Points and Crossings Out

Designing the track layout is one of my favourite parts of building a model railway. I usually start with a few pieces of paper on which the outline of the baseboard is drawn, then I doodle track plans. Initially these are pretty ambitious and have many spirals, levels, branch lines and sidings, but eventually a degree of common sense creeps in.

Once I've drawn a feasible-looking plan I'll lay some track out on the baseboard to see how much my plan has in common with reality. The main constraint is the minimum radius of curves. I wanted to keep the minimum radius on the 'main line' to 30 cm, or thereabouts, with 23 cm for sidings; the latter being about the limit for N gauge. A 30 cm curve does not look realistic but I don't have a deep enough baseboard for a larger radius, so I'll have to hide these curves in tunnels (the standard railway modeller cop-out).

Care has to be taken on curves to keep adjacent tracks far enough apart to prevent passing trains from fouling each other. The tighter the curve the more long carriages overhang, that is, their ends and centre overhang the track. Without sufficient space between tracks the overhang from the end of one carriage will hit the centre of another. There are some minimum measurements that will act as guidelines, but I find it easier to check tolerances by running the longest carriages I possess on the track. If they run smoothly and don't hit one another then it's likely the track is OK.

This was a good excuse to head into the attic and bring down the shoe boxes that have contained the track and rolling stock since my model railway was packed away about 20 years ago.

Green Cross Corrode

Oh dear.

Manufacturing techniques have moved on somewhat in the last two decades and several of my locomotives look a bit dated. I'll be taking a more detailed look at these in a later posting. However, more seriously, the points and crossings had been stored with some Peco foam underlay and this had perished. Not a problem in itself, as I wasn't going to use foam underlay, but it had damaged most of the points; giving them a rough green coloured coating.

Luckily I have a Peco rail cleaner and with this I was able to remove the majority of the corrosion. The picture below shows a before and after.

You can see the corrosion on the exit rails of the top point, together with some remaining foam underlay that's suck to the sleepers. The bottom point has been cleaned and most of the muck and ick has been removed. Unfortunately a couple of points were beyond redemption and had to be discarded. One (slight) bonus is the oxidation of the rails during the years of neglect has toned down the shininess of the rails and made them a bit more prototypical.

Side One, Track One

After much chewing of pencils, crossings out, profanity and a smidgen of inspiration I've settled on the layout I will build. Well, pretty much, sort of - it may change a bit, a lot - radically, or stay the same. Um, here's a picture of the rough layout of the track.

This layout provides me with two complete ovals and some sidings for operational interest. A station will be built at the front of the baseboard, with one of the platforms between the line at the edge of the board and one of the main running tracks. To the right is a small goods yard. There will be a raised section furthest from the camera - one of the inclines is visible on the right. The track will go on top of the raised section, it's currently under it until I'm happy with the layout and the wood has been fixed to the baseboard.


Right, so still a bit of work to do before track laying can start. Once the raised section is completed I'm toying with using cork sheet as an underlay for the track. This will give the track a slightly raised profile and should reduce noise.