Some very good progress inside the Trainbarn this last month. The 'table' for the Tri-ang 00 layout is now completely finished, which has been quite a big job.
In the post from last month this 'construction' was just three support sides, now it's finished! I have copied the covers of several Tri-ang catalogues that I own and had them block-mounted and it is these that can be seen around the base. I have nearly all the catalogues now, but the problem in our area is that no-one does block-mounting. Eventually though, all the covers prior to the Hornby era will be mounted around the base.
As you can see there is some track appearing on the table! I am working to a basic plan, from one of Tri-ang's track plan books, but much expanded. I am also squeezing in some Minic Motorway roads so I need to optimise the space available, particularly the width. Each piece of track needs to be cleaned and inspected carefully prior to being laid, as most of it has been used before and it is all at least 50 years old. I am aiming initially just to get one circuit fully complete so that I can run trains properly, and then build on that as time and track become available. Needless to say though that trains have already been run, for testing purposes!
With this year rapidly coming to a finish I've called 'tea' on any further layout building for the year, but will use the remaining time to finish off the many small jobs on the Trainbarn building itself. I am really happy to be able to finally get a lot of my collected Tri-ang items out of their boxes and onto the layout. I think it will be a very interesting layout to run and view once it's done!
A quick update from yesterday's progress in the barn. I've been working on the parts for the base of my next layout - Tri-ang OO - and yesterday, with the parts for three sides complete, I couldn't resist putting them together in the place that they'll live. That also clears my improvised work area for side number four!
The photos aren't great quality, having been just snapped on my phone, but here's the new layout as seen from the entry archway.
And looking in a different direction with the TT layout in the background. Incidentally, the TT layout has been progressing well, with the main station largely complete as regards all the required accessory items.
As my layouts don't need to be portable I like the bases to be fully enclosed, so I basically use house stud-wall techniques to build them, and then sheeted with wallboard or, in this case, plywood. Most things that I build are massively and excessively strong, and these bases are no exception! Once side number four is in place I'll build a simple table top on the base, similar to what is known as the L-girder technique. Side four will have a small doorway for access to the electrics and, most likely, some useful storage space.
Seeing something so substantial come together like this was immensely satisfying! I'm looking forward very much to the completion of the table-top and the start of tracklaying and the placement of accessories.
Each system of model railways has it's own distinct character, and this is what I hope to show with each of the layouts in the Trainbarn. With the Tri-ang TT layout that I'm focusing on at the moment the locomotives and rolling stock are mostly smaller sized versions of Tri-ang's OO system, however the buildings and accessories are completely different. Apart from the smaller size it's these features that really identify this as a Tri-ang TT layout.
This iconic Tri-ang TT art-deco style station arrived today, and I had great fun placing it on the layout. It's approximately 60 years old, virtually 'as-new' and didn't cost an arm and a leg. Some TT items are quite expensive, but the station is relatively common, so you can just wait until you find one in the right condition and a favourable price. My (invisible) TT passengers are still in danger of falling off the non-track side of the platform, so the search continues for the attractive platform walls. Also, the station remains anonymous, so one or more seat units with the station name needs to be sourced. There was a considerable choice of station names, I'm not fussy at the moment, whatever I can find first!
Being a fairly short-lived system there aren't the wide choices of other non-train accessory items that there are with OO scale. Wherever possible I try to only incorporate items that would have been available during the period the trains were being produced, which with British TT is quite limiting! Researching old magazines to learn what was around in the appropriate period is great fun, but very time consuming! Then you have to actually find the item! For example, TT scale cars from that era are very few, but some of the smaller Matchbox and Minix cars can be used successfully.
I've heard many retirees make the comment that they wonder when they ever had time to go to work! While I'm not exactly retired as such, I've been incredibly busy these last few months, and find myself wondering the same thing. Lots of things have been happening on many fronts, but the most relevant and interesting for this blog is of course the trains!
For many years I've been planning to build various layouts for different train systems when the space to do so became available. One of these is the TT gauge system introduced by Tri-ang in Britain in 1957. This was not really planned to be my 'first' layout in the Trainbarn, but the more I thought about it the more I realised 'why not'! I have collected bits a pieces for this over the years but didn't really know what I had or what I still needed for this collection. The obvious answer was to build a layout, which immediately showed up the gaps.
Tri-ang introduced TT, which stands for table-top, as a small sibling of it's very popular OO gauge system. OO is 4mm to one foot scale, whereas Tri-ang TT is 3mm to one foot. At the time it was released it was the smallest commercial scale, but was soon usurped by N scale which is smaller again. The advantage of TT is that you can build a more comprehensive layout in the same space as compared to OO, or build a basic layout in a smaller space, ie a table-top. Combined with the rise of N scale and the fact that many Tri-ang dealers disliked having to stock two complete systems instead of one, sales of TT soon declined. It was finally abandoned by Tri-ang in 1968. Incidentally, TT is still very popular indeed in the eastern part of Germany, though to a slightly smaller scale.
So, here is a 'classic' Tri-ang TT layout, built on a sheet of plywood 1200mm x 2400mm, though I would've preferred 4' x 8'!!
Of course it's not finished, how boring would that be!! But it's a very good start and I can clearly see what I still need to look out for. It is basically two ovals joined by points and will eventually have lots of sidings and an engine shed to display as much as possible of the TT range of rolling stock.
