A visit to Foxdale

A couple of years ago, we started work on an Isle of Man Railways project - a model of Foxdale station. To be honest, after an initial burst of enthusiasm, things have stalled thanks largely to me have so many projects on the go that I don't have time to move it on.

This doesn't mean the project has been abandoned. Far from it. While on the IOM we took a scenic bus ride to find the station building which still exists.

Wandering around the site of the line makes understanding the plans a whole lot easier and of course you feel more connected with the prototype doing this.

The top view shows the station looking towards the lead mines. Below we are pointing at the junction at St Johns. From here the trackbed looks pretty intact. Maybe once the line is re-instated to Peel, someone could just run a branch up here? Mind you, they might get this done before I finish our model!

The building is now in the hands of the Foxdale Heritage Centre. Visit their website for history and photos showing the station when the railway was working.

A new plastic box, a new layout.

Last year I bought a plastic box and built a layout in it. At this years Model Engineering show, I bought two more boxes. Which can only mean one thing...

Layout 1 is being built for a reason - while working on the Foxdale project, I'm concerned that persuading the rolling stock to work as well as I would like will require lots of testing. Now I could use the layout but it's going to be 5ft long and quite wide so not ideal to have set up all the time. What I need is a test track.

So, the plan is to knock up something that will fit in the box. It will have plenty of points and some bends. If a loco or wagon runs around on it, then it will be considered fit for the main layout. We learnt the hard way when building Flockburgh that untried rolling stock and an untried layout do not make for harmonious or pleasant modelling. I reckon any time spent on this project will be more than saved on the main one.

Sadly, I will have to do something clever with the baseboard design as at 74cm long, the box isn't big enough for a run round loop, but I already have and idea how this is going to work.



Talking of plans, this one was run up using AnyRail 4, which looks pretty good especially as you can download it for free with a few limitations. My effort isn't to scale but it is easy enough to pull scale track sections out of the pallete and plan away. It's certainly good fun for those who just want to daydream a train set.

Foxdale progress

Over on the Foxdale desk, my Dad is making great progress on the fancy crossover section of the track. All the points around the crossover are in place and some even have switch blades.

The wagon I completed at Hartlepool runs as well as my original test item and we now have a nice little train on the layout. If I can get around to sorting out the couplings, maybe we can even connect it up.

On a technical note, Parker senior was really struggling with the soldering until I spotted he was using a cheapo lead free solder. Switching it for some normal lead/tin stuff helped enormously. If he was using something bigger than an 18W iron, or the solder had been made up with solver in the mix, all would have been well. As it was, it wasn't. So kids, get some old fashioned solder, just remember not to suck the end of it.

Foxdale track progress

While I've been building chassis, my Dad has been hard at work making something to run them on. At one end of the station there is a complex crossover which seemed to obvious place to start.

As is his wont, the 5 points will be made in one lump. The idea is to have the longest lengths of continuous rail possible. The section on the photo includes 2 points and the sidings at the end of them. The rail carries on from the bottom of the picture and should fit in the next points as well. Electrical continuity will be assured and running improved, or at least that's what we've found to date.

Construction takes place on a slab of softboard with plans stuck to it. The track is lifted every so often for a trip to the sink and scrub to remove the flux. That;s why it's not sitting on the plan in the picture.

Point testing again

It may not have power but Caledonia's chassis runs when pushed so now we could carry on experimenting on the points for the Isle of Man model railway layout.

Many years ago (OK, probably 2) we built a 12mm gauge test track on a plank. It's about 4 ft long and has two parallel tracks and a crossover. The points on this are longer then the last ones tested and I hoped that they would prove easier for the stock to negotiate.

This turned out to be the case in spades. I sat the 0-6-0 chassis on one end of the track and tilted the board. It ran down the line, through the crossover and down the next bit of track without even a hint of a derailment. I did it again in the other direction with the same result. In fact I spent a happy half hour (I'm easily pleased) eating wine gums and tilting the board to make the chassis run. At no point did we even bump through the points never mind leap from the track.

This means that:
A) I'm not completely useless at building chassis.
B) We need to re-plan Foxdale around less tight point work.

So good news and not so good. I just hope it all still fits on the board.

Deja-vu trackwork

To get an idea of how Foxdale's track will work, we built a test piece. Nothing fancy, just a point with bits of track going off a little way.

I actually want to test the ballasting method with this, but before doing so I've gapped the PCB strip and put some power into it. The single part-built locomotive was dug out of it's box and placed on the rails. Then electricity was supplied and it stuttered forward.

So I reversed the power and it stuttered backward and fell off.

Looking underneath, the linkage for the handbrake wasn't attached to anything and when swung down, caught the rails. A touch of solder tacked this out of the way. While I was under there, the pickups had been made of stupidly thin phosphor bronze wire so they cam off and were replaced with "Phil's standard" stuff.

More testing and another problem appears. The loco won't go around the corner. Isle of Man engines may only be 2-4-0's but the front 2 is a long way out front so the pony has to be sprung. I'd done this with a bit of nickel silver wire which appeared to be too stiff to allow the truck to swing. Replacement with phosphor bronze helped a bit but not a lot. A touch of gauge widening also helped. These are really long-wheelbase locos and we want them to go around tight-ish points.

