Lacathedrale

Can ya guess what it is yet? Reading Chris Croft's articles in MRJ has been super helpful in giving context - for example, the drawing for this particular wagon appears to place the middle bearer washer plates on the solebar nowhere near the end of the middle bearers - some distance under the door, infact. Given the location of the bottom end of the diagonal braces - which we are informed multiple times cannot interfere with the vertical line of the middle bearers and their washer plates, and the side knees and their washer plates - it was clear they had been moved outward in the drawing, and just needed to be shuffled in. I'm really not sure how I'm going to be able to build the wagon rail guides on the ends - maybe brass?

@Harlequin no more than the use of polystyrene, using a hand file to smooth off sheet plastic, etc.? As for debonding you could be right - seems that corner blocks to hold the sides/ends on is a good idea regardless, maybe even a lip around the bottom of the ply to hold the polystyrene inside the shell? As for very long term - it seems not unreasonably to expect 30-50 years without degradation - by which point I imagine the layout will be well past its usefulness. With a substantial ply subroadbed however, one could in stages remove the polystyrene from the shell (probably very messily and no doubt ruining the ground-layer scenic treatment) - and replace it with ply risers in the normal fashion. That has given me cause to do a bit of maths around the baseboard (If we assume the weight of the average 6mm ply 8' x 4' board is 10kg (https://www.inchcalculator.com/how-much-does-plywood-weigh/)) - 3mm boxed-in XPS (3" tall (front), 12" tall (back) and 7.5" (average of gradient - for sides) x 4' is a weight of approx 800g, plus the weight of the XPS (approx 1kg) for a total board weight without scenery, lighting, etc. etc. of approx 2kg. The equivalent outer framing in 6mm is of course, 1.5kg., and it seems that with longitudinal and transverse ply risers, one can get very little deflection of on a span of 407x305mm (using https://www.woodbin.com/calcs/sagulator/) and an internal lattice based on this (plus 2" square softwood blocks on every corner) adds about 2kg to the weight of the layout for a total of 3.5kg. So we are saving some 40% in weight and providing a surface to apply scenics directly - but it does seem like there's alot more than just 'glue ply to polystyrene off you go'...

@jonhall - I believe it's also stopping warping. I also imagine it depends on whether you are having the sides purely boxing in the foam, or providing an additional depth beyond the bottom of the foam. For example, clearance for bottom-mounted cobalts is ~70mm - so not feasible with a single layer of 50mm foam providing the sum-total distance between underside of roadbed and bottom of the 'baseboard'. If you were using 3mm I would have thought that would get bashed up pretty quickly along the bottom edge? I'm not speaking from experience, mind you. I guess it does mean if you're using a single layer of foam to provide the base then you can't use cobalts! @Phil Bullock as I said I believe the big Balcombe viaduct layout is using this method, and that's ginormous!

@Phil Bullock my question was realistically for a layout built for my own pleasure, but I would like to exhibit it at some point. @hayfield what caused this pondering was while a ply lattice is definitely better than the old 3/4" sundeala-on-softwood, my 4' x 1' tim horn board isn't a dead weight, but it's definitely not lightweight - a 4' x 2' equivalent would start to be decidedly unwieldy, I think!

As has been rightly pointed out the area of failure/most danger is around a turnout's tie bar Exactly this one. @Harlequin it's a great book - I don't believe I paid that much, but very much an enjoyable sojourn. Hi Richard, do you have any pictures? I'm assuming there are recesses in the foam lined with something else (styrene? wood?) into which the servos are placed - with a channel under baseboard level connecting this location with the tie bar. Do you have your velcro covers over the servos portholes, or the whole thing including the channels? Glad to hear that a recess/hollow with a bottom mounted point motor is also feasible. Maybe the solution is a passive provision for both? 3" square recesses in the foam underneath tie bars as well as cut-and-cover channels from those tie bar locations to the rear of the layout. Thank you all for the tips on the corner blocks and the particularis of the foam. This is the stuff, right? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/XPS-Insulation-Boards-Floor-Underlay-Panels-for-Electric-Underfloor-Heating/153630539630?hash=item23c517ff6e:m:msGiZmS-EaPCjahsYdj2ozw

