Turtle Bay

[Rob Rossington]

I thought it was about time I posted some updates on my new layout Turtle Bay.

First, some background...

My first layout was called Ross Town. Some of you will have seen it on the exhibition circuit although its career was cut short when it was stolen (It was in the back of my car ready to go to a show, the car was stolen from outside my house. I was more bothered about the layout!) Ross Town was set on the island of New Ross, somewhere off the west coast of South Africa.

When it was stolen I needed to jump back on the horse again straight away, so I started planning Turtle Bay. This is another branch of the New Ross Government Railway, This time hugging the Island's eastern coastline, rather than heading off through the interior like the Ross Town branch.

The final version of the plan looks like this;


I wanted to incorporate a number of features that Ross Town had, for example the separate loco shed, but make them bigger and better. The resultant plan is similar enough to Ross Town the it's believably built by the same railway company, but learns from the things I did wrong first time around.

The layout (for the time being at least) lives in the loft (refurbishing the loft is one of the reasons for the delay getting started!) and so at this time of year it can get quite warm, so progress has been a little slower than I had hoped.

Track laying took a couple of days, with delays to accommodate a couple of changes as I went, but this is what I have ended up with;









Wiring is traditional DC with many, many isolation sections. Wiring properly fries my brain, I have plodded through it though and am now ready to start fitting point motors! The layout's transformer, lighting dimmer and CDU are all in a treasure chest bought off Amazon. I doubt anybody will see it, but it fits the tropical setting so I just had to have it!

On Ross town I had used the Bachmann scene craft modern barn as an Engine shed. With very little modification this made quite a convincing SAR/SAS style loco shed, but would have been far too open for a seaside setting. By chance I picked up two Scenecraft loco sheds for a bargain £15 each, thoughts turned to how these couple be modified for Turtle Bay;



I broke out the dremel and very cautiously started to cut the side out of one of the buildings. I figured that if I lost one I could still use the other as a single shed and I'd still be quids in so to speak. As it turns out, cutting them open was a lot easier than expected!







It took a fair bit of sanding to get an acceptable join, and the result wasn't perfect but was easily hidden with a downspout and valley gutter;





I used two-part epoxy to glue the two halves together, so it should hold up to the rigours of the exhibition circuit!

Thanks for looking, there will be more to follow especially now the weather seems to have turned!

[Tom Haythornthwaite]

Rob, assuming your loft doesn't get stolen this is going to be marvelous.

[Rob Rossington]

Rob, assuming your loft doesn't get stolen this is going to be marvelous.

One can only hope!  ;D

[Robin Webster]

Once you weather the joint one would not know that they are two separate buildings.They look good. Tom, could you please give a little discription on the locos and goods wagon you have on the lay out, I really like them.
Thanks,
Robin.

[Robin Webster]

My apologies all around . I was thinking of my projects and wrote the wrong names. It should read Rob and not Tom.
Robin.

[Rob Rossington]

Once you weather the joint one would not know that they are two separate buildings.They look good. Tom, could you please give a little discription on the locos and goods wagon you have on the lay out, I really like them.
Thanks,
Robin.

Hi Robin,

The locos on the layout in the photos are a mixture of Paul Windle built and Backwoods kits. They're the biggest locos in the 'fleet' so we're being used for clearance testing. Two of them (the Indian style Pacific and the Mallet aren't actually mine, they're on loan from Stan Williams). The Backwoods NGG16 is my pride and Joy and was originally the late Roger Christian's.

The two oil tanks are converted triang TT gauge ones, the bogey van is a 3D print from shapeways  :)

My apologies all around . I was thinking of my projects and wrote the wrong names. It should read Rob and not Tom.
Robin.

Not a problem, I've been called far worse!  ;D


In other news, a large box arrived this morning containing 13 SEEP PM1 point motors (12 for the layout plus one spare). I had hoped I had enough point motors in stock, which I sort of did but would have meant using a mixture of different types (Peco and SEEP) and having to fit separate accessory switches as I only had PM2s in the drawer.

Going with new SEEPs will hopefully mean better reliability than the second hand ones I had in stock..

[Rob Rossington]

Over the last few days I've managed to finish the wiring (although the point motors need some tweaking as I'm getting some shorts from the built in accessory switches).

