Pont-y-dulais: We have light...

The new South Wales coal micro layout has been progressing alongside Mollington Road over the Easter weekend and has provided a welcome and positive distraction...

The first stage after basic construction was to add some lighting - this layout sits in a dark spot above my bench, and so integral lighting is essential if it's to be used. I invested in 5m of LED flexible strip for East Works, and impressed by it's colour intensity on that layout I decided it would work here too, my only concern being whether a single strip would give adequate lighting without backscene shadows. On East Works I used a strip along the front, and towards the back, to eliminate the shadows from trees - the narrow and low height of the scene here won't allow that.

A quick mock up showed it worked well, so the strip was cut and glued to the front inside edge, allowing it to bounce off the rear and roof to provide a good spread of light. Whilst not cheap, these natural white LEDs are much better than others I've seen - the distance and spacing of them suits model railways, and doesn't leave too much glare on rail heads.

The next thing that needed solving was point control. As there is no 'underside' to the baseboard, this all needed to be on the surface and as it was only an 'experiment' I didn't want to install expensive servo or slow motion surface mounts - not that it would have been easy anyway - so I adopted a two pronged attack. The uniforms were wired to momentary toggle switches - this means if I'm running longer wheel base or compensated locos I don't need to use them, but with the short 0-4-0s (Hornby and Hattons) as well as the DJM Austerity I can flick and hold the switch to ensure a smooth transition over the frog. 

In order to operate them I originally planned just a finger or a little stub on the end of my uncoupler bar for the tie-bar but figured this might end up damaging things, so instead built a very simple wire in tube. This is 0.9mm brass wire in styrene tube - now covered where exposed by card and paper before I do the scenery proper. They're dead dead simple, but on a small layout very effective. What have I learnt already? That these Bull-head points, whilst visually lovely, have a couple of annoying traits... they're more flimsy, and despite being laid on a totally flat board I think there is a little flex in them so they're not totally flat. The blades aren't totally flat eigher a the toe, so that locos jump a little as they drive on to them. They also definitely need frog wiring - the dead frog area is large, and even though the Bachmann Pannier's I've tried have no problems pretty much everything shorter than that does... for the price I'd have expected more - and these days why a small mechanical frog switching mechanism could easily be included in the box to be  mounted alongside or underneath. 

Since then I've done some testing, whilst waiting on the backscne and some suitable materials for the stone overbridge and undergrowth. I had some 'views' in mind when I placed the structures and track plan and it's nice to see what these look like, even with just mock up structures. Behind the shed a small road will cross the branch, giving views of the engine as it shunts the sidings...

There should also be a view from the over bridge of the mouth of the yard, allowing shots of locos like this as if viewed in person. The beauty of the layout being above the bench is it's viewing height is very natural - these views are easily achieved without any bending or contorting. 

The shed area will lend itself to any industrial setting - I suspect Pride of Gwent will be a regular on the board - it's lovely smooth runner and negotiates the dead uni frogs most of the time. I've got cars suiting both the 1960s, 70s and here 80s to allow a ring of the changes. I plan to begin on the shed structure today too...

Finally, a shot of the bridge, this will be done in Will's Coarse stone as I like it's relief, and will use the Peco girder shortened to fit. Here my Golden Valley / Oxford Rail Janus, another smooth runner that occasionally hesitates on the uni-frogs, is in action. Despite being fitted with Kadees (as the large holes in the buffer beams don't come with blanking plates I fitted Kadees before I'd settled on 3 links on everything else) I managed some shunting by using the wagon couplings on the hook on the chassis. So it's been a productive few days, and will look forward to more when I add the backscene next. Until then, more soon...