Sunshine, Palm Trees and a Food Industry...

This weekend I spent time clearing out the sun room as it was becoming unfriendly. I have an old table out there that I use as a modelling bench but the problem is that it accumulates far too much modelling junk. It was stop number one when I needed to put something down, and then left there...

Today I made a rash decision to remove the table, including the two old chairs and also go through the storage draws and declutter them along the way. In fact I ended up decluttering the spare bedroom where the JSRR short line layout lives. I never realised how much crud I had collected ! I can do my scratch building on the dinning table when required.

Here is a clean pic of the table in question...

So, what's all this got to do with my Miami layout ??

Simple answer is space. Currently the Miami layout resides in the lounge dinning area and each time I operate, I have to put the fiddle stick up and that crosses the doorway to the kitchen. The fiddle stick makes much sense when operating, but I want a clearer area to operate in. Now with the table gone, I can move the layout out into the sun room against the wall/window where the table sat.

This is a win/win situation to be in, but I now have extra space.....

So with some recent planning (yes, occasionally I do plan things...), I have come up with the idea of an extension to the Miami layout !

Here is the track plan I have designed to fit the area of the room, without interfering with the flow of the room to the laundry and back door.

I intend building this sooner than later and I have the baseboards already to go, well the baseboard tops ! After work tomorrow I'll pick up more timber and a few shelving units from my local Bunnings store. The shelves are 1370mm high, 710mm wide and 305mm deep. These are perfect for holding the layout up and it creates more storage for some of my other bits and bobs. These are the shelving units I will purchase : https://www.bunnings.com.au/handy-storage-137-x-71-x-30-5cm-galvanised-4-shelf-unit_p2583029

This is a mock up of what the eventual shelf layout will look like in the space, minus the shelving units underneath.

Cheers, Gary.

 

Corner module and peninsula module has been constructed from 42 x 19mm pine with a 9mm MDF baseboard. You can see more timber on top of the shelves for two more smaller baseboards. Also I have purchased four sheets of 600 x 1200 x 30mm insulation foam that will be cut to size and glued to the top of the MDF.

More to come...

Cheers, Gary.

 

Baseboards are now in position and about 80% complete.

I have used Baston XPS Handy Panel (extruded polystyrene) on top of the baseboards. You will notice that I have added a timber edge on the ends of the baseboards where they meet each other.

The reason I do this is so when I lay the pcb sleepers, I have something solid to adhere them to. Normally I drill a hole on the outer edges of the pcb sleepers and use a panel pin to make sure they won't move. Also the use of araldite helps too.

Test fitting the individual modules together...

The tops here have the foam and 30mm timber ends fixed in place.

Next up will be cutting several long strips of 3mm MDF to 80mm or 3 3/16" so I can line the edges of the baseboards and protect the foam from accidental damage.

Cheers, Gary.

 

Yep ! It's amazing what you can get done when nobody visits and takes away your time !

Cheers, Gary.

 

Here is my next video update on the construction methods I use to create modular baseboards...



Cheers, Gary.

 

Thank you Gormo and Paul.

The layout build is moving along quite quickly. Hoping to attach the completed Miami shelf layout to it this weekend.

Cheers, Gary.

 

I spent this afternoon cutting 80mm strips of 3mm MDF for the fascia. The circular saw I use is a little bit off on the sight gap at the front of the skid. I lined up the line to cut, started to cut and once I had cut the 2m long strips, I noticed that the cut was 2-3mm out ! Luckily for me this was on the outer edge which made the strips wider. This happened to be a good thing as I now have a small lip on the top edge, which will help keep scenery scatters etc protected. If the MDF is too high, a simple file down with the surform rasp will fix this.

Here is a couple of pics of the fascia in place...

and here is the latest video on adding the fascia to the layout...



Cheers, Gary.

 

[QUOTE="gormo, post: 96471, member: 10"
Those corners on the end of the peninsula can be softened / blended with Duct Tape over the join then painted.[/QUOTE]

I decided not to add PVA when adding the fascia which means I can remove the fascia panel on the end of the peninsula. I'll cut out 30mm of foam on the end and add a strip of timber right across. Yes, it is more work, but I then know that it will be much more solid and stable !!

Cheers, Gary.

 

Last night I played around with a few track templates that I printed from Anyrail. This enabled me to lay the track plan out on the baseboards, using lengths of flex track between points and curves.

This large curve from the original shelf layout is Peco radius 4 pieces, which have a radius of 22.5" or 572mm.

The two curves here are different radii. The curve closest is radius 4 and the curve above that is radius 3.

The furthest end of the layout looking back towards the corner module.

Today is my day off and I need to go purchase four new points, 2 x SL87 (curved left) and 2 x SL95 (medium r/h) and 2 x packets of rail joiners...

Cheers, Gary.

 

Yesterday I ventured down to Casula Hobbies to pick up four points and rail joiners as mentioned above and when I got home, track laying commenced !

Using the paper templates shown in my last post as a guide, it made track laying easy, almost like connecting the dots ! So, here we are, track down and looking not too shabby. I'd have to say it's some of my finest track laying work ever !!

Couple of photos...

This is starting to take shape just as I had planned. Oh yes, I soldered on some feeder wires to the module that joins the existing shelf layout and took a loco (GP9) for a short run. The long siding with the yellow box car and red reefer has no power as the point is trailing. All points are Insulfrog as I'm only running large BO-Bo locomotives and nothing like a 0-4-0 steam loco.

Here is a video demonstration of the running qualities. Please note that this is not my preferred YouTube channel. I decided to add another channel, named P1MRC VIDEO. I wish to keep this separate from my original channel as I'm doing a progressive layout build series on there and not throw my subscribers out of whack with a random video from the future!



Cheers, Gary.

 

Been doing a little wiring on the layout, adding a bus wire and droppers. I have completed two modules and have two to go...

This below looks like spaghetti, but in fact it is quite neat and tidy...

This diagram shows the technique I employ to tension the bus wires on each module.

On the ends of the modules, I use these connectors, cut in half and the wires soldered to the bus wire. The male/female plug pokes through an elongated hole I drilled in the baseboard frames. They are quite sturdy connectors and I have used them previously on my other modular layouts.

Two more boards to go so I'm hoping to have them complete before the weekend.

Cheers, Gary.

 

During our storms in Sydney earlier this week, I ended up with water in the ceiling. The build up had caused water to drip through the light fitting, not good. I could also see where the water had started to pool as it has damaged the ceiling quite badly. I ended up drilling a hole in the ceiling to let the excess water out.

The biggest problem is the leak is in the sun room where I had moved my layout to and started on the extensions...

This photo shows the light fitting in question. It sits above the peninsula module...

The electrician has been by and terminated the power and will return when the ceiling and leak is repaired.

Meanwhile, I have taken the last two modules to another room to finish off the wiring.

The corner module only has one set of droppers. I soldered a link from main to the siding.

I guess between now and the repair all I can do is work out the foot print to the buildings and start scratch building them.

Cheers, Gary.

 

You are absolutely right there Gormo.

Cheers, Gary.