Barcoola MKII Hobsons bay 2010 part 3

Hi All

More pix

thanks

Scott

Barcoola MKII hobsons bay 2010

Hi All

Some more pics

Barcoola MKII more shots

Hi All

some more pix. We managed to get some good pictures of the "Ginacood" pub, note the EL sneeking around the corner in the background.

A view down the main street, the HJ75's to fit the location, I would like to see a EB Falcon or VR commondore out the front of the pub, but since most of our local model manufactures are 10 to 15 years behind modelers demands, I seriously doubt this will happen. I will have to work something else out.

Like any layout it's never finished. But on the plus side, it has a new permanent home and although its not able to be set up, I have plenty of room to store it.

Barcoola has no new exhibitions for the remainder of this year and we expect it to go into hibernation. Construction of "a Town like Alice" is going to be planned out with standard project management techniques. If all goes well, I should be able to be accomplished within 6 months, as long as we can get the materials in time.

Enjoy

Scott

Barcoola

Hi All

We had a very successful exhibition at Hobson's Bay 2010. We caught up with many, and fun was had by all.

We managed to squeeze some pictures in on sunday and monday in some of the lulls between heavy traffic. As usual the Saturday morning was the busiest. Most of the changes to the layout were more unseen between Caulfield 2009 and Hobson's bay 2010. These included the following:
cutting down the four of the five heavy ply boards and converting them to the same format as the new boards. This enabled all the scenery boards to be loaded into the one 6by4 trailer.
Rewiring four of the old boards to DCC only.
Building new lighter free standing legs for the four older boards
Building five new lights to better spread the light, this turned out to be obvious not only in the photos but also the additional heat generated, which at the end of the day you really started to feel.

The down side:
One wiring fault (my bad) on one of the new boards. All the GM's seemed to have their chips fried at the last exhibition and refused to be reprogramed, EL53 sound equiped was also fried #$%^& it!

Any way here are some the un modified, small res shot of the layout, more to come.

thanks

Scott

Barcoola-palluza 2010

Hi All

Just a quick note to let you all know whats going on. Over the Xmas NYE period, I managed to get some quality time in. I have gone through my model equipment and discovered that I had more than enough equipment to construct another Alice Springs train goods train without the need to purchase any more equipment. I will have to convert some more Walthers 89ft flats, I just need to get a Walthers 75ft flat so I can rip off the tie down rails, which will make the converted 89ft flats more authentic. I have more than enough trucks and containers, so life is good.

I am still working on tripple deck car carriers, the worst thing is that I realised I need stacks more cars, I think I have come up with an aceptable alternative, to make a "look alike" series of Australian cars. When I look at the loaded car carriers they all ways seem to have a smattering of different types of cars, so thats what I am trying to get. I have too many of one type and more of the others to even up the mixture. The wagons will have to be built in sections painted and weathered in sections BEFORE assembly, it the only way to do it. I have made six side for three WMGFs, so this is still a work in progress.

I visited Glen after Xmas, and saw all the work he has put into constructing cattle wagons, Both ex CR & SAR long and short wagons, all to Glen's "standard". They are looking very nice.

Alice Springs yard has been planed out on the floor of the layout room, checking the track and point arrangment. I checked the room for the roads in th yard were big enough and wide enough for trucks to use the yard properly. I also positioned the crane and all is good there. MDF bases for Alice Springs Yard were cut to length and laid out on the floor, board sizes have been confirmed. All I have to do now is define the rest of the boards and the production line can be kicked over in quick fashion. Of course the layout room will need to be painted and new "blocker" blinds installed, along with more down lights. I went in to the roof to check it out and with the cooling and heating using seperate ducting there is stuff all spare room in the roof, so it might be a bit of a trial to add lighting, but its got to be done.

Will up load some more pix

CYA

Scott

Barcoola MKII mods

Hi All

I have been a little busy with work lately, but this weekend I finally have both days off. Yesterday, I managed to modify four of the new boards. Two Holes were cut in the bases of each ends of the boards. This enabled bolt holes to be drilled for transit bolts to be installed. These bolts were installed, from the inside of the boards, and screwed into T nuts that were hammered into the blanking - transit ends. This means that we will no longer have to screw and un screw the ends for transit (this arrangment was temporary anyway). So for our next exhibition each board should be ready for assembily with the removal of 4 bolts per board. This will make set up and take down even easier. I am happy with this configuration and will be incorporating this design into Alice Springs.

Anyway I am off to rebuild the remaining Original boards, have a good one.

Scott

Barcoola MKIII, Alice Springs and Bow River

Hi All

Here is a image of Barcoola MKIII, or Alice Springs and Bow River. As you can see I have been busy designing out as many of the imperfections as I could.

The result is the plan you see here.
the highlights of this change are as follows:
The industrial area is more "faithfull" to the prototype. I have added Smith street, re aranged the indusrties so that the are in correct order, Adelaide Brighton Cement, KleenGas, and Mobil, I have incorporated a runaround within the industiral trackage, this will enable an operator to work on the outside of the layout, without having to swap between sides. This will work in both home and exhibition format. A track to the NTFS depot has also been added, the original 1980 plans show that NTFS had a siding, for ultra modern Alice Springs this will be NQX's depot as it is now. A simple change of signs should be enough, to stop the hard core few.

Barcoola has been moved away from behind the bar as much as possible, and I have added a 2.5 ft bridge between Alice Springs and Barcoola, this will not only act as a scenic break, but also give more space for the train Controller, operators shunting locomotives off at Barcoola will be able to access the point with out inpinging on the work space of the Train Controller.

Tracks in the yard have been reduced from 4 to 3, addtionaly deadend sidings have been added so that Barcoola could accomidate 4 trains 3 in each yard track, and one more in the dead end tracks (if broken up). The TAR main has been included, this will act as the head shunt for Barcoola yard, leaving the CAR line free for normal operations. The switch for the 555Km Quarry is just short of the backdrop, and the line to the quarry will go under the Todd river same as the CAR main, this will pop out the other side on a small shelf below Alice Springs yard. Trains for 555Km Quarry will have to be manually reversed and loaded from this shelf.

Bow Rivers gradient is 1:50 and will look good as is levels out at the bridge just south of the end of the loop. entry of the CAR main into the back drop will be hidden by trees. Both ends of Bow River have nice gentle reverse curves. One just south of hevatree gap, the other at the brige south of the loop.

Grades:
The main north of Alice Springs, will be grade down untill it reaches the bridge before Barcoola. The other grades are, just north of the yard throat at barcoola, down under the Todd river to level out on the bridge south of Bow River.

Hevatree Gap as been increased in width to a max of 5.5 feet, this should mean that the scenery can do "Justice" to the size of the gap.

With this version, we have 36inch minumum radi and 22ft standing room in all sidings.

Two foot minumum aisle space only at "pinch" areas near the end of the peninsula, the remainder are 3 feet or more, especally in the Bow River - Barcoola area.

For exshibition format, both mainline sets of points at Bow River will have to be powered, this means that "mainline" operators can walk around the "outside" of the Layout with out any problems, and maintain control crossing moves.

Enjoy

Scott