Greymouth 3 - Rapido Progresso.

 DB speaking fluent Italian there:

Its been a belissimo week here, but the dungeon has been visited on a few cloudy days such as today. These visits have produced surprising progress. 

As the old saying goes, "If you spent as much time doing it, as you do thinking about it..." Well for once I've just gotten stuck in.

The first task involved getting that third road out from the platform and its attendant siding installed. This required modifying two old points to be fed at the frogs by a switch using methods described earlier. This didn't take as long as I remember, and the points went in quickly, with their point throw rods under the layout. This meant I could fix down the '4th access road' at Elmer Lane to the PCB at the edge of that module. 

Rails was quickly painted brown with a rail pen, and the sleepers weathered with a light grey wash. The 'modern' coal train was also tried on for size:

I then went mad and soldered up all the jumper wires to the tracks on top. 

Then I went madder and ballasted the whole thing in about 90 minutes, after adding a painted wooden 'platform', which looks a bit skinny. Its 25mm across, and it should be 30, but Greymouth's south end is cut away for car parking anyway. I'll probably double up the width of the north end when the station and attendant buildings go in.

I let that all set overnight. I'll not ballast the PCBs until its all been tested. Which I should have done by now, but that would have distracted me from the roll I was on.

This afternoon, I thought the platform colour was a bit dark (and quite bluey-grey) and was just about to repaint it, when I looked at some pics of the real thing, to see that it is even darker on top (asphalted I guess). So I taped off the edges using Tamiya masking tape guided by my eye, and then painted a darker 'German Grey" on top for the asphalt and leaving the sides and top edges 'concrete'. This came out OK, although probably a bit fancy.

Well. I couldn't stop there, so started building some platform verandahs. Greymouth has quite long ones at both ends of its station. I took an educated guess based on the space available and some other station and verandah plans as a guide to sizes and shapes.

The verandah poles were hastily added from H section styrene. These will not meet any textbook definition of 'vertical' so were painted dark grey to hide them. Two poles on each 30cm 'end' have steel spikes, which plug into holes on the platform.

The station has worn many paint schemes over the years. In the 1950s or 60s it looked almost orangey/bricky with white trim. The wood was repainted in a lightish green with white trim and a red roof in the mid 1960s for the very end of steam. The red roof was a patchwork of red and new silver corrugated roofing in the mid-70s and the station was light grey.

In the AC cars era, it was a fairly bright yellow, with white trim and a green roof. This yellow faded a bit over the years. In the dark blue TranzAlpine days and for the 1988 flood, the station was a light grey with dark red trim. 

The last train to use the wharf trackage left Riverside behind three blue DJs at the end of July 1989, although the station building was removed before the 88 flood (probably removed when the Rewanui passenger trains ended in October 1984). Only three tracks remained by the station by 1992, and the Warehouse was in place in the yard when the footbridge was removed in 2002 or 2003 

The station today is a cream colour with red trim.

Mine will be the light grey with bricky trim grey roof for something vague and subtle. 

Station to go in between:

Greymouth 2 - Moduleing on

DB in another West Coast land grab. 

I don't remember where I left the Greymouth piece off, but some legs have been built with long 'bottoms' to be trimmed later...

...and the top was primed, and some basic track surface (thin basswood sheet from Mitre 10) added in a few key spots:

Next up from the Master Plan...

...we need the intermediate module that will host the Grey station and the yard tracks. This has been pondered for some time, but should be fairly quick to make. 

I have no idea where it came from, but I have a long piece of fairly thin ply about 39cm wide, so cut some fresh 18mm stuff into sections the same width wide to bolster that top sheet with:

And then some sides from Bunnings were added:

And there it is resting on the garage floor, as always, in the hope it will set flat. This only took about half an hour to make once the first cut was made, and this won't need any legs, because Elmer Lane and the Yard Throat/Riverside modules are plenty pedal.

Indeed, this has continued to come together super quickly. It was primed, and blacked up on top with some 99 cent shop paint.

It then came inside and was clamped onto Elmer Lane so holes for dowels and a bolt/wingnut could be made while the faces were mated together. Then today I decided to cut out some copper PCB strips for soldering the rails to at the ends.

The tracks started to reach out for the other end, so PCB was cut and attached there too. And before you know it, five of the six tracks are ready for soldering to the PCB and wiring up. 

