Great Chesterford Junction Part One ( Pre P1MRC )

G`day Folks,
I`ve decided to attempt to keep all my railway history in one place.....one forum....so I am now embarking on a transfer of the text and images to try and make this happen.
I will only be transferring text and images that I have created, so the interaction with members on my previous forum will be left out of the story.
As a consequence of this update, this thread will be known as " Great Chesterford Junction Part One ( Pre P1MRC ) and my thread formerly known as Great Chesterford Junction will be known as " Great Chesterford Junction Part Two ".
So now we begin
Gormo

 

G`day Folks,
Work has begun on the room that will house Great Chesterford Junction, Little Bardfield and Bamford.This railway is fictional, however the place names are real. Why these names you ask???.......well because some of my ancestors came from Great Chesterford in Essex. They emmigrated to Australia in the 1800`s. I have been to Great Chesterford and I feel a very strong connection to the place, therefore the name for my railway. My ancestors were Bards.......Little Bardfield is very close to Great Chesterford.Bamford was originally going to be called Bampton ,but I decided to include my wife`s family as well and so Bamford was the obvious choice.
The real Great Chesterford has a railway running through it to Cambridge etc, but I have chosen to follow a fictional plan and create a junction with plenty of operational challenges. If it is too easy to operate I will lose interest.
Recently, I was fortunate enough to acquire Murrays railway, due to the generosity of Murrays widow ,who was assisted by Murrays friend Gary in disposing of said railway. Gary is a member of this forum. ( G`day Gary ) Most of what I acquired will become Little Bardfield and Bamford with very little left over.
To give you an idea of what I am up to I have inserted a plan below. The plan shows the junction station with fiddleyard opposite. There will also be a sliding fiddleyard on the peninsula that projects into the middle of the room. Above the sliding fiddleyard will be Bamford branch terminus. Above and in front of the other fiddleyard will be Little Bardfield branchline through station.



The railway is 13 feet x 10 feet. On the lower right hand side of the plan, the branch line passes through the wall into my workshop and travels around the wall, rising at 1 in 60 as it goes, to a height of at least 3 inches. It travels through the wall near the top right hand side of the plan and passes through a curved Little Bardfield station. It travels through the supporting wall for the branch terminus (Bamford) and below Bamford, yet above the main line tracks, and out through the left hand wall into a storage room.It does a circuit of the room, whilst climbing 1 in 60, to arrive at Bamford back through the wall again.
That`s probably enough confusion for the moment.!!.....The room forms part of my garage, which has been a conversion project for quite some time now. At this stage the ceiling is lined, the lights are done and the power points are in. I have cut one of the exit holes for the branch and so far everything seems to be on course. The photo below shows where I started a couple of years ago and you can see the remnants of my former railway.......What a mess!!!!!


Now some pictures of the actual room


The pic above shows the supporting wall for the Bamford branch terminus which projects into the centre of the room.The pic below shows the supporting wall temporarily removed and lining of the ceiling has begun.


The next pic shows more lining completed.


Well that`s all folks .....for the moment........more updates to follow.
Cheers gormo

____________________
"Anyone who claims to have never made a mistake, never made anything!!"

 

I have a plan here, drawn a couple of years ago, showing the concept for my garage layout.......I submit it to show more clearly the position of the rooms within the building.

 

G`day Folks,
Work forges ahead, time permitting, and now the railway room is 99.99% boarded out. There is just one small strip to add to the bottom of the branch wall / peninsula.
A small concrete infill has to be added at the end of the room to complete the floor and the room has to be trimmed and painted.......Then?????.......work starts on the railway.

• 
  It all looks rather grey and ordinary at the moment but painting will transform it and lighten up the room.

Cheers Gormo

 

G`day Folks,

Well the room is almost ready for painting...........the concrete has taken me a week because it was done in four stages.......but today I have finished the trim and filling.........so I`m getting there.

One of the good things about this project is that I am recycling materials wherever possible and I am gradually reducing my store of collected materials.

I just have to check now on the paint situation........hopefully there will be something left in the shed that will be usable.

Cheers for now
Gormo

 

Just to get off the subject for a bit.........I haven`t been sitting on my hands dreaming away for the last couple of years........I`ve been collecting items for my railway and making buildings etc.
I thought I would show some of my Metcalfe creations with embellishments.
These are low relief .Notice the lady in the upper window 2nd from the left and signs added to the right of the doorway on the model shop. The top yellow sign shows my Grandson as the proprietor.




I created new shop signs for the Bookshop and Julie`s Gallery. Julie is my wife......she loves books and Art. It`s only fitting she should have her own gallery with a bookshop next door




Here is a potential model railway customer for the model shop


And a view of the book shop......note the book cases inside the shop.




And Mrs Jones leaving the bakery with Mr Jones daily bread




I am looking forward to adding these items to my railway and also I have still have quite a few to build



Cheers Gormo

____________________
"Anyone who claims to have never made a mistake, never made anything!!"

 

I went down the road of railway first and then fix the room when I first jumped into model railways in the 1980`s.........it`s hard to do it that way but at least you have a railway to tinker with whilst the room gets fitted out properly.
Building the room first is an exercise in delayed gratification for me, and I hope it`s worth the wait.!!

