It has been about 6 years since I last wrote about my 00 railway in an old 10' x 8' shed. ( this was titled Starting Again and I think Shed Layout ).I had slightly lost enthusiasm for this due in part to other commitments and the fact that the layout was too crammed. I had a 23' x 12' wooden building which was an old garage dating from 1947 which was very dark and draughty. There was also a lean too extension on this making a total length of about 30'. I had plans to renovate/rebuild it in blocks with wooden cladding and double glazing but I was over-ruled on that. In fact when I investigated a bit more the old garage was about ready to collapse and I had to be very careful taking it down. In 2018 we went to look at greenhouses and found a 20' x 10' "log cabin" on display. We bought a greenhouse and I also ordered a cabin although I didn't like the double doors being in the centre of the long side. I completed building it by October 2018 and fitted it out with kitchen cupboard base units on one short side and halfway along the long side at the rear. These were for support of the baseboards and for storage. I eventually started track laying in about May 2019. I started out with a copy of the main station from the previous layout. This is loosely based on Brent in South Devon. Because of the centre doors I was restricted to about 9' on that side and even then it was over one side of the double door. My other half also wanted to use some space for an exercise bike so my original idea of a dog bone shape layout wouldn't work. I ended up with a continous run not a great deal bigger than the old layout.
![Train Building Rolling stock Vehicle Sky]()
This is the main station, I am not happy with the platforms and intend to rebuild them soon. I have also lengthend the station a bit, more later.
The other side featured a country station partly based on Midsomer Norton in Somerset.
Note my attempt at painting a backscene, I used acrylics which everyone says dry darker but this turned out far too bright and garish so was discarded.
I kept things as they were until early this year. I decided that crawling under the board to get in the middle was getting a bit much now I am 70! Also, just going round and round was not that interesting.
I had already extended the board along the rear for about 18', I left space at the end for access to the electrical consumer unit, and had laid some more sidings/ fiddle yard. After a bit of thought and measuring I realised that I could do away with the roundy roundy style and duck under and replace the small station with a double track return loop. The fiddle yard was relaid with crossovers to allow access to all roads from each direction. This also allowed the station to be lengthend slightly so that a 3 coach train and loco fits in the bay with room to spare. The loop line crosses over a vally on a viaduct and then enters a tunnel before returning back towards the station and fiddle yard.
![Table Cabinetry Wood Window Interior design]()
I have completed more landscaping since this picture was taken in June this year and made a start with ballasting the track here. As you can probably see I used two DPDT switches to change to polarity in the loops, this works ok with DCC and I found that I could actually reverse the switch with a train on the loop with just a bit of hesitation in speed. This differed with diferent locos, possibly due to different decoders. I have a mixture of Lenz, Hornby, Hattons in use. I recently fitted Digitrax reversing modules instead, these were easy to set up and work a treat.
I am trying to concentrat on one job at a time to get at least one part looking acceptable before moving on to the next part.
More to follow soon.
Chris
