NSW – 1023 - Layout of the Quarter CHUDLEIGH – TCH 125

 

The owner writes about how this layout came into being and how it has evolved in to its present form

 

 

It started again at Croydon Technical College in the mid 1960s. Doodling a model railway layout was far more fun than concentrating on various chemistry lessons. And so the dream was born. The previous child’s Triang layout had long been consigned to four packing boxes in my parent’s loft. Probably, sadly, all that survived from those days were the controller, transformer and a 12volt soldering iron.

 

Some 38 years later living in Balmain NSW, 26^th May 2003, on our wedding anniversary, my wife gave me a small, heavy, nicely wrapped package. I had no idea it was a Bachmann J72 and what amazed me after all those years was the detail, fine wheels, brake pipes and the small couplings.

 

Into Yellow Pages, nearest railway shop, bought a Settrack oval plus siding, and a $50 controller. These two kids watched this beauty run in circles on the dining room table.

 

Dam! So now, as well as a busy job, rugby, sailing, home, garden, cat and wife (obviously not in that order), I had a railway.

 

Figure 1 - A busy Summer Saturday with every foot of siding given to storing spare loco’s.

 

Chudleigh was a pleasant coastal town in east Dorset, on the LSWR main line with a small fishing harbour.  To the west are a range of hills with a long 1 in 80 incline directly west of Chudleigh Town. In the heady days of nineteenth century railway building, the GWR and LSWR came to jointly own the branch to the harbour. The next major change was in 1943 when the USA army built a large breakwater to expand the harbour into a port for the Normandy landings. In recent years a cross channel service was established. So the scenario is:

·         Through and stopping main line trains to the West Country;

·         Boat trains heading for the port;

·         Inter-regional trains to both town and port either via the Somerset and Dorset or the Reading link;

·         The inevitable WR push – pull unit operating the town / port line; and

·         A selection of parcel and goods trains.

 

The catch of course was the line to the port is steep, narrow, twisting and with severe weight restrictions. So for the boat trains the main loco and the restaurant car both have to come off, and 0-6-0Ts handle the port leg, one taking the reduced size train down, and two, or even three, pulling it back up. Summer Saturdays are chaotic.

 

Building a model railway layout today is, so I have found out, just a little different from the 1950s. My first was a Triang 0-6-0T, two rail, with two maroon coaches in a box eventually fixed to a 6 x 4 base board probably at the age of eight. In 2003 after a few weeks of magazines and use of the internet it was decided:

·         BR SR / WR late 1950s;

·         Code 75 track, electrofrog points, Peco point motors and switches;

·         DCC Digitrax system, two Zephyrs (one command, the other a slave with auto-reversing enabled). Recently I have added a DT 400 and UT4; and 

·         Modern Bachmann and Hornby RTR locos and rolling stock, with brake pipes and rods, and, where possible, screw link couplings on the front of locos, some crew and weathering. All with the emphasis on “watching the trains go by”.

 

And so, for the next two years, we made a layout on a piece of chipboard, a double main line, centre passing line, terminus and goods yard, both with head shunts. Kit buildings, scenery and life was added, with most of the detail by my wife. Outside of operating sessions, with everything packed away, it hung under the rear porch (known affectionately as the “Hanging Railway of Balmain”), until we moved to a larger house.

 

When we moved to St Ives, the layout was placed on a custom table built by my neighbour and later expanded to 3.2m x 1.5m x 0.94m to fill the room by use of a second bolt on table and a separate control panel. The layout is now effectively three levels, the main line being the top, an intermediate level at the front containing the port, and the lower having 14 rolling stock and 7 locomotive storage sidings linked via a double track spiral, allowing the entire rolling stock to be active.  Both the table and control panel are on castors to allow access to the rear. By necessity, point switches, all 33 of them, have been left on the main base board.

 

Figure 2 - Collet goods loco on shed

 

But, coming back to the layout design, the priorities were movement, length and height.

·         Movement. I have tried to create end on / horizontal views of train movements. Sitting on a normal chair the top level gives more of an elevation rather than plan view. Also inside the spiral is an operating “hole” where shunting and marshalling can be achieved by an operator sitting on an office swivel chair without the back.  The double loop mainline and branch allows at least a couple of trains to be running at any one time. One of the advantages of DCC is the ease of double heading.

·         Length. I reckon a main line model train has to be at least a loco plus five coaches to look “main line”. So Chudleigh Town was made to handle a tender locomotive, with 5 BR Mk1 coaches, allowing the restaurant car and brake coach of the boat trains to be uncoupled and put into the passing loop, whilst the rest went down to the port.  

·         Height. I wanted to get away from a flat layout and the extension has enabled that. A  basic layout height of 0.94m allows more of a horizontal view when sitting down. 

 

To say this layout was planned is true as long as you add “on the run”. I tried using WinRail as a design tool, which I am told was a German design that was adapted for the UK. That would explain it, very teutonic, (I should know, my Head Office is in Hamburg.) I could not get it to handle flexitrack well, but the track layout shown was done with it.

 

The lower storage sidings evolved when talking with my neighbour who built the table and control panel. Once out of sight the double spiral and point work is all Peco Setrack to allow maximum space utilisation. The Setrack points are manual control, by Universal 218 toggle switches, a keep-it-simple approach.

 

So, today, the structure, track and wiring are complete. To my surprise, it all actually works. The original town and buildings, which I was very pleased with, have been left, and the scenery, ballasting and buildings on the new part are to be done. Lot’s of detail help from my wife has made the last few months fun and very rewarding.

The few visits I have been able to make to BMRA meetings have been hugely rewarding. I am amazed at the talents of our members, and just how much there is to modelling, much of it way beyond me. Still I am happy with much of Chudleigh. For me three things stand out.

 

1.       Being able to replicate operations I remember on the Southern railway some 50 years ago when I was but a kid;

2.       Watching a down express pull out of Chudleigh Town, crawl up the bank and lean into the curve at the top; and

3.       Using the reversing loop to turn locomotives for the run back to London.

4.       So now we can finish the scenery, do the rest of the ballasting, devise the timetable, and build the port.

 

Figure 3 - Time for a pint at the Swan Inn

 

 

 

 

 

To be continued...