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| Well, Jade and I have just come back on
deck from our Christmas break. I made an executive decision this Christmas,
and that was to take a week off. So for a total of one week, I managed
to get stuck into the layout. |
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The remainder of the track for the yard has now
been laid and wired. I have almost finished the laying and wiring
of the loco servicing depot and have decided to extend onto the
back corner of the yard and incorporate a wagon shops. |
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As many of you who have spoken to me over the years
know, I have a bit of a thing about workshops. I guess it comes from
an article I read over ten years ago in Model Railroader. This article
had a diesel servicing shop as a 4’x 8’ layout. When you through DCC
operation into the equation it becomes a very doable proposition.
Most people (myself included at one time) don’t
seem to understand the amount of work that goes on “behind the scenes”
to get just a couple of locos ready to start hauling a train. It is
certainly a seldom modeled facet of the railroad industry. Yet I find
it to be one of the most fascinating aspects of the railway industry.
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| The basic layout of the Summiton Loco Depot consists
of four roads, set in two groups of two tracks separated by a cross
over. At the Eastern end of the yard I am allowing for the Loco
inspection pit and loco storage roads. There is in fact a third
road running next to these that will become the “dead road”. |
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At the other end of the loco depot, will be the
Sanding Facility and then the Loco Maintenance Shed. These two buildings
are based on the standard modern Queensland workshop buildings and
are going to be built using Plastruct I beam clad with AR Kits corrugated
iron. The Sanding Facility is not too dissimilar to the sanding
facilities in the U.S. |
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This means there are a reasonable amount
of kits presently available that can be used as a starting point. I’ll
go through the construction of these in future chapters once I get started
on the buildings themselves.
So far as the layout of the loco depot, I have been using Google Earth
and studying the Willowburn Loco Depot in Toowoomba, QLD. You can get
a fair idea about what the “essential ingredients” are.
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| As the loco depot was growing along the front
of the layout, I needed a place to use as a wagon shops. This I
have decided to locate on the Western end of the yard and opposite
the loco depot. I am planning to have 2 roads running into the servicing
depot and a third to act as a storage road. In all each road should
be ten feet in length. |
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I am trying to get the largest building possible
for the wagon shops as I am trying to portray the sheer size of
these structures. Also, as there are only two industries on the
layout that require shunting, this will allow me to have a much
greater variation of rollingstock, in a smaller area then would
be required to build industries to service them. |
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Now, with all these grandiose plans set in place and
Jade pre-booking the psychiatrists sessions, we should be ready to make
a start. In all the layout is really starting to unfold in more ways
and with more possibilities than I would have thought. It should be
interesting to see what the next modification will be once the workshops
is done.
We shall see how we go.
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