December 29th 2011

Anderton has gone to Birmingham for the Christmas holidays. Here are some photos of the work done.

The mock-ups of the buildings give a better idea of what the finished layout will look like.

Enjoy and have a Happy New Year!

Meetings - December 2011

Well, a busy month this one with two meetings in two weeks.

At the first we cleaned up the track and turnouts following the ballasting session in November.

The three-way point in the timber yard has been causing us some concern - its narrow gaps and slender rails have meant that it is rather fragile and has caused us some problems.

At the second meeting Allen turned up with his latest creation - a three-way stub point. This was designed to be a simple replacement for the existing three-way. It took most of the morning to remove the old turnout and insert the new one. Then came the fun of tweaking the alignment of the lines in the yard and then sorting out the wiring. With unerring accuracy Allen wired it up correctly first time - well Ok, the switches now work in reverse, but you can't win 'em all.

Meanwhile Ken painted the remaining deck in a very dark colour, which really improves the look of the layout. Andy and Peter worked on the remaining back-scene boards which overlap onto the large fiddle-yard board. We are trying an experiment here in the layout of the back-scene to see if we can disguise the exit more subtly - watch this space for pictures.

During the afternoon we paused for tea and mince pies (thanks Andy) to celebrate our final meeting before the festive season.

This week the layout goes on its Winter holiday to Birmingham. It will return in the New Year in time for its outing at the Trent Valley group's exhibition on January 21st.

All that remains is to wish you all

Merry Christmas
and
Happy New Year

Meeting - Sunday 6th November 2011

	At this meeting we celebrated the birthdays of two of our members, Ken and Allen. Allen's mum provided a very appropriate and tasty cake - many thanks.
This session we ballasted almost all of the track. We used the traditional method, spreading the dry ballast, then dampening it and finally dripping on dilute PVA. Here you can see the birthday boys, with Ken closely supervising Allen.
	Using a combination of two types of commercial ballast and some finely sieved soil from Andy's garden we managed all of the running lines, except the loco area and some of the timber yard. In this photo you can see thr transition between the main lines and the timber yard.
Allen brought along his latest toy - a 1:1000 scale "train set" using a linear induction system. As you can see the control unit dwarfs the track and loco. Compare with the size of the timber branch gate in the background.

Meeting - Sunday 9th October 2011

A truly momentous session today!

Unbelievably, we seem to have settled on the final track plan, and today we made the first tentative steps towards the scenics.

We replaced the old back-boards, which were riddled with access holes, with some new, plain boards using the 3mm MDF that Allen supplied. Then Ken painted the front faces of the backboards in a pale blue sky colour.

"Yellow Peril" poses in front of the newly painted back-scene.

We began to fill in the timber-yard area, raising the ground level towards rail-level. At the next meeting we will be filling the area, burying the sleepers.

The first piece of "3D" scenery appeared near the timber-yard entrance. This hillock hides the complex set of micro-switches that switch the power in the three-way turnout.

Y.P. passes our first "hillock".
	To prevent the back-scene sheets from warping, we painted the back of them in matt black.

The tasks for our next meeting are:

• Cover the rest of the point motors (more hillocks)
• Begin ballasting
• Prepare bases and card mock-ups for the proposed buildings

Meeting Sunday 18th September 2011

This weekend Anderton returned from its Summer vacation on the sun-kissed shores of Birmingham. Whilst away Allen and Andy had done some tweaking, including sorting out the uncoupling magnets.

Andy has made a new fiddle yard/turntable for the Station end of the layout. It is made from 3mm MDF, so is very light weight, but sturdy. There are 3 tracks on the turntable, each split into 2 sections.

We connected the fiddle yard and added an end board to hide it. The main line onto the turntable connects with the rear, station line of the layout, so the fiddle yard is aligned to the back edge of the layout and leaves a place for the operator working the timber-branch to stand.

Then we noticed that the front line of the turn table could be extended to link up with the rear timber branch. This means we can drive loaded wagons of rough-sawn logs into the timber buildings, unload off scene and bring out planed boards.




The two rear timber-yard lines were raised and re-layed. The rearmost one runs sinuously through to the new fiddle yard; the middle line tries to run parallel to it.

So the track layout is finally completed...... until the next meeting!

Meeting 23rd July 2011

At today's meeting Allen and Andy finished installing the mark 2 turnout motors.  We also replaced the control arms on the first batch with the new improved strengthened versions.  Allen is now selling the turnout system as a kit - check it out at the Minimum Gauge Models stand at your next Narrow Gauge exhibition.

	Peter had finished the improvements to the turntable to sort out the warping of the deck.
	The turntable is aligned by a single bull-dog clip which bridges the angled aluminium strips

Several months ago Ken built a really lovely three-way point for the timber-yard sidings, but the complexity of it has meant that it is rather fragile - it is difficult to strengthen, so reluctantly we have decided to replace it with teo separate turnouts.

