Public transport safe, ultra light, super strong shunting layout. Ideas?

[0triad]

Hello,

I only recently joined the 009 Society. I am constructing a large 009 and 00 layout in my loft but very few people get to see it. My kids also tend to 'play' very heavily with it so I have put it on hold until they are less like Godzilla over Tokyo. Instead I wish to build a small shunting layout to take to shows. This will also give me the opportunity to learn the electrical gubbins side of model railways before putting down two 12 metre loops etc. around the loft. Current loop is a trial and all points are by hand - it is 7mm scale but I have decided 4mm scale allows much more in the space and so will be re-laying it all with point motors, isolated sidings etc.

I have a few problems:

I have to travel by public transport
I can only carry a certain sized layout and of a light weight.
I don't want a tiny micro layout but something I can really shunt on - not too hard to wire up as I am a begginer.

Locos will be 0-4-0
Theme will be engine shed and yard at end of line with small platform for passengers. Setting is British ex-colonial 1950s. Freelance.
Modelling is not a problem, nor is woodwork, as I do those quite well. Electrics... well, thank goodness PECO have simple electrics which require little or no expert skill.

Track is to be PECO code 80 'mainline'

I was thinking of making a board where the 'lid' comes off and attaches to the base forming a shunting yard. I presume that tables will be available at shows other wise I'll need a golf bag or something for the legs!

Any ideas (other than learning to drive - anyway a car would mean no money for modelling!)

Cheers,

Tim

[Stephen Hart]

I saw some boards recently which seemed a good idea.

One of those cardboard cored flat interior doors, plenty of space between the ply facings to wire up, allows a few depressions with some carpentry.

Polystyrene hills, with polyester resin topping made a nice hard shell for the terrain.

If 8" edges are added to both boards....perhaps with piano hinges to drop the front down the two halves shouldmake a nice box to carry, and not be too heavy. 

[Graeme Dunbar]

I made a 4 x 2 foot base board for a test track out of two pieces of 6 mm 4 x 2 foot plywood. One piece was cut into strips to make the edging, diagonal bracing, backscene  etc. It is remarkably light and stiff and easy to carry into exhibitions from the car in one hand (thinks - I should add a handle to it before the next show.) It was done as an experiment and sort of modelled on the way the body of an acoustic guitar is made. This unfortunately means it amplifies train noise rather well and probably needs spray foam adding to the cavity (as mentioned in an Iain Rice book).

However if I was relying on public transport  I would make it a bit shorter, perhaps two 3 x 2 foot sections that fit face to face. I am also intrigued by the layouts made using 50 mm building foam (so-called blue or pink foam), particularly the ones skinned with very thin ply (say 3 mm). I think they would be even lighter and stiffer. When I find somewhere locally that will sell me less than an 8 x 4 sheet of foam and somewhere  that supplies thin ply in larger sizes than the small sheets at high cost from the model aircraft shop I will give it a go.

With cunning design any hills or other raised structures on the two boards could fit together top to tail (erhem.. 69) for transport. I've seen a design where the two backscenes close the box and separate removable end cheeks hold the two baseboards together (and apart).

Some people swear by artists paper-covered foam board (foamcore) for light layouts, but I can knock lumps out of much more substantial materials, so the most vulnerable parts, at least, would need a ply skin.

[Armchair Modeller]

Why not look at

http://neag.2mm.org.uk/2010/07/haromthwaite-2-baseboard-assembly.html

This one fits in a metal briefcase - it is 2mm scale, but near enough the same gauge  ;)

Richard

[RJSRdg]

I built one a few years ago entirely out of expanded polystyrene held together  with 'foam nails' - so light it kept blowing away when I worked on it outside! I built it for the Chemsford Show's 20"x30" challenge some years ago. In fact, it's a right-angled triangle giving a run of just over 3' on the main line, and one short siding fed by an overhead ropeway.

The layout is split horizontally to increase the height of the hillside and the backscene clips on.  The layout itself fits into a 20" x 30" x 6" cardboard box. The lower part of the hillside incorporates a 'storage cavity' for removable features like trees and the ropeway. The controller and stock pack in a small holdall. I have taken it on public transport from Reading several times - as well as its debut at Chelmsford (involving getting it through LUL ticket barriers) I've also taken it to the South Downs Light Railway at Pulborough and recently to the North Downs Group's exhibition at Epsom.

