Brazilian Switching Layout

[hpept]

I´m starting this new thread to show the layout I´ve working on since 2007.
It´s basically a shelf layout with some pretty intense shunting capabilities. Since I don´t have much space in my apartment, I tried to come up with something that could sustain intertest for sessions longer than five minutes.
Since I like very much puzzle layouts, I tried to combine two of the most famous puzzles: Inglenook and Time Saver, which became a " Timenook" on my layout.
The other effort I put on this, was to give a credible scenery to such amount of rails without cluttering everything.
Apart from the swithcing area, I included a manteinance area with a loco shed, oil deposit, sand facility and coal station for the older steamers (actually only one, but I think it adds so much to a layout to put a coal tower) and a turntable.
All of this in the amazing space of 270X60cm, actually occupying the whole wall of my "chaos" room.
The table has been split into two sections which can be separated for better transporting in case I´ll move from here. All woodwork was done with 12mm plywood (5 plies) glued with wood glue and screwed together with self threading screws to secure everything down.
In the following picture follows the track plan.

The longer central track is part of an imaginary single track line who crosses the whole layout. Lower left there´s the maintenance area for my locos (up to 5 machines can be simultaneously accomodated + another running loco on the layout) with coal tower and sand facility (SPOT 4), oil deposit + water tower (lower left of the turntable) and loco shed (two stalls on the right of the turntable) with an auxiliary external track.
Upper left, SPOT 1 location, can accomodate a grain elevator or cement tower.
On the right side of the layout, upper track is serving a manufacture plant (SPOT 2). Second track leads to a goods transportation company(SPOT 3), third track (the curved one, which is also part of the main line) serves an oil refinery.
The other two lower track are part of a fluvial port container terminal (blue area). The last track goes into a, respectively, intermodal station, goods station,passenger station by simply changing the building located at SPOT 5.
As you can see lots of action is packed up in a small space.
A feature I wanted to explore was to be able to play shunting puzzles. For this reason, as I already mentioned, the layout was accurately studied to turn into a standard (5-3-3) Inglenook:




or a Timesaver:



(just click to open bigger pictures)

[GWRman]

Sounds very nice. When can we see some pics?

Doug.

[hpept]

Here follows some pictures of the early phases of the layout constrution, dated back to end of may 2008 showing the overall positioning into the room, and some details of the track laying, which was done entirely over a cork bed 3mm thick.
All tracks are brasilian products (brass turnouts and flex tracks) of a company called Frateschi. Turntable is also a Frateschi product, very noisy but precise enough when indexing the exits due to an ingenious cam system which ensures repeatability of perfect alignment to the incoming tracks.
In the first picture is easy to see the mark where the two tables join. They are aligned by means of two wooden pins 1cm diameter and three steel bolts which take care of the flex momentum which tends to separate the lower edges of the tables.

[hpept]

The layout has been designed to be operated in DC mode, since DCC is overwhelingly expensive here in Brasil due to the import tax of 60% of the value imported (tax applies also to shipment value... ) and also extremely difficult to find.
For this reason I went through the only affordable way, which is old plain DC. I´ve searched the internet for good electric plans, and I was able to build myself the entire control panel.



The control panel is enclosed in a plastic box made for electronics hobby, 26X17cm, with a nicely sloped front panel which I used for the synoptic pane.
The track schematics was done by printing a corel draw drawing onto a overhead transparent sheet, and trapped between the panel and the leds sockets and switches.
Black on/off switches are the track blocks. Turntable tracks can be individually activated with a momentary on push button.
Leds, indicating the turnout status, are bi-color 3mm leds which polarity is selected by an under the table DPDT switch activated by a through the fascia rod to manually operate the turnouts.
The grey box on top of the panel is the turntable control panel: left button rotates counterclockwise, right button clockwise).
The row os switches on the upper right is the lighting system: six sections were taken into account for illumination of road lights, shed, buildings, railroad crossing lights, and so on.



