Using Peco track templates

Recently I had someone ask how I drew up the track plan for my layout. The answer was; I downloaded and printed out the Peco track templates that are available on their website. Designing the track plan for Philden was the subject of my first blog post back in May 2015, (setting plans in concrete). Using Peco code 100 rail and medium radius turnouts enabled me to design a fully self-contained layout in just 6 x 1 feet. So when thinking about adding an upper level extension to my bookshelf layout, I once more turned to Peco's website, printed out their HO scale turnout plans, and got to work designing a track configuration that hopefully when finished will resemble a Sydney suburban railway station.

When using Peco's track templates, making sure you print out the turnouts at the actual size is paramount. Really its as simple as un-checking the 'fit to page' option on your printer's settings. The scale ruler printed on each template easily allows you to check that your printer has printed this correctly. Cutting each turnout to shape with a pair of scissors then enables you to try as many different configurations as you like, without having to first purchase the actual turnouts.

What I needed was a track configuration that would route passenger trains through the neck of the yard to either platform 1 or 2 as needed, while still allowing access to a freight siding. I also wanted to use large radius turnouts instead of the medium radius turnouts that are in place on the bottom level. An island-type platform was also a prerequisite as it enabled trains to be viewed on the bookshelf from both sides. However, when you're working within the confines of 6 foot by 1 foot, it soon becomes evident that there are only so many combinations of left and right turnouts that are possible. So below are three of the best that I was able to come up with.

Playing cut n' paste with Peco's track templates shows exactly what will fit into your layout space.

Back-to-back large radius Y turnouts were one option, but I didn't like the single track neck that this created. A single Y turnout would work however if you were modelling a single track Sydney suburban line.

I just kept fiddling around to see how many track configurations I could come up with.

With the curved platform in the distance, arranging a right hand large radius turnout as the centrepiece of the station throat gave the track approaching the staging end a centralized position. It was about this time that I came across a British OO trackplan called Trewartha Quay that was posted on a model railway forum. It was essentially the above design, only reversed. It seems there's no beating the Poms, and British modelers are surely the masters of small layout design.

This track plan would work if I could fit 3 tracks leading to staging, and all with just 4 turnouts!

No matter how much I tried to tinker with the track plan, it soon became a case of trying to reinvent the wheel. Reversing the crossover points gave what will be the dedicated passenger track to the right, access to both platforms 1 and 2. While the track to the left would provide freight access to small industrial siding and ensure that the locomotive would have to travel the full length of the layout and utilise the platform road to gain access to the siding.

Moving the right hand turnout also enabled a short siding.

The curved platform gives the 1 foot wide bookshelf layout some character while opening up a large portion in the middle of the layout to the right for modelling some sizable structures. Adding another right hand large radius turnout to the throat of the yard allows for another short siding. I am extremely grateful to have used Peco's printable track templates. When it comes to layout design, they make life just that little bit easier for us modelers.

Small pencil lines between the sleepers give you a dot-to-dot pattern to fill in later with pen.

To draw the life-size track plan, I first sticky-taped the turnouts into position before slightly offsetting a stretch of flextrack in the shape of where I wanted the track to flow, and placing pencil lines between each sleeper. After taking the flextrack away, it was just a case of joining the dots.

This design ended up being the winner, and with just 3 turnouts! So I taped it into position.

Creating a double-decker layout in such a small space would be a challenge. Although I didn't end up proceeding with the upper level addition in the year that followed me writing this post, showing you how I use the printed track templates is perhaps the best way of discovering for yourself what works and what doesn't. Until next time...

Replacing legs with panels

For the past two weeks I've been working on what was supposed to be a rather simple project. After calculating the height I wanted to drop my layout down to ahead of building the staging shelf extension, I thought I'd build two matching end panels to add some more stability and a touch of class to my layout's appearance, instead of simply cutting the four existing timber legs down to size.

I glued the plywood panels between the timber lengths for extra strength.

