Oak Street - N Gauge

[briantwigley]

Layout has moved from the planning stage to construction now, so I thought I'd better make a new thread.

The plan:



The location is a through station on the way to Kings Cross. I'm undecided as to whether I will use the lines in the middle for purely storage or use some sort of shed for maintenance. We'll see I suppose. I also want a small fuel depot possibly for the trains but also for road tankers perhaps. As well as this there is a 3 road through station with 2 roads stretching round the top right corner to the first join. Since this plan has had a slight change, one crossing on the bottom line has been removed, must have been tired when I put those in!

This is what I have now (after ripping up my old layout)



I have all the track for the new layout, so I just need to finish off cleaning the points taken from the old layout, and sand down any bits on the layout so I should get the first lot of track laid within a couple of days.

Major rakes of stock that I have at the moment are:
Class 45, 2x Class 37, 1x 4-CEP, 1x HST, 2x 101s and a 121
BP TEA Rake
ICI TEA Rake
Silver Bullet Rake
VGA Rake

I want to build up a few rakes of MK1s and a TPO Rake as well, but for now I think I have a pretty good stock collection.

Updates to come soon! Want to get the first loop laid so I can get some trains running!

Thanks for reading.

Ryan

[Timmy33]

Another N scale/gauge layout ill be following your work probably pick up some handy info. Nice track plan im useless with those programs haha

[briantwigley]

Got the first loop laid and wired and finally got to run some trains! Breaking in the new 4CEP:



And an overview of the loop. My soldering is still pretty poor but it works!



I couldn't find my pin hammer anywhere so I used my new twist drill and I've snapped all my small drill bits for it already... But it should only take a few more hours to get the rest of the track down, then I will test all the areas to make sure everything works how it should.

Cheers,

Ryan

[lerysc]

Looks good so far!

[StevieDay]

A very nice start to your layout Ryan.

Just looking at your plan. If you swap the 3rd & 4th points over in the sidings and brought them so they were attached to the 1st & 2nd points, you'll end up with longer outside sidings.

I've drawn this up in Anyrail.....depicting n gauge set track. So you can see the difference & the smoother transition into the sidings, will reduce the risk of derailments which your current plan has.

[briantwigley]

That's much better I can't believe I didn't see that before!

I'll change the plan I've printed to include that.

Thanks a lot,

Ryan

[briantwigley]

In a spare moment while not working or at the gym (training for the army..) I finally wired up the second loop and my shoddy tracklaying and wiring actually works. For the first time I have run 2 trains at once! What a pleasure it was too. All thats left are the innards and the third set of curves on the right hand side which funnily enough I forgot to order somehow? Anyway heres some photos and I will get some more up at some point soon of my stock.










Cheers for now,

Ryan.

[briantwigley]

Few more pics:







The BP TEAs I got from The Model Centre on ebay pre-weathered by them, they seem to do a lot of decent work so if you're looking on ebay just search 'TMC'.

I did take a video but it was all shaky and rubbish so I'll try get a better one soon.

In my stock box there appears to be:

Class 08 - BR Blue
Class 37 - BR Petroleum (Mercig Commission)
Class 37 - BR Distribution (Mercig Commission)
Class 43 - Intercity Executive (Dapol; got for £63 - bargain!)
Class 45 - BR Blue
Class 73 - NSE
Class 108 - NSE
Class 108 - BR Blue/Grey
Class 121 - NSE
Class 411 - Blue/Grey

6x Grey ICI TEA
1x White ICI TEA
6x BP TEA
3x Rusty Silver Bullets
1x Pristine Silver Bullet
1x TPO Blue/Grey
6x Railfreight VGAs
2x Railfreight HAAs
Various Coaching stock
2x MK2 NSE
2x MK3 Intercity

On the way are some Esso TEAs I picked up on ebay.

I'm after some MK1s (newer Farish Blue Riband) so if anyone wants some silver bullets I would be happy to trade!

Thanks for looking!

Ryan

[jamest]

Hi,

Looks like a really good start there - you can certainly fit in a nice run in a relatively short space with N gauge.

Can I ask how you get on with the NCE powercab? Would you recommend it?

And how the hell do you fit a decoder in an N gauge class 08? I had enough trouble with my OO one!

Cheers,
James

[briantwigley]

Hi James

Thanks for the kind comments.

The NCE Powercab is good but a bit advanced for what I do with it, which is just run trains round! Its a bit awkward switching trains, eg having to press select loco then the number then enter then the same to go back to the last one, but otherwise I have no complaints.

As for the 08, I sent it away to be fitted so I can't take the credit for it!

Cheers

Ryan

[briantwigley]

Finally laid nearly all the track - I underordered AGAIN. I forgot my 2nd radius curves the first time, then when I went to order them again I only ordered one.. but I managed to get my slightly adapted storage area laid.



Just need a few very small straights at the ends, wire them up and then a very thorough track testing session!

The setrack doesn't fit as well as you'd think in some places for some odd reason but everything seems to run ok so I'll see if I can find any faults then move to the ballasting stage.

Ryan

[briantwigley]

Got what I can wired up now, just waiting for my track, which is very frustrating when I only need a few bits!

Ryan

[kevin sharpe]

Looks good
kevin sharpe

[briantwigley]

Thanks Kevin.

After a bit of a dilemma with wiring I have laid the remainder of my track and wired it up. Time to test everything and then I can begin planning some scenery in a bit more detail before I ballast.

Ryan