Progress hasn’t been very fast over the last months.  There was a bit of a diversion onto Jacks Hill 3, to make up a bigger loading building.

With the other guys’ help, I now have a cobbled yard in front of the sector plate, and the basis of a road making its way along the front of the layout to link the sidings and the station end.  There is a low-relief goods store slotted into place in the yard.
I have also been mocking up the layout of the station platform and buildings.

As I said in my last update, my plan over the winter months is to concentrate on buildings (the platform, station building, signal box, etc.) and rolling stock.

And Irish Railway Models (part of Accurascale) keeps producing tempting new goodies, which would reinforce the CIE goods stock very nicely…

The main job this summer was to get track and point wiring completed.  I had initially used suitcase-style connectors to link droppers to the bus wires, but I learned about getting what you pay for.  I had bought too cheaply off the internet and I found that, due to a combination of product quality and (I admit) pilot error, about a quarter of the connections were non-existent or unreliable.  I fixed that by diverting connections to other bits of the bus, but while that worked, it created a cat’s cradle of wires under the boards that lost all semblance of a system.  So I re-wired the power bus using chocblock connectors which involved more screwdriver work but has left me with a tidier system.  I got the Megapoints point control set up, with switches embedded in the baseboard back member. I found that a 1mm steel wire to connect servo arm to tie bar worked better for me than a finer wire.

Currently, I am in the happy position that all bits of the track have power in the right places when they should have.  The curved point in the yard area did flummox me for a while by having the frog and wing rails electrically separate, which I can’t believe is an intentional design feature from Peco!  However, an extra dropper to the microswitch sorted that out once I worked out what was going on.
 
The overbridge at the sector plate entrance is structurally complete.  It shields the sector plate and also gives a little ‘mousehole’ access to the sidings in front of the sector plate, which is being made into a little commercial area.  That area will have track inlaid into sets/cobbles, and I have started on that, using Wills plastic sheets.  This has involved a lot of fiddly cutting to shape, but I think looks quite good so far.  Next stage is to put in a representation of the guard rails and the setts between the rails.  I have started on the buildings for that yard area, too.  These will be in low relief against the backscene shielding the sector plate – there is some evidence of the start of this work in the latest photographs.
 
My plan over the winter months is to concentrate on buildings (the platform, a station building, a signal box, the commercial yard, etc.) and rolling stock.

I need to build up the stock roster.  Railcars, conversions of BR Mk 2 coaches for the NIR locos to haul (the real railway did so, so I will too!), parcels vans for the passenger side.  A kit for a NIR Hunslet Bo-Bo awaits.  I’ll need some stock for a CIE passenger train. Freight stock for both NIR and CIE needs some vans and short container flats.  In this case, some British kits can be adapted and I have also got a number of Provincial Wagons kits of appropriate types.  Irish Railway Models (part of Accurascale) has already provided – via Santa – a super model of a CIE A Class locomotive, and promises some NIR Mk 2b coaches during 2022.

The current job is wiring up the layout. I have gathered all the bits I need for this (I think) and am slowly making my way through this. The move to DCC and servo motors for points mean it is that bit less familiar to me and I need to check what I’m doing as I go. However, progress is happening.
 
Updates on earlier work:
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In one of those ironies that frequently happens in this hobby, I had just about completed bashing together the body for the 80 Class motor coach when I was browsing a well-known internet auction site and came upon an old MIR set of brass sides to convert coaches into an 80 Class. As the final quality should hopefully be better, those were acquired, and I will make a start on that soon.

An earlier update mentioned the “brown van” I was building, and that is now painted in NIR maroon. If I weather it like the real thing, it will become clear why these were called “brown vans”, regardless of what colour they were originally!
I have also made a CIE loco fuel oil tanker from a Dapol kit plus a brass details pack from Studio Scale Models of Athlone, with transfers from Railtec. I found the details and transfers really good and it has turned out quite nice.

With a bit of careful use of the available timber, the three revised baseboards came together soon after the last update, and the trackplan fitted quite well.

Then, slowly, I got on with tracklaying. The sector plate came first – basically four nearly-straight tracks, so easing myself in. The tracks are all electrically linked, with one pair of power feeds diving through the baseboard just in front of the pivot.

The rest of the track followed, its pace determined by the fact that bits of real life happened over the summer and needed to be dealt with. Also, I managed to cut track wrong every so often, even after having measured it. However, it is now all laid.  Rolling stock seems to be able to cope with the various points, curves and joins between sector plate and baseboards, and between baseboards. Push test only so far, but not making me worry. The boards even come apart and go back together again with track in good alignment, much to my relief.