I started by cutting 4 x 1100 mm lengths of 39 mm x 19 mm dressed pine, followed by another 4 x 1060 mm lengths of the same which I purchased off the rack from my local Bunnings Hardware store. To form the end panels for each end of the layout, I bought a panel of  7 mm plywood that measured 1200 mm x 600 mm, and cut 2 sections each measuring 1100 mm x 280 mm wide. I then sandwiched the ply panels between the timber lengths, ensuring that the shorter lengths would be at the front of each panel, then measured, pre-drilled and countersunk the 3 holes that would secure the panels from the back of each section. Next I glued the sections together using a zigzag pattern with a tube of Maxi Nails, and turned them over to secure them in place with some 34 mm wood screws.

Pre-drilling the holes before gluing made everything much easier to align.

Once the timber lengths were positioned correctly, the wood screws simply followed the holes I had pre-drilled and aligned themselves with the panel edges perfectly.

I spent a lot of time sanding these to get a furniture-like finish....

So far this project had cost me less than $30 and only a morning of my time, including the trip in the car to the hardware store. So far, so good. I then spent the best part of the afternoon sanding each panel by hand, questioning again why I was sticking to my goal of constructing this layout by hand without the use of any power tools, except of course for the electric power drill I needed to drill the holes. So after wiping the sanded panels clean with a damp cloth, I applied the first coat of all-in-one stain and varnish with a paint brush. I followed this up the following morning with another coat, and another 8 hours later a third. By the time the 3rd coat had dried the following morning, it was obvious that the panels were lacking the red Jarrah shading of my layout upstairs.

....before finding out I had used the wrong coloured stain!

It turned out that the opened can of Cabot's Stain & Varnish I had used wasn't from this project after all. A quick check through the photos I had taken on my own blog revealed a shot of the can I had used when varnishing the layout 12 months earlier. It was Australian Jarrah, and from what I could see before me, it was a helluva lot different from normal Jarrah. As the stain penetrates the timber on the first coat to highlight the natural hues of the grain, sanding or stripping the panels back and staining it again wasn't really going to work. With the weekend now over I had to wait until the following Friday to return to my local Bunnings once more and purchase all the timber necessary to start again from scratch. Complicating the matter was the fact that Cabot's no longer produced a shelf-ready Australian Jarrah Stain & Varnish, and I had to get the paint department to tint a base can for me. It looked fine when I checked it in store, so home I went to spend another weekend repeating the same process that I outlined above.

I built these panels a second time, although matching the colour of the stain proved quite a challenge.

Having worked a lot quicker the second time around, I brought one of the finished new panels upstairs on a Sunday morning after the 3rd coat had dried overnight to compare the finish with that of my layout. The tinted can of Australian Jarrah I had bought was red alright, only a little too red. As you can see in the photo above, the store-tinted Australian Jarrah on the bottom left doesn't quite match the original shelf-ready Australian Jarrah that I had used on my layout 12 months earlier in the top of picture. The shelf-ready Jarrah on the bottom right was no help either. It was simply the wrong colour altogether. With the materials now having cost me double on account of having to start over, and add onto that another $50 to purchase a litre of the stain & varnish which I had tinted in store, I had my doubts that starting over yet again would accomplish anything. Instead, I went with my gut that applying another 2 coats of the store-tinted Australian Jarrah would yield a darker result. Fortunately it did. Although not a perfect match, by Monday morning, armed with a day off from our business, I got to work bringing the panels upstairs into our apartment in readiness for replacing my layout's legs.

Then it was off with the old legs....

This is the final view of my small bookshelf layout with its original painted timber legs. Being built to travel to exhibitions, the 2 steel coach bolts that are visible unbolted easily. Having taken everything that was loose off my layout, I unbolted the legs and rested one end on the back of a chair while I positioned the completed panels, drilled the 2 holes and bolted the shorter end panels into place one at a time. The exchange was quite simple and took only 15 minutes.

....before the girls came out to play....

Wanting to keep my theme of a museum-quality finish going strong, I had purchased 2 British Railways metal signs some time ago in preparation for this day. Advertising British Railways Holidays from the 1950's, I bought them simply because of the grandeur they inspire of railway travel from days long gone. Ah, who am I kidding? I bought them simply because in the words of past movie stars from the silver screen, "they're a couple a' nice broads!"