These little trains are amazing, they're so simple and well engineered. I give everything a good check over and lubrication as necessary and they just go! And go, and go. I really like this Southern Region 'Spam Can'! It needs some more green carriages, the search is on! One thing about Tri-ang TT generally that I'm finding is that being so shortlived - dare I say 'unpopular', there are lots of items available in either new or very good condition. Many items seem not to have been played with very much.
For example this set:-
It has been carefully used, but not too much.
This 'Jinty' tank loco was probably the most common loco in the TT range.
The layout has been great fun to build and I've learnt a few lessons from it that I can apply to other layouts. It is obviously still a work in progress, though even as it is now it's great fun to operate! The contra-rotating trains don't seem to miss each other by very much on the parallel tracks, particularly the curves, but that's how it was designed.
As I develop this layout in the coming months I'll post some updates, meanwhile a start has been made on layout number two!
Now that the Trainbarn is effectively finished I'm starting to install some of the 'permanent' displays, which of course I have dreamed of doing for so long! The first is in the entry area and is what I call the 'Scale and Gauge' display. Long term readers will have seen a preview of this display quite some time ago, but now it's complete!
The most recent addition to the display is the print on canvas showing the iconic image of the Santa Fe Super Chief, and I think this photo goes very well with the collection of locomotives. I have collected a Santa Fe 'warbonnet' F 7A diesel locomotive in every model railroading scale, from Z to G scale. In front of each loco and track is the scale's name, the scale proportion and the track gauge, the intention being to help clarify the often confusing terms and sizes for someone new to the hobby. The photo of this display was kindly made by my son-in-law, who is a professional photographer and is way better than my usual snapshots!
On the far left of the picture above you can see a piece of OO/HO track (the same gauge- 16.5mm) with two British Brake Vans on it, which at first sight might seem a bit out of place. Not so! One is the 'normal' British OO scale (4mm/one foot) and one is the much less common (in Britain) HO scale (3.5mm/one foot), both running on the same gauge track, and the difference in size is very noticeable.
Here's a closer view from a different angle showing the sizes of the locos more clearly. The smallest is Z scale, then N, TT, HO, S, O, 1 and G scale.
It is extremely exciting setting up these displays at last, which I've been planning for many years!
Well, it's taken a bit longer than expected, but the carpet in the main display area is now completely finished and it looks great!
We deliberately chose to do similar 'panorama' type shots, before and after. Given the large area, the carpet layers chose to go with a commercial underlay glued to the concrete, and the carpet glued to the underlay, to prevent any movement or wrinkles. It feels nice and soft, and reduces the 'echo' significantly, which I'm pleased about.
Let the layout-building begin!
After a monumental effort, and my son-in-law coming to the rescue, all the painting is finished in the main area! Which is just as well as the carpet layers are arriving tomorrow to start, naturally enough, laying the carpet! 'We' also had to clean the slab as thoroughly as possible as apparently the underlay needs to be bonded to a nice clean slab. And it's done, finished, complete!!
The only other thing remaining to be done in this area is to stain and install the architrave around the two windows and then start building the layouts!!
Obviously I'm very excited that finally this stage has been reached. I'll post some more photos once the carpet is down.
As another month starts to wind down I can say that I'm quite pleased with the progress here at Whistlestop. Usually February is a 'mowing month' with the grass growing as you watch it, but it's been abnormally dry here and very hot, so not a lot of growth. Which is just as well as we had a ferocious storm late on Christmas day here last year which brought down vast numbers of trees and branches, making it necessary to tidy up before mowing any area. I made a start, but it'll take months- and a bigger chainsaw- to catch up.
The focus therefore has been on getting the Barn finished, well, at least the main display area.
The only painting still required is on some of the wallboard, the chair-rail and skirting, otherwise it's done!! What a mammoth job it's been, but I'm super happy with the end result. I have the carpet booked to go in here soon too, which will make an enormous difference. And once that's in the layout building can begin! I've waited a lot of years to get to this point, and so I couldn't be happier!
This is the area that the Standard Gauge layout will go, and it'll be the first of several layouts that I'll build. It will also no doubt be the most spectacular! Standard Gauge is a very rare size in Australia, I'm sure it's quite unusual in it's home country- the US- now too.
There are still endless jobs to do, some big, some small, but we're certainly getting closer to completion. I'm sure though that as most railway layouts are never really completed, so it will be also with the building housing them!
I'm very glad indeed to be getting nearer to completion though!
As the work on the Barn is getting ever closer to being finished I'm giving more than a little thought to the design and construction of the layout tables. The track designs are pretty much confirmed, but there are always details to be decided upon. Many people these days, of course, are using computer software to design railway layouts, and I'm sure there are some very clever programs available for people who like that sort of thing. Being very much 'old school' myself though, there's nothing better than getting out a fresh sheet of paper and ruler and pencil (and eraser) and drawing what I have been mentally picturing.
Sometimes though there's no substitute for getting out track and accessories and putting them together to see how they fit, and this is what I decided to do on this cold and rainy afternoon. There were two things that I wanted to check, firstly if the magnificent #128 Station Terrace would fit easily between two parallel tracks, and the answer was yes! And secondly the corners of the table. The corners will be cut off at 45 degrees as they tend to be just wasted space, but also to allow easier access around the table. The question was how much to cut off, and this has now been decided.
Of course it was great fun getting out all these fantastic bits and pieces! The thing I really hate though is putting them all away again. One day, soon, that won't be necessary!