I thought I would show you a before and after example from my workshop, which as you know , is the room next to my railway room. The garage is being transformed from a bit of a tip to something that`s nearly good enough to live in. My next door neighbor, Bill, reckons it`s the best " dog house " he`s ever seen......high praise indeed !!!!!!

The first pic shows the partition framing ready to receive cladding




The next pic shows the same wall clad and painted..........so you can see it`s a radical change.




The railway room will be to the same standard......it`s amazing how a multitude of sins can be covered by a lick of paint.

Cheers Gormo

____________________
"Anyone who claims to have never made a mistake, never made anything!!"

 

Thank you Gents,

It`s Thursday evening and work is coming along nicely. The ceiling is painted ( white ) and the walls are painted (sky blue ) half way down. The bottom half will be painted ( black ) tomorrow.

The idea behind the two-tone colour scheme is to fool the eye when in the room. The wall above the baseboard will be sky blue and the wall below the baseboard will be black. I`ve mentioned before that the layout will be supported on brackets below the baseboard. The layout should appear as though it is just suspended off the wall. With the below baseboard area being black, I am hoping the eye will be drawn to and concentrate on things above baseboard level.

I have some dark chocolate coloured carpet tiles to go down on the floor ( they sound good enough to eat ) . They were gracefully donated by my son`s work, who in their infinite wisdom decided to chuck them out. I will always gratefully accept unwanted useful items.

Well folks....that`s all for now........next time I`ll put up some pics.

Cheers Gormo

____________________
"Anyone who claims to have never made a mistake, never made anything!!"

 

G`day Folks,
The painting is done......just some touch ups to be done where the masking tape was doing it`s own thing. Next step is to clean up the floor and get some carpet down. I am also going to paint the sliding door to match the walls but I`ll have to remove it from it`s track to do that.

Anyway......some pics as promised.













Well ???........still more to be done.......but the results are encouraging

Cheers Gormo

 

G`day Folks,
Here`s an update from the news desk!!!!...
The entrance door to the train room has been painted both sides and pelmet fitted as per below.
The first pic shows the door from the workshop side.


The next shows the door from inside the train room


The carpet has also been laid and it has reduced the echo effect in the room




I have now started to install the steel brackets that will support the railway. I have slipped into a pic to give it some scale




Well there you go!!!.......an action pic of the Gormster as a bonus!!
I am cracking on at a good pace, when time permits, and hopefully it won`t be too long before we can get a train running in this room.
Cheers for now......Gormo

____________________
"Anyone who claims to have never made a mistake, never made anything!!"

 

One thing I should mention is the amount of recycling that has gone into this garage conversion. These days we live in a throw away society and I don`t think people seriously consider the huge impact that unwanted items have on the environment. The amount of rubbish that an individual may dispose of in a lifetime is no big deal........but when you multiply it by population.......it`s massive.
My garage contains timber framing that was going to be put through a solid fuel burner, some sheets of fibre cement being used for a second time, paint that is well past it`s use by date, reclaimed iron sheeting, steel framing left over from a job and saved from the scrap metal merchant, particle board furniture taken apart to be used for baseboards...............the list goes on and on and I don`t wish to bore you..........but the point is that for a moderate amount of effort spent in reclaiming these items I have also saved myself quite a lot of money.
So there go you folks.......I`ll get down off the soap box now......Cheers Gormo

____________________
"Anyone who claims to have never made a mistake, never made anything!!"

 

G`day Folks,
Another productive afternoon in the shed has come and gone.
I could not resist a test fit and photo session with part of Murray`s layout. The blue on the walls seems to be exactly what I was aiming for and it really only becomes obvious when you park a layout in front of it.
Anyway here are some pics













This has got me fired up now because I can see the railway is going to work out as planned.
Cheers for now .....Gormo

____________________
"Anyone who claims to have never made a mistake, never made anything!!"

 

Howdy Gents,
I`ve managed to fit 95% of the brackets to the walls of my train room.........I just have to sort out some supports in three of the corners and that`s it !!.......Progress has slowed a little due to social, domestic and work commitments.......but hey???....That`s life.......So we bite the bullet and move forward at the pace we are allowed.




The room suffers from a sloping floor, a sloping ceiling, corners that are not square etc......I think the building was erected by a one eyed, crossed eyed builder who could not understand a blue print.However, the racking is true and level and rigid. The brackets that are bolted to the walls are rated at 70kg load limit......do you guys think I may be over engineering this thing????



I test fitted another piece of Murrays` layout on this section above and all is well.




This pic shows the brackets to support the sliding fiddleyard (lower) and the Bamford branch terminus (upper).


So folks !!.......that`s it for the moment........more to follow when time permits.
Cheers Gormo

____________________
"Anyone who claims to have never made a mistake, never made anything!!"

 

G`day Gents,
The end of the day here in Oz sees the first base board for Great Chesterford Junction in place. The board frame is from my previous railway and has been modified to accept my form of manual point control. The top of the board is made up of recycled furniture pieces I have collected over the last couple of years.
The first pick shows the frame in place and suitably modified with cut outs etc.