....and on with the new panels.

The Weston-Super-Mare blondie now resides at the dead-end of my layout beneath my newly added signal box plaques, and as I like to point out to my wife looks exactly like her.

The end result looks so much better than the previous legs, and not just because of the pretty girls!

The mouse-hole door end of my layout now has the Butlins girl standing guard. More importantly, the newly varnished panels in the end were a very close match after all. Not only do they look a great deal better than the basic legs they replaced, they have given the free-standing bookshelf layout a great deal more stability, courtesy of sandwiching the plywood panel between the 39 mm x 19 mm dressed pine lengths. It also adds a great deal more strength should I choose to add a second level on top at a later date. The layout now sits approximately 120 mm lower over my desk, which is still enough room to have some desktop items and the printer nestled beneath to save space. More importantly, it will keep the upper level at a more suitable viewing height for future Model Train Exhibitions.

Taking the time to stop and correct this now may very well have robbed me of any chance of exhibiting Philden in 2016, but come 2017, this layout will be ready to travel in my car to shows in Brisbane, Sydney and possibly even Melbourne. I can now get to work on building the removable staging that will enable the trains to exit through the mouse-hole door to the new height of the layout. But as usual, that's a story for another day.

See also; Avoid space sapping staging

Making awful look awesome

When installing the LED strip lighting on my bookshelf layout, I was left with the unavoidable decision to mount the transformer circuit on one of the outside end panels. While I promised myself that I would later look at disguising what was an awful-looking plastic eyesore, I just couldn't for the likes-of-me figure out how to do so. That's when I came across some antique NSW signal box plaques on eBay, and had the idea to simply turn what looked awful into an awesome-looking feature.

These antique NSWGR signal box lever plaques were a great find on eBay,

I bought 8 of these old NSW suburban signal box plaques and cleaned them up using a microfibre cloth dipped in soapy water, although I have to honest and say I have absolutely no idea of where in real life they would have been mounted. They could have come from a decommissioned signal box proper, or simply a suburban signal relay hut that you see lineside on the rails heading into Sydney. Apart from the obvious lettering for the down, up, local and suburban lines to Strathfield, the plaques are somewhat of a mystery to me. Approximately 10 cm long by 7 cm high, they are each constructed of a 3-ply plastic sheet with the numbers and letters each engraved deep into the surface.

On some of the edges the plastic had swollen, perhaps from being exposed to the weather, while the backs of each plaque had the remains of glue blobs from whatever surface they were once glued to and were a little bent from having been carefully removed. As such, they were impossible to fix to any surface with double-sided tape, (believe me I tried). I decided the best way to mount them onto my layout was to pre-drill holes in each corner, and fix them to the end panels of my layout using the same method I used when adding the old brass station name signs.

With the edges of the plaques in a delicate and somewhat fragile condition, I had to carefully drill each hole about 1 cm in from the corners, as drilling them any closer to the edges would have caused the swollen plastic edges to have disintegrated or crack when screwing them to the layout. There was just enough room for me to mount two plaques either side of the LED transformer box. I applied some clear silicone glue to the back of each one, and carefully screwed them to the end panel using some 12 mm brass screws. The glue provided a great leveling medium given the plaques were no longer dead-straight, while the brass screws provided just enough tension to secure them flush to the panel.

They make the ugly plastic transformer box for my LED lighting look like its all part of the show!

Having been worried about how I was going to mount these, (and dreading the thought of mutilating a historic railway artifact), I'm actually pleased with how the brass screws look. The ugly plastic transformer box from the LED strip lighting now looks like its part of a relay circuit for a miniature signal box.

Adding these signal box plaques to my model railway layout was a fun project and has also given me another interesting facet of railway history to research. Just where did these signal box plaques originate from? If anyone has any knowledge of what they may have been used to identify and where they would have been located, I'd love to hear from you. Until next time, I'm heading back to the garage to apply another coat of varnish to my next layout project.

See also; Replacing legs with panels and Safe and dust free!