I've got a fairly firm idea of a layout plan I'd like to put together- two boards of 4' x 2' each. Having read Iain Rice's new cameo layout book where he evangelises the use of extruded polystyrene with a ply roadbed, I am tempted. I believe @Re6/6 has also done this on this forum, and as I am informed Gordon Gravett's Pempoul (MRJ 185). The proposed solution is to use a base layer of 50mm XPS that is boxed in with 6mm plywood strips attached via no nails. Track is laid onto a plywood roadbed and then glued onto the XPS. Obviously, this makes no provision for under-baseboard turnout operation, wiring, etc. and Iain Rice's solution is to have each roadbed section fully wired up in isolation, embedding these wires in the surface of the XPS towards a bus on the rear of the layout. Similarly, using wire-in-tube to run turnout actuating rods horizontally in the XPS to motors/servos at the back. This raises a question - how do you handle maintenance? With a fully sealed unit - trackbed glued onto XPS and then wire-in-tube glued into a cavity and subsequently covered with scenic material - what happens when a wire snaps, or glue inadvertently drips down under the tie bar? It seems a very fragile solution, but I may be overlooking something... I have wondered about a hybrid approach, with oversized voids cut out of the XPS into which roadbed-mounted turnout motors fit (and are accessible from below). Any thoughts or opinions on this gladly taken!

The full size stuff looks lovely and sinuous:

Looks really really lovely - with the mockups of the bridge and throat it looks even better!

Now both sets of pointwork are mounted ready for timbers, limewood strips from Mantua models are inbound as we speak: I really like this lines on this:

Back in 1:64, an SR diagram 1369 - quite how I'm going to pull off the wagon rail I don't know - I may wimp out and model 1370 - while the latter has curved side knee washer plates, it has a plain timber beam on the curved ends, rather than the movable rail: I tried to use Evergreen v-groove planking, decided I could do it better myself (with the side/end rails, the narrow planks above the middle bearers, etc.) and ultimately ended up with something that looks almost identical anyway The above picture shows my attempt at using the Evergreen planking, which I decided not to pursue...

I've been bashing around ideas for a potential S-scale layout (see pointwork previously) and I have taken strong (!) inspiration from the Iain Rice plan in 'Urban Layouts in Small Spaces', i.e. The divisions in the above plan are for 4mm/ft foot grid, so do not correspond with the scale of the diagram. To get an idea of how this would be visualised, I mocked up a 1:8 scale model of the layout: A view from behind, showing the sector plate access - my assumption is there will be a cut-away under the hillside, enough to fit two parallel roads - this way, there will always be room for two trains - or at least one train and one spare locomotive! The sector plate itself is only 2' or so, so even by justifying this rump of a goods yard as within station limits (and thus without the need for a brake van), it's going to be quite tight for any kind of tender locomotive...

I decided since I was quite a distance along anyway, to flesh out the model-of-a-model like so: Doesn't look too bad, huh?

That's very helpful Simon, thank you - duly noted for experiment on my next parts order!

Hi @MartinWales - wheels in S presented a big question for me. Reading the handbook, there are many methods of scratchbuilding, but I feel it's important to get a set of working datum points - i.e. some track, a wagon, a locomotive that works under its own power, etc. as soon as possible. One of the huge issues I had with progressing and maintaining enthusiasm with 2FS was that it took me over a year to get a single working loco! With that in mind, I looked for off-the-shelf options. I think it was @steverabone who initially pointed out to me (although no doubt the original source is lost to the annals of time in the S-Scale Gazette ) - that EM gauge wheels have basically the correct S-scale profile, so I bought these from Alan Gibson: They have 16 spokes rather than 12, but as above I feel it's important (at least initially) to get some working points of reference! (In theory I could cut out and re-fix the spokes in all but the cardinal directions and then insert my own - but I won't this time) I have since acquired a unimat SL from a member of the society. Since the SSMRS parts shop offer brass inserts and steel tyres that can be machined together to a given size - (or you can use the insert by itself for wheels a few inches smaller) and as per advice in the handbook, locomotive wheels could wear by inches before they were replaced. I then went through an exercise of thinking about all the locomotives I had thought about owning or building, and realised there were either SSMRS or AG EM-equivalent wheels of everything I could realistically want - what felt like an insurmountable problem now does feel like a little bit of a non-issue to me.

