Alderford draws its inspiration from Carl Bowden's home territory - the electrified lines of the North West in the late 1980s.
ALDERFORD
Carl Bowden
FACT FILE
Layout Name: Alderford
Scale/Gauge: OO
Size: 37ft 3in x 2ft
Era/Region: BR North West WCML (1985-1990)
Layout Type: End to end.
The inspiration
When the time came for me to start to think about building a new layout, I was wanting to do something different from my two previous layouts, both of which were of the round and round kind, Scotforth junction in N gauge followed by Great Endon in OO. While on the lookout for ideas and having some criteria in mind (a terminus station and overhead electrification to name two), I came across an article in the BRM sister magazine, Traction, Annual 2009/10, featuring Liverpool Lime Street in the years of 1985/86. The idea that came from reading this article and studying the photos was to model the operation methods of Lime St but within the confines of a station with only five platforms and from this, the seeds for Alderford were sawn.
With the help of a former Preston club member, the trackplan was created using a free trial version of Anyrail layout planning software. Once we were happy with the plan, construction was started on the layout in early 2011. I had barely got the track laid on the baseboards when I was given the invite form for Alderford to attend its first exhibition in 2013 by the Preston club exhibition manager. Being a member of the Preston club may have helped to get this first invite but also this set the time scale for having the layout in a presentable state before its first show.
The biggest lesson I learned from my last layout was to not use chip board for baseboards. For Alderford, I decided to use 12mm marine grade plywood sheet for the baseboard surface and 15mm ply for the framework. A total of nine 4ftx2ft baseboards make up the layout, 24ft for the scenic section and 12ft for the fiddle yard, plus a 2ft x 15in extension for the station building and street scene. All of the legs for the layout are hinged underneath and each baseboard section piggybacks off the last.
Trackwork is all PECO code 75 with live frog points. Live frog points are a must in my opinion for the absolute minimum of power interruption even with DCC control and locomotives manufactured to today's modern standers with all-wheel pickups.
I'm not going to go into too much detail about how the land contours were created and what ballast, scatters and foliage was used as I would just be repeating what has already been published so many times in other layout article's except for one thing about ballast and that is I preferred to use N gauge ballast as it just looks more to scale in my opinion than that labelled for OO gauge.
The buildings and structures on Alderford are a mix bag of scratch-built, kits and ready-to-plant items. Starting with the low relief buildings on the backscene, the church and the office block for the industrial area are scratch-made from flat sheets of clear perspex with added brick or stone embossed sheet, raised detail and painted. The church also has a working clock face added into the tower for that extra finishing touch. The remaining low relief buildings are from either Ten Commandment or the Skytrex range.
The loco maintenance depot shed, office block, disused signal box and the low relief corner pub by the station building are from the Bachmann Scale Scene range.
The station building itself, of which I get asked quite often about at exhibitions, is from the Townstreet Models range of cast resin kits and is loosely based on the main building of Carlisle Citadel station. Finding an impressive station building for Alderford was a bit of a concern at the start as I was not liking a lot of what was on the market either ready-to-plant or in kit form and was thinking that this was also going to be a scratch-build job. It was only by chance that I spotted a small advert in the back of a magazine for Townstreet Models with a photo of the built station kit and that was it, my search was over, it was the perfect station building for Alderford despite the near £100 price tag. Room interiors are being fitted to the building but this is an ongoing job.
The train shed for the station is the PECO offering using four kits to make the 3ft 8in twin arch structure. Originally, I also used the support pillars that came in the kit for the middle, the two sides being supported by brick arched walls, but within the last twelve months, they were replaced with more robust brass tube pillars, support beam and ornate bracing at the top of the pillars. Changing the pillars to brass tube also allowed me to attach working lamps to them. The train shed roof does lift off to facilitate access to clean the track and re-rail derailments. The power feeder shed for the overhead line equipment is the only scratch-built full building on the layout built for me by John Wilson. He was on the job of building one of these sheds for the club layout, so I thought he may be happy to build a second one for Alderford.
Once I had got all of the track laid for the scenic area, the next 6 months was spent installing all of the track wiring to the DCC BUS, wiring up all of the 24 point motors including two Diode matrices, 17 signals, two of which have theatre boxes and the control panel for the points and signals. A DCC twin BUS line runs the full length of the layout and every length of rail has a dropper wire down to the BUS. Experience has taught me not to solely rely on rail joiners.
All of the points on the scenic area of the layout are controlled using the more traditional method with buttons laid out on a mimic track diagram panel. The panel connects to the layout using multiple D-type multi-pin leads. As these multi-way cables can only hand low current, I have used relay switchboards between the panel and the point motors. The panel buttons trigger the relay switches and the relay contacts handle the higher currents from the CDU to the point motors. All of the points in the fiddleyard are hand-operated to keep the wiring as simple as possible in this area.
