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Worsley Dale Garden Railway


mick
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I think a lot of us have had this nagging problem on track realism at some time or other. Why haven't Peco brought out a more realistic product after all these years?

Mick, if you have access to British railway Modelling on line, (June 2012) you will fine a good article on exactly what you are doing at the moment. Andy York tackles the problem with text and pictures. Fine article.

He actually puts the sleeper spacing at 7.5mm.

Obviously you are going to loose a lot of the robust nature of the track, and I suspect you need the patience of Jobe, but the end product is excellent.

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Rossi said:

...if you have access to British railway Modelling on line, (June 2012) you will fine a good article on exactly what you are doing at the moment....He actually puts the sleeper spacing at 7.5mm...

I'll take a look at that later - thanks for the heads up.

As for the spacing, I simply laid out the sleepers in what I thought was the most pleasing and realistic looking way and measured several from centre to centre to come up with 9mm. I think that's about all you can do seeing as the gauge is incorrect to start with. If it looks okay then that will suffice for me - it does look better than before. I just hope, as you point out, that they remain robust enough. Ballasting should help that and they are only going to be done on the main scenic section.

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A good move with the sleepers, Mick, they certainly look better. I never thought of doing that with my outdoor Flexitrack, probably because I had accepted that the outdoor track would not be "fine scale". However, I might try it on some sections of track.

For my "winter project" indoor layout, I have made my own track using C&L Finescale components. After some research, I found that the norm in early BR days was 25 or 26 sleepers per 60' length, with the sleepers either side of the rail joint being slightly wider and spaced slightly closer. Let me know if you'd like me to dig out the actual figures. I had always thought that the Peco sleepers were smaller and closer than scale because it is correct for HO scale, 3.5 mm/ft. I've just measured a prisine length of flexitrack, and the distance between a half-spacing either side of 25 sleepers is about 173mm, which for 60' gives a scale of 173/60 = 2.9 mm/ft. (or 3.0mm/ft if you count 26 sleepers). Why on earth would anyone make track like that? Bizarre!

The Peco sleepers are also much too short and narrow. Obviously, 00 gauge rail spacing is narrower than scale, so the compromise I have adopted, which seems to look ok, is to shorten the sleepers by 18.83 - 16.5 = 2.33mm, which leaves the correct amount of sleeper protruding either side of the rails. All this is fine for a 5' long indoor diarama, but it would be an awful lot of work for the garden railway, so your sleeper compromise is probably a good one, Mick. And 9mm centre-to-centre is about spot-on for 25 sleepers per 60ft.

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fungus said:

A good move with the sleepers, Mick, they certainly look better...

Yes, that's the only reason I've attempted it. I'm not bothered about whether they're now to scale distance or not, it's just that when I look at the track it never looks like a proper railway because all you see are the sleepers - almost one on top of the other depending on your angle of view. Now with the plastic webbing underneath removed you actually get light coming through beneath the rails and it's a remarkable difference. It's extremely fiddly and it makes the task of laying the track more difficult because it doesn't flex as much as it did before and when it does flex the rails themselves slide along a lot more making alignment problematic. But yes, it is worth doing for the improvement in appearance.

Thanks for the offer but it's okay about the sleeper spec figures during BR days - I'm not likely to be doing anything that would require such a detailed approach at this time. I'm sure you are correct about the spacing being closer at rail joins and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the sleepers were wider either side of the actual joint. I may even have been taught that at training school when I began work on the railway over 30 years ago but you forget.....

How much have I managed to do? Well I've almost completed the one line from the viaduct round to the weather station. This has all been my salvaged wooden sleeper track. I'm really pleased I've done it now because I was going to discard all my old track and start afresh but there's not really a lot of point when the old track is still perfectly useable. I've cut out damaged sleepers and cut off any damaged rail ends so they're not all complete 1 metre lengths but they're certainly up to the job.

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My feelings exactly, MIck. I want my track to look correct, commercial track doesn't, so if I am building track from scratch, the sensible starting point is the dimensions of the real thing. However, if I am adapting existing commercial track, trial and error is as good a way as any.

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One day Ian I will probably try my hand at making track too; not for an outdoor layout but just something small for indoors. I love the look of correctly made and ballasted track more than any other part of the railway which is why I go on so much about it. Like I've said previously, I'd like it to look nice even without a train in sight because I used to spend hours looking down the track when I worked on the railway - I think it was just the anticipation that something would come along soon and that feeling's not something that's easily captured in model form!