Richard

[Graeme Dunbar]

If the travelling is extensive and a layout in a case is what is needed, I did eye up the hard bass guitar case I bought for my son:
http://www.thomann.de/gb/thomann_ebass_case.htm

There is very limited headroom, but for a small layout in a case it seems like an economic solution.

[JulienW]

<snipped>
I have a few problems:

I have to travel by public transport
I can only carry a certain sized layout and of a light weight.
I don't want a tiny micro layout but something I can really shunt on - not too hard to wire up as I am a begginer.

Locos will be 0-4-0
Theme will be engine shed and yard at end of line with small platform for passengers. Setting is British ex-colonial 1950s. Freelance.
Modelling is not a problem, nor is woodwork, as I do those quite well. Electrics... well, thank goodness PECO have simple electrics which require little or no expert skill.

Track is to be PECO code 80 'mainline'

I was thinking of making a board where the 'lid' comes off and attaches to the base forming a shunting yard. I presume that tables will be available at shows other wise I'll need a golf bag or something for the legs!

Any ideas (other than learning to drive - anyway a car would mean no money for modelling!)

Cheers,

Tim

The first issue is going to be weight.

I have often thought about experimenting with 'kapperboard' / foam cored board.  This material consists of a foam core (polystyrene or polyurethane) backed on both sides with card.  I have used it to make the buildings on "Latham's Brewery" and it can be stuck together with PVA or one of the hot glue guns.  There may well be some info out there on the Net about using it to buld layouts (there was an article in Modeling Railways Illustrated but that was some time ago and the mag is no longer published).  From what I remember one uses the board to make box girdirs to make the basebords (not unlike using thin ply?) and uses thin ply to make 'endplates' for joining bords together (and other 'vulnerable' areas)

Another thought is to use the pink foam insulation sheets (polystyrene I think) sold by B&Q and other DIY outlets.  the wonderful "Pempol" layout uses this method, and the builder wrote a couple of articles that appered in either Railway Modeller or MRJ about the boards.  Note that this is not expanded polystyrene (lots of little white balls squished together) but a proper foam (it also comes in blue).  unfortunately I can't recall the details but I suspect that too used plywood end plates for joining boards (ond to protect vunerable areas).

Other than those I suspect that the lightest method is goping to be plywood along the lines that Barry Norman uses in his Landscale Modelling book (published by Wild Swan).

Next you will need to decide on a sensible size - something that you can comfotably handle, get through doorways, etc.  Weight will have something to do with it too, but at a guess anything bigger than 3 feet by one foot wide is not going to be easy on your own (remember you'll have your stock and some means to power the layout and run trains to carry too).  Rather than a detachable 'lid' why not have something that hinges in the middle to give you a total area of 6 X 1 feet?  I have a layout (given to me) that uses this technique (it's a bit long though at 8 feet unfolded) where the hinges are mounted about 2 inches above track level to allow some landscaping and are used to carry the current from one board to the other (and have removeable pinsso that the 2 bords can be seperated).  Once folded a carrying handle on one end allows it to ne noved about, though a handle on a long edge might be better.  Construction is a bit of a mis-mash of plywood, real wood and melamine covered chipboard (so it's a bit heavy) but I'm sure that a plywood version would be lighter, and the design could be made lighter still using other materials.

Don't bother with legs but use a table - providing one should not be a problem for an exhibition venue.

Hope that helps,
Julien.

[Graeme Dunbar]

Tim,

Further to my earlier reply, are you familiar with the following:

http://www.carendt.com/index.html

and

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/small-layout-design/?yguid=254328707

Many of the ideas mentioned in this thread can be found in these places.

Foamcore board has been mentioned a couple of times. My wife pointed out that HobbyCraft have a special offer on:

http://direct.hobbycraft.co.uk/productdetail.asp?ProductID=117151

If it applies to in-store sales and you have a store near you it could be a good saving.

[JulienW]

Another cheap source of foamcore board is your locoal supermarket...

