00 Scale Shuntng Puzzle Layout - Little Bazeley

The construction of Little Bazeley Sidings has been a par force effort of "trial and error" - much of what has materialized in the end happened to do so because something else went wrong or didn't work at all.

Nothing you put on top of it will really keep the promises it holds unless the baseboard you use is built to last, keeps its shape and provides you with an even surface.

Little Bazeley Sidings is constructed on a "ready made baseboard" by using one of the (now discontinued) chests with drawers from IKEA's "Moppe" range, which I found to be an ideal item for a shelf layout. I had used the various flat chest models for layouts before, and this time opted for one with three drawers, measuring 120cm x 28cm, which I still had left. Both the material (birch plywood) and the strength of the sheets of wood used are just what I would have used anyway. The quality of assembly is very good, and you'd be hard put to produce something like this yourself.

Because I would need some sub-baseboard chanelling for wires etc. and I did not want to lose a drawer, I added strips of 10mmp lywood as supports. A baseboard top (measuring 120cm x 28cm) rests on these supports, the space in between providing the sub-baseboard channels I need. The top is fastened by screws, allowing for fairly easy access if something is amiss with the wires.

The track used on this layout is Peco Streamline code 100 flextrack with medium radius electrofrog points - my standard choice for about 15 years now. Using Marklin Z Scale track pins sparingly, the simple track configuration was laid down in virtually no time at all.

As all pieces of track are straight I sprayed them a dark brown colour (using an aerosol spray can) and then touched up the side of the rails with a lighter rust colour (using a fine artist's brush) before putting the rails and points (which were not sprayed in order to avoid conductivity problems - more about this below) down. Weathered or not, the track is now ready, and a shunting puzzle layout needs nothing more than this to be operational. In reality, however, few people can resist decorating this bare gameboard...

click for larger image

Weathering the track is an essential part of recreating the atmosphere of the real railways.

The colours vary greatly on the prototype, ranging from dark, almost black to to a very light rusty brown. Eventually, it's a matter of taste as everything else. However, applying weathering to the track is best done with a subtle approach, as too much colour can muck up the pointwork and reduce electrical conductivity to critical levels.

However, over the past few years, I found that I was having more and more trouble with electrofrog points after painting and ballasting, as they no longer did what they should have done, i.e. change the polarity of the frog according to which way the points were set.

The problem is not unkown (straight from the box the points rely on physical contact of the switch blade and the outer rail, so if paint gets onto this there's no electric contact), but it seems to have plagued my efforts more and more in recent years.

It is such a devil of a problem because a blade which no longer provides effective contact with the outer rails no longer supplies the necessary electric power to the frog. As a result of this, the point effectively becomes an isolating point, with any ongoing track cut off from the necessary electrical power supply to both rails. More often than not, the fault can't be rectified with the point in place. Lifting the point means lifting the connecting pieces of track, too...

The solution to overcome this possible problem is well-known and well-published in the model railway press - add separate wiring to the frog which will provide a direct means of routing current.

Like it or not, eventually the facts of railway modelling are such that reliable pointwork simply is not guaranteed straight out of the box (no matter which make you choose), and it gets worse if you weather and ballast your points.

With the otherwise well constructed Peco points, ensuring reliable routing of polarity to the frog is an easy and straightforward task (with the code 75 points, it's even pre-installed to a certain extent).

Because this wiring arrangement requires the changing of the frog polarity to take place simultaneously with the route setting of the point, you either require a point motor which is equipped to do this, or you can stick with manual control and use a single pole single throw (SPST) slide switch which is connected by e.g. a rod to the tiebar of the point. This way, if you slide the switch to throw the point, the polarity routing is changed at the same time.

The point is connected to the slide switch by a piece of wire which is attached to the tiebar and the slider of the switch. In order to prevent unwanted sideway movements and to strengthen the connection, the wire is run through a brass tube for the length of the distance between the tiebar and the slide. It's an easy, dependable, and cheap method of remotely controlling the points. At a later scenery stage, the whole thing will be disguised with foliage and such to make it less conspicuous.

For the time being, Little Bazeley Sidings is wired for analog operation (DC) despite the fact that the newer shunters from Bachmann and Hornby are all DCC-ready. The DC wiring on such a small and compact layout is, however, almost as straightforward as it would be for DCC. In fact, apart from the main feed, the only wiring in place is for polarity switching of the point frogs, as described above. As the points are operated manually, there is no need for point motor wiring.

Once the functional aspects of the track are settled, it's time to add ballast to the weathered track - an essential part of recreating the atmosphere of the real railways.

Just as with the track itself, the colours of ballast vary greatly on the prototype, depending on the type of stone used and how much soil and rust is deposited on the trackbed by traffic on the line. I prefer the look of grey ballast - which is not restricted to newly ballasted tracks at all. Many yards with light shunting traffic display light coloured ballast, simply because there's not enough activity to deposit tons of dirt and rust, even over the course of a few years. The weeds, however, are a different story.

The overall effect is, however, not only dependent on the materials used but also on the lighting. Just how much difference this can make can be seen from the two views on the left:. the initial stage of ballasting (above), photographed with the use of artificial light, and the same track and ballast at an advanced stage (below), photographed in late afternoon sunlight.

