Wow it has been a long time, so long that I forgot to upload my 2018 update. Which has now been uploaded as is. 

No work has been done on the layout planning. 

I have spent most of my time playing the transport simulation game Transport Fever 2 - 

Still Planning - 2018 post

It has been a while, I am still planning.

I have been looking into to stations I could model, currently I am thinking of using Barnstaple (Victoria Road) station as a template for my branch line terminus station.

Anyhow here are the stations that I am interested in:

• Bodmin General railway station
• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodmin_General_railway_station
• Goathland railway station
• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goathland_railway_station
• Hellifield railway station
• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellifield_railway_station
• Ross-on-Wye railway station
• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross-on-Wye_railway_station
• http://www.ross-on-wye.com/index.php?page=ross_530The_Railway&pg=3
• Barnstaple Victoria Road railway station
• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnstaple_Victoria_Road_railway_station

Currently I have chosen Barnstaple (Victoria Road) as the template for a Branch-line terminus as it has:

• Engine shed (2 road) 
• Turntable
• Station has two platforms 
• main platform has a runaround shared with cattle siding
• Goods shed with runaround (rack road) and an oil spur.
• Cattle siding that shares the runaround with the main platform.

Track layout as per greater western.

Blog entries that were drafts since 2015

Going over my blog entries, I had found three drafts from 2015, that I have decided to release as part of this entry. I am still working on creating a viable plan which keeps on proving difficult as I attempt to include heritage and main line stock operations. One idea from this a station that has both Mainline and Heritage facilities,  which will in a future post.

Anyhow as previously mentioned listed below are blog entries that I have had in draft since 2015.

April 4th 2015

I am still stuck on the design phase of my layout plan, as I have realised that it would be a good idea for the terminus station to be transformed into a through station when required. Which then links in with the station's history of it originally being a through station. I have also been trying to shrink the size of this facility. The biggest hurdle to this is supporting a full length HST of two power cars and seven coaches with an estimated length of 1.42 metres. As the station platforms, a head shunt  and stabling will need to fit a full length HST. The stabling is in parallel to the head shunt and can access the station platforms. If I do it this way I can have a single road full length HST servicing facility parallel to the station platforms. All of which leads to at least 3.50 metres for the length of board required to make it.

Terminus Station - Version 8.17 (Scrapped Idea) 5.8 metres long

Terminus Station - Version 10.00 (incomplete)

Version 10 of my plan is very much in the draft phase. The idea is platforms 1 and 2 are for short trains such as DMUs of three coaches or a steam locomotive with a rake of two coaches in a push-pull configuration. Platform 1 can support two three car DMUs due to the double crossover, which gives us platforms 1a and 1b. Platforms 3 and 4 are through platforms, and can support a steam locomotive (155 mm) and a rake of nine Mk1 coaches (136 mm * 9).

I will have a more accurate measurement once I receive my pre-order of the Dapol HST intercity swallow livery bookend set.

18th March 2015

This is the original terminus idea I had, unfortunately it takes up too much space. If I had the space this is the plan I would use.

Essentially the maintenance facilities with the HST/DMU stabling are to the left of the station. Whilst the coach stabling and HST/DMU servicing facility are parallel to the station platforms. Locomotive storage is parallel to platform one, where a station canopy has been erected to protect them from the elements. Although I am thinking this may be best for diesel locomotives and visiting steam locomotives. For the permanent steam locomotives a round house is in use.

