JSRR : Juwair Sajour Rail Road

Well, it is about time I pulled my finger out and got back into some modelling..., or I should say layout building.
As some of you have read elsewhere on the forum, the layout I built Jack (my eldest son) will be growing. You can read up on how I got to the final track plan here : http://p1mrc.com/p1mrc/view_topic.php?id=632&forum_id=7 As usual, some minor changes may creep in during the build.

The name for the layout, Juwair & Sajour Rail Road comes from the first two letters of my two sons full names, (Jack William...) Ja Wi Ru = Juwair and (Jody Samuel...) Jo Sa Ru = Sajour. With a little rearranging of each of the two pairs of six letters, the railway (rail road ) name was created. I must say it took some deliberating to come up with the rail road name !

The original layout, Jay Dubyew Nth Yard (http://p1mrc.com/p1mrc/view_topic.php?id=632&forum_id=7) will pretty much stay as it is, well, sort of. I will be removing a small section of straight track at the left hand end (fiddle yard end) and replacing this with a long wye point. This will enable better operation in the long run.

So, if you haven't read anything form the links above, this is what the proposed railway will look like... Each square represents 12" x 12". The wye point in the lower right hand corner of the plan is situated on the existing layout (Jay Dubyew Nth Yard).



The short line to the wood chip loader will be on a rising gradient and the loop, wood chip loader and log siding/head shunt will be 50mm higher than the lower line that runs along the front edge of the baseboard.

Baseboards were constructed back in late August... They consist of 3mm MDF on 42mm x 19mm pine frame. 3mm MDF doesn't seem very thick, nor durable I hear you say... There is a very good reason for choosing this... I'll let you read on to find out why I have chosen 3mm MDF...



...and now they have had legs added and the baseboards arranged in the spare room... Again, 42mm x 19mm pine was used for this.., and yes, it is pretty sturdy !



Above : Looking in from the door way...

Below : A view from the opposite side of the room...



Below : My youngest son getting into the baseboard assembly.



Overall, it isn't a huge extension, but the total surface area of the baseboards have grown from six square feet to just over 27 square feet !

The baseboards have been built 50mm lower than the existing Jay Dubyew basboard.



...and they have been all leveled off perfectly !



50mm thick pink insulation foam will be used to bring the levels up to the existing layout. This will enable me to sculpt thescenery down in some places, rather than build everything up from a flat baseboard.

The baseboards have been made as individual baseboards for easy maneuvering. Station Road Baseboards 'cabinet maker dowels' have been used to correctly locate the base boards with 2 1/2" x 3/8" bolts and wing nuts, clamping the boards together.

I am waiting on a few items from the US before I can continue on with the build.

Cheers, Gary.

 

Thanks Pete.

I have to correct you there Pete, that isn't Jack helping me put the base boards together, but my youngest son Jody... Jay Dub is Jack's layout, but this extension is named after both my boys.

Cheers, Gary.

 

Recently I posted up pics of my latest acquisitions. One of these was a PRR hopper kit.



To my surprise, Jack said he would like to put the kit together, whilst I cleaned up some of the sprue on one of my bridge kits.

So out with the instructions, a cutting mat, a knife, files, glue and a few simple pointers from me and he was away !







The bogies will go on tomorrow as we have rubber bands around the hopper and floor section, holding it together whilst the glue dries.

Jack told me that he enjoyed putting the kit together so I asked if he would like to do more, perhaps one each couple of weeks and he said "yep, that would be good..." Made me smile !

Follow up pic tomorrow of the completed wagon. Now I just need to order a couple more kits to tie him over !

Cheers, Gary.

 

One completed kit... "Woo hoo...!"

The couplings that come with the kit are useless so we put Kadee No.5s on the model.



Cheers, Jack & Gary.

 

Funny you should say that Chris, because this coming weekend that is exactly what he'll be doing with a little guidance from me.

I bet you can guess who wants his own tool kit and model kits for Christmas...??

Cheers, Gary.