The second pic shows the odd bits of board test fitted prior to screwing and glue and trimming.




The next shows the board fitted and trimmed.




The last two show my lever frame fitted.







My intention is to fit a fascia to the front of the baseboards to hide any imperfections in the recycled materials and also it will drop down low enough to hide the racking. It will butt up to the outside edges of the lever frame housing and hopefully give a simple stream lined effect.

Cheers and Good Night Gents
Gormo

____________________
"Anyone who claims to have never made a mistake, never made anything!!"

 

Hi Toto,
Yes that is the size of the room.........actually it is 4 metres long which I think is 13` 3" X 2.965 metres which is about 9`8"........13`x 10` to keep it simple
So the room may look big in photographs but the above is the actual size. An important thing to point out though is that the branch line tracks pass through the walls at either end of the room, and they do a circuit of adjoining rooms to enable their tracks to climb to a suitable height so that they may pass over the main line system. One room is a storage room and the other is my workshop. A single branch can be achieved within the room, however it seems like too short a run between the mainline station and the branch. One of my sources of inspiration was Ben Alders Kylesku and the Mound......now dismantled....which I believe was in a 9` X 11` room but the railway seemed much bigger. A railway I had years ago, in the same building, was 36`long x 2`wide and travelled down one wall of my garage. Believe it or not, Great Chesterford Junction is a much longer run than my previous railway. If you add the wall lengths it totals 46`, however it still seems like a smaller railway????? I could have made the track plan easier by going for smaller radii however a minimum of 3`radius on the scenic areas was desirable. I should also add that I have based all my calculations on a maximum train length of 5` ( 60" )
I`ll insert one of my early plans to give another example



Cheers Gormo



____________________
"Anyone who claims to have never made a mistake, never made anything!!"

 

Hi Toto,
Here`s another variation for you. I dug this out of the archive. It was drawn at a time when I was considering a visible fiddle yard and on this plan it would have been Little Bardfield. Little Bardfield is loosely based on Waverley West and only shows part of the station.....the rest is behind the scenic break and as such creates the illusion of a full size station in a short space.
The main problems with the plan are not enough storage space.......challenging to operate, which is not necessarily a bad thing.......and access to the hidden tracks. I still rather like the flow of it though and I am sure those problems could be sorted out with some perseverance.


The layout could have two trains circulating whilst holding five comfortably ,with a DMU in the bay platform and a short train at the branch.
Even though I have opted for a hidden fiddle yard on my final plan, I think it`s worth considering a visible one.......you gain a lot more railway in your allocated space......any way.....it`s just another option.

Cheers
Gormo

____________________
"Anyone who claims to have never made a mistake, never made anything!!"

 

G`day Folks,

Work on the railway has begun again in earnest. I have managed to put together two baseboards over the last couple of days, although it looks like only one in the pics. I am using up my store of scavenged materials, which is a good thing.
The pics below show where I am at. These boards ( the white ones ) are some of the more complex ones, due to their shape and the odd angles involved in the framing.










All for now
Cheers Gormo



____________________
"Anyone who claims to have never made a mistake, never made anything!!"

 

Hi Peter,
Yes it`s chipboard with melamine covering.......but it`s all braced......screwed and glued and boards bolted together. It will survive the next Ice Age.!!!... I will drill the melamine if needed to accept pins, however testing has shown that this will probably not be necessary.

Here`s another one just knocked up today.





Cheers
Gormo

____________________
"Anyone who claims to have never made a mistake, never made anything!!"

 

G`day Folks,
Unfortunately progress is slow at the moment, due to other commitments.
However, there is progress. ......I have managed to print out and stick down a full sized track plan on part of the layout. It gives a great feel for what the layout will actually be like and it will assist greatly with track laying. I intend to lay track over the top of the plan which should make it relatively easy to achieve some of the radii contained within said plan.
I plan to cut strips of foam rubber to the same width as the sleepers and then glue the foam rubber to the track. Then the track with foam rubber underlay will be glued on top of the plan and possibly pinned if necessary.I have tested this method and I am happy with the results. Trains run ever so quietly over the rubber base.
I will attach some pics








There is plenty of room for my five coach trains and so far all seems to be good.!!!
Fingers crossed !!!
Cheers
Gormo

____________________

 

Hi Chinahand,
I am using pre-loved carpet underlay.........I have stacks of it so I am going to give it a go.I have tested it with glue, from a hot glue gun, put onto the foam and spread quickly with a spatula and then quickly place the track on and hold firm till the glue sets. I will be using flex track and with the foam applied it still bends quite easily. This method works well and is quick.I am going to use either a building adhesive or silicon to glue the foam to the baseboard. I tend towards silicon because of it`s rubber like quality.Silicon needs a good 48 hours to go off so some patience will be required. Obviously the track may have to be pinned until the glue goes off.

I know this all sounds a bit unusual......but I like to use what is at hand. Once the foam is ballasted and effectively sealed with PVA , it should last for years.... ( he says with fingers crossed ).
Cheers Gormo

____________________
"Anyone who claims to have never made a mistake, never made anything!!"