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12/06/06: First Steps
Having got the plywood that will form the roadways I started marking out the course of the guide wire according to the plan. In an email Bruce Lake, of Ridings fame had asked how big the roundabout was and if I was sure that vehicles would be able to get round it. My answers were - six inch radius and they ought to.
Click any picture to enlarge it.
Just to be sure I marked out the roundabout section first and routed out a guide wire channel that ran from Back Lane to the roundabout, almost all the way round and then back to Back Lane. If the vehicles could navigate that then I could be confident that the roundabout would work. The guide wire was temporarily secured with Sellotape (I normally use Scotch Magic Tape as it is not so slippery) and the first vehicle to turn a wheel on Redhill was Midland Red LS18 5237 which performed faultlessly, albeit slowly. Second up (because it needed recharging) was Midland Red S17 5612 which went around faster but still without problems. I then tried a Faller Ford Transit but that couldn't cope with the rough and ready nature of the roadway.
With that out of the way I marked out the board that connects the roundabout and Back Road to the hidden loops and then started working along Queen Street to Station Road and the bus station.
The buildings are just there for effect. Here we are looking from the roundabout towards the bus station.
And towards Station Road from opposite the bus station. The railway track will be higher. The station will be on the far side of Station Road with the railway on arches behind the bus station.
On to the bus station itself. The WMPTE Ailsa is in bay 1 for a service to Birmingham. The LS18 is in what will be Bay 3.
I am having doubts about the level crossing as this really has been shoe-horned in. The next step is to mock up that area and see if I can convince myself that it will work. If not it will be back to another bridge.
Not shown on the plan are the storage loops to the bottom right. As feature creep expanded the layout they shrunk in size but a sketch indicated a suitably large capacity keeping my 2.5 inch wire spacing (to keep sufficient clearance on curves). However when I came to draw them out on a (fortunately oversized) piece of ply I found I had blundered. On my sketch I had measured the gap along the entry/exit roads rather than between the diagonal storage roads. This meant that they were much too close and capacity was dramatically reduced. Rejigging in this area has produced a longer storage yard that will go along the bottom wall and will be able to hold 24 buses and 12 cars/vans. If I ever build more than that I'll revisit it!