Gee - it's nearly been a year since I last posted.
In the meantime, there has been an announcement that we're to move house, followed by an aggressive period of de-stuff-ing, painting & decorating. It's amazing how much work there is in making a house look like it is low maintenance. Finally, the house is on the market, but, of course, we've probably chosen the worse time in history to sell a house, save the 1930's.
Amongst all that, I lost enthusiasm for a layout that would probably be dismantled, and began investigating alternate locations for a future layout in a future space in a future house. In the end, I've done a full circle and come back to consider how I might add a fiddleyard to the existing
Banff layout in a future shared double garage.
Here, I've given myself 2 x 4.8m because I can't be sure I will be allowed a fully half of the garage, and because it's easier to make layouts bigger than smaller should I be surprised.
The four boards at the bottom are the existing layout, already 4.8m long. The left-most one will require re-laying of track, but not a substantive reconstruction of the baseboard itself. Everything else would be new. Most of the boards are 600mm wide. The wriggly bit on the left will be train-in-the-landscape. The background there is borrowed from a CJF plan, and is indicative rather than prescriptive. There may be a bridge or halt midway.
At the top, in the blank bit, will be the fiddleyard. I haven't drawn anything here yet because there are many options, at least including:
- fan of turnouts
- traverser
- turntable
- sector plate
- cassette
or combinations thereof. Not having had any sort of fiddleyard previously, I should take time to look at each in turn.
In the case of Banff, there is no need for trains to be turned. Most, if not all, locos ran into Banff tender/bunker first. I suppose goods services still had brake vans at the tail, but in-bound passenger services all seem to have had the guard compartment of the 3rd-brake immediately in front of the loco. With a downhill gradient and a loco in reverse, I suppose there was no chance that a decoupled train would run-away unnoticed. So the fiddleyard merely has to get the loco on the other end of the train. A locolift may be sufficient.
There's plenty of time to consider the options. Doesn't seem like I'm going anywhere.
While the northern hemisphere people are asleep, I added the following ...
Fiddle Yards: The Unglamorous Secret to Great Operations seems to offer sagely advice for fiddle-newbies like me:
- fiddleyards should be as long as your longest train, including the loco, plus another 50mm or so. To some extent, that requires a crystal ball to see into the future, but I get the drift and I'm off to measure my rolling stock.
- you need more tracks than you expect: at least twice the number of tracks as trains running simultaneously, plus two.