The 2FS mag came through the letterbox the other day. In it is an interesting article on amongst other things DIY DCC. I have rather been out of the loop with DCC as I have not had a layout to run it on and also I’ve not been in a club environment for a long time where they have been using it on a group layout. It struck me about this particular article was the simplicity of the set up, and the flexibility of it. One forgets that often we are bound in to proprietary systems to keep u buying additions or because they offer something that other manufacturers don’t.
Yes I know I can hear the people saying that it’s not that easy and that you can’t just plug a play. But let’s face it, if you have the bent to be interested in the electronic to that point you maybe able to fathom the depths of the diy digital. The fact that there is so much open source out there is testament to the back room hackers want to do something differently.
I for one fully support this and will be mashing up my Arduino and Raspberry Pi and teaching myself some programming stuff to control my little world, and with technology being so cheap, there’s never been a better time to do it!
Whilst walking in my local park on a beautiful sunny morning, with the glimmerings of spring seemingly around the corner my mind turned to which notty road to follow. Since returning back to my YouTube channel with renewed enthusiasm I have kind of left myself a bit of a quandary. Once the infrastructure, i.e. the shelves are finished and I have space to start building my first layout, I am faced with this choice. In the blue corner, is the current intended project. This is the lightweight foam board layout I started last year. In the red corner, is the new upstart. The project I committed to maybe last year or the year before, I can’t remember now, with my friend Richard. However not happy just to commit to a project that had a deadline I decided to pile on the pressure and come up with, in a blinding flash of inspiration, the plan to sign myself up to the same challenge. Now granted I am only making “some” track for my friend, but the fact that he is/will be waiting on me before he can really get on and to the scenic side has added a layer of pressure.
Now to my own folly. Around the same time as a visit to this part of the world, we happened to realise that well know Steam Loco Tornado was working the local heritage railway. This then triggered a conversation about the line, history, and my thoughts and ideas about it. Some of the plans I daydreamed about as a youngster were still in the back of my mind. For whatever reason this small rural tiny backwater line had me gripped from a young age. I have talked about this obsession in previous posts before but all talking and noodling just re-awoke it. Having brought every book on and tried to accumulate any pictures I could all with the end goal of one day producing a layout of it. Its not an original idea and there’s been a number of layouts in the model railway press over the years but its an itch that just needs scratching.
Bringing that back to the current day I am faced with the option of abandoning my “mini” idea or hurl myself headlong into this. What is this idea we are talking about? Well, it is the Diamond Jubilee Layout Challenge of the 2mm Association. The deadline is late June 2020 and by my calculation, that is about 4 months. Now as I have previously said I have a number of tasks in my room that I need to finish, like some coving to put up and some paint touch up to be able to get to the point where I can start anything. Realistically that is probably going to be into March by my current rate of progress at which point I have to decide which path to take for the YouTubes. There is, of course, a plan C option, which is to run the project alongside but to document the DJLC for later, after the event, as a kind of retrospective. I’m guessing that this is the sensible thing to do, but then when have I ever been sensible! Also, the thing that has been flickering through my mind recently is that I could also do an idea I have also had in my head for a long time, portraying a seaside station on the south coast of England. This was hatched in a moment of madness when I brought a 2 car DMU and that I got wheels turned down for 2FS. That has also been gnawing away at me to build.
I’m not sure whether one or the other of my ideas would harder to complete than the other so I guess it boils down to what makes the most sense. Given that I have the rolling stock for the latter it would seem more feasible to move that project forward. I seem to be talking myself into this, but like all the cliches about “no pain, no gain”, “cracking eggs to make omelettes” blah blah blah… It might be a fools’ errand, but there’s nothing like being under pressure to produce some results.
So now some doodles of the ideas I have and maybe some ideas will flow from them.