 

Wow, hard to believe that I haven't posted anything for nearly a month ! Most of you must think I'm just lurking in the back ground !!

So, what have I done ?? Not a lot really...

Whilst away I visiting my good friends in the UK, I had my house painted which meant that the layout boards had to be dismantled, to allow the painters access to the walls. On my arrival back home and after about 250 hours of sleep, I needed to get the house back into order, before I could start on any modelling.

Finally After the few days at home and the following week then back at work, finally I could get back into modelling. My first priority, well second actually, but I opted for this instead, was to construct the two deck girder bridges I purchased from the good ol' US of A. These kits are from the Micro Engineering Company range of kits, and believe me, the detailed kit parts are pretty good, although a little on the lighter side, or I should say 'flimsy' side of the equation.

So, the kit...



In the kit are four girder sections which need to be glued in pairs. Where they join together is almost invisible once done. All the other parts, apart from a few castings (bridge shoes), are all on sprues which need to be carefully cut off and out.



As you can see above, the lateral bracing (zig zag bits) comes on a sprue with the cross bracing (X bracing) and the long rivet plate. Altogether there are the 4 x girder halves, 4 x lateral bracing, 9 x X braces, 4 x long rivet plates, 6 x guard timbers and 2 x pieces of code 83 rail with correct sleeper spacing. Rail joiners are also included in the kit.



The long rivet plate, lateral bracing and x bracing all removed from the sprue is shown above.



After gluing the two girder halves together and allowing to cure overnight, the lateral bracing has to be glued to one side of each of the girder sections, as shown above.



The X bracing is next to go on, but only to one of the girders only.



Above. One of the girders complete with lateral and cross bracing the other with lateral bracing only.

Both these pieces now need to be merged into one. I found this to be the trickiest part of assembling the model, that is after cutting all the parts off the sprue and removing any excess sprue by filing down !



Electrical tape is your best friend for holding the two halves together. As you can see in the above pic, you can't always get a flush finish on the lateral bracing. This was rectified after I allowed the whole girder cure for about an hour.



Above, the lateral bracing after it had been rectified. Something you may notice in the pic above is the sprue marks and mould lines on the girder sections. These need to be removed.

Below shows one of the girders that has been sanded using fine wet & dry paper. The other bridge girder is there for comparison.



Whilst all these parts were curing overnight during the build, I decided to paint the guard timbers and the sleepers (on the track that was supplied). I still need to paint the rails, but that can wait until I'm ready to paint all the rails. This will be one section of the whole layout where there will be no ballast what so ever, so a half decent, but weathered look to the timbers/sleepers is needed.



Well, that's as far as I have gotten on this kit build. One thing I do need to consider is the depth of the bridge girders. The depth is 31.5mm or 1 1/4". This only leaves me 18mm to the top of the baseboard as the track will be laid on 50mm of insulation foam.

So, now I need to consider dropping a section of the baseboard lower where the bridge will be or have a lower slung bridge above water level...??

Decisions, decisions....

Cheers, Gary.

 

The baseboards have been reinstated into the railway room and the insulation foam has been cut to size and mounted.

The insulation foam does create the huge mess that polystyrene does when cut. As can be seen below, very little mess is actually made when cutting with a hand saw. Gormo did give me his original hot wire foam cutter, but this insulation foam is 4' x 2' and the hot wire cutter could not be used due to its size.



The cut foam is left reasonably smooth with a little rough texture, but this will be hidden towards the back of the layout and any exposed edges at the front will eventually have a MDF facia.



All of the baseboard has been covered with the 50mm thick insulation foam.



I used 'Gorilla Glue' to secure the foam to the MDF baseboard. The Gorilla Glue isn't cheap, around the $20.00 for a 236ml bottle, but from what I have learnt, it's the duck's guts, the bee's knees of adhesives for this type of material. The glue was applied to the baseboard (as shown below) and the insulation foam was given a light spray via an atomiser bottle, before being stuck down. This is what is required when using this adhesive.



