The end of the line for the Terminal Railway?

Overview

For almost twenty years I have been working off and on building a model railroad in the storage/laundry room of my home. Having been interested in N scale for more than thirty years before this, and seemingly always being a train fan for as long as I can remember, this was a big deal for me. I had started a half-basement layout in our previous home in South Dakota, and I had a lot of plans. Sadly those plans previously intended for a twenty –two by twenty-eight foot basement did not scale well into a ten by eight foot room.

Undaunted, I tried, and I had a list of things I wanted to achieve. But over the years it has also meant a lot of compromise, and looking back, led to a lot of disenchantment with not having the space to do more.

A couple of things along the way contributed to my very slow progress, and maybe this will help someone out there who is struggling in the same way

Life happens

Too often things outside of the span of our own control get in the way. For me, the events that led to my muse, my then two-year old grandson coming to live with us, took a sudden and terrible turn when my daughter, his mother, passed away just before his third birthday. Being responsible for a very young child again required a major shift in our lives, and severely affected my motivation at the same time.

Diversions

Along the way I also acquired use of enough space to build a big enough layout to run the kind of trains I wanted to; a loop of approximately eleven by thirty-three feet. This also cut into my capability to progress on my home layout.

And as if that was not enough, in 2017 I acquired a small layout to take to shows and exhibitions. This project gave me the opportunity to do something I had never done before; scenery. So while having three layouts means less time for each one, I was able to operate my layout publicly and realise some of the things I never realized was wrong with my original layout.

This also made me face some things that have slowed down progress on building the layout I wanted.

So I decided it was time to start again.

In doing so, I will be making some changes in the original design, because looking back, it was really overly complex, and keeping me from making progress.

1. Removing the complexity of attempting staging below what was going to be the industrial switching area. I never found an effective way to build a base for the industrial track, or operate the staging area usefully, due to short track lengths. 
2. Make the layout modular. Going to shows has been a very good experience, and I have a plan in the making that should allow me to use the layout in public, and share it with more people.

On top of all of this I joined a club recently, and incorporating a connection to their standard is possible, and adds an added dimension to the urban scene I am trying to create.

Along the way I toyed with incorporating Squaw Falls into the home layout and/or modules, but don’t see an elegant solution that will let me run the layout as is or take it on the road.  I’ll still have Squaw Falls “as is” until I complete enough of the layout to go public, at which point maybe expanding it out to include a mountain scene (space permitting) will be something I can revisit.

I've already started, and will update with pictures when I am able.

City Lights Up

One of the primary reasons I wanted to build this layout for was the urban scene; the trains to me are part of the overall artwork, and urban scenery is something that has always drawn me. But structures themselves do not make a city, it needs life. And life needs LIGHT!

One Light Powered

And Man, what a pain THAT was! 

The leads are not quite long enough to work with under the layout, when you have almost three inches of foam base under the city. It meant removing the structure base, extending the wires on the bench, and carefully threading them, the slightly larger extensions, AND heat-shrink tubing through the original hole with the aid of a Capri-Sun straw, and putting it all back together. 

This does explain the wet glue under the structure, and lamp. 

Thankfully I had an epiphany on connecting the others, and the guy that sells these says he can add longer leads, which will make it VERY much easier... 

Three Lights Lit

I managed to power all three currently installed street lights despite the close quarters; I used a piece of copper-cladded perforated board, and soldered the lamp leads to this, as well as the feeder wires. It was a lot lest aggravation to be sure!

For now I will figure out how many of these I will need to do a good portion of the city, and take the maker up on the offer to provide longer leads. I will also need to consider the street surface; at the minute it looks too shiny, except for after a rain storm.

Overhead View - Three Lights Lit

All three lights when viewed from above. In these shots I was using a nine-volt battery, as I will be running a separate 12-volt power supply for the scenic lighting, as to not overwhelm the turnout power, or get brown outs when changing routes!

Twenty-one more to go, and hopefully get some interior lighting installed and connected at the same time.

Getting Back to the Layout After a Wonderful Summer

Since the last update I have been very busy on other fronts; changed jobs twice (another contract, and a permanent role now), as well as spending some quality time back home in the good ol' US of A! When not working or travelling, other "summer" activities ate up  my free time, and while enjoyable, did not leave much time to work on the layout.

Two major events occurred that have made a huge difference on the layout project, one visibly, and one operationally.

1. Visual Improvments - Bedford Valley grows!

I managed to acquire a failrly large haul of N scale structure and rolling stock kits through a friend on Ohio. I had these shipped to a relative's house in the states so I could sort through them to ship them more economically, and made several that were of no use to me available to other local modellers.

Included in this were several Magnuson Models resin kits, two of which will add some character and "back home" real estate to the now larger City of Bedford Valley

Bedford Valley 2.0 - The City Grows!