For all of the lighting and signals, a second 12v DC supply BUS again runs the length of the layout. The signals on Alderford are what I would call semi-automatic. Normally, all signals are set to red and are called off to yellow or green as and when train movements require.
The electronic brains behind the signalling control are three Arduino Nano micro-processor boards with custom programming code. On the panel, the signaller pushes a single button to set a required signal to either yellow or green. The signals reset back to red once a train passes by triggering Infra-red detectors set in the track. Additional programming code has been added to the micro-processors to prevent conflicting train movements from the station platforms. The exception to all of this are the ground signals that have been kept manually operated.
Are the wires live?
The Overhead Line Equipment (OLE) is probably the biggest single feature on Alderford and is the subject of most of the questions I get at exhibitions including “are the wires live?” The wires are not live but one stipulation was that all pantographs on electric locos had to run up against the wire. I'm not personally a fan of pantographs being held just short of the wire.
The vast majority of the support structures are of the multi-track head span type. These had to be built in situ first by driving in the 4mm H section into 3.5mm drilled holes into the baseboards. Then all of the wires, insulators and catenary arms are attached with the help of marked wood block that sit on the track to make sure that the catenary arms were positioned correctly. The actual catenary wires are from the Sommerfeldt range, as are the single-arm mast used at the end of platforms 1 & 2 and along platform 5. Alderford was built just a few years too early to benefit from the introduction of the PECO OLE system. I have also fitted springs to the two ends of the OLE system just beyond the bridge as part of the wire lead on/off ramp and at the ends of each platform to apply tension to the whole system to prevent too much up and down movement of the pantograph as it runs along the wire. The wires are also zig-zagged along the length of the layout to even out wear on the pantograph contact shoe.
The majority of my electric loco fleet and EMU's have all been fitted with Sommerfeldt pantographs as I just find they work better than the factory-fitted offerings and all of them have had the pantograph arm spring tension reduced to lower the upward force against the wire. The exception to all of this is the Bachmann class 90 with its fully working servo-driven pantograph, which when in the up position is already very softly sprung. This is a very welcomed feature that gets made use of a lot on Alderford whenever a class 90 is stabled waiting for its next turn.
Layout operation
Alderford is operated by a team of up to six people, The signalman, the station pilot, two operators at the station, one bringing in arrivals, the other on departures and the last two operators work the fiddleyard.
With Alderford being set in the mid to late 1980s a form of BR inefficiency is applied. A typical loco-hauled train movement would start by being sent from the fiddleyard by one of the fiddleyard operators to emerge from under one of the two bridges. As the loco travels along the layout, its control is handed over to the station operator dealing with arrivals.
Once the train arrives at the station, the loco is decoupled from the train with the aid of magnets triggering K-dee couplings and is then classed as trapped to the buffer stops. If all is running to plan, the station pilot operator will have got another loco ready to drop onto the rear of the train that has just arrived. When the train departs from the station this will release the loco that was trapped at the buffers. At the likes of Liverpool Lime Street, it was common for this loco to follow the departing train quite soon after as far as the signal at the end of the platform and this is common practice on Alderford. When cleared to do so the loco will then proceed to the stabling point to wait its next turn.
Obviously, all this has to be fitted in with the other frequent train movements like DMU's, EMU's or even a HST coming and going. At least half of the loco, DMU and EMU fleet has sound fitted and this further enhances the operational experience from locos stabled on the depot being shut down and started up to the door beeps and guard to driver buzzers on the multiple units. Operating on Alderford can defiantly keep your mind occupied for hours.
Final thoughts and Appreciations
Alderford has been on the exhibition circuit for over five years and I would like to think I will get at least another five years if not more before I start to think about building a replacement. A few shows in Scotland or down south would be nice. A little hint to exhibition managers. Without my team of operators I would be very stuck when attending exhibitions so first off I would like to say thank you to Bill Taylor, Jeremy Davison, Dave Pallent, Phil Holgate and Michael Duffy-Price for being happy to play trains with me. I must also give a mention to the standby men Chris Wilks and John Wilson.
A special thank you must go to Bill Taylor who provided a lot of modelling help of the scenic work in order to meet the deadline for being ready for the first show at Preston. A big thanks to Dave Pallent for his help to program and integrate the micro-processors into the signalling. And finally, I must express my appreciation to the Preston & District club for allowing me to store Alderford underneath the club's main OO layout as it's not as practical to store Alderford at home as I first thought before I started the build.
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