Below is a list of tractive equipment I either have or plan to own and use on my layouts:

1. Steam Locomotives
• Princess Coronation Class:
• Duchess of Norfolk (BR Express Passenger Blue, Early Crest)
• City of Coventry (BR Crimson, Late Crest)
• Ivatt Class
• 2MT 2-6-0 (BR Black Lined Early Crest)
• 2MT 2-6-0(BR Green Late Crest) { wish listed }
• 2MT 2-6-2T (BR Black Early Crest)
• Class 3F 0-6-0 Jinty (BR Black Early Crest) { wish listed }
• Class A1 Tornado 4-6-2 (BR Brunswick Green Early Crest)
• Midland Class 4F (BR Black Early Crest)  { wish listed }
• Fairburn Tank 2-6-4T (BR Black Early Crest)  { wish listed }
• BR Standard Class 
• 3MT 2-6-2T (BR Black Late Crest)  { wish listed }
• 4MT 2-6-4T (BR Black Early Crest)  { wish listed }
• 4MT 2-6-0 (BR Black Late Crest) { wish listed }
• 5MT 4-6-0 (BR Black Early Emblem) { wish listed }
2. Diesel Locomotives
• Class 08 
• (BR Black Early Crest)
• (BR Blue Wasp Stripes) { wish listed }
• Class 20 (BR Blue Indicator Disc) { wish listed }
3. DMU/HST
• Class 43 HST (BR Intercity Swallow)
• Class 43 HST (BR Intercity 125 Blue & Grey) { wish listed }
• Class 101 - 3 car (BR Blue & Grey) { wish listed }
• 2 x Class 121 - 1 car (BR Blue) 
• Class 122 - 1 car (BR Blue)

Based on the above list, most of my motive power is steam, I may need to order a lot more coaches than I originally thought. Plus the steam facility will need to be the most important part due to the amount of steam motive power available. Luckily diesel support is not as massive as steam.

18th January 2015

I still plan to implement a DCC controller initially using the Arduino, but this is no longer urgent as I now have a SPROG 2 that I can use to control my locomotives with.

Having said that, here is a list of equipment I will use to test the dcc controller:

• BitSope Micro & Probe Adapter - Oscilloscope & Logic Analysis.
• DCC decoder tester - MERG DCC test rig
• DCC decoder
• Arduino with DCC monitor

My vision is to use a Raspberry-Pi as train layout controller, but in order to this it will require:

• running software like JMRI
• expansion board that generates the dcc signal that can provide 3 - 5 amps of power, and supports the railcom cutout signal.
• communications bus (openLCB or CMRI), allow the use of nodes to communicate ie railcom detectors.

DCC Controller- Update

I  haven't touched this project in a long time. However I have found a project that is up and running which uses the Arduino Uno/Mega to generate the DCC signal and also uses a L298 Motor Shield to act as a booster for the DCC signal. This project is DCC++ and listed below are some useful links for it:

• DCC++ Website

• DCC++ YouTube Channel

• DCC++ GitHub repository

• TrainBoard.com topic - Introducing DCC++ ---a complete open-source DCC station and interface

Also there are two Raspberry Pi SPROG modules:

• Pi-SPROG One
• Pi-SPROG Nano

More information can be found at the Pi-SPROG webpage.

Been a while

It ha been a while, work has been taking up the vast majority of my time. Plus I have been attempting to plan a branch lines station, which has been taking forever as I could not make up my mind, and I still can't make up my mind.

There are a few branch line stations I have been thinking of use for inspiration of my design. The stations are:

• Arley Station on the Severn Valley Railway
• Bodmin General
• Goathland station

Arley Station 

I watched a YouTube video (shown below) about Arley station on the Severn Valley Railway, which made me realise that Arley station could be  good station to base a branch line station off of.

Which then lead me to watching the YouTube video D8059 Arley, 04/10/15 shunting the yard.

 The difficult part was looking for track plans, thus I used google maps to help me.

Arley Station as per Google Maps

And then I found "A drawing of the signal box track layout for Arley box at c1960, from the collection of John Hinson" located at www.signalbox.com.

Thus I decided to use Arley as the basis of my branch line station plan. Shown below are some initial track plans for the branch line station which is a work in progress.

Version zero - A basic rendition of the Arley station track plan using straight track segments

Version 007 - Extra sidings and a third platform added

Version 008 - double slip switch added

Version 012 - Station can now have double track approach on either end if required.