Several weights were placed on top of the foam, this included books, records (yes records !) and any other heavy items I could find in the house ! The piece of foam under the window has not been glued yet as this will be cut to allow a river with the twin bridges.



Whilst this was curing (option allowance is 24 hours), I started on the removal of a section of track on Jay Dubyew Nth Yard. Luckily I had some rail joiners along the track where I had an insulated section if I was to operate this layout on DC. I just had to de-solder the droppers to this piece of track.



...and the lifting began...



Some extra scenery had to be removed to allow a right had point to be installed.



A clean section of base board is now ready for a point.



THis point is a damaged second hand one I used to measure distances with. I need to use a right hand point rather than a wye so that I can use the Jay Dub section of the layout for exhibitions, utilising the original fiddle yard/sector plate which aligns with the straight section of the point.



After about 4 hours, I lifted the weights off the layout and drew out my track plan. As you can see, there were a few changes along the way to improve the flow-ability. I was going to use a double slip but in the end, it limited my operations so I reverted back to the original design, with a few minor changes... And not one set track point was used, which the original plan had !!



Well, that's it so far as I won't secure any track until the adhesive has had a solid 24 hours and I have secured the area under the window once I'm happy with the depth between the bottom of the bridges and the water surface...

Cheers, Gary.

 

Thanks Chris. I checked out how well the foam has stuck and I don't think I can move it without upsetting the baseboard legs ! It certainly has bonded well.

As for the F1 Thin Controller, I do like the 1960's era of the sport, when men were man and when they had huge testicles... I have meet a few drivers of that era, Jack Brabham, Jacky Stewart, Stirling Moss, John Surtees, Alan Jones, Mark Webber, Takuma Sato, Bruno Senna, Hulkenberg and a few other drivers that are not in the game now, but have driven for teams in the last 10 years or so. Then there are the Aussies that entered but didn't hang around like Larry Perkins, Warwick Brown, Tim Schenken...

Jack Brabham is probably my all time hero. Aussie drivers give 110% in what they do in a largely European sport. The likes of Jones, Webber and Ricciardo prove that ! To be honest, both my boys are named after drivers. My eldest son is Jack and my youngest son is Jody....

Cheers, Gary.

 

Whilst I have been making waves on my new exhibition layout, this layout has taken a back seat, well until last night ! Another reason why it has taken a back seat was that I had been waiting on three sets of curved points from Hattons. Typically the Christmas rush may have slowed the postage times down, but when I got home on Friday, they were sitting at my front door...

Last night was reasonably warm in Sydney (much like today ), and I could not sleep. After pulling up all the track on Kelly Bray, I had everything at hand to start laying track, so I did. Never got back into bed until 4.00am !!

I was intending to remove some of the webbing between the sleepers, on two of the left hand curved points to tighten up the radius, but in the end I chose not to. I started the track laying from the Jay Dubyew end of the layout and branched out, pardon the pun... I almost used all the flexi track from Kelly Bray, leaving only about 4' of flexi track over. Mind you I have not built the wood chip branch line yet as I will require a few new lengths of flexi.

So, this brings me to here, this point...





As can be seen above, the dropper wires are those that were used on Kelly Bray, so I just took advantage of them, rather than solder up new ones. Some track pieces will require new droppers. Not one insulation rail joiner was used, as I wanted to test run the layout after laying it all out.

Tony (Dr Tony) did ask in the thread earlier how I was to pin the track down. The simple answer is 1" nails... These were pushed into the insulation foam every now and then to keep the radius of the track consistent. The nail (flat head nail) is pushed into the foam right up against the rail, using the head as a clamp within the rail web. The track will eventually be glued down with PVA once the droppers are installed.



Just to make sure it all worked, I ran an engine....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oii20bXkyrg



...then I had a play using the 'hand of god' to uncouple the wagons...

Cheers, Gary.

 

That's a great pic Chris.

I'll be using my two deck girder bridges on the open section seen in the images above. Still lots to do before I get anywhere near the scenery !

Cheers, Gary.