My preferred make of model ballast is Woodlands Scenic medium grey ballast, although the fine grade would probably be closer to scale. However, with weeds and other green overgrowth to be added later, the appearance to me is just fine. The ballast is sprinkled in place, then covered in a mist of water and washing up liquid (also dubbed "wet water", this brakes up the surface tension) from an old aftershave sprayer until the ballast is quite soaked. Immediately after this, a mixture of water and white glue (approximately mixed at a 2:1 ratio) is carefully dribbled onto this by employing a syringe (mine came as a spare from the vet). The whole trackbed should be quite whitish in appearance and then left to dry for a good 24 hours. After this, the ballast will be hard as concrete (well, almost) - which is why it pays to check for dislodged ballast (which can get onto the ties or, far worse, cling to the sides of the rails) while everything is still wet.

On a small layout like Little Bazeley, different modelling tasks start to interact very quickly, and it is a very short cut from basic ballasting and landscaping to setting up the first batch of planned structures.

Metcalfe Brewery (P0229)

My plans for the sidings at Little Bazeley were to create a small and somewhat enclosed place, but not too sleepy and isolated, as I wanted at least some justification for the movement of trains. This called for some sort of facilities to be present, rather than just a couple of overgrown and windswept tracks in the middle of nowhere.

I felt that that a small warehouse would be ideal (allows for very general traffic unless specified). My structure modelling experience stems almost entirely from plastic kits, but for Little Bazeley I opted for card - mainly because to me it is such a typically British material for structure modelling that I felt it would reinforce the "Englishness" I was aiming to capture with this layout.

It would also have to be a typcially Victorian red brick building, and I found just what I needed in the form of a small brewery complex in the Metcalfe Models range consisting of three individual buildings.

Obviously, certain details which are typical for a brewery (such as roof vents) would have to be left off in order to turn the buildings into mere storage rather than production facilities, but the fact that there was precious little space behind the tracks meant a lot of cutting and pruning anyway.

Putting card kits together is straightforward modelling fun, and I found card to be a lot easier to work with than plastic if you need to cut items to make them fit a specific space - just how shallow some parts of this "low relief" structure had to be can be seen from the building front pictured on the right.

Besides having a charm of their own, card models these days are pre-cut precision kits, and the brewery used on Little Bazeley is both very sophisticated and versatile. Just how much cutting and pruning the kit had to endure can be seen from the finished warehouse setup - the building to the left is the only one built (more or less) in its intended form.

Regardless of the material used, it is important, once again, to check clearances and make sure that all rolling stock intended for use on the layout will clear loading platform edges and canopies. It is, however, equally important to make sure that there are no unrealistically gaping gaps between rolling stock and (un)loading spots.

Both the VEA van (left) and the 12t van (right) are close enough to give a convincing impression without fouling any parts of the building
(both pictures: click for larger images)

It is also a good idea to make sure that clearances are compatible with the locomotives intended for use.

It is 1966, and a brand new BR(S) Electro-Diesel locomotive has ventured out to Little Bazeley Sidings on a trial run. Clearances are tight - as they would be on the prototype - but not too tight.

With the structures all in place, the right hand side of the layout started to look fairly complete in a basic sense. The left hand side, however, was still a piece of bare baseboard with unscenicked track.

The idea here was to hide the entrance / exit of the track (which passes through a hole in the backdrop) by means of an overbridge from which a road would branch off down to the warehouse. The bridge is an old classic of British railway modelling - although the specific item used on this layout is a 2005 production Hornby item, it still uses the same mould employed in the 1960s Tri-ang production. Again, I chose this partly for sentimental reasons. The colouring of the plastic on this model as it comes out of the box gives a very toy-like overall impression, but a simple repaint of the entire model did away with this.

The contours of the landscape leading up to the bridge are modelled using a single piece of styrofoam. It's a messy business, but it provides a lightweight shell to work on. This is then covered in plaster which then receives a liberal coat of colour to seal things up. The road surface is already modelled into this plaster coating and only needs appropriate colouring after this, while the rest will receive its final touch with the sprinkling of Woodlands Scenics scatter material.

The realism of scenic scatter material is greatly enhanced by mixing together two or more different colours.

The grass used on this part of Little Bazeley is a mix of several different types of material both in terms of colour and texture. The final visual effect is far more realistic than the monochrome green of just one specific type of scatter material.

The only thing lacking at this stage are bushes and undergrowth, which will be added on the far side of the road and scattered along the embankment.

Up to this stage, uncoupling on Little Bazeley was entirely manual, using a home-made lifting device. Although this works, the standard British tension lock couplings tend to be a nuisance unless uncoupling is achieved by a fixed unit of some kind. Uncoupling ramps are available for this purpose (e.g. by Peco), but they tend to be very bulky and provide little clearance, which I found to be a problem for most newer locomotives.

Therefore, if I wanted reliable uncoupling (really an essential on a shunting layout) whilst retaining use of tension lock couplers, I would have to come up with something myself.

The concept behind my self-made uncoupling device is simple and straightforward and relies on the same working principle as tension lock uncoupling ramps: an oblong piece of flat material is moved upwards from in between the track to push up the tails of both hooks far enough to clear the loops, releasing the coupler. An item of rolling stock which is then pulled back uncouples, with the other stock remaining in place over the uncoupling device.

II planned to have an uncoupling device which would be remote controlled by means of a wire and which would be able to drop down into between the track when not in use (Peco's ramp, for instance, is sprung and therefore always in an "on" position, protruding above the top of the rails and only pressed down when rolling stock passes over it).

The first step was to determine the exact positions of the three uncoupling devices Little Bazeley would be needing. Combining this with the length of track needed to store the required number of rolling stock for an Inglenook Sidings puzzle, these positions were determined and the required holes then drilled.