SMALLER and SMALLER!

Reprinted from the June 1968 issue of Model Railway News.

When one considers the standard scales and gauges used in railway modelling, one finds that even the smallest available (TT gauge at the time I started work on this layout) requires too much space for a realistic layout. From the knowledge I had accumulated over many years of spare time work on very small models, I was confident that an electric motor armature of about 0.3in. diameter and of short axial length could be made to operate reliably - much smaller sizes are possible, but reliability then becomes a serious problem. There appeared to be adequate room for an armature of such dimensions within the width of a British steam locomotive reduced to 20 ft. to 1 in. scale. The shortest "respectable " train I considered would be four bogie coaches and a locomotive, something of the order of 1 ft. long in this scale, and requiring station platforms of comparable length.

For convenience in transport, a 6 ft. x 3 ft. baseboard is about the maximum; this represents something under 0.3 of a mile long; not as much as I would like, but a good deal more than most layouts. On one point I was quite definite - the layout would be in one piece. Detachable joints in this size track are not a good proposition.

The First Locomotive

This is shown in Fig. 1. It is an 0-6-0 side tank 1.5 in. long, conforming to general British railway practice in external appearance, but not based on any specific prototype. A full description of this and other locomotives in this scale may appear later in these pages (with the Editor's approval), but since this article is more general, only the briefest details are appropriate here. It operates on the two rail system; current pick-up is on all six driving wheels. The 0.3in. O.D. armature on a vertical axis, drives the rear axle through a 24:1 worm reduction gear. When satisfactory operation was obtained on a short length of makeshift track, the first phase of the project was completed.

Track

A section of the track is shown in Fig. a. The track bed is of rigid P.V.C., the "sleepers" being formed by gang milling, and the rail slots cut with a thin saw cutter. The rail itself is brass strip 0.l in. wide pressed into slots. I originally thought that friction would hold the rail in place, but later found wire staples necessary. The track bed section was originally made straight; the curved sections were produced by softening the P.V.C. in hot water and bending it to the required curvature. On the layout, the P.V.C. track beds are pinned and stuck with Araldite to a sub base.

Points

Attempts at producing the conventional types of points were a failure. The very thin ends of the point blades were too weak to hold their form. Stub points (see Fig. 3) were much more successful; the square cut ends of the rails gave no trouble. Derailment at points is now almost unknown. I am not as happy about the crossover and single slip (see Fig. 4) which has required a lot of "fiddling". It works quite well for "'all rigid wheelbase" locomotives, but pony trucks sometimes come adrift. The point controls are mechanical (using 0.0625in. control rods under the "ground "), the mechanical control being linked with the electrical polarity of the rails by multi-contact semi-rotary switches. All points are on easily detachable sub-bases for ease of maintenance.

The Layout

The layout (Fig. 5) was designed with the hope that it would look reasonably like a portion of the actual country; not an area into which as much track as possible had been crammed. The final outcome consists of an outer circuit of double track (the tunnels at the ends of the board are intended to convey the impression that these are two independent main lines) and an inner loop of single track connecting a terminal station with the main. line at a junction station, with a branch line to a quarry. At the terminal station there is a locomotive shed, goods siding and a small goods wharf; the row of shops adjacent to the station represents part of a town just off the map. The junction station adjoins a small village near the centre of the board. The river provides a good excuse for an assortment of bridges, and the uneven nature of the terrain requires items of interest such as retaining walls, embankments and cuttings. It was hoped that authentic plans of actual villages might be obtained, but the best information I could find was only of some individual buildings. These were all made out of cardboard, which is quite robust in this scale. I have used standard OO gauge brick paper; even though the bricks are about 2.5 times true linear scale, the effect seems better than forgetting the bricks and painting in brick colour. For the stone work on the church and tunnel mouths, I have used OO gauge " cobblestone street " paper, which gives a fair representation of rough masonry. At present, the locomotive yard and sidings at the terminus station are the only unfinished parts of the layout; the outer loop is the only part at present wired for current supply. Completion of the work is awaiting the solution of automatic coupling and decoupling problems; up to the present my experiments in this field have not been entirely successful. The layout is a joint effort; my wife is responsible for the scenic work.

Rolling Stock

At present I have made only the bogie passenger coaches and four wheel goods trucks. These are all of plastic construction, except for the wheels. Brass dies were made for the plastic components and the pressings made under hot water. The components were assembled in jigs to maintain squareness, and the wheels sprung into place. The coaches and trucks were passed only if they would coast down a 1 in 50 gradient under gravity. The goods trucks required weighting with lead before they would run properly around the curves (minimum 8in. radius) in reasonably long trains of about 20 trucks, again not much of a train in full size, but nearly a quarter the length of the layout. The heaviest passenger train the locomotives can manage is eight bogie coaches up the 1 in 30 gradients on 8in. radius curves, when everything is thoroughly clean and the track dry; still a good margin for deterioration for the four coach trains which are the longest the stations can accommodate.

General Performance

This layout has been shown in operation at four exhibitions in New South Wales, running on the outer circuit: only. Each locomotive has had at least 100 hours' running at reasonable scale speeds - not the ridiculously high speeds seen all too often when model trains are demonstrated. There have been troubles, mostly due to the dust which gets stirred up in crowded exhibition halls, but only on one occasion has a fault occurred in one of the locomotives which could not be rectified in a few minutes.

Despite their small size, the trains appear to be quite reliable in operation. It is not so many years ago that OO gauge was thought to be too small for reliable operation. Size is purely relative, and even 20 ft. to the inch appears large when experimenting with 40 ft. to the inch railway modelling, which I am doing at present.

[Copyright Note: The copyright for this article must still reside with the estate of the late A.A. Sherwood. The current owner or owners are unknown, so the article has, therefore, been reproduced without permission but with full acknowledgement of copyright.]