First Idea
A rural halt in the North of England in 2FS
Second Idea
A modern seaside town in 2FS
So with all this in mind, I have to sit myself down and work out how, when and if I need to do this. So in the coming weeks, I will follow up on this as this is more of a sounding board to myself which I enjoy being able to do as in other formats it is harder to formulate these ideas without having to project rather than reflecting on. My not sure an hour of babbling on about a concept, track plan and execution would be that interesting to many people. I also like that here on the blog I can have these ideas and they can percolate through time without having to have a definite end. Quite often ideas can last for decades.
However, as the years’ tick by it is becoming more apparent that these ideas need turning into reality. In some ways having a restricted space is limiting, but in conversation with a friend yesterday I said that it actually fits my character much better. When I look at my modelling inspirations, Rice, Gravett and Nevard, to mention a few, on the whole, their layout output is on the more compact size. But the level of captured reality is inspiring. Thus proving one doesn’t need huge amounts of space.
In the time I have and the space constraints (around two feet in length) I think I can achieve something in 10-11 weeks. Anyway, we’ll see how that pans out. As my grandfather said, “Never sit at the front and never volunteer for anything!” From a man who volunteered for Bomber Command during WW2.
In planning the track for the diorama I needed to find out what the height differentials were between the types I am looking at using. In order for the scenic section to look somewhat realistic I decided on using some Peco Code 55 FS Concrete Sleepered track and then was contemplating a mixture of 2mm Association track in two formats, the Easitrac moulded plastic sleepering for the straight sections of the yard and then just plain old PCB and coiled code 40 rail soldered construction as used in the test track. I was asked by a friend why didn’t I just use the Peco? My reply was that I had all of the stuff there to build after years of stock piling and it’s so much cheaper. Have you seen the price of curved Streamline switches? But the payoff to using one type is you don’t hat to do any elevation on the road bed.
Now how did I go about measuring the gap? With no depth gauge or other suitable instrument I opted for a rather rough and ready feeler gauge alternative using some styrene sheet with combinations of .10/.20/.30 thousand mm to increment the height until I got a match but rubbing finger over the joint. Yes I know its not scientific or an accurate measurement but for my purposes it is good enough. So with this method in place I ascertained that the PCB to Peco needs a .40thou lift and the PCB to Easitrack is just .10thou of a millimetre. This then raises the question of whether the Easitrack is worth it and I am going to ditch it in favour of just straight interval soldered track like the test track though I may actually measure out the gaps and not freestyle it like I did previously.
Lastly the question is what to do with underlay on the scenic section. I have two types of it one with a rubber backing and a standard old fashioned cork I need to get measurements for these to see how much adjustment the different tracks will need to accommodate in order to provide quiet running and a smooth transition between the two track types.
After a rather too long a hiatus in modelling terms due to life getting in the way I have managed to get back to the workspace. Yesterday I attended the NEAG meet that was primarily for getting people building and most of us built a 2mmFS Mineral Wagon kit and had the challenge to complete it by the end of the day. I didn’t get off to a good start by forgetting my soldering iron (I have at least 5 with the temp controlled one I was going to take got out ready the night before, and a craft knife) Thankfully one was provided for me and I cadged off my fellow AG member for the knife. It also realised/remembered that there are all sorts of little jigs and things like Blutac and hair clips. I have also been thinking about toolbox build and adapting it to my needs. I therefore haven’t moved ahead with this yet but I have make contact with local timber merchants who will supply and cut good quality Birch Ply along with carcassing timber for another project.
Unfortunately I didn’t manage to get that far but I certainly managed to get a good way on with it. The boost it provided has got be back to getting on with my modelling and certainly will keep momentum going as I got another kit to bring home with me to start as soon as I have finished the first one. In fact I have a rake of about 15-20 to build of these so once I have completed one to my satisfaction I will start batch processing.
This leads me on to what to run these on. Well I am going to try to build a foam board micro, a kind of inglenook keeping it simple!! but building some things that can be transferred to the ‘big’ layout. But less talking more doing! 🙂
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In planning the track for the diorama I needed to find out what the height differentials were between the types I am looking at using. In order for the scenic section to look somewhat realistic I decided on using some Peco Code 55 FS Concrete Sleepered track and then was contemplating a mixture of 
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