I still have a lot of work to do with the plan, especially as I want to give various options for the station:

• Through station with:
• single track access on both sides
• double track access on one side and single track access on the other
• Terminus station that has the terminating sides track buffer stopped and used as the head shunt. The remainder of the disused track will be populated with overgrowth. The station approach is via:
• single track access
• double track access

Version 012 of the track plan can now support double track on both ends of the station if required, and also follows the British goods yard access standards from when facing point locks were not in use.

As mentioned earlier Arley station is one of three candidates for my branch station idea, I also like Bodmin General and Goathland stations. 

Lack of Update

I have started working in April and I have been busy since. The plus side is the increase in funds I can use on the Model railway.

Currently I am collecting Intercity liveried coaches and locomotives, unfortunately Graham Farish and Dapol have no Intercity branded locomotives, unless one looks for second hand. I am still collecting steam era locomotives and coaches, but I also want to run some more modern coaches and locomotives on my heritage rail. Of which I am still in the design phase, I keep on getting interesting ideas that start off good, but then take up too much room.

Anyhow a list of my recent purchases:

Locomotives:

• Class 86 Bo-Bo Electric 86415 Triple Grey 'Distribution Sector'
• Class 5700 Pannier 0-6-0 4 in BR black with early crest

Coaches Locomotive Hauled:

• Mk3 - 1st class Intercity Executive ( x2)
• Mk3 - Buffet Intercity Swallow
• Mk3 - 1st class Intercity Swallow
• Mk3 - 2nd class Intercity Swallow (x3)

Wagons:

• 20t EX-LMS Brake Van BR Grey
• Conflats BR Bauxite with AF containers BR light blue (triple pack)

and I have on order:

• Class 43 HST Book Set in Intercity Swallow
• Mk3 TGS Intercity Swallow (x2, HST)
• Class 3F Fowler Jinty 0-6-0 tank in BR black with early emblem
• BR Mk1 57ft Suburban Second Open in crimson (x2)
• BR Mk1 57ft Suburban Brake End in crimson (x2)

In regards to the HST, it is a better deal to buy the bookset than to buy the spare part unpainted motorised power car. At least with the bookset you get in addition to the motorised power car,  two coaches and dummy power car. My plan is to have a full HST rake with both power cars motorised, which means transplanting the frame from one motorised power car to a dummy power cars shell. From there I plan to have one of the dummy cars sit in my maintenance depot as apart of the scenery.

As for the suburban coaches, I have a Class 2MT Ivatt 2-6-2 tank locomotive that is push pull fitted, and thus want to convert one of the brake end coaches into a push-pull fitted driving unit. I plan to have a push pull rake of four coaches.

And of course my planning is still an ongoing journey as shown below. The biggest issue is keeping the length down to 3-4 metres.

Latest Arrivals

I had received on Friday (20/03/2015) the Coronation class locomotive "City of Coventry" in the BR maroon livery with the late crest. Which I have not tested out, as I was waiting on my order of Kato unitrack to arrive, which happened today (24/03/2015). Andfinally I did test run the locomotive on Thursday (02/04/2015), which ran well and looks good with Maroon coaches.

City of Coventry running on Kato Unitrack

Kato Unitrack

Video footage of the locomotive going backwards as the last part of the burn in.

And just for fun, a video of  the locomotive pushing a HST standard class coach with a DVT in front.

Plus I have received some volumes of a series of books about steam depots in various BR Regions - the series is called "BR Steam Motive Power Depots" by Paul Bolger. The regions I have are:

• North Eastern Region
• Western Region
• London Midland Region (second hand)

And now I am in search of books about the diesel traction motive depots (TMDs). These books should help me plan the maintenance facility for the heritage railway depot located at the main terminus.

I have received on Wednesday (01/04/2015) another Arduino UNO, which will be replacing my microduino as the train controller.