We discovered a small problem with our uncoupling magnets. We have used pairs of small "rare-earth" magnets, with their tops level with the sleepers, to operate the KD couplings. They work fine with the bogie stock, but when we tried to reverse some standard Bachmann V-skips over the magnets they proved too strong and tipped the skips.



The problem seems to be that the V-skips have a very short wheelbase, but a long overhang to the coupling pin. The magnets make the wagon pivot on the front axle.

So, sorting out the magnets is our next priority.

And then Andy started planning another extension to the layout.....

Developments in January - June 2011

The first half of 2011 saw the completion of the fiddle-yard and our first chance to set-up the entire layout.  Testing and tweaking of track-work and wiring has occupied most of our time.  Once we were happy with this we built integral legs for the layout and retired the Dexion supports.

Just as we thought all was settled, Allen turned up with his "mark-2" servo system for the turnout controls.  This is a very-professional looking system, with an excellent etch, so we embarked on another set of changes. 

Developments during 2010.

Our first exhibition at Mickleover allowed us to identify areas for improvement on the layout, including:

• Improving the track layout in the timber yard; this included building a three-way turnout to give us three sidings and adding a head-shunt for the yard loco.
• Centralising the turnout controls. Our first version had manually operated "wire-in-tube" turnout controls. Although these worked very well the operators had to move from board to board to set routes and reaching some of the more distant controls was difficult.
• Change the fiddle-yard from cassette-based to a large turntable.

Ken designed and constructed the three-way turnout.  We lifted the original track-work in the timber-yard and re-laid it as three sidings, plus head-shunt.

Since our turnouts are land-made we needed a method for locking them in route.  Allen devised a servo-operated system and produced etched parts to operate them.  He also produced our central control board, by re-cycling  an unwanted industrial control box  and adding an exquisite etched panel. We also took the opportunity to completely revise the wiring of the boards, simplifying them in the process.

Finally a new fiddle-yard was built  incorporating a 5' long, 5 track turntable.  We have a lot of odd-ball locos, so the central track is split into 6 sections, so that we can store a selection of locos on it.

We returned to the Mickleover exhibition in January 2011 (although the fiddle-yard was not quite ready) which gave us the chance to really test out the new track.

Mickleover exhibition 2010

Our friends from the Trent Valley group of the 7mm NGA invited us to show Anderton at their member's day in January 2010 at Mickleover.  As you can see the layout was in a very basic state at the time.

You can see here the Dexion framework in which the boards sat.

The mark 1 fiddle-yard was tried out for the first time.  It used cassettes, but we found their size made them unwieldy and made plans to change to a turntable version.

Thanks to the Trent Valley group for giving us a chance to take Anderton out for the first time and for their encouragement. Their exhibition is a really friendly event, with lots of chances to talk "narrow gauge" with like-minded colleagues.

Henmore Vale makes its annual outing and there are other selected layouts and demonstrations.  And the bacon sandwiches are brilliant as well!

At the close of the show they invited us to bring Anderton back the following year.  It sounded great, until we realised that, since we meet just once a month, we only had "12 days" before the next exhibition.

In the beginning ........

In 2008 Andy posted an invitation for interested people to form an area group in "Narrow News", the publication of the 7mm NGA.  A small group traveled from as far afield as Kidderminster and Stafford to the first meeting in "The Roebuck" pub in Wolverhampton and those present agreed to form the West Midlands group.

The group met (and continues to meet) about once a month.  The initial meetings traveled around between member's houses before settling at Pete's house in Stafford, where there is a room just long enough for the layout to be assembled in its entirety.  Andy produced the first draft of the plans for Anderton, which were discussed and agreed.  Phil of "PLM Cast-A-Ways" kindly supplied 5 sheets of thick plywood, which formed the  tops for  the baseboards.

Initially the baseboards did not have their own legs. At Ken's suggestion they were supported in a frame made of Dexion.  This was particularly useful when track-laying and wiring; a board could be lifted and clamped on its edge across the Dexion so that we could work on both sides without disturbing the other boards.  Once the track-work was completed integral legs were added to the boards and the Dexion retired.

Click here to see a video of the first run over the layout.

The track-work was hand-made by Ken, with the wiring under Andy's supervision (he is still the only one who understands the cross-over wiring!). The loco turn-table was engineered by Allen, out of brass and Meccano, with Andy adding the planking to the table itself.  


The first fiddle-yard was constructed using cassettes, but these proved too unwieldy, so Peter built  a 5' long turn-table for the fiddle yard.  Allen re-cycled an old CNC control box into a really smart control panel.


The Trent Valley group of 7mm NGA have encouraged us by inviting us to their 2010 and 2011 exhibitions. Thanks guys!

So, that's where we are in July 2011.  Track-work and wiring are pretty much finished, next stage is ballasting and scenery. But with just 12 meetings a year progress is not quick.