Once I've used a Dremel to cut the rails strung between this module and Elmer Lane, the awkward 'new' turnout into Elmer Lane can be laid, along with the third road out from the platform. This is just sitting there at the moment. The platform will be located on the far side in the pic above, or on the right in the one below.

This is basically the access track for the loco depot, which is a bit silly, but that's the way things had to be, given that the extended south end of the station extends well beyond the Elmer Lane throat which has marched north.

I was going to put a small passing loop on that third track, perhaps for storing the Rewanui passenger train, but given the price of PECO points these days, I'll just make it a siding with the turnout at the Grey River end as shown here. A dead-end siding will be more capacious too, so it could also fit a 1990s TranzAlpine or a little work train.

As you might just be able to make out in the above pic, I've finally gotten a look at what a good-length train will look like on this. The coal train above is 32 wagons incl guards van, plus 2 locos, and over 2.2m long. The three rear yard tracks might fit 2.5m trains. 

But whether such trains can be dragged around the Roundhouse loop is another matter! Soon we shall see.

Greymouth 1 - a start, and plans for Galactic Domination™

DB thinks:

Despite life and other bruises preventing me from generating massive dollops of progress, a few wee projects have made small steps forward. 

Most interestingly, I'm making some moves on the trek towards Greymouth station now that work on Elmer Lane has slowed down. I'll probably build a steam-era sanding tower there, add some power poles and people, and have yet to decide whether to include a water vat or not, but most of the key bits that I wanted at the depot are more or less done.

So it is high time to start progressing in a northeastererly direction, as has been threatened for some time. This 'planning' (I really need a much looser word here) started in March, and since then, I've been daydreaming about where this might lead. A Greymouth Empire Module Set could easily include:

• 'a main line connection' to other people's modules (with Omoto bridge and loco dump)
• The wharf, with its hydraulic cranes serving colliers tied up for loading
• The wooden Cobden 'S' bridge across the Grey river
• (and on to Rewanui).
• (in hindsight, a turnout by the roundhouse could have given a Hokitika branch too!

Greymouth modules concept (not all tracks shown)

It would seem logical to advance this in the following order: 

1. design the yard throat module, 
2. at around the same time, link those yard tracks with Elmer lane using 'Greymouth station'
3. build Omoto to provide a mainline module that can transition to other people's modules
4. add the wharf for more operational fun
5. Build the Cobden S bridge, because that would be really cool,
6. and at the same time, build the Rewanui station/state coal mine terminus.
7. build at least one Rewanui 'branch' connecting module between the bridge and Rewanui Station to provide a little more branchline running time and interest. The branch/bridge/incline etc wouldn't technically be 'mainline', so could have tighter curves and points than the usual, much steeper grades, and even a (low) centre rail for looks, which could be interesting. I doubt I would make Dunollie Junction (and the Rapahoe Branch) to slot in between the S bridge and the Rewanui branch, but someone else might!

So geographically, the module next to Elmer Lane will be a fairly plain 1.2 metres of straight tracks, but this will house the Greymouth station building (and between one and three turnouts to join the depot into the yard). 

The more 'interesting' module (from a Darryl perspective) is the next one - the yard throat, the tracks across Mawhera quay, the signal box, Riverside station, and the connections to the other future modules. 

The design of this throat should obviously enable trains to come off the 'mainline' and go into the yard/staging tracks (perhaps reversing using the Elmer Lane roundhouse loop first). 

It should allow 'Rewanui to Riverside' passenger or coal trains to operate without interfering with the core layout (the 'mainline'). This includes a runaround at Riverside station so it can be used even if the wharf or Rewanui modules never get built. Freight from Rewanui can be moved straight to the wharf yard, or into the Greymouth Yard. Passenger cars used on Rewanui trains might be stored in the Greymouth Station yard when not in use. 

The wharf should also be operable fairly independently, without upsetting other operators. Its layout should allow trains to come to and from both Rewanui and from the mainline.

So this is the current thinking, which is fairly fluid, but it hasn't changed too much since it was first laid out in March onto a triangley bit of ply. 

That ply baseboard is an offcut from Elmer Lane, and it has been braced with some bits of secondhand wood that live in the garage.