Newport Model Railway Society: What do you do?

The majority of photographs in his section were taken with an Olympus C-5060 Wide Zoom Camera. The aperture was fixed at its minimum setting (f8.0) and the shutter speed was automatically adjusted. No flash was used. The camera was placed on the layout for stability and it was fired using the push button thingy supplied. The photos were digitally "got at" (straightening, doing away with perspective problems, cropping and some image enhancement) using the Paintshop Pro PHOTO X2 Ultimate programme.

The original Belle Vue & South Coast Direct Railway "Hazelhurst" was on the Southern Region . We have tried to follow prototype dimensions in the building, drawing up and laying of the scratch built track. We have standardised on B8 turnouts. A D14 and a C12, together with a B6 Y are also there somewhere. The track is laid to 31mm gauge to provide better running and appearance, whilst allowing standard Slaters wheels still to be used in the rolling stock.

Most, if not all, locos are either sprung or compensated and are chipped, for the layout is DCC controlled. All available routes are programmed into the computer programme running software compatible with Lenz DCC.

More woodwork this week. There's a proper production line going now on the modifications to the test track. I'll probably take some photos of the progress and what the end result is next week. I will say that the individual boards now seem much more rigid and that they do stack.

If I mention a ratio of 1 to 12, I wonder if that will mean anything to anybody in this baseboard context?

No piccies this week as Mike has covered this in The Goings On Section. In any case, I'm not sure that adapting the test track ends so that they can stack is really rivetting stuff! However, the evening did show that when a degree of accuracy is required cutting an 8' length of 4mm ply then a hand saw beats a jig saw, even when it has a substantial piece of timber used as a fence.

Of course, this stacking business is just the start process in the refurbishment of the ends. They are being strengthened so that they won't sag so much along their length and a support will probably have to be incorporated to prevent them drooping across their width. We'll see.

And then of course we can start to look at the actual trackwork - smooth curves, uneven baseboard joints and all that.

No report for last week as all we did was to work on the rack. Mike took some photos of it and it appears in the Goings On section.

However, this week some important work was done on the new baseboard which forms the scenic section at one end of the layout. This was originally one of the end fiddle yards for the P4 Belle Vue layout which used a cassette storage system, which is why it is trackless. The board has been delicately, and carefully altered, the surgery being performed with a large hammer, a brutal circular saw and a jig saw with a blade having a tooth pitch suitable for cutting down Giant Redwoods! And there are some who still insist that railway modelling is an Art-Form.

Well, there it is in position and you can just see the very roughly drawn track alignment swinging off to the right. Obviously a hole has to be cut in the backscene to allow the tracks through. The end facing you has to have a ply front put on, too. Any ideas about scenery?

We also erected the fiddle yard to see if the new boards and trestle system worked. It did, thankfully, although to make it fit the height of the front of the layout which is supported on beams, we'll have to shorten the trestle legs. This was expected and the legs were made overlong to take this into account. So here's the article, all 28' of it. The baseboard ends aren't our usual construction but are solid timber, although the sides are our normal Ply/18mm*18mm sandwich.

More wood butchery this week. The ply has been cut into strips and the ten new supporting strips made. These have been put to one side to let the glue set: however, the already made up ones have been fitted to the underside of one baseboard.

We have found that perhaps it is possible to use -with some surgery- baseboards that are already made, to make up the new boards needed to turn Hazelhurst into a roundy-roundy. We'll see. No photos of wodworking but a photo of the entrance to the Carriage Works. That Kissing Gate still needs toning down a bit!

No pictures from me this week, but I'm sure Mike will have some on the Club's Goings On page.

The problem with the rack has been fixed and we can now get the side into the club room. We carried on building the other side but ran out of enthusiasm. It also needed to be assembled in the main hall and that was being used by the ladies playing Bingo. Enter there at your peril.

The remaining two yard baseboards were assembled from the already fabricated component parts, so we now have the shells of the baseboards needed, all 28' of them. We need the supporting strips fitted under the tops to stop them bowing. Ray and Paul made up six, but we will have to get some more ply cut because we need sixteen. Although it doesn't seem much, I feel that a lot of progress was made tonight.

Building the new cupboard, and filling it, in another nearby part of the Leisure Centre has certainly freed up a lot of space in the main workroom. It looks indecently empty although I'm sure a visitor would not think so. Enough space to build 7'x3' baseboards at any rate.

Update. You remember the old story of the man who built a boat in his bedroom and then couldn't get it out? Well, for boat, think new rack. For bedroom think clubroom and for getting things out think putting things in.

Still, a few hinges should ease the problem. As I've told some of the rest of the club, the damn thing is hanging from sky hooks shoehorned into the end of the layout room.