The next thing I’m doing is putting the bridge on the fiddle yard board that will form the scenic break, because that will form a benchmark for the backscenes for the other two boards and the scenic bit in front of the sector plate. I managed to secure it with a combination of screws, panel pins and glue, because that end of the baseboard is quite congested underneath with timberwork. When I came to putting up the backscene that will hide the sector plate and be the setting for a little warehousing area, I found that the piece of 4mm ply I was intending to use had warped a bit in the changing weather over the last few months – alternating hot and dry, biblically wet, warm and humid, cool and autumnal conditions. Having the “sky” be twisty just looks odd, so I wasn’t happy with that. Because there is very little space between the back of the backscene and the sector plate, bracing wasn’t a practical option and I will be using 9mm ply instead.

I have started the skins of the bridge, based on mounting board with coarse stone plasticard facing. It has taken a few attempts to get to a reasonable painting and weathering regime. There is still a bit of work to do on this; however, at least it can be done indoors (“I have to do this on the table, dear, because otherwise the damp garage will cause the cardboard to warp”)

Then after that will be wiring, one board at a time. All the sections of track have dropper cables already fixed, so all I have to do is connect them to the bus that I will install…and then wire up the point motors and polarity switches…and then fit a few signals. My original intention was two single platform starters, but having to squeeze the layout width makes me think that I’m more likely to end up with a bracket signal.

​And after that, buildings, rolling stock and scenery. It’ll keep me out of mischief for a while.

The best-laid plans…Though clearly my plans hadn’t actually been that well laid.

About a month ago, baseboards had progressed to the point where I could think about starting to lay track. One of the conditions of planning permission for the layout from the domestic authorities was that it had to able to be stowed away in the loft. So boards had been sized to fit through the loft hatch. Just to check, I tried putting the boards in the loft – and they wouldn’t fit. They fit through the hatch (just), but because of the position of a few significant items like roof joists, I couldn’t turn them to store them in the intended place.

“Oh dear me, how disappointing”, I said (or words to that effect).

To be store-able, the layout has had to shrink a bit; from 10’ to 9’ overall length, and from 2’ wide to about 19”. I warmed up the brain cell and pondered various options for next steps, including some radical revisions to station design.  After consultation with the others, I concluded that I can keep essentially the original trackplan, without too much squeezing. The street scene behind the station will have to go on separate add-on boards, which will make it easier to work on away from the layout. I’m OK with that; I like the idea of that street – it will hopefully be reminiscent of Portrush and will help set the scene. There should still be room for at least one siding in front of the sector plate.

The sector plate itself has to be shortened by about 6”, which will limit the maximum train length a bit, but won’t affect the everyday railcars. The plate will stick out further behind the backscene when in operation, so I will need something to stop hard-to-get stock plummeting to the floor because I put the wrong number in the controller. I have some initial thoughts for a restraint, which will have to get refined as work goes on.

Over the last few weeks, I have started trying to salvage as much of the material of the original baseboards as possible to make the smaller versions. To add to the challenge, I am trying to do this with the minimum requirement for new wood, etc. so that I don’t have to break lockdown for the relatively trivial purposes of shopping for my hobby.

So far, I have managed to rebuild the fiddle yard board, as seen in the photos. A backscene will go in between the sector plate and the flat triangle ‘in front’ of it, but my thinner plywood has warped, so that will have to wait for a while. I definitely have enough timber for the next board, and it’s looking a bit tight for the third board, so that shopping trip might have to happen at some point, hopefully when lockdown restrictions ease a little in the future.
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Still, it makes a nice change from sitting on a computer all day.

The first tentative steps have been taken to create a stalwart of the NIR passenger carrying fleet, the 80 Class DEMU

The first vehicle, a driving trailer, takes shape.  2 Hornby BR Mark 2a coaches have given up their plastic, along with a scratchbuilt plasticard cab.  Obviously there is a lot more to do, I’ll post updates as and when progress is made.

Work on Portandoo has been slow over the last few months, not helped by the fact that the “railway work room”, aka garage, hasn’t been the nicest place to spend time over the winter.

However, creating a short test track (see pics below) has been possible in more indoors conditions, and has let me fit DCC chips to some stock and try them out. The photos show the test board and a couple of Murphy Models‘ fine products.

Also, a bit more track planning has been going on.