Collected some timber framing material today, so can now begin the long awaited recreation of the layout I had in England before our move here to Slovenia, although in a different form, but with the main original structures and facilities. It is well over two years since I had a working layout and I was beginning to get withdrawal symptoms! Construction will be chronicled here as work progresses towards operation.
Photos during construction will be shown here. My usual method is to design trackplan using actual trackage on the baseboard! But two ideas are shown below. Not to scale, and will almost certainly change!
I can't stress enough how useful this style of design is. It was Brakie, not sure if you know who he is, who first got me thinking to do it that way. Hadn't realized you decided to move to SLO. Sounds wonderful. What town exactly? he he... Doh! it's on your profile. I have enjoyed all your layouts. You always build very minimal layouts with lots of detail. I expect this will be equally as interesting.
Hi Geeky, we live in a village about 5 kilometers from Ptuj, 30 min drive from Austria, an hour from Italy, 30 min from Croatia, an hour from Hungary. Quite an interesting area! The layout will feature the same stuff as the one it replaces, but in a longer space along a wall instead of around the walls of the shed as it was in England. My main interest is in freight operation and switching, so the stone loader will be in use extensively! I am acquiring a few Hungarian locomotives, which I fell in love with during a recent train ride to Budapest, so I can have cross-border locomotive changes between Slovenia and Hungary. The various border operations around the country are very interesting. I am cheating a bit, as the SZ/MAV border has electric locos from Hungary exchanging trains with SZ diesels - but our side is due to be electrified soon.
I had to brush up on my converting of these numbers. Roughly 23 feet by 5 feet... Looks like you are in an upstairs room?
Yep, dimensions correct Ken. Widest part will be a bit less than 1.5m, other (staging sector plate) end less than 1m. Yes, the upstairs room was just a roof space. After a new insulated roof was fitted it looked too good not to use. It is now boarded, insulated, floored and turned into a sitting room, guest bedroom in the larger section and a computer/layout room in the slightly smaller end. Pictures of the whole area when more complete.
I will be reusing turnouts (I have more than I need), but bought a 25 yard box of new track but have some track lifted from previous layout. Will prob use the old track in sidings if I need it.
Yesterday I finished fitting the basic boards, ready for trimming to size/shape. They will be curved along the front edge, should look better than boring straight edge!
Yes Paul. I would not normally use this type of board, but I had exactly the amount I needed left over from the roof space conversion! I can get cork sheet locally. Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2
Laid out some track and the structures off the previous layout. makes me realise that I have lots more space than before, so may add more buildings and details. Plus lots more trees! The station building will have the other half added (I bought the roof material before leaving England).
Is there a specific reason you are going to use a sector plate? I would personally be tempted to do one of two options: a. extend the oval and make multiple through sidings to hold trains. b. Adopt the linear staging approach and have a really long siding along the the back to hold multiple trains ready for introduction into the schedule. How much scheduled traffic will your layout have?
It will basically be a switching layout, so a sector plate staging will be fine. The track along the back will not be too accessible due to being close to the sloping ceiling. The tracks along the front of the board will be sidings to hold freight cars, or complete trains awaiting departure. It will be a border station and have trains crossing between Slovenia and Hungary. In reality this happens at Hodoš, but I am cheating and inventing another border crossing! Few passenger trains cross now, but there are lots of freights, especially intermodals from our port at Koper on the coast all the way across the country and into either Croatia, Austria or Hungary and countries beyond. Last week I saw a freight in our local town, Ptuj, and all the cars were steel coil carrying ones from Slovakia, heading for Koper port. On the layout the main activity will be the arrival of empty stone hoppers which will be loaded by the working loader then departing full. A freight from Hungary would arrive along the back wall and into the station freight tracks, where the locomotive will be removed and a Slovenian one will take over and head back to the staging along the front tracks. Going to Hungary it will of course be the reverse of this. Often freights are held at the border point for paperwork checks etc. so an excuse to hold the train in a siding for a while. There is also a local freight depot building which will be on a loading ramp, enabling a variety of wagons to be switched for loading/unloading. In reality little local use is made of these buildings now, but again, I can cheat to create more activity!
The progress is looking great. I am looking forward to seeing the progress. Sometimes the second time is a charm. After getting a layout build, sometimes the thought comes up that there could have been room for improvement of if I would have had a switch here instead of ther. I'm sure you know what I mean. I too enjoy switching. My layout in theory isn't much different than yours. Mine is point to point with the ability of having continuous running by using hidden staging tracks. looking forward to more posts.