Pontesbury Sidings - Track and energy....

As I mentioned before I'm using 00 (1:76) scale and 9mm track to represent pretty accurately the 2'4" narrow guage of the real Snailbeach & District Railways (by the way the company itself couldn't make up its mind whether it was the Snailbeach & District Railways or the Snailbeach District Railway - they appear to have used both).  

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. 

The making of Dennis

The Snailbeach  Railways wasn’t exactly flush with locomotives – it only ever owned 6 throughout its 80 odd year history. The longest lived was its first - a second hand cast-off 0-4-2ST from a colliery named Belmont – of which there are no surviving photos. If there was a loco which is synonymous with the SDR its the third loco Dennis, this was purchased new from Bagnall in 1906 and named after Sir Henry Dennis the SDR’s Engineer and Director. It was an 0-6-0T of monumental proportions for 2’4” gauge; Dennis’ size tells us that the SDR thought it had more in common with its 2’6” gauge near neighbour at Welshpool, than the 2’ gauge railways of North Wales. 

Dennis was a direct replacement for the SDR’s second loco Fernhill a Scottish made 0-6-0ST of similar size showing that there was a clear purchasing policy for hefty locos. When Fernhill was bought in 1881 traffic was heavy in both directions (smelted lead trains of 100t downhill) and similar amounts of coal for the mines and smelter back up grade. By the time Dennis came along however, the up grade traffic was dwindling, and quarry products were surpassing lead ores as the main mineral traffic. The size of these loco’s appears to have been mainly required for downhill braking effort on unfitted (i.e. no continuous train brake) mineral trains.

Dennis had a short but brutal working life with very little maintenance, by 1920 she was out of service, and horses worked the empties back up hill for the final year of the old company. Disassembled for a major overhaul when Col Stephens bought the railway in 1923, the work was never completed and she was eventually scrapped in the 1930s. 1920s photos of the partly disassembled loco next to the Snailbeach shed show how much bigger she was than the reguaged 2’ gauge locos Col Stephens bought to re-power the line. 

The model

A 00 scale (1:76) white metal kit for Dennis has been around since the 1960s made by GEM - the range is currently sold by Lytchett Manor Models but are definitely beginning to look a bit dated. Typical of early 009 kits this required an N gauge donor chassis to complete – in this case from a Graham Farish Pannier tank. The chassis is reasonably close in terms of wheelbase, but is of course inside framed. 

I purchased a part complete Dennis kit for my first attempt at building part of the Snailbeach in the early 1990s; it must have been at least 10 years old even at that point. The early Farish chassis either run well – or they don’t; with no apparent reason for the difference. Some say its all in the motor brush spring pressure – who knows; I got a good one.

Despite the fact it ran reasonably well, the inside frames just looked horrible on what was supposed to be an outside framed loco. So when I started thinking about having a second go at modelling the Snailbeach rebuilding Dennis to a more prototypical appearance ended up being the catalyst for the whole project.

For a start I ordered up a set of BR class 08 shunter wheels from Graham Farish’s spares department (by now part of the Bachmann group). These have a much finer wheel standard than the 1980s era models, and have plastic axle and crank extensions for outside frames; this makes the modern 08 chassis a go to source for 009 steam loco mechanisms.  The wheelset comes assembled and is not a direct replacement for the old pannier tank one - the connecting rods need to be swapped, and the main drive gear on the centre axle is different (a smaller nylon spur gear on the modern 08, whereas its a brass worm gear on the 1980s pannier chassis). Swapping the rods was straightforward enough, but the gear was a more technical challenge. 

The nylon spur gear on the modern wheelset is off-set and supported by an central boss cast into the axle, this had to be removed to make room for the brass worm gear to fit. To do this I used a gear puller to remove one wheel and then the nylon gear. Next I placed the wheelset in a mini-drill to make an improvised lathe and “turned” the boss off with a jeweller's file. I then carefully tapped the brass worm gear into place, and reassembled the wheelset using a quartering tool.

The chassis then needed a set of dummy outside frames. I fabricated these out of styrene sheet and glued them to the chassis block with CA.