In addition, during recent months a number of very good quality N Scale city structures have released as well, allowing me to expand the footprint of the City of Bedford Valley. The townhouses will move to the left of the structures here, between them and the Downtown Deco kits that will transition the city image into industrial uses.

Expanded Bedford Valley

Expanded and reorganized following acquisitions, there will be more American buildings present, as well as a few taller structures to up the skyline a little.

The control panel installation has also meant changes in the city footprint in the foreground of the layout:

Future Site of Red's Bar

The fascia allowed me to widen the city area enough to place a small structure on this corner; I had been agonizing over where to place this small structure for weeks, and once it is lighted, will be in a perfect place to show it off.

2. Operational Developments:

While attending the International N Gauge show this year (and meeting up with fellow N scaler Andy (a.k.a. Texhorse)) I discovered a small vendor offering some some very interesting, practically plug and play control boards for turnout control...

megapointscontrollers.com/

Dave that runs the operation with his wife Shiela, and gave some very clear and helpful demonstrations of their product line, which can control up to 192 turnouts through linked boards, and 192 programmed routes using a panel processor.

Accessory boards can be chained to the system to power frogs through relays, or provide auxiliary controlled power based on the throw.

How far I will go with this option is not clear, but at £60 (approximately $75) to control 12 turnouts, and an additional £72  (approximately $90) if I want to add automated power routing (which I am also testing via a double or triple pole toggle switch to drive the turnouts). The system is modular, so I can easily "just" power the servos at present, and add the relay cards if I wish to add route control later, without having to do a major electrical engineering project.

At the current exchange rate it means I can save a few dollars on twelve installations, and just over the cost of the twelve single control boards I can add the relays and have a foundation for route control. The major benefits are a local supply, and the ability to build up the features in a modular manner, rather than commit to everything up front. 

Where might this lead?

Single boards are great for the mainline away from the control panel on the larger layout. The MegaPoints system lends itself to the more congested yard areas and smaller layout. I'll have to doodle with routing to determine how far I might want it to go, but certainly lends itself to freight and passenger yard operation, to pick from up to 192 routes through a station and freight yard for example.

It has meant track gang has been called back to work, to facilitate mounting of turnouts and motors in the industrial area, after a rather long hiatus.

Turnout Repair Time

Some of the soldered joints were not very strong, and resisted resoldering them,. I ended up replacing the frog and all ties past connected to it and beyond.

Hole Cut for Turnout Motor

New servos, and new controller boards, mean I can make progress on this neglected projected again, and hopefully get trains running through here under their own power soon...

More Turnout Motor Mounting

These turnouts have not even been built yet, and this will be the next extension of completed track, the old power plant sidings.

I'll continue to plug away at it, and add another update once a few of the works in progress are completed...

Control Panel Construction: phase two

As some of you know I have been spending far too much time in the bathroom lately. Renovating, not as a fan! Unfortunately the only slack time I had to work that in to was layout time. So progress has been slow.

Until today.

Next week I'll hopefully get to start tiling, if a supplier pulls their finger out, but this weekend I got to spend some time working on my layout at home. And control panels were the project of choice.

 The Plan for the Center End of the Layout

The most complex arrangement of control switches will go here. The end of the layout will have three panels; west end of branch, industrial tracks, and east end of branch.

Ready to Begin

Simple tools; a square, a pencil, and the plan...

 West End Branch Panel

I drew half-inch grid lines on the panel board, then plotted the track lines. One half inch is about the minimum for two toggles switches to be mounted side by side. Dots are for turnout control switches.

West End Branch Panel with Power Control Switch Placement

I added dots where track power switches will be placed. The spur in the center will lead directly to another turnout on the industrial track...

 Center Panel Prior to Drilling

Center panel for the industrial tracks; most of this has not been laid yet as it is code 40 hand laid!

East End of the Branch

Third panel for this location; very simple, but mostly just keeping the fascia complete. Turnout is not powered yet, and way down in the list.

All Three Panels In Place

I put the panels back in place as I was not ready to start drilling them yet, and felt they were safest out of the way where they belong. The switches hanging under the panel on the left power the branch line turnouts, and will be mounted once the holes are drilled.

Hopefully I will get the opportunity to drill some of the holes and mount the switches that are already installed, to get them to where they need to be. Then it is on to soldering track power control switches to give me the ability to switch tracks between DC and DCC, something I have been wanting to do for a very long time!

Control Panel Construction - phase one

And they have to start somewhere. In this case, it's the framework:

First section of control panel frame in place

This will give me a great mounting for the control panel and ad about an inch or so of city space on the front of the layout.

Lower-level view of the frame

The framework is in place and mounted, showing most of the length of the frame.

Joining to the layout

This will be the trickiest transition to finally get right, as I have been scenicking this area already...

The other side

The other side of the control panel frames are up; now to the third side and panels themselves...