???

They use the stuff to make the overhead special offer signs (that are often only just high enough to get my tall frame under) and when the offers are over they get binned.  They may want to know what you are going to do with it (i.e. not use it for anti supermarket publicity) but it does not cost them anything if you take it away as opposed to the disposal cost of it as commercial waste.

But do ask for it (from the branch manager) rather than help yourself from the pile around the back...

[0triad]

Thank you for all your help, it has given me loads of good ideas. I'm going to use a combination of foam and ply and keep it small -about 50x100 folding out to 50x200.

Any ideas for interesting track plans?

Tim

[JulienW]

Any ideas for interesting track plans?

Tim

That's a big can of worms there Tim... ;D

It depends what type of line you want - North Wales Quarry, UK Common Carrier, European, Colonial, etc, etc.

Bearing in mind that for an exhibiton layout you'll want an area 'off stage' as a fiddle yard you will not have the full 200 length cm to play with and you are unlikley to be able to have any other plan than a "fiddle yard to termius" plan. Your board is about 18 inches wide which will give you a radius on a return loop of 9 inches at most, probably closer to 7 by the time you have brought the track in from hanging on the edges of the board to allow a little bit of scenic treatment on the outside of the curve (and to protect from little fingers!) and a sensible minimum for 009 is a bit more than 9 inch radius - though you can get away with less with short wheelbase locos and stock (but it might not look great and the running may well never be right).  Assuming that you do go for a terminus try not to put too much on the layout and end up with the NG equivalent of Waterloo station.

A couple of people have used ironing boards as baseboards which are probably not far off the size you have in mind, and I have a feeling that David Gander's "Green End" layout is about 200 x 50 cm if you wanted some ideas.

[Graeme Dunbar]

There are some small layouts shown in the NG Railway Modelling On-line forum ( http://ngrm-online.com/forum/index.php  ) where the entrance to the layout is through the middle of the back, through a backscene that is brought forward.

Another possibility is to use cassettes either off to the side, or taken off  the line through a 90 degree turn at the end.

More complex but taking less space than a fiddle yard would be a sector plate or traverser.

Many people like to hide the off-scene track and pretend it doesn't exist, but in the case of small single-operator layouts, I think it can be very effective to make it part of the "show". Obviously there is some form of scenic break.

[Graeme Dunbar]

Foamcore board has been mentioned a couple of times. My wife pointed out that HobbyCraft have a special offer on:

http://direct.hobbycraft.co.uk/productdetail.asp?ProductID=117151

If it applies to in-store sales and you have a store near you it could be a good saving.

No luck, I'm afraid. She took the train into Aberdeen this morning and there was no sign of the special offer in the branch there. In fact the prices were rather higher than on-line.

[JulienW]

There are some small layouts shown in the NG Railway Modelling On-line forum ( http://ngrm-online.com/forum/index.php  ) where the entrance to the layout is through the middle of the back, through a backscene that is brought forward.

Another possibility is to use cassettes either off to the side, or taken off  the line through a 90 degree turn at the end.

More complex but taking less space than a fiddle yard would be a sector plate or traverser.

Many people like to hide the off-scene track and pretend it doesn't exist, but in the case of small single-operator layouts, I think it can be very effective to make it part of the "show". Obviously there is some form of scenic break.

A cassette fiddle yard is going to be the most space efficent (should have specified in my post, sorry), but I would council against turning the track through 90 degrees due to the lack of width on the board unless you intend to hand the fidleyard off the back of the layout - which will mean another baseboard element to carry and join up to the main layout.  That said though the layout will probably look better if the 'main line' (for want of a better word) does not run strait down the middle of the board, or parallel to the front (and back) edge.  I'd suggest a long gentle S shape if possible to make your layout look more like a model railway and less like a toy train plonked on a plank!

If I get the chance I'll have a look through my plan books (two old laboratory note books) and see if I have anything of about the right size.

[Isaac W]

I remember Charles Insley turning up to exhibit at one of the Buccabury Group Open days, in Haddenham (Bucks), by train, with a layout on a two wheel shopping trolley, the electrics & rolling stock where in a rucksack on his back.
8)