It's a glorious day up here today so I'm ready to go outside and fiddle with a few more hundred sleepers!

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I've just been sitting outside with my cup of coffee planning the course of action for today and I've come to the conclusion that as I'm working towards completing the section from the shed only as far as round to the weather station curve that it might be better for me to complete just one track before moving on to the next. If I get one track operational, the viaduct finished and a start made inside the shed, I can then construct the outside station and run trains back and forth before moving on to finishing the second track. It will help break the monotony of cutting all those sleepers. Until I expand round the garden there's not really any desperate need for double track running just yet and there's such a lot of other work still to do.

I need to address the wiring and think of the best way to add some cant on the curves. It's not going to be a high speed line so just a hint of a cant would suffice. Perhaps some narrow strips of roofing felt placed under the sleeper ends would give the required lift or I have some left-over pieces of rubber pond liner that might work. I'll have to see which gives the best effect without overdoing it and then I'll be thinking of ballasting - all very time-consuming.

And if anyone knows a good way to rid the garden of ants I'd appreciate it!

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mick said:

Live Steam - Is that the Hornby model? I had visions of running them outdoors on my layout in Selby but it simply wouldn't work. The wiring, whilst great for normal DCC running simply wasn't up to passing the voltage required by the live steam controller. I could just about raise steam but it wouldn't accept any commands to move off. Worked fine indoors on a rolling road and a small circle of track but while the smell of the oil and steam was remarkably realistic (just like the real thing in fact) there was only so many times you could go through that routine. I sold all my live steam in the end.

Looks like I'm set for a frustrating weekend.

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mick said:

I need to address the wiring and think of the best way to add some cant on the curves. It's not going to be a high speed line so just a hint of a cant would suffice. Perhaps some narrow strips of roofing felt placed under the sleeper ends would give the required lift or I have some left-over pieces of rubber pond liner that might work. I'll have to see which gives the best effect without overdoing it and then I'll be thinking of ballasting - all very time-consuming.

If your going to do ballasting anyway, you could consider resin casting something like these

http://www.fiberglassflorida.com/fiberglass-supplies/fiberglass-supplies-wedges/demolding-wedge-20.html

Doing them yourself gives you more control over the angle, and a lot lot cheaper to. Just one at each pin point and then lots of ballasting.

I'd love to know what angle would make for a good Hi Speed line... Anyone?

And how do you ballast for the outside weather?

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I had a conversation yesterday with a long time garden railway enthusiast, his is 'O' gauge live steam. The subject got onto ballasting (he asked me how my build was going), and I asked him his method. He used bitumastic paint mixed with shot blasting material, this comes in several grades of grit and in several materials. He mixed it up to a thick paste then spread it with a thinned down palette knife. Any residue can be removed using turps as a thinner. I saw some pics and I must say that in 'O' gauge it looked very realistic. Whether I would like to do it in 'OO' gauge is something I would have to consider.

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It seems everyone with an outdoor railway, regardless of scale, has their own ways of doing things. That's one of the nice things about this hobby, there's no set way of doing anything and you've got the opportunity to devise and share your own methods.

If you look at some of the roofing felt available the finish is ideal for ballasted track. If only we could sink our tracks down into it! I've also found that if you rub two pieces of felt together you get some lovely loose ballast depending on the type of felt you've obtained. The one I'm using now came with my new shed and the stone particles that comes off it would make great ballast. I've got a small plastic tub for saving it.

I've not got round to doing any canted curves yet but I have made a start on adding the droppers. I've stripped some old flex and used the blue and brown wires for droppers and stripped my ring-main cable to extract the blue and brown wires for the bus. I've got the brown droppers soldered on already and will be starting on the blue shortly. My soldering technique gets little better but I'm getting there I think!

First thing this morning I completed the last two lengths of wooden sleeper track by cutting through the plastic webbing and sliding along the sleepers to widen the gaps between them. I've now done all I can until I make a start on the viaduct top and the curve round past the weather station.

Just had to come in because the sun was burning but it appears to have clouded over a bit now so I'll go out and brave it some more!

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I'm sunburned - my shoulders are on fire. First time this year and it's only getting on for mid-August!

I like the idea of using the bus wire system and knowing that each section of track is being fed from it but there's a lot of wires on show at the moment. What makes it worse is that I've used brown and blue wires - the brown's not too bad but blue..???

