasting will hopefully help accentuate the rough look I'm going for. In this layout, I'm aiming to get a 'heavy' base layer of ballast everywhere around the bare sleepers, then lay chairs/rail (and obviously fabricate the turnouts etc) then go along and start adding more "yuck" everywhere. The difficult thing is that, in a lot of places, you can't actually see the sleepers for the coal dust/mud/ash/"ballast"... I had originally planned to use hardwood sleepers appropriately stained, but when I realized how little they'd be seen.... it seemed a bit futile!

 

[Osgood]

John David, at this stage I really am paying attention, as I too would like some stretches of pretty rough track and have been wondering how to go about it.

One thought is to bend and kink the rail, e.g. at dropped joints - and once looking good, use the distorted rail as a jig to set the height of the sleepers. Of course it may be wise to try to temporarily set the rail in a jig in order to try running a wagon over it first before using as the template for sleeper height (but this sound vey complicated).

Another idea - maybe easier - is to build the track flat onto a very soft deep foam base, then bend and kink the rail to achieve drops and undulations where necessary. These could be tweaked to ensure adequate running. This mean ballasting afterwards though.

Alternatively (and in the absence of any practical experimenting, my preferred option) build the track on a jig in 'panels', bend about, pack underneath and test running, and finally glue/ballast around the sleepers to give support.

All of which points towards using those pesky separate keys made possible by S-Club-7.........

 

[Overseer]

One method of replicating crippled, or dropped, joints is to lay the rails, then file shallow notches in the head of the rail at the joint locations. Then find an old chisel or similar and a hammer. Hold the chisel in each notch and whack hard. The result is a prototypical crippled joint. Saying that, the largest rail I have tried this with is code 100 flat bottom rail which works well. There should be enough give in the underlay. I would certainly lay the rail, and distress it, before ballasting the track.

 

[flexible_coupling]

I'm continuing with the "regular" sleepers this evening.... and looking at more and more photos, I think you're right with "ballast later"!!

 

[flexible_coupling]

I'm running out of progress that I can make without "more bits and pieces" arriving. I did a little bit of exploration into what's required for building up the engine shed, and might make a start on that soon. I'll need to plan out the engine shed properly shortly and chop out the inspection pits. As is probably obvious from the photo, I've joined some of the sleepers together in preparation for the shed roads. I'm pretty happy seeing this much progress in a fairly rapid progression, it's a lot more/lot faster than any other stage of this layout's existence!

 

[flexible_coupling]

I believe that this would accompany the dictionary definition of 'painful'.... will look good at the end, but it certainly is dull. The main visible wall of the shed needs this treatment on one face (pretty-side out) as the standard Slaters sheets are too short, and I just had to have a shed that could fit four locos.......

 

[Dikitriki]

I would experiment first with a really good butt join. I think what you are doing will be more visible, not less.

Cut along a vertical joint from top to bottom on both sheets (steel rule, new blade etc.), angling the cut slightly inwards so the top surface presents a sharp true cut. Butt joint over whatever surface you are using, run Mek along the vertical join and lightly sand when dry.

Much quicker too.

Richard

 

[Osgood]

I see from your photo of the sleepered baseboards above that for you appear to have a load of track templates in a variety of gauges - some look S7, some more like N - cut into strips. You have definitely committed to 7mm scale, haven't you?

I further note that the templates do not appear to be very accurate as the crossing Vees do not line up

 

[Dog Star]

I see from your photo of the sleepered baseboards above that for you appear to have a load of track templates in a variety of gauges - some look S7, some more like N - cut into strips.

Just back from Asda (read Aldi, Lidl, Tesco et al as suits) and I could not find any PW materials anywhere, not even for ready money and especially not in the Duvet aisle.

 

[Overseer]

fc, just in case some of these comments aren't making any sense they are talking about your doona cover.

 

[flexible_coupling]

Haha.... I expected that'd eventually get commented on. The bed is one of about three places in the apartment that the layout can fit horizontally, and will be where most work/play is done. It stands on one end up against the fridge in a foot-wide gap between fridge and desk. In the immediate future, as long as I'm in this little shoebox of a place, buildings/anything taller than an inch will be removable...

Dikitriki.... I got a little further down the joint and came to the same conclusion. I'm contemplating placing a mid-wall gutter down pipe in a strategic location...... I also realized late in yesterday's session that I'd mis-measured (not in the worst way), having initially marked out for shed walls that would end up being 20' high.... rather than the intended 14'! 140mm is, indeed, not 98mm. It does mean that I can get two full wall panels out of a sheet for the workshop building which is a big plus.

 

[flexible_coupling]

I had a small moment of madness/distraction over the weekend where I sat down and considered completely rehashing the design of the layout..... after spending a few hours on it, I returned to the sane conclusion that I simply couldn't/wouldn't gain anything useful from such an exercise. I spent a little time jigging up a handbuilt turnout made to F7 and bringing it to S7 specs, along with a wagon, just to convince myself that S7 was the way to go for the layout. I needed a bit of hands-on reassurance... I tend to feel like I've got a better understanding of things with something physically in my hands! I also built up a few teeny sundry items for the eventually fully detailed interior of the loco and wagon sheds.



