Dublo 3 Rail Layout

When I mentioned the thread on the crane, I was referring to the string type thread that operates the crane, not the screw type thread that holds it to the platform.

 

I just ordered the quarter and half straights and buffer stops that I need, as one more large radius terminal rail. I have gone a bit overboard with putting in supplementary feeds but I would rather have too many of them given that I'm using sectional track and relying on rail joiners that are between 55 and 70 years old to carry the current.

 

Obviously nothing is operational yet, but it's beginning to look like a layout:

 

Apart from a couple of sidings that I know will not present any problems, all the track is loosely in place, ready for clearance testing. I was initially going to use a Co-Bo with a Tri-ang Caledonian coach (about 2cm longer than a Dublo Super Detail coach) and also the "Canadian Pacific" Duchess (the cowcatcher sticks out more on curves than a normal Duchess bogie) hauling a Dublo breakdown crane.

 

In case you're wondering, the terminal rails in the photos are for supplementary feeds, not the main feeds. And I found another job to do - my Co-Bo needs a couple of new traction tyres.....

 

I had the "Canadian" Duchess running on the inner track and the clearances were pretty much OK (I haven't checked all the sidings yet) bar one. The problem is an electric point near a curve where the cowcatcher hits the side of the solenoid housing. It wouldn't be a problem with any other locomotives, so I'll try to solve it by simply moving the position of the point. Funnily enough, the same sort of thing happened to Meccano Ltd, when they were testing the City of Liverpool, the revamped and improved version of the Duchess, in the late 1950s prior to releasing it on the market(whether it was the prototype model, or an early production run model I'm not sure). It was going around, and the front steps (which had been made scale length) touched a point solenoid housing, the locomotive left the rails, and dived onto the floor. They shortened the steps and from then on there were no problems. Anyway, I digress.....

I did have a bit of difficulty getting the locomotive to run, due to what appeared to be an intermittent short circuit (or probably more likely, several of them) - with Dublo 3 rail, the most likely reasons are either one of the joiners for the third rail is bent and touches the tinplate track base or the third rail itself is bent (usually this means someone stepped on it in the dim distant past) and is touching the track base. It looks like my problems with conductivity were caused by both of these scenarios and, unfortunately, the track with the bent third rail turned out to be one that I don't have any spares of, so I've had to effect a repair - hopefully it will behave itself now.

In any case, I've decided that the testing for clearances can wait until all the electrics are working 100%. To this end, I've retired the Pacific to a siding and brought out that most unstoppable of all the Dublo engines - the 0-6-2T (I have ten of them). So far it has highlighted an issue with uneven rails at a diamond crossing, which turned out to be caused by a badly bent rail joiner (and I thought I had checked them all when I was putting the track pieces together. Here it is in action:

 

Everything seems in order as far as clearances are concerned. The next job is to go over all the track and double check the level of the centre rails at each track joint as it seems that they are not all even - then I'll have to wire up all the electric points, signals and isolating rails (sounds like that's at least a couple of months worth of work already).

I'll have to retouch or repaint my station buildings and signal cabin, as well as repainting all the platforms, as each one is a slightly different shade of that dirty cream that Hornby used. The scenery is the last thing I'm going to do.

I'll have to get myself another controller too - I now have a double track layout, but only one controller......

 

I had to give up on the idea of having a through station in addition to the terminus due to clearance issues. The one problem I had that I couldn't work around was the amount of overhang on locos coming out of the engine shed siding and hitting the island platform of the through station (the goods shed siding had the same issue, but that could have been resolved by moving the platform as far to the left as possible). I was expecting the "Canadian Pacific" Duchess having clearance problems when leaving in a forward direction, and was prepared to place a restriction on it so that would only be permitted to reverse out, but it turned out not to be the only one to have problems in that regard. One thing that surprised me was the amount of overhang from the cab of a reversing Duchess. If the board was 4' 6" wide rather than 4', I could have laid in an extra line but, as it was, I had a choice between having the platform edge around 4 or 5 scale feet from the track, getting rid of the turntable and engine shed, or getting rid of the station. Moving the platform further towards the edge so that only Olympic athletes would be able to board trains on the inner line looked ridiculous and also ate into the space I am using to mount switches for isolating rails and electric points and signals. Getting rid of the turntable and engine shed was not an option, as I want to have both (as does our older grandson), so I ended up opting for getting rid of the station - reluctantly, as it did give a bit more purpose to the running of the trains.

We had our grandsons over today, so I gave them a demonstration of where I've got up to so far. I have to watch the younger one though (he's 16 months old) - he waits until I'm not looking and then goes for the controller and turns up the speed (funny thing is that he knows which way to turn it - he's never turned the speed down). I'm not sure how you do a scale conversion of speed, nor do I really think I want to go there, but Silver King looked like it was going faster today than Mallard did in 1938.....

 

I do have rather more Duchesses than I can accommodate on the layout at one time though:

 

Clearance problems or not, there wasn't going to be sufficient room for that island platform anyway. The position it was in didn't leave me enough space to fit in the switches for electric points, signals, isolating rails, uncoupling ramps and TPOs. Now that the platform is not going in, I have more signals than I need. I was going to have colour lights for the departure roads of the terminal station and semaphores elsewhere. I think I'll change that to semaphores throughout. I'll also be putting in another TPO rail, so that I can operate TPOs on both the inner and outer tracks.

I've just gone through all my leftover track and pulled out the best bits so that, when it comes to fix the track down, I will examine each piece I have on the board and compare it to my leftovers, to be sure that my best track has been used throughout.

I'm also trying to work out the wiring scheme. I want to get it right the first time. The last thing I want to have to do is to muck about with the wiring after all the track is screwed down.....

 

Nothing is fixed down yet, nor has any scenery been added, but it's now at the stage where I will start screwing down the track and wiring up points and signals. I had to abandon my idea of having a second station due to clearance issues and decided to remove one siding, as it looked too cluttered even for a Dublo 3 rail layout. Here's where I'm up to now:

 

Now that I've almost finished all the painting I had to do, (internal woodwork on seven windows, touching up paintwork on the walls around the window frames, and repainting one wall) I can look at starting to take the layout to the next stage, by screwing down track and installing the wiring (so far I have just been using two wires connected to a terminal rail and have been changing electric points by hand. Also, I was short of switches for points and signals, although I have more than I need for isolating rails. I also decided that two manual uncoupling rails should be replaced with electric ones, as I have to reach over five signals to operate them. The arrival of a package today from John Winkley took care of all that.

Probably the best place in Sydney to get the wire would be Jaycar but, as the nearest one to me is in the Castle Hill Trading Zone, I'll wait until next week before I go. That part of Castle Hill is where all the home improvement/furnishings/hardware stores are, and it's very crowded on weekends.

By the way, I will be using the name Strathmore for the station, a name that I was going to use about three decades ago for the Caledonian and Highland railway layout I intended to build but never got around to doing anything other than building some rolling stock and buildings for.....