Power for the wheels

The old style Farish chassis are nearly impossible to convert to DCC due to the bottom motor brush being integral with the frame (and yes there are ways to do them, but the results aren’t always good). Instead I thought I would experiment with “dead rail” – that is no power to the rails but on-board battery power with radio control. I thought this might improve slow running – as rail pickup is usually the problem at slow speeds in smaller scales. Li-po batteries and r/c receivers are now small enough to make this possible even in such a small scale. I initially set Dennis up with a DT (DelTang) Rx63 r/c receiver and 9v inverter to boost the 3.7v output of the single re-chargeable battery to a voltage suitable for the motor. 

The boards are not difficult to wire in, but a certain amount of reading is required first. I found the UK based Micron RC website very helpful.  I tested this installation a few times - operation was slow and smooth, but I found that even with the largest Li-po battery (70mAH 50C) I could get inside the model, there was only 15-20 minutes run time. This may well have been improved with a modern low resistance motor drawing less current or requiring a lower voltage than the old 3 pole open frame type. A second battery pack running in tandem would have also lengthened run time – possible in HO or larger scales but not in 009. I removed the r/c gear and reverted to conventional 12v DC analogue control via the rails. This decision meant that Pontesbury Sidings was to be my first conventional analogue layout I have built in 20 years.

With a body to match

The whitemetal body kit was entirely disassembled, and stripped of various layers of previous paint, the parts cleaned of glue, filed for a better fit then re-assembled with CA. Parts of inside of the kit under the boiler and tanks were trimmed back to make way for the r/c gear. Even with this metal gone the kit remains very heavy for this scale, so no problems with tractive effort here! 

I replaced the cab roof with a new one fabricated from brass sheet, installed “turned” cylinder lubricators and fabricated injectors with control rods. Where areas of rivet detail had been damaged due to paint removal I added this back in with Archer 3D decals. The body then got a coat of primer, followed by an apple green colour (mixed from Revell and Tamiya paints) on the cab, tanks and boiler, red buffer beams and black smoke box and below the running plate. The tanks and cab got a squirt of gloss varnish, and then Fox Transfers lining decals were installed. I always use Microscale Micro Sol to settle decals it melts them onto the surface and providing they are on a shiny surface gets rid of any film silvering. 

Once dry I gave the body a coat of Testors Dullcoat (I won’t use any other matte clear varnish), then I added hand rails, and etched maker's and name plates by Narrow Planet. The final steps were a driver figure (Masterpiece by Falcon Figures – the manufacturer doesn't have website but you can get them here, or direct from the manufacturer at UK shows or mail order) and some weathering using Lifecolor pigments and inks. 

Underneath Pontesbury Sidings

One of the most appealing aspects of the model railway/railroad hobby is the range of skills it helps you develop. From research and draughtsmanship, woodworking and electrical, electronics and computing, paint and artistry, even the core model construction part of the hobby means working with a range of materials (wood, resin, plastic, metal, plaster) and therefore a range of workshop skills to match. There is always a new skill to learn, technique to master or new product to try out.

I must admit that woodworking is not my strongest skill set, but still wood underpins the majority of model railway layouts, so you need to know some basics. Wood does have advantages: it is widely available from hardware and builders’ stores, its not expensive, and not that difficult to work – on top of that in our environmentally conscious world its from a sustainable resource. Pontesbury sidings is no different, indeed it was designed to fit in as the middle shelf of a wall mounted rack. 

The base is 12mm exterior grade birch-faced hardwood ply shelf, 6ft (1.8m) long by 1ft (300mm) wide. With a narrow-gauge prototype its amazing how much you can fit in this modest space – without having to resort to the unrealistic “rabbit warren” beloved by many 009 modellers. 

After fitting the shelf to the wall mounted brackets it soon became obvious that the ends were going to droop without some stiffening. Many would have added a dimensional lumber frame, but I wanted a smooth base to slip on and off of the shelf brackets; instead I added a stiffening piece (a ply strip) along the back of the layout. This would later help mounting the backscene.

Pontesbury sidings were raised about the natural ground level on a substantial earth embankment – the railway needed to pass above the main road between Pontesbury and Minsterley (now the A488), and also end up being raised above the GWR standard gauge so it could tranship its main loads by gravity. I created this embankment by using 12mm ply risers which were glued to the shelf – clamping these while gluing gives a much better bond. Holes were drilled in the risers for threading wiring before the track bed of 6mm ply was glued and screwed on top. This all added to the structural strength of the layout. 

Not quite the quickest layout baseboard I’ve built, that was from extruded foam, but not far off. So far so good. 

Next time – I’ll look at track laying