Rothervale Revisited

With the recent announcement in the 2mm Newsletter shop notes that track bases for flat-bottomed rail are being commissioned, I decided to dust off my plans for Rothervale, my modern image layout. I temporarily stopped work on this layout towards the end of last year, when FB plastic track bases first became a possibility.

Just prior to the temporary abandonment, I got hold of some plans of modern image pointwork from DEMU. These showed that modern points are very different in profile to equivalent bullhead designs - and in some cases much longer. Also, I realised that my platforms and loops would be a bit short for some of the trains. This all lead to a lot of head scratching over the last few months. The end result was a complete redesign of the trackwork.

After browsing through various track plans, I realised that Water Orton gave me most of what I required. I just needed to add a bay platform line for the DMU branch service. The position it will occupy is shown in red on the photo on the left (Click on it for a larger view). It fits into the scene very well, though the platform will have to be widened and stretched slightly.

The track plan is shown on the left. Click on it for a larger view. I will only be modelling the section between the dotted lines, for the time being. The pointwork for the junctions is well beyond the platform ends. In fact, it has been pushed off the scenic part of the layout altogether, so will only exist in my imagination - at least for the time being. I would need several metres more at each end of the layout to model the junctions accurately. The left-hand side of the plan has been flipped vertically, compared to Water Orton, so that the branch is on the correct side for my location.

Not modelling the junctions saves me an awful lot of work. In fact, two of the through lines now have no pointwork on the scenic part of the layout at all. This means that I can use the layout to run N gauge locos in before I convert them to 2mm fine scale standards. This was one of my original objectives, but one that I had no easy solution to - until now. Off scene, the 3 tracks at each end of the scenery will simply converge into one single line for the descent into the underworld fiddle yard.

I have shown supposed destinations for the various lines on the plan. No actual location would fit this configuration exactly, though the trackwork on the North Midland line between Barrow Hill and Beighton Junction does contain more or less all the right connections, over a distance of about 5 miles. The connection to the Robin Hood line is the mothballed line through Staveley and Clowne to Creswell. The one glaring error is the lack of a real direct connection to Worksop. One possible addition for the future would be a connection to the Roundhouse Museum at Barrow Hill - a great opportunity to run models of preserved stock and try one or two of the new Easitrac bullhead points. That line would come in at the top left of the plan, to its own platform, completely separate to the main line.

I have already ripped up the old trackwork I had laid on the scenic baseboards - fortunately not a lot! My next step will be to draw the new track plan onto the baseboards. I will then build and install the point on the scenic area. As soon as the concrete sleeper track bases become available, I can quickly lay the rest of the track on the scenic boards. Much of the track on the hidden part of the layout is already laid.

I now propose to base the main station building on Water Orton too - though in a more austere form. There were some nice drawings in the MRJ some time ago (edition 88, 1996). Midland architecture is far more appropriate for Rothervale than the MS&LR building I originally intended to build, something that had been playing on my conscience for a while - but no longer!

It would be nice to get some of this layout done for the GJLC, so I do intend to give it a go. Even if I can get little more than a DMU running up and down the track for the 2 days of the show, it will have been worth the effort.

Meanwhile, work on getting the trackwork on Mount Royal operational continues - I should have a report on that soon. I know am mad to try and attempt two 2mm fine scale layouts at the same time. My view though is that I could never satisfy all my model railway interests in one layout. Also, Easitrac makes tracklaying much, much easier. An additional advantage is that when I get one of my frequent mental blocks about one layout, I still have the other one to get on with.