Stroudley Green

This is little unusual for the Gallery pages.  The story of the construction of Stroudley Green in Maurice Hopper's own words.

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Above is the outline track plan for Stroudley Green. The original idea came from Brading on the Isle of Wight. The “bay” siding has been removed and the long warehouse siding added to make more interest operationally, visually and electrically. This new siding turns back off the loop and crosses the curved siding with a diamond crossing. So the only particular characteristic that remains of Brading is the rather unusual small turntable release at the head of the loop.

This shows my first venture into ply framed baseboard frames. It also shows the advantage of working in a furniture making shop with plenty of long cramps available.  I am keeping the cut-outs to see if all the extra work with the saw drill actually makes a significant difference to the overall weight of the finished product.

The main broad is on the way to joining the first short end board. In the back ground the set of ‘L’ section carrying “girders” can be seen, each pair folded on top of each other. These will be latched together across the top of folding legs which will have levellers included in the top mounting beam. The girders will be set up on the legs with the help of a spirit level before the layout base frames are place on top. There are enough “girders” here for the larger "Melstock Intrinseca" with the differences in length design to accommodate the two layouts in different selections and combinations. The thin edge of the “girder” has a number of 3/4” diameter holes that will fit over 5/8” round pegs in the leg tops to hold things in place.

Here the curved and profiled side panels are being fixed to the sides of the short end broad. Although the core box is already square, I am still working on the flat surface of a piece of mdf. This is the only reason for having the revolting stuff (mdf) in the work shop as the top of my home made bench is not absolutely level. (I have to have a few pieces of mdf about as I don’t always wish to make rocking chairs, especially when they are supposed to have four legs on the ground.) The sides are built up with the shaped extension blocks being glued in place first. When fully dry the ply is glued, gently bent and held in place with cramps until dry, normally over night. Having cleared the cramps out of the way I finally pin the 6 mm ply side to the 12 mm blocks and end panels and the over-cut ends trimmed to size.

The second side of the centre base frame is being fromed using small clamps building up from the rectangular core frame. The right-hand side of the frame has been reduced in height to accommodate the gentle embankment that will be a feature of the viewing side of the layout.

The track base of 9 mm ply (the thickness being determined by some useful and large off-cuts that were to hand) has been glued and pin to the top of the base frame. The track centre lines have been transferred from the full size track plan by pricking through and holes drilled for wiring. I like to get as much of the woodwork done before track laying starts.

Cork half strips are being glued down next to the centre lines. These are held in place until dry by the handy weights made from suitable pieces of full-size permanent way that originate from closed railway lines in various parts of Devon. (I really should look at the landscape rather than the ground when I am out walking.) On the higher back edge of the base frame the section switch block (old Hammet and Morgan) and the space of the lever-frame are accommodated in cut-outs in the curved panel.

Corking completed. It’s beginning to look like a railway. How long will the turntable be just a hole? I have enough Meccano to make the works underneath.

A jump forward shows the track templates glued to the cork and the copper clad sleepers stuck down with green UHU. Wiring is in place with short ends poking through and held with a tab of masking tape. The embankment has been wired with mesh from the local garden centre. This is not only cheaper than the 10 metres of chicken wire (what would I do with the other 9 metres) but is somewhat more robust in the process of shaping. The mesh is carefully stapled to the top of the ply with upholstery staples. The ballast department are trying various methods for ballasting to produce the style of the late 1800 and early 1900s. I suspect I will end up with a two stage process, fixing the below sleeper ballast before soldering the rail in place and then revisiting with the glue and grit to add the over sleeper ballast, leaving the drainage gaps at about ever fourth sleeper space. There is one problem in working this way in that all the information on the templates about the rail positions and gaps are lost under the ballast, so I will return to the tried and, to some extent trusted, method of finishing the track and adding and shaping the dry ballast afterwards and dropping diluted PVA glue on it from an eye dropper. This method is of course no use with granulated cork ballast, which just floats away. The siding will be ballasted with much finer material than the “mainline”. Talking of the “mainline” the spoon seems to have double arrows on it.

This final construction picture in this set shows the end of the long siding with track being laid on a base formed of a 8 mm foam camping mat as suggested by Ian Rice in his various works on 4 mm fine-scale track building. This is supposed to make a significant difference to the amount of noise generated by moving trains, isolating the movement from the sound box of the base frame. This track while be ballasted with cork granules also to help keep the sound down. Part of the experiment includes the join between to base frames, to see how the relatively soft base copes with keeping the track aligned across the join. And so onto the finished layout