Friday 28 September 2007

A Rolling History of Rails in the Roof

My love of model railways began at Christmas 1980, with my first train set. A GWR 0-4-0T tank engine No."101", a "Texaco" tanker, "McVities" box van, and two trucks. "101" still runs today (all be it with a replaced motor). The set also came with a vinyl record narrated by Bernard Cribbins. He was doing some Hornby adverts on TV at the time I seem to remember...

At that time, I had to lay out the track on the carpet each time I wanted to play trains. I still remember coming home from school one day to find loads of track laid out on the floor, and my Dad having made a 6'x4' baseboard.

Here's a photo of me (aged 6 probably) with that layout. You can see "101" with the aforementioned wagons, and 0-6-0 Pannier Tank "2744" hauling a rake of three GWR "Chocolate & Cream" liveried coaches.


Another photo of the same layout here, showing GWR 4-6-0 "Hagley Hall" passing Swindon station on a passenger run, and 0-6-0 Pannier Tank "2744" in a siding awaiting its next turn of duty.

As time passed, the layout progressed. Birthdays and Christmas's brought more locos, wagons and accessories. We see the same baseboard here in 1986.You can see how my wagons and locos ended up in play-worn condition!


As my teenage years went on, I played less and less with the railway. I suppose I had "better" things to do with my limited money by then.
When I was sixteen, we moved house. I carefully wrapped and boxed my locos and stock, knowing one day I'd take up the hobby again.

Some ten years later in 2001, now married and with a house of our own, I decided to setup a permanent layout in the loft.

This photo, taken in June 2001, shows the task which awaited me; a few suitcases, and lots of fibre glass.The first job was to install better lighting (there was a single tungsten bulb), followed closely by boarding the floor. A few weeks later, the roof was fully boarded.

The next job was to design the layout. I didn't want to make any kind of start without having first planned how the layout was going to look. After taking extensive measurements, I purchased a copy of "Hornby Virtual Railway", and used that to plan the layout of the track.As a design tool, it was pretty good really. I'm sure there are better programs out there, but it did for my purposes. The only real problem with it was that the largest layout you could do was about 2x2 metres, meaning I had to split the layout into four chunks, called North, South, East and West. Imaginative eh? Fortunately, Hornby Virtual Railway 2 doesn't have this limitation.

Once I had a good design, it was a case of starting building in earnest. I decided to start with the one side of the loft that was brick wall (adjoining next-door), as this would be the easiest. This would be the "South" of the layout. I put up a length of baseboard 240cm long, and about 100cm wide, supported by cheap shelf brackets. Here's my first photo of that proud moment!


I then arranged the planned track on top to see how it looked, and to make sure it fitted well.This photo was taken in October 2002




I decided early on to use roofing felt for "ballast". (You'll soon learn one thing about me. I'm not big on scenery. I'm much more interested in operating the trains). Once the ballast was down, the track was pinned, motorised points installed, and a simple DC controller connected up.


Once I was happy with this part of the woodwork, I extended to the left...









and to the right of the first piece of board.










I then spent some time adding a bit more details. Like I said, I'm not big on scenery, but a few nice details here and there are always good.





I also experimented with some platform and yard lights - to good effect I think. This photo was taken in February 2003.






Next it was time to extend clockwise round to the "West" of the layout.This took quite some time, as there was a fair amount of woodwork involved, and I'm no carpenter! This piece of board was 2.4m x 1m.
You can see 37207 "William Cookworthy" and a MK1 coach testing the newly laid track. As you can see, the board is still propped up on a workbench - the "leg" isn't in place yet.
This picture was taken in June 2003.

More time passed (much more) and I have started to extend further round to the "North" of the layout.In June 2005, you can see 31270 with an engineers train testing the newly laid track. In the background is the West loco shed (minus the shed building!), with 08830, 56105, 50035, 25033 and 25056 residing.

I decided to put in place all the supporting woodwork for the "North" and "East" sections of the layout before fixing any baseboard or track. My aim was to make a complete circuit of track, simply resting on baseboard laid over this supporting woodwork. This would give much greater pleasure operating the layout while the long task of finishing the "North" and "East" sections of the layout were completed.

To this end, on 3rd July 2005, the circuit of track was completed. The aforementioned 31270 with engineers train was the first to make a complete loop, closely followed by 50035 "Ark Royal" with a passenger service.


More to follow...

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