The left-hand end

to the left of this section will be the lift out, with the bridge.

The right-hand end

I've been using the switch controls for most of the time the layout has been built, and they will finally get a proper panel! I took advantage of the New Year's holiday and decided to work on the control panel fascias and clear up the layout room.

The local lumber store cut the strips into six and half and seven and a half inch strips.

 The City Side of the Layout

This side of the layout has a narrower fascia on account of the washer and dryer height. I will eventually build the city street out to the fascia, giving me about an extra inch of depth, and cut the top edge down in most places to match the road height.

Industrial Park Side of the Layout

The fascia is wider on this and the center section to allow for the increased number of tracks needing to be controlled.

Center Section overall view

The Center section will control the interchange yard and most of the turnouts for the industrial trackage. I have not decided whether to control the interchange yard and industrial tracks from different panels, or to spread the controls across the width of the panel.

From here it's on to the track diagrams, switch installation preparation, painting, and switch wiring.

More trackwork - finishing the branch line junction – Part II

Track work:

After getting the turnouts fixed in place, the time came to more permanently fix he track. Since this area of the layout is going to portray a weed-grown locale, I thought to deviate from my normal approach of scenery then ballast, effectively killing two birds with one stone by ballasting this track.

The dark ballast was left over from a long time ago, and I have slowly been using it up wherever I want to have a variety, especially since the “normal” color will be light grey. Hopefully I have enough left to finish the branch line terminal and tracks, or I will have to find a replacement.

I also filled under the floating section from the previous post; it went a lot easier than I expected, and can hopefully get everything to a point where I can start the scenic effects, and ballast around the turnouts.

Wiring:

What good are remotely powered turnouts without the means to work them? As I am powering all of them from a separate transformer, I had to run a bus wire around the layout from the outlets to the control switches, which will be mounted on the fascia.

Power Bus Approach:

I came up with the idea of using household mains cable as a power bus to avoid running dozens of jumpers. It definitely made life easier on the loft layout, so I thought I would give it a try where it presented itself.

Planning the code 40 turnout installations

I actually built these years ago, but have delayed installing them due to issues over control. The basic problem was that I could not find a readily available supply of components that did the job in a cost-effective manner, which I was happy with. Having decided that servo motors fit the bill, I can now get on with it.

 Having built the first turnout (almost) by the book, I deviated from the following ones, and mounted the wood tie strips directly to the roadbed. This will make the placement easier when it comes time to mount them, as well as simplifying the placement of the servo, as there is no guesswork involved in where the turnout sits in relation to the mounting board.

Here you can get a better look at the placement of the future turnouts from the tie strip placement. I’ve also shown the servo mounting board with tie strip attached.

Change to mounting practice

I had been installing the servo on its edge to save space in the footprint, but oddly could not get proper throw in this location using that method. As a possibility I tried turning the servo back on its side, and problem solved. The throw wire is actually thicker than the stock wire provided; I just could not be bothered to change it after I realise it did not solve the problem.

This image shows the revised mounting method.

More trackwork - finishing the branch line junction

I managed to find some local power transformers that make the servos run really well, so after a bit of experimentation (fun!) with that, I dove back into the finishing up the branch line junction.

I kind of got to this state before Thanksgiving, which took a slight bit of time out of my free-time pool. Getting decorations up for Christmas, etc., well, you know how it is. This was the last "shot" of the work in progress:

All well and good, right? Not quite. One of the turnouts was not behaving properly. And if it was being a pain now, it could only get worse, right? So I decided to pull it out and attempt to fix it, when this happened:

Well, I can salvage the rail, frog, and guardrails. The project wrapped up in this state, kind of a regression:

Until today! I got home a bit earlier than usual from work, no major crisis causing me to connect back in from the house, so I decided to get the replacement turnout in place. So I did; back to where I was a few weeks ago!

It doesn't feel so much like lost time, since it does seem to work better, so I'll stick to that. I also decided to start on the foam "shaping" that would be needed prior to scenery.

I used the Woodland Scenics risers to elevate some of the track, but it is just too wide for an N scale industrial area, so I sloped the edge of one section down to the base:

The sanding tool was making kind of a mess of the cork as well as the foam, so I only used it to keep a smooth line along the rough shape. I then used the course sandpaper to finish off the shape. Later, once I have hooked up all of the feeder wires and powered up the turnout motors one more time, I cover this with paper, and paint that over with PVA prior to applying the scenery.

One more challenge to face: the smoothing of one of the "transitions" in height. Gluing the track to the cork left a rather extreme elevation change, so I may resort to using ballast to fill in under this stretch to support it, in a more even grade change:

The track seems to find its own level, so I may trust in its choice on this one occasion, and let it be.

Off to do the wiring, both track and turnout motor SPDT toggles, so won't be much more to show tonight. Hopefully this weekend I'll get trains running on this again,  which has not happened very well in quite a while...