Growing Pains — And Pleasures

Your original layout, even a simple oval on a 4' x 6' table, can grow and grow without spilling over its original limitations. The addition of new loops, sidings, cars, accessories, buildings, hills, lakes, streams, trees, and the scores of other items that have a place on or near a rail- road, will keep you busy and happy for months—or longer.

So many and varied are the potentialities of even a modest pike that, if you are strictly limited as to space, you can still gain for yourself years of rewarding enjoyment.

But if there is a little unused space somewhere, you will in time plan additions to your table or shelf. There are many ways of doing this, depending upon the amount and shape of the available space. If you have a platform along one wall of a room, continue it along an adjoining wall. If windows or doors get in the way, construct lift-bridges or drawbridges across these points. If your train shelf is not too high, perhaps you can build a downgrade that will carry the extension below window sills. Some enthusiasts have even tunneled through a wall into the adjoining room to gain additional space.

The chances are, however, that most newcomers to model railroading will have started with 4' x 6' or 4' x 8' tables. They would like to add to their layouts without

Starting all over again and, if possible, without destroy- ing too much of the trackwork and perhaps scenery that they have already completed. You can accomplish this by building another table and attaching it to the first. It may extend out from the old table at right angles, or fit across one end to form an L, or make a T with the first table, or a big square 6' x 8' by putting the two side by side, a long shelf 4' x 12' when end to end. These figures are based on two 4' x 6' tables.

You can add greater variety by making your second table open-top if the first was closed, with easier construction of mountains, valleys, lakes, rivers, underpasses. And, no matter how you place the table, you can find a way to tie your new trackage into much of the old, and add new scenery so that it blends with the old

One example will show you how it can be done (Fig. 105). Let's take one of the 4' x 6' layouts suggested in Chapter 5.

Now add a second 4' x 6' table to the first and add the trackage indicated, as shown in Fig. 106.

There are, of course, many ways in which you can add more tracks to your original layout. The suggestion offered here gives you a Figure Eight, with a crossing, another outside loop beyond the Figure Eight loop—and a passing siding, all without changing anything in your original layout, which can still be used just as it was before, but with the many additional movements provided by the new trackage. You now have tracks running diagonally across the table— always an advantage in creating the illusion that you are not running a railroad on a rectangular table. The Figure Eight means that at certain points you will have two trains passing each other going in opposite directions. If you run just one train it does not always run in the same di- rection, as with ordinary oval layouts. All you need to do, to accomplish all this, is to replace three sections of curved track of your original layout with switches and add the new tracks on the new table.

 

On this combined layout, you can build mountains with tunnels if you wish, carrying the new outside loop through a tunnel while the loop of the Figure Eight curves around the base of the mountain. On the long stretch where the tables butt together you have enough length to build a good grade, so that one line of track can pass over another.

Instead of a crossing in the Figure Eight, you may have a bridge, with one track passing under the other after as- cending a grade. If your new table is open-top, one line can descend 21/4 inches, the other rise 21/4 inches. The new layout obviously adds tremendously to the variety of train operation, without making you waste any time ripping up your old layout and scenery. The new scenery can flow into the old perfectly, in fact. If the terrain on your first table has been gently rolling farmland, start hills on your new table a little higher, growing higher until at the far end you have your mountain. Add a river if you wish, tumbling down the mountain, under a bridge, across your new table, and into the river bed on your first table.

Perhaps your first table was 4' x 8' or 5' x 9'. You can still add to it as you wish—a 4' x 6', another 4' x 8', or, if space is limited, even a 4' x 4' addition will help. Whatever you add and in whatever position, sit down with your pike-planning ruler, lay out the new table arrangement one inch to the foot, and plan your new trackage according to your tastes and interests. Then sketch in an approxi- mate handling of accessories, buildings, and scenery, and go to work. If the new layout you make does not seem to be possible with regular track sections or even half sections, you can cut your own odd lengths. Take an ordinary section of track, put in a vise or hold tightly, and saw through the rails with a hack saw. File the cut edges smooth, place metal pins in place, and if necessary shift the position of a tie and its insulating fibers.

If you can add a table at both ends of your first table, to form an inverted letter U, the possibilities are increased tenfold, for the waterwings or dogbone layout is one of the most popular.

With an enlarged layout, you will probably be running two trains, if you haven't started earlier. As explained earlier, some switches for S-gauge trains allow you to run two trains just by pushing a button on each switch of a pair. But this just stops one train when the other moves on a different loop. If you have two separate loops—a circle within an oval—you can run two trains all right, but both will travel at the same speed, since you have only one speed control on a single transformer. (Be sure your transformer has enough capacity in watts to handle two trains plus all your accessories before you try this.) "While this can be very enjoyable, the time will come when you want to run the freight train slow, the passenger train fast, or to stop one while another goes on, without any relation to switches.