All this is horribly familiar. When we built Flockburgh there were many sessions of testing when rolling stock seemed allergic to track. In the end we fixed this, let's hope it is easier this time.

Making narrow gauge points

Before we embark on the full model of Foxdale, a little bit of test track is being constructed to allow us to experiment with both building and ballasting techniques. My Dad is in charge of track making on all out layouts, partly because he enjoys it but mostly because I'm not very good at it. I can adjust and make the stuff work but when I try and build from scratch it all seems to go wrong.

Anyway, a few basics. A quick note on the Isle of Man forum established that the sleepers are 6ft 6 inches long and 2 and half foot centres. This is the sort of detail that matters - the track needs to look right after all - but it surprisingly difficult to find out.

The sleepers are OO ones chopped to length and then the first point is assembled on a plan. To ensure reliable spacing a little jig has been made up from cardboard. This seems to be working and a longer version for plain track.

Foxdale planning session

Planning proper has now begun on Foxdale. When the Parker's build layouts, that means taking some point plans and scattering these over the board until we like what we see.

The station features and interesting bit of pointwork with four turnouts facing each other to preform the same role as a double-slip would do on a main line model. It's this that really got us interested in the station. To aid construction, the plans for this central section have been laid out and stuck to a sheet of paper. This is them plonked on the board to give us something to work around.

Other aids to planning are the flat stock mentioned on Tuesday, and a mock-up of the station building. It's the only one we have a plan for and since there are only three structures on the model, we had better get it right.

The photo also shows a couple of plans from books that only slightly contradict each other and every photo I could find on the web.

From all this we have worked out that it is possible to build the model in the space available. This is determined by the size of board that will fit in the back of the Berlingo without splitting the model into several boards. The overall plan is for a letterbox style model with integral lighting. It's not going to be perfect, the length will be condensed to get it to fit, but we are looking for a pleasing representation. Go somewhere else if you want a perfect model.

One happy surprise is that this will be an interesting model to operate. Sidings pointing in both directions proliferate, not something you find elsewhere on the Isle of Man. Despite out condensing, sensible trains can operate - choosing the Manx Northern helps a lot in this respect as the longest passenger service is likely to be the railcars which as two units with a van in the middle. 2 coach trains or 4 wagon freights will be OK and possibly a little longer once we get building.

Some work will be required on ground contours. There is a huge pile of rubble at the back and the line to the mines needs to rise up by a centimetre or more. That doesn't sound too scary through so things are looking good. Stay tuned for more updates as they say !

Instant rolling stock

If we are to plan out  Foxdale we need some rolling stock to work out siding and look lengths. Of course I haven't actually got around to building very much yet, specifically one van and half a loco, so either it's late nights on the workbench or improvise.

Thus we have the ultimate "flat pack" rolling stock for a model railway - rectangles of Daler Board with writing on them.

These can be pushed around and placed on the plan as required. If a wagon falls on the floor, there isn't much detail to damage and even storage is simple. You could suggest that we might as well have made the stock to scale rather than full size but with a little layout and a full size board already available there's not much to be gained. Anyway, I find it easier to work out what's going on at 1:1 scale.

I can't claim this to be an original idea. The same technique was used by the L&WMRS 7mm scale layout "Kimble" when they re-planned the engine shed area. Lobbing O gauge locos around while planning isn't exactly popular with their owners and so some lumps of plywood acted as stunt doubles.

Now this might just be a planning idea, but does it have to be so ? After all there is the Pokemon craze where eager youths pay stupid sums of money for cards representing the characters they desire. Why bother with 3D locos when the model railway industry could just sell special approved cards ?

Just think, no more problems with ham-fisted modellers getting the things out of the box. No storage issues. The locomotives can be displayed in an attractive picture frame. Since many real models never see a track because they are part of a "collection" then the no-working nature of the cards won't be an issue. You can even have proper arguments over prototype fidelity. Can a colour photo really represent a loco that only existed in the days of black & white film ?

Foxdale

What you see in the photo might look like a big machine cutting a piece of plywood. What it really is, is the birth of a new model railway.

After years of prevarication, we've started work on the long promised Isle of Man layout. I'm not quite sure how this happened, one day my Dad fancied making some track and I needed to persuade him away from a main line station. For a while now I've been wondering about picking Foxdale as a prototype and when we sat down and did a little research, it seemed to fit the bill.

Firstly, there mustn't be too many coaches. I hate building them and the kits cost a fortune. Luckily there is "The Foxdale Coach". One vehicle, even I can enjoy making that. Apart from this, trains on the Manx Northern were short - no Douglas style 12 vehicle trains with a loc on each end.

Next, there is shunting. Wagons go in and out of the mines over the most interesting track formation on the island.

It's not a pretty station, surrounded as it is by spoil tips, but then we like industrial settings. Anyway, if we bend history a little and model it in the very early 1960's, plenty of vegetation will be present. It's not too much of a stretch anyway as the last train ran in 1961 as far as I can tell and the track lasted another 10 year.

So, that's a new project (note I didn't say THE). It should be a quickie but no doubt progress will be in fits and starts. I don't know when it will be finished but we'll probably book it into a show or two before its ready and then have to rush to get things done.

So far we have a 5ft by 2ft baseboard. And half a plan.

Anyway, for those who don't know the prototype, visit this website.