So today I've made a start on preparing the track for ballasting. I've spent a few hours painting the rails, and tomorrow I'll do the sleepers. I'm planning on doing a short test peace to decide what colour to paint the sleepers first.

The photos I've taken today are mostly overall views showing the buildings in their final positions;







One of the inspirations for the loco shed area was the one at Famagusta on Cyprus. If I'd had the space I'd have gone for a complete replica of this shed (in-fact, I'd originally intended to build a model of the engine shed building for use on the layout) but finding decent photos of the layout here is difficult. So I've settled for something similar;

[Rob Rossington]

So, today's job (other than finishing rail painting) was to decide on how the sleepers were going to be painted, particularly in the yard. 

After various experiments, I settled on a dark grey, dry brushed with a light grey. 



Once the paint was dry on the test piece, I decided to use it to test the 'ballast' I'm using. I saw this idea on FB, and thought it looked amazing. It's tile grout...



It has just the dirty, grimy look I wanted and it's literally the easiest thing to make look good. 








I think I'm going to turn the test piece into a plinth for displaying locos. 

I sprayed the grout with water before applying the glue not thinking about whether this would activate the grout. It did, obviously. This is fine for the area immediately outside the loco shed, where it would be contaminated with all sorts of chemicals, but elsewhere I'd like it to look drier. I think IPA would be a better option for pre-wetting. At least I've learnt this on a test piece and not on the main layout! 

[Peter Boulter]

The ballasted track looks really good and very realistic.

[Graeme Dunbar]

It looks very effective!

I think I'm going to turn the test piece into a plinth for displaying locos.

Hmm, wasn't there a competition somewhat along those lines?  ;D

That's a good use. It's too good just to discard.

[Rob Rossington]

It looks very effective!

I think I'm going to turn the test piece into a plinth for displaying locos.

Hmm, wasn't there a competition somewhat along those lines?  ;D

That's a good use. It's too good just to discard.

Thanks Graeme :)

I think it would be a little small for the comp!

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The first job for today was to paint the sleepers in the loco shed area. As with the sample piece I did yesterday these were painted with a mid grey and then dry brushed with a light grey. 

The next job was to finish the inspection pit. This is broadly similar to the one I built on Ross Town. With the sleepers removed and the rails painted I cut some plastruct girders to size. 6 pieces are needed, two long ones for the rails to sit on and 4 short ones for legs. The long girders have half cut away at the ends so that there is a fillet between the rail and baseboard. The girders were sprayed with red primer and then dry brushed with rust and gun metal. The legs were painted black, and again dry brushed with gunmetal. 
The 'swimming pool' was then lined with stone effect styrene suitably painted. The rails are fixed to the girders with drops of superglue along the length. The legs are fixed to the base with plastic cement. 





Once it was dry enough the tile grout ballast was put in place and then damped with water and soaked with PVA. Where excess PVA ran onto the board more grout was put down to soak it up. The result is some nice variety in the texture and colours....





I obviously couldn't resist posing a loco, 





I made sure that some of the grout stuck to the girders and rails, roughly where an ash pan would be emptied,



The finished article...

[Robin Webster]

I like the ash pit, it looks good. I also like the littlle loco.
Robin.

[Rob Rossington]

There's been a slow down in progress over the last couple of weeks due to the heatwave. Now that things have cooled down a little I can start ramping things up again.

First thing is that I've acquired a new station building. This is a Bachmann Scenecraft one modelled on the one at Crookwell in NSW. It matches the Australian house purchased a few weeks ago quite nicely, and appears closer to 4mm scale than Ho.



The next job was to complete the ballasting around the loco shed. This as mentioned previously has been done with a mixture of Anthracite and grey tile grout (to represent footpaths etc);





I'm really pleased with how it has turned out.

The station now has a platform, and ballasting the mainline is mostly complete;



I intended to have a small siding on the jetty/pier for a wagon or two to be posed on so made a start on making a dummy turntable. Nothing too complex, a disk of styrene with some styrene strip around the edge;





Yesterday's job was to finish lining the foam board pier with embossed Plastikard and get it painted;





Todays job will be to add Timbers, both around the edges to hide my sins, and as verticals along the sides.

Thanks for looking!

[Peter Boulter]

Thanks for the update. The layout is coming on really well Rob.

[Robin Webster]

Rob, i like the dark coloured shots of the ballest. To me, it gives that old heavily worked area.

Robin.