Nick Rogers
Western Thunderer
Greetings all,
I probably need to qualify the title of this thread, as I'm sure several people would cock their heads to one side and wonder what on earth DRAG has to do with railway modelling!
The Devon Riviera Area Group (DRAG) of the Scalefour Society meet twice a month at Holcombe village hall. We are all members of the Scalefour Society, and many of us, not all, model to P4 standards. A fair number of our band have various 00 efforts, as well as HO and P87 projects. Some do wear hairshirts, although this isn't a compulsory item of modelling clothing!
At present, we are in the process of building a replacement test track to replace our existing one, which is showing significant signs of ageing. Test Track 2 (TT2 -the current layout) was started about 17 years ago and has seen twice monthly use for about 16 years. One complete circuit is around 1 scale mile. The baseboards were made from MDF (a material we have found unsuitable for the Riviera climate), and as can be seen in photos and videos of the layout, most, if not all, the boards have developed a 'saucered' top, which isn't suitable for finescale stock. Some may argue a test track should have lumps and bumps in it to provide a shakedown for stock. However, the majority of us want a circuit were can run-in motive power and rolling stock, and not navigate an obsical course. Some of the baseboard joints on TT2 are gaps of between 4-5mm, and speaking as a professional railwayman, I would rather not go flying at 100mph over a gap in the rail of over 1ft and don't see a reason why my 4mm stock should either!
I thought it would be nice to share what we get up to. We are a talented and friendly lot and many of our members lurk amongst the pages of this forum, and indeed have their own layout treads on here, which I'm sure they would be happy to elaborate on.
As I mentioned above, Test Track 3 (TT3) is well under way and I'm sure Captain Kernow will be along shortly to share some track laying photos.
We decided to commission Tim Horn to produce our replacement baseboards from plywood. The new layout will be slightly smaller than TT2, with significantly lighter baseboards (the MDF ones really are like Dreadnaughts weight wise!). We are confident our new boards will be more than satisfactory for many years to come. We have decided to modify the original boards slightly to provide some better underframe protection.
Below are a few photos from last year showing the underside of the Tim Horn boards, with the late, great Brian Pearce making the finishing touches to the plywood protection pieces. We plan to use trestles and steel square lengths to rest the boards on. This framework should be reasonably easy to put up and provide a solid base to put the boards on.
The protection and strengthening of the boards is fairly straight forward. Various lengths of timber were cut and glued to the underside acting as a lip for 4mm ply to then be guled and nailed to. This, we hope, will prevent the crossmembers from becoming damaged and it helps to keep the boards straight by providing T and L shapes within the structure. The plywood strips were cut to shape using various templates Brian and I created. The boards have subsequently received 4 coats of varnish, on all visible surfaces to help keep the damp out.
During the early months of 2024, we had a trial set up. It was felt by several of us that two straight boards and a length of 8ft (each straight board is 4ft long), wouldn't give longer trains enough of a run. Brian very kindly gifted the group the funds to purchase four additional straight boards, which I am currently building. So the set up below will have two additional straight boards down each side, giving us a 16ft straight run.
Minimum curve on the 00 is a little over 4ft, with a 4ft 6' radius curve running down the centre of the curved boards. Track laying is well underway, almost complete, and I'm sure Tim will add some photos in when he gets a minute.
The steel underframe can be just about seen in this photo.
As well as meeting fortnightly, we also have Indulgence Days, which are essentially modelling days where members turn up with a project and have the company and support of their fellow model makers. These tend to fall on Saturdays.
A photo from the last Indulgence Day showing a hive of activity. We do open these days up to other finescale modellers, so if you live locally and fancy attending one of our Indulgence Days, do send me a PM.
So that pretty much wraps up DRAG and what we do. In a future post, I'll put some videos up of TT2 in action.
Best wishes,
Nick.
I probably need to qualify the title of this thread, as I'm sure several people would cock their heads to one side and wonder what on earth DRAG has to do with railway modelling!
The Devon Riviera Area Group (DRAG) of the Scalefour Society meet twice a month at Holcombe village hall. We are all members of the Scalefour Society, and many of us, not all, model to P4 standards. A fair number of our band have various 00 efforts, as well as HO and P87 projects. Some do wear hairshirts, although this isn't a compulsory item of modelling clothing!
At present, we are in the process of building a replacement test track to replace our existing one, which is showing significant signs of ageing. Test Track 2 (TT2 -the current layout) was started about 17 years ago and has seen twice monthly use for about 16 years. One complete circuit is around 1 scale mile. The baseboards were made from MDF (a material we have found unsuitable for the Riviera climate), and as can be seen in photos and videos of the layout, most, if not all, the boards have developed a 'saucered' top, which isn't suitable for finescale stock. Some may argue a test track should have lumps and bumps in it to provide a shakedown for stock. However, the majority of us want a circuit were can run-in motive power and rolling stock, and not navigate an obsical course. Some of the baseboard joints on TT2 are gaps of between 4-5mm, and speaking as a professional railwayman, I would rather not go flying at 100mph over a gap in the rail of over 1ft and don't see a reason why my 4mm stock should either!
I thought it would be nice to share what we get up to. We are a talented and friendly lot and many of our members lurk amongst the pages of this forum, and indeed have their own layout treads on here, which I'm sure they would be happy to elaborate on.
As I mentioned above, Test Track 3 (TT3) is well under way and I'm sure Captain Kernow will be along shortly to share some track laying photos.
We decided to commission Tim Horn to produce our replacement baseboards from plywood. The new layout will be slightly smaller than TT2, with significantly lighter baseboards (the MDF ones really are like Dreadnaughts weight wise!). We are confident our new boards will be more than satisfactory for many years to come. We have decided to modify the original boards slightly to provide some better underframe protection.
Below are a few photos from last year showing the underside of the Tim Horn boards, with the late, great Brian Pearce making the finishing touches to the plywood protection pieces. We plan to use trestles and steel square lengths to rest the boards on. This framework should be reasonably easy to put up and provide a solid base to put the boards on.
The protection and strengthening of the boards is fairly straight forward. Various lengths of timber were cut and glued to the underside acting as a lip for 4mm ply to then be guled and nailed to. This, we hope, will prevent the crossmembers from becoming damaged and it helps to keep the boards straight by providing T and L shapes within the structure. The plywood strips were cut to shape using various templates Brian and I created. The boards have subsequently received 4 coats of varnish, on all visible surfaces to help keep the damp out.
During the early months of 2024, we had a trial set up. It was felt by several of us that two straight boards and a length of 8ft (each straight board is 4ft long), wouldn't give longer trains enough of a run. Brian very kindly gifted the group the funds to purchase four additional straight boards, which I am currently building. So the set up below will have two additional straight boards down each side, giving us a 16ft straight run.
Minimum curve on the 00 is a little over 4ft, with a 4ft 6' radius curve running down the centre of the curved boards. Track laying is well underway, almost complete, and I'm sure Tim will add some photos in when he gets a minute.
The steel underframe can be just about seen in this photo.
As well as meeting fortnightly, we also have Indulgence Days, which are essentially modelling days where members turn up with a project and have the company and support of their fellow model makers. These tend to fall on Saturdays.
A photo from the last Indulgence Day showing a hive of activity. We do open these days up to other finescale modellers, so if you live locally and fancy attending one of our Indulgence Days, do send me a PM.
So that pretty much wraps up DRAG and what we do. In a future post, I'll put some videos up of TT2 in action.
Best wishes,
Nick.