You would think that after all the years spent drawing schemes on the back of crisp packets I wouldn't have neglected what is perhaps the most important point. Getting it in and out of the clubroom!

Just to show that we are up to something there are a few pictures. These are the embryo sides for the new rack. Not exactly exciting, are they?

And the following photos show where the present layout ends and the new bits have to be tacked on.

This is at the right hand end of the layout where the single track disappears underneath the walkway connecting the disparate parts of Tom Phillips' Carriage Works. The left hand track is the station Goods Yard Headshunt. Presently, the world ends just after the white electric cable. The public is to the right of this picture so would never see the mess under the walkway. Frankly, neither have I, and it's only because I shoved the camera into a totally unviewable position that it has become apparent.

This is the other end of the layout and shows where the new scenic section has to go. Captivating, isn't it? No? Well removal of what passes for scenery shouldn't be too difficult. The wall in front of the station building's just gotta go!

You can see that even the ends of our baseboards are made from our normal plywood beams.

This really is the place where it's all going to happen. The wall to the right will go, the small tump of "earth" removed and the dog should be able to see the rabbit as far as the new scenery is concerned. The bit of Chepstow Castle wall must go. Paddington is supposed to be thinking about what form the scenery will take. Suppose we'd best get in some more marmalade and a few loaves of bread.

The purpose of this photo is to show that we did consider using the left hand track of the Bay as the new Main Up Line. This would have meant sweeping away the station building, and frankly, making the curves at the end of the layout a bit iffy with regard to radius.

At any rate, Steve's D is there in all its Dingham coupling glory and just out of shot is the Birdcage Set which runs with it. The couplings (and uncoupling) seem to work very well.

Last photo for now. Once again the D is up against the station blocks. This is the wall that will be swept away, the left hand track becomes the Down Main and the right hand track the Up Main. A new "half" platform will go to the left of the Down Main. That's the best we can do without having a bolt-on piece to the front of the layout and build a complete platform on it.

The stop blocks on the wall, placed over the adverts look pretty convincing don't they? Yeah, right.

No photos because nothing really exciting happened last night worthy of the name. We spent loads of money on timber etc and brought it to the club, then started to make new bits for the enlarged transport rack. Dimensions are tight on this!

At any rate, after this, the test track ends were laid on the floor of the main hall in our premises and, using the floor tiles as templates and a totally unmanageable powered tape, critical dimensions such as track radii, etc. were measured off. We can now produce drawings showing just how the new scenic board, test track ends and fiddle yards will actually fit. More wood butchery looms.

Still, Hazelhurst has been put up as in its previous guise, some sticky point motors freed (what do you expect after not being used for over 12 months?), a few tie bars come unsoldered and the layout is now talking to the computer. We could have run it, I suppose, but we didn't have the memory stick with the appropriate software on it. Instead we ran it manually using the Roco unit and trundled a G6 up and down. Steve also brought his under construction Maunsell Push-Pull Set, so we pulled and pushed it along the layout. As expected, it ran smoothly like practically all of our other 7mm stock because not only is it compensated (in this case with Wayoh bogies) but also benefits from having flanges on its wheels. I suppose I'd best show willing and surprise the ungodly by taking my Beattie Well Tank along next week. Now this is definitely cousin of clunker for it's rigid and has no compensation or springing of any sort. It'll be interesting to see how it runs. At least the pick-up should cause no problems as it's split axled throughout.

I've cleared out this page except for a couple of photos, which give the merest hint of what Hazelhurst may be about, because of recent, kind comments, and also that work is now starting in earnest on the reconstruction of the layout.

Hazelhurst will no longer be the terminus that the Belle Vue & South Coast Direct Railway originated but will become a through station with a most idiosyncratic track plan. Why, I don't hear you ask? Simply that we are fed up with trying to operate end to end jobbies and secondly exhibition managers ask for a roundy-roundy. So, bearing the fact that these last gentlefok are cost conscious we are going to try to keep to the same size van that we used to transport the previous incarnation of Hazelhurst and Belle Vue (R.I.P.).

2. Refurbish both the construction and the trackwork of the curved ends from the test track, shown below, both to make them more robust but more importantly allow them to stack.

5. Lay the track in the fiddle yard after mating up the test track ends with it.

7. And on the seventh day we'll have a rest. And think about the scenery. And think about timetables. And think about everything else that comes to mind.

And finally, the notice at the end of the platform warning enginemen not to use the track to get to the Loco Yard. This doesn't refer to the poky little Loco Shed at Hazelhurst, but to the much more important Loco facilities which were based a couple of hundred yards up the track at Hazelhurst Junction.


	What do you do?