After some help from Paul Greene and the kitbuilding subforum, I've found a way to make my RCH wagon run without a ridicolous duck waddle - tweaking the angle of the brake rods and adding some packing to limit the pivoting range of movement: Thanks @Buhar - I've learnt a good deal even with just this one wagon, I can''t wait to get started on the next one. Here's another shot with buffers and coupling hook in place - email to the society parts shop for W-irons also winging it's way there too. This is a bit of a cruel close up but hopefully gives a good impression: Lastly, printed off and mounted a single-sided tandem turnout to experiment with. I did order laser cut MDF sleepers from the society but I much prefer the limewood strips I ordered: Lastly, I thought this was pretty cute:

I bent the shoe very slightly away from the wheel face, and packed out the pivoting W-iron - and it works great. Thank you @5050

You're not wrong, @cypherman - I can't deny however, that it is attractive even if a little ridicolous.

For your first one, maybe get one of the 'turnout in a bag' kits from C&L/etc. so you know what all the bits are and what things should roughly look like before you tackle it for yourself? That's by no means mandatory but you'll have everything you need and if you decide not to proceed then you won't have meters of rail/sleepers/etc. sitting around.

I personally find that laying track directly to PCB is the most 'fun' - it's all about smooth lines and alignment an very forgiving. This is a pretty standard method back in the day in 4mm/ft, and still fairly current in 2mmFS. I do not find much pleasure in plastic construction, but I do see the utility of plastic chairs/etc. so I have been buying limewood strip in 3/4mm x 1.5mm profiles - you can get 20m for the price of a single turnout. Mantua Models provide it, and I think it looks great. With regard to sourcing items - C&L generally are fairly highly regarded but I've had trouble in the past with communication/postage/packing.

Thanks, Simon - I re-jigged it a little, with the tandem now single-sided - it's a much nicer line through the curve (this is a full size template, but if you compare the right hand road there's no reverse curve, and the leftmost road has a much wider angle:

The wagon lurches closer to completion: The sharpness of cut 20-thou rod for the bolt heads is obvious - the rest are Rocket Card Glue dots. The latter certainly feel more sane, taking only around 15 minutes to apply bolts on the whole wagon, but obviously sacrifice the relief and sharpness of the rod. Hinges for the drop sides, crown plates, buffers, hooks, brake gear and wheels still to go...

@The Stationmaster the kickback is really just a headshunt for the loading dock. I decided (since I'm getting the hang of this thing now) to scale the plan down to fit on a single sheet of A4 and then build a mock-up, in 1:550 Similar to view 1 above Similar to view 2 above Overall view @Flying Pig we are coming across a number of things I would poo-poo in a normal context - exit-under-a-diagonal-road being quite high up that list.

@34theletterbetweenB&D - interesting, maybe the corner of a station like the Euston milk dock? As it stands, I've printed off the above Rice plan to 2mmFS size and plonked some wagons on - still no runaround, but it has the makings of a setting: A view from the front-left side of the layout. In the distance, the left side is a hidden sector plate, and right side is the headshunt. A different view of the same corner. Although this looks vastly bigger, in terms of operational footprint (as opposed to visual) it's almost identical.

@Flyingpig so you are suggesting to have a sector plate for the two left-hand roads?

Interesting, I'll check out South Wales - certainly an area I've visited a few times and really enjoyed seeing but whose railway history I know little about. The GWR locos and stock in the photographs (just to be clear) are no reflection on any further development in that direction in S-scale, however. As an addendum to the discussion raised here, I was leafing through the 'Urban Layout Design' book by Rice, and saw one of his 'bitsa' plans that also contains a three-way and a half scissors. Please note that none of the timbering is done, no point at this early stage! As is well known and frequently highlighted by @martin_wynne, lots of Iain's plans are aspirational with regard to turnout selection and location, and this is no different - however, with a little shuffling it seems to fit in a 120% magnification (i.e. P4 to S) fairly well: This represents the freight rump of a suburban station, the passenger platforms/etc. are assumed to be underneath the roadway and on a little. It too is eight feet, but operation into a hidden siding via sector plate feels like it would get a little tedious in a home environment backed up against a wall!