I've run the bus wire down each side of the track base, brown on one side and blue the other. It will clip nicely to the side of the board which should conceal it and I'll probably paint over it with that bitumen stuff once everything's tested and working. For now I've just used the staple gun to tack it out of the way.

I've had 37417 running up and down again along with the track cleaner to dry the rails off because they were getting damp as the evening drew on. Everything seems okay but I've had enough for now. Couldn't even be bothered to take any photos once I'd packed everything away so that'll have to wait.

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mick said:

I'm sunburned - my shoulders are on fire. First time this year and it's only getting on for mid-August!

You should get for yourself a boiler suit in white like painters wear and a large brimmed hat. Therefore it repels the suns heat and you don't get sunburnt. Mine has an FPF rating of 50+ which is better than most sunscreen creams. Mine is made by King Gee.

Good to see your onto track laying and that you've run something. We'll soon be seeing loads of videos from the Worsley Dale Railway.

Roy.

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Canted Curves

I use strips cut from small sheets of 0.5, 1 and 2mm thick neoprene (ebay). The objective is for the outer rail to be about 1mm up, which looks right in use for a non-high-speed line.

Ballast

I am currently using Gaugemaster N scale real stone ballast. Real stone was the only material to last the winter, all the others fell off. It was held in place with builders' waterproof PVA diluted about 1:2. I am currently taking a chance and using "Klear" Pledge floor polish on the recent extensions, which several people have recommended. I have given it a few water tests and so far it seems ok. It is also more free running and quicker drying than the PVA, so easier to apply. I also intend to experiment with polyurethene varnish; If anyone who reads this has tried it, plese let me know.

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Good to hear that you are also laying track, Mick. Don't worry about the blue wire, 3 months in the sun and it will fade to a dusty grey colour and blend in nicely with a dusty trackbed.

Lots of wires? I think that is the point (pun not intended) - the more wires the better, it shows that each piece of track is connected to the bus. Like those pics I posted, the amount of incidental 'junk' alongside prototype railways is just amazing. Make a feature of them, that's what I intend doing. Little boxes with yellow lids, small cylinders, bits of plastic sprue to make them look vaguely mechanical.

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Ian (Fungus):

Regarding ballast, I'm awaiting delivery of some Gaugemaster ballast in both fine and medium grades. I do have a stash of Woodland Scenics but had just about ruled that out for outdoor use and reading about your results then that's probably a good thing. I believe it's manufactured from crushed nut shells or similar?

Regarding fixative I have almost settled on using one of the suggested floor polishes and still have ideas on exterior or marine varnish but it would seem that the qualities of the floor polish will make application easier - maybe that's the best way to go. There again, perhaps trial and error is the way to go so that we can amass as much field test data for future users? If I get the chance I will definitely set up a test board with several lengths of track attached ballasted using several types of fixatives.

Quck update: My Gaugemaster ballast has just this minute arrived so I'll be taking a look shortly.

George:

Yes I'm sure the wiring will eventually blend in and become less noticeable, it's just that at the moment it seems I have a wire-framed ladder extending the full length of the layout. The bus wires are currently very prominent but these will eventually be tucked in to the sides.

Roy:

I'm not sure I'd be comfortable outdoors in a boiler suit even if it does repel the suns heat. A hat would be a good idea but it's something I've never worn however, after a rather painful and uncomfortable night (sore shoulders and throbbing head) then some kind of preventative action is obviously required!

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Having just opened my early morning delivery I must say that the Gaugemaster ballast is much heavier than the Woodland Scenics and would seem to be the better, more resilient choice for outdoor use. I just need something to fix it in place now. Might have to go shopping.

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Before I make a start today I've just been out and taken a couple of pics of how the wiring looks right now. This first image is looking along the layout with the bus wires seen running down each side of the track base.

IMG_6532.JPG

And this is a closer view of the soldered connections to the track and bus wire with just the one remaining 'brown' feed to be attached and the blue awaiting connection to the rail once the concrete sleepers have been eased out similar to the wooden ones.

IMG_6535.JPG

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Looking really good Mick. I cant wait to see the trains running.

Personally, after my experience with the current layout, I wouldnt bother with ballast in the future. The rain has blasted a lot of mine all over the place - buildings, platforms and track are covered in it - and points - the less said the better - its caused constant problems

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