Curzon Street Station

[Direct Rail Services]

With the closure of the Dungeness Branch, Ive set the wheels in motion to build my next project - Curzon Street Station.

Curzon Street Station will have five platforms with enough length for x2 Class 170 (3Car) Turbostar units or x1 Class 221 (5Car) Super Voyager.

The main operators into Curzon Street will be London Midland (Local Services), Arriva Cross Country (Intercity/Regional), Virgin West Coast (Intercity) and Arriva Trains Wales (Regional), Curzon Street will also have the odd East Midlands Trains services.

The south side of the station there will be a small DMU stabling/Fuelling point entry will be via a carriage wash. On leaving the station trains pass the EWS Adderley Park maintenance depot, then passed Adderley West Junction and into Beechwood Tunnel and the storage area.

Adderley West Junction:


Looking round the bend into the yard at Adderley Park Depot:


The yard and depot at EWS Adderley Park


The fueling point and shed


The carriage washing plant and DMU stabling/Fueling point


Looking back towards Adderley Park from Curzon Street


The track to the far left is Platform 1, with 2/3 and 4,5 in the centre. The lines to the right are the DMU/Carriage stabling Loop


All the buildings on Curzon Street are/will be from the Bachmann Scene Craft range, I also plan to add the LNWR Style Signal Box at Curzon Street as the line is on the original LNW route from London to Manchester, but the box at Adderley West Junction will be of Great Western design as there used to be a route from here into Birmingham Moor St, this was a joint section with the LNW.

The EWS Depot at Adderley Park will see little use, mainly seeing a odd locomotive exam, the main reason why EWS have retained it is to store/stable Network Rails fleet of MPVs.

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On the more practical side of things I can get this layout to a semi operational stage pretty quickly as i have 80% of the points i need left over from Dungeness and more than enough flexi track to complete the job, as i brought a fresh box when i got the two fuelling points, shed and washing plant. Ive also brought the Rail Express Class 60 - 60074.

Have a very good Xmas!!!

DRS.

[Lewis Nash]

its too late,dungness is no more!
but the new plan looks good,have you salvaged any of the wiring?

Lewis

[Direct Rail Services]

its too late,dungness is no more!
but the new plan looks good,have you salvaged any of the wiring?

Lewis

Yes, Dungenss is no more.

I recovered all the track and pointwork intact and reuseable, along with all the point motors and switches, which will lessen the hit when i get round to doing the wiring on Curzon St.

DRS.

[Mighty]

Best of luck with this one DRS - at least you already have the baseboards constructed

[GROTLAND]

Whooooh..DRS...Slow down! What are you doing? What is the point in trying to make a model railway as quick as you can? OK, it's your layout, but if you spend more time planning then you will be rewarded, and plus......you will learn more skills if you take it slowly. Dungeness looked like a great idea but you just rushed into it. Yeah...we're all beginners on here but there's no prizes for building a layout in the quickest time......................Think about it!

[Direct Rail Services]

To agree with you about jumping in the deep end and rushing, but although it appears Curzon St has been knocked up in 30secs, it has been in the planning since around the same as I started Dungeness.

To be honest I had my doubts about Dungeness from the very start and continued with it mainly beacuse i had the RE DRS 37's on order.

Curzon street will allow me to home my skills in many different aspects of model railway contruction.

DRS.

[GROTLAND]

Sorry about that rant DRS. I was absolutely leathered ar 4 am. Christmas day modelling?

[Direct Rail Services]

No problem Mr Gotland .

I had a new addition today from my mother a Hornby Class 73 (73214) in Intercity livery. Totally out of the question for Curzon Street so i think it will be 'passed on' for some points or something

My darling wife also brought me a nice little soldering iron for all that soldering Im going to be doing with point motors and power feeds!.

Ive taken some decent pictures of the Bachmann buildings on Curzon St. I was surprised when i felt the shed, well all of them really as to how heavy they were, I was expecting plastic contruction, but they seem to be cast of something, very heavy and the detail is excellent! The handrails on that walkways on top of the shed are even bent! (cast metal it feels like).