In order to run two trains at different speeds you must have two speed controls, and this means either two trans- formers or a transformer with twin controls. You have probably outgrown your first transformer, anyway, with the many additions to your track and accessories, so think about another. You may keep the old transformer and buy another, checking on the wattage demands to determine its size. Or you may get a twincontrol transformer for two trains and keep the old transformer for carrying the load of a number of your accessories, particularly those that operate and draw a fair amount of current.

If you have not sectionalized your layout, you will have to do it with two transformers running two trains, at least to the extent of dividing the layout into two main sections (Fig. 107). Power from one transformer goes to one main section, from the other transformer to the second main section.

In any extended layout you are bound to have at least two basic lines on which the trains run, and theseare your natural sections. The two sections can be connected by track, of course, so long as fiber pins insulate one from another. When a train passes from one section to the other, you will shift to the other transformer to control it. Actually, with the twin-control transformer or two transformers, and the switches in your layout set correctly, you can control four trains!

With the advent of multiple-train operation you will have one or more associates and assistants a good deal of the time, although one person can handle an amazing number of train movements alone with a good control panel in front of him. Most likely there have been sev- eral operators of the trains almost from the beginning, with one person on the transformer, one on switches, one on uncoupler, and so on. With a more complex layout and at least two trains independently controlled, operation by more than one person can increase not only the enjoyment of model railroading but its resemblance to real rail- roading.

The simplest form of two-operator running of trains comes with a layout consisting of two loops or train systems, each with its train and transformer. Each engineer controls his own train and does what he wishes, with- out regard to the other. But this is really just running two trains on two different railroads, and offers none of the problems of running more than one train on one railroad system. When one engineer moves his train from his loop to the other, then you have multiple-train work, with the possibility of collisions. When both trains are on the same loop, of course, they must be controlled by the same transformer lever, which means that they will run at the same speed if they are of the same power and carry the same weight in cars. If you want these trains to run at dif- ferent speeds, make one of them a short, lightweight passenger train, the other a longer freight train—and load your hopper cars with pieces of lead or other heavy metal. The passenger train will then outspeed the freight, which is as it should be, even when controlled by the same handle on the transformer.

This is the time when you must have a passing siding, with its switches set for Two-Train Operation. With the fast train approaching, the slow freight must get out of the way. So it pulls into the siding and stops as you throw the switches for the train on the main line, because the throwing of the switch cuts off the flow of current into the siding. After the fast train has passed, open the switches, allowing the current to flow into the siding once more, and let the freight come out onto the main track. By this time you can send the fast train to the other loop, let it switch transformers, and proceed with other operations.
For the handling of two trains by two people, the dead-block system is, of course, an excellent aid. It prevents collisions when two trains are on the same loop. Sectionalizing your layout into shorter blocks will also give you greater control, as you can stop a train merely by flicking off the current to the block it happens to be in, without closing the controlling lever and stopping the second train on the same loop.

On large pikes, more complete control is gained by sectionalizing and adding rheostats—which control the amount of current sent over the wires—between the source of power and each block of track. Thus for a train to move through any sectionalized block, the switch must first be thrown for that block to receive current. Then moving the rheostat as if it were the control lever on the transformer controls the speed of the train within that block.

With a layout of this nature you can have two, four, six, or as many operators as you have trains. On some very large private layouts and railroad club pikes, operators engage in "cab" control. Each person sits in a cab with a complete panel before him. He is in charge of one train, carrying it over its route so as to co-ordinate it with the movement of all other trains. He controls its speed through each block or section of the layout.

Timetables are made up for multiple-train operation of this sort, as they must be. They show the schedules of each train on the pike, which siding a freight is to take to allow the express to pass, where that freight is to pick up a car and drop another on a dead-end siding by a factory building or station. There are fast expresses, fast freights, commuting trains, milk trains, slow freights, work trains on the railroad system, each doing its job on schedule and keeping out of the way of all other trains. If one train is delayed, orders are sent out to the operators of other trains—just as on real railroads—so that all schedules may be adjusted.

You can try timetable operation of your two-train lay- out and see how much fun it is. The fast train, of course, will make eight or ten circuits of the layout to represent a trip from one town to the next; otherwise its journey would be too short to allow the freight train to perform many of its essential operations of picking up and dropping off cars, halting at every little station, and so on. In order to increase the illusion of distance and time, the fast train can remain hidden in a tunnel for a while, as if it were traveling to towns out of sight of the operators. If your mountain is long enough, you can have a passing siding within the tunnel; the fast train can disappear into the tunnel, move on to the passing siding, and stop. Then the freight train, a few scale minutes later, can also enter the tunnel, stay on the main track, emerge from the other end of the tunnel and go on about its business, perhaps pulling onto a siding to pick up a freight car standing there. While the freight train is on the siding, the fast express will pull out of the hidden siding in the tunnel and come out on the main track, pass the freight, and high-ball on its merry way.

If you have worked out good routes and timetables, two operators can thus run two trains much as railroads run theirs. You can work out different timetables, switch jobs, take on two assistants as dispatchers, and vary the operation in innumerable ways. You will probably find yourself enjoying your hobby more as more people join you in it.

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