This under the hood picture shows the interior of the control panel. Basically there are two transformers (left one is 6V, used for layout lighting and track semaphors power supply, right one is a 12V/3A for the track feeding). Backside of the front panels shows the routing for the turnout indicators, while on the back of the panels the two DB connectors: 15 pins for the track feeding and 37 pins for lighting.
At the right, there is a DIN plug for the self built handheld unit.



The unit is very basic and simple, since it must permit to my son to also play with the layout thus maintaining a certain freedom of movement for the operator whic can reall go close to the action. The controller basically features a rotary 5K potentiometer and a direction switch with an amber led to indicate the voltage track feeding. It´s based on a easy to find circuit using a LM 317 voltage regulator (which sometimes goes very hot, very nice to warm hands during winter nights... ).

The layout can be operated completely without putting the "hand of God" on it. Turnout switching can be done on the front fascia, and the status of the turnouts can be checked on the panel, thus perimtting a first sight routing (green light, straight ahead, red light, deviated) without actually looking at the layout.

[hpept]

After searching the internet for a simple and effective solution for turnout control, I concluded that the rod system manipulated through the fascia is the simplest and most reliable.
6mm eucalyptus rods are fed through the fascia to the undertables, kept into position by some elastic bands.
The knobs are simple drawer wooden knobs painted grey. Stroke is around 8mm, enough to feed the motion to the electric switches under the table whic also helps to keep the turnouts into position.



Under the table switches are DPDT, directly fed by the control panel and are used to route power to the relative green/red light on the layout and the bicolor led of the control panel.
Most of the turnouts are parallel to the layout edges, so switch action is pretty easy. Some of them although are at a slight angle (15 degrees) which makes a little more difficult to activate them by the rod which is perpendicular to the long edge of the layout. The switch is kept into position by a 30mm piece of aluminium L profile.



A different case is the Fleischmann double slip. In this case the lever action is not perpendicular to the track, but parallel. I had to transform the motion from transversal to parallel by means of a right angle made of plastic and a lot of "file action" to make things sit right. What came out is the best turnout action of the whole layout, sturdy and steady...



And finally, how the turnout is actually moved. A simple straightened paper clip is glued to the rod and passed through a hole in the table and through the eyelet of the turnout.

[JackBlack]

Very good progress so far hpept!!

[GWRman]

Thats some ingenious work you have done hpept. It never suprises me, the ways to do something when you don't have proprietry items available. A brilliant job.

Doug.

[hpept]

Thank you Jack and Doug for the encouraging words.
Yes Doug, necessity is the mother of progress. It may seem very simple for a US or UK modeller think "let´s go to the local hobby shop" when he needs some parts. A couple of years ago I lived in a city (not a small one, a state capital) where the closest "local hobby shop" was 250km away in the capital of another state. And also now that i live close to a metropolis like S.Paulo, it´s not easy to find all I need. I had to develop alot of techniques to work around these problems, such as home made ground foam for vegetation and trees, lots of scratch building and DIY since I´ve no commercial material available. The only things I can find at the "local hobby shop" (which is now fortunately only a couple of kms away) is some basic train sets, locos, wagons flex and setrack and very basic decorative material (such as psychedelic green tinted sawdust ).
For this reason I´m using also some paper models that i bought and downloaded from abroad to fill in the gap.
Maybe if I had readily available DCC systems I would have gone for a top of the line set, with locos crammed with tremendous functions, but what I have will do for me... Maybe now I wouldn´t know as much as I know now about electronics, about scenic material, about scratch building and surely I wouldn´t have passed alot of time making researchs. For me it works, as long as I have fun with all of this.

[Made in Italy]

Well, after all this way of modelling was very common among modellers until 30 years ago even in Europe!
Very well done
Franco

[gringo]

muito gostozo!

It looks very nice, and I can't wait to see more pictures!

FYI, I travel to Campinas frequently (I'm an airline pilot and my wife is from there). I have a friend in Jundiaí whom I bring American hobby supplies- PM me if you need anything specific! I'm sure I can help out a fellow modeler!

Tchau!