Adderley Park Shed and loco fuelling point:


Curzon Street DMU Stabling point and fuelling point:


And the carriage washing plant:


My Birthday present from my loverly Wife, I had it a few days ago but its still a xmas present 60074 in Teenage Cancer Trust Colours


And the odd ball, why dont parents ask before they buy????


The Class 60 is stunning, Im a big 60 fan but this is my first of the Hornby type. Many years ago I had about 10 or 11 of the lima ones and I thought they were a very good model, but the Hornby offering is amazing! Opening cab doors, lights, the body is excellent, see through grills. I gave it a spin the a few lengths of track last night you could feel the power of it! Excellent, this will be the first of many over the next few years I think!.

Im going to get one of these for Curzon St, a London & North Western Railway design Signal Box, seeing as Curzon Street is on the former LNWR route from Birmingham to London.



DRS.

[trains!]

I was surprised when i felt the shed,very heavy and the detail is excellent! The handrails on that walkways on top of the shed are even bent! (cast metal it feels like).

[Class 66]

Good to see your back on track DRS

I'm glad you made the decision to start over before you got to far with Dungness

Very best of luck !

[Direct Rail Services]

Dungeness if im totally honest was doomed from the start, it just wouldnt have held my very short attention...........yes it was very good contruction........span.



Curzon St, will be done properly and to a decent standard over the course of a few years, although i want to get to a stage that i can play trains inbetween serious works fairly quickly.

The plan is to have a rised house/shop front all the way along the back of Curzon St station down to the TMD, then industrial buildings well front along that back, then a small outer city type background along the junction side.

I undecided whether to add a small 3car length station just before the tunnel to storage????.

Thanks for the comments, i think i made the right decision to start again.

DRS.

[Direct Rail Services]

I had some time this afternoon whilst the wife took the kids to a party so i made go use of the time and draw a trackplan of Curzon Street.



The power feeds will be at the end of each platform road and the blocks end of the carriage line loop.
There will also be power feeds on both lines at the tunnel month and on the fuelling roads in the TMD and on the TMD headshunt.

This should give power to the whole lot i think.

Would this cause any problems?

DRS.

[mumbles]

I have a "simple" way to make sure power is supplied to the whole layout, it goes like this.

Solder a power feed to every whole piece of flexi track you use, to every point and you may even need to do some to small pieces of flexi. I also isolate all my points totally [but that is because of the detection I use] however with this system you can fault find in seconds with which feed has failed.. as the train has stopped on the section, it means the power to that section has failed, not a piece of track 2 lines away and through 3 points. That seems like an excessive amount to some people, and bear in mind I have 50yards of flexi and over 30 points, all electrofrog and all with individual feeds and frogs with feeds, however, I can tell you one thing, I never has problems with trains stalling from power loss and then a 30 minute headscratch trying to work out why.

Once you get the hang of soldering wire to track, you will not notice the slight increase in time to do it, I forget if you are DC or DCC, if you are DCC you would be best running a power bus to solder the feeds to, and if you are DC you have the option with numerous isolated power supplies to have switched sections to hold trains in while you run other things.

BTW, I really like the look of the new track layout, the length of the station platforms looks spot on. Take your time, make the right decidions in how you build things and you will have a cracking layout..
Cheers
Michael

Some Pics on my site of wiring

[47806]

Good progress! I was sorry to see Dungeness go but this layout looks to be just as interesting.

[Direct Rail Services]

Thanks for your comments Mr 47806.

Mr Mumbles:

I was thinking about this bus wire thingy sounds like the best way forward for use with DCC operation.

Just to make sure Ive read and under the concept....

You solder a wire onto each rail in each track section run both wires to a bus wire (which is one wite running from the power source, a hornby Select). Can i still use the metal peco fishplates to connect the sections together?

Also with the points which rails do i need to put plastic fishplates on?

Im using Electrofrog points so i understand I need to use the plastic fishplates on the points and DCC locomotive control, could i use the Select to control the trains and use a gaugemaster controller to power the track? or would it be better to use the selec for both? and just use the gaugemaster transformer for the point / light control ?

I was also thinking about kicking the Select to the kerb and trying out a big boy DCC controller which isnt to expensive any thoughts?

Cheers lads.

DRS (Oh, my real name is Marc )