A sleeper pile to be weathered (that may grow a little depending on the surplus remaining from the layouts' construction!), a pair of Kerroby Models toolboxes (that were not terribly fun to fettle and assemble), ancient Slaters telegraph poles and a pair of cats (that will get repainted!) and lamps also in need of a lick of paint. I have a strong love/hate relationship with the feeling of exiting a shop with a little pile of little bags of cute accessories.... and the sting of what the little pile of little bags cost for such little bags..........

I'm reclaiming most of my cache of plastikard from cold-storage while meeting up with my folks on the weekend in theoretically-sunny Queensland (about 1800km's north!) which will expedite the building of the sheds and a heap of other fun and necessary bits-and-bobs...... I'll also reclaim some of the cache of other modelling stuff, including a loop of Kato N-scale track. I'm seriously thinking of making a mini diorama roundy-roundy N-scale layout as a cameo scene from Mountain Ash - repaint a Dapol 57xx and build up a string of Parkside 24.5t wagons. I find the sound of a little layout running laps very theraputic!

 

[Osgood]

...I'm seriously thinking of making a mini diorama roundy-roundy N-scale layout as a cameo scene from Mountain Ash - repaint a Dapol 57xx and build up a string of Parkside 24.5t wagons. I find the sound of a little layout running laps very theraputic!

This sounds suspiciously like an extension to the S7 locomotive shed diorama by means of some very clever perspective modelling!

 

[flexible_coupling]

Nah that'd get too confusing and honestly - I don't think I've got the space for forced-perspective!

 

[flexible_coupling]

Teeny update... spent the evening overseeing the final Bolton match of the season via a horrible online feed, and built up the copperclad trackwork for the traverser and fiddle-yard. This will be padded out to the right height datum and "fettled" once in place on the layout proper. I could certainly have done this later on... but I just had an itch for a bit of soldering! I've also put a bit of energy into finishing the drawing/'designing' of the loco shed, to help with carving up the plastic sheeting correctly - hopefully allowing 'measure 70 times, cut once'... As I'll be laminating brick plastic/1.5mm plastikard/brick plastic in most places, it's going to be really important to plan it out right!!

 

[flexible_coupling]

Have given things a fair bit of thought over the course of the last few days - largely revolving around the amount of money involved in "trivial" things like constructing and authentically lighting the two buildings on the layout... track... turnout control and electrics... decorating... and the lurking feeling that I'd eventually want to build a larger "Mark 2" version of the layout; I've decided to do a little Beeching on the project as-is.

I ultimately planned, at the time of deciding to proceed with the layout in the form described in the posts before, to build up a somewhat larger version of the layout incorporating the BR railway and station etc., and run it at about 1960 (as opposed to 1972-1980). This would let me sleep better at night invoking 'Rule 1' and let me buy a Heljan railbus and run some short loco-hauled passenger and freight services on the branch, and still have chaos on the more elaborate NCB system. What I'm considering now is about 10-16' of scenic-section with (removeable) traversers or train-turntables at each end, BR in the background, NCB in the foreground, condensed up a bit but still including the station, wagon shop, river (correctly aligned) and loco shed/representation of the yard by the loco shed. The construction of this won't be able to start until I've moved from my current residence around the end of the year... but I feel like it's a smarter move to plan and build the right layout once, rather than build it up now and butcher it later. 110-quid - just for fluoro lights - for inside the loco shed.... sobering!

Fear not - the woodwork as-is will be used for a basic test track, PCB soldered track to S7. I want to have a good few continuous feet of track to run with, and I've got the boards for it! Might doll it up scenically... see how inspiration fares!

 

[flexible_coupling]

The decision has been made on the woodwork I have here. There's been a bit of scraping-up of glued down sleepers and thinking about the possibilities. The image above gives a bit of an idea as to what's planned - a really simple two-sidings, decorated as a simple permanent-way storage yard. Piles of sleepers, lengths of rail, weeds and junk, a brick retaining wall along the length (probably about 3" in from the left-hand-edge). Essentially really similar in concept to Mr Compton Castle's Old Oak Approaches, and intended as part test-track, part photo diorama - but intended to allow basic back-and-forward shunt operations and running. The relatively sharp S-curve is now a deliberate feature for testing stock out. The traverser has been reduced to two roads, three stubs off the traverser. Wanting to incorporate some kind of grounded coach-body and/or a van (suggestions welcome!), adding a lean-to and a few little bits of interest, to make for a nice photography diorama and a bit of fun.

Altering from my previous remark - I'll use C&L chairs, Peco rail and the C&L plastic sleepers, as they're available inexpensively from a local shop (they're clearing their stock out). I'll probably implement a Peco turnout motor and hidden (above-board, perhaps - conduit through the underlay) linkage, tucked away behind the pending retaining wall - only because I have a few here unused. I'm half-way there with sleepers being laid, as can be seen! I have a nice 11-day holiday coming up soon - hoping that the majority of this will be done by the end!!