The SDR used light flat bottomed rail spiked to timber sleepers throughout its history. As much of this time was spent scrimping and saving, and there were no passengers (at least officially) to please, track maintenance was the bare minimum. Its documented in the Col Stephens era that when one rail head started to wear or shear the rail was often simply turned around to use the other head as the running rail - so they could get the maximum life out of each length of rail. Far from the prying eyes of the Railway Inspectorate speeds were low and derailments frequent - especially of the badly re-gauged Baldwins. Photos show that weeds, soil and cinders were holding the track together - but that's why we modellers like narrow gauge railways, it's lots of great "character" to model.
To model this dilapidated state I used Peco 009 "crazy" track throughout Pontesbury Sidings using their standard 009 medium radius turnouts. There's nothing fancy about how the track was laid its just glued with PVA directly to the ply surface - no need for a cork road bed to simulate a yard of washed ballast here! Ballast, or rather dirt is up and over the sleepers in a lot of places.
I did spend some time painting the track, and nothing looks worse in my mind than shiny plastic sleepers and un-weathered rail. Before ballasting I painted the sleeper a dark muddy brown colour with a mix of low cost acrylic paints designed for school use. I then picked out some sleepers with a series of lighter colours to simulate newer untreated or very old weathered sleepers. I contemplated adding etched brass joint bars at appropriate intervals, but decided that it just wasn't worth the effort. So I next painted the rail sides a series of different rust colours, before giving everything a dry brush of a light grey - it highlights everything.
Then came ballast and dirt. For the highly compact areas like the transhipment wharf I initially experimented with DAS modelling clay, as recommended by Chris Nevard. I am really fond of Chris' work and can stare at one of his micro layouts for quite some time even if nothing is moving. In this case I wasn't 100% keen on the result of the smeared DAS and ended up doing a lot of blending with a variety of paints and granular materials - my favorites being sieved garden soil and coal ash from the household fireplace. I find with all loose ballast and ground texture materials they need to be pre-wetted before applying dilute white glue. I use rubbing alcohol or meths for this as these break the surface tension but allow the the dilute PVA glue dry completely clear. Using water as the wetting agent with or without a drop of detergent gives everything an unrealistic shiny sheen. Water is also much more likely to make very fine materials (such as soil and ash) to go into a ball, which you really want to avoid.
For the standard gauge sidings I used Peco's new range of code 75 bull-head rail, it represents the chaired rail used extensively in the UK at the time much better than even their regular code 75. I contemplated making it operational - but ultimately decided that it was to be just cosmetic. I was therefore able to weather the rail and chairs appropriately - nothing's shiny in a weedy old siding on a branch line!
The layout is wired as one section with an isolating section only on the rear track of the loop. Its intended that the layout is run like the proptype, as "one engine in steam". It would lend itself to easy DCC conversion - but due to the way Dennis is built everything is currently analogue 12v DC and I have no plans to convert any of my 009 locos. I have built a home made power supply using an older Gaugemaster transformer and some other components, and mounted them in a floor based plastic enclosure. Two 16v AC feeds are brought up to the layout - one feeds the point motors and uncoupling magnates and the other goes to the 6 pin controller socket. I use two interchangeable Gaugemaster hand held controllers – a model W (best for the modern coreless motored locos) and a model UF mounted in a handheld enclosure for Dennis (which needs the feedback controller to run slowly with its old open frame 3 pole motor). DO NOT use feedback controllers with modern locos like the Bachmann Baldwins unless you remove the PCB and speaker, even then the coreless motors don't like feedback much. I have mounted a momentary contact push button in the controllers so I can fire the uncoupling magnets - these are routed via the spare "pair" in the 6 pin socket. At the moment I have used Peco uncoupling electro-magnets designed for N scale. I don't think these have quite enough "umph" and may swap them for a different brand; for home use I frequently just uncouple by hand with a small screwdriver.
All 5 points are fired by Peco solenoid point motors attached directly to each turnout through the cast in mounting holes. This requires a slightly larger rectangular hole cut in the trackbed and a piece of thick paper is laid under the turnout to retain ballast with the point motor "legs" punched through it and into the locating holes. All the points are switched through momentary switches on a simple panel in the staging area. Two of the points at the far end of the loop were originally wired to fire together as a a crossover, but I had no end of trouble with one motor not firing properly in one direction that I ended up separating them onto different circuits. There are frog polarity switches mounted to all turnouts - both varieties of Peco accessory switch have been used due to space issues under the tackbed.
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