Philden Road Part Sixteen

 ...or the one about leaving room to expand my track at a later date, and how a year like 2020 and COVID-19 has changed my plans for this layout and the next.

All the track is down, and I'm waiting only on some LED lights to arrive to begin wiring everything up beneath the layout. Just when they'll get here is anybody's guess. It is after all 2020. For a year that I think we all wish would hurry up and end, we've at least made it through to October. Even though the promise of brighter days being just around the corner is beginning to sound like a broken record.

This week I happened to re-read an old post I wrote back in March, sounding a warning to prepare for modelling lockdown, expecting to cringe as I sometimes do. Only it turned out I was right. While we're fortunate up here in Queensland to be enjoying something that resembles a normal life, both my sisters in Victoria have been in lockdown since July 8. Its no lean feat considering they've each been homeschooling three kids while working from home.

By comparison, my wife and I have had it pretty good. We run a local small business on the Sunshine Coast and have been fortunate enough to have continued to work right through the COVID pandemic while qualifying for some Australian Government Jobkeeper assistance in the process. It enabled me to have an unprecendented amount of spare time between jobs to work on my layout while we waited for things to return to normal. This week we found out what the 'new normal' is. Our business has recovered enough to no longer need any Government assistance going forward, which is great news in a way. But still being down some 15-20% compared to last years' figures means you need to look at where you can make cuts and compromises somewhere in your household budget. Turns out that hobbies are a luxury.

Laying track is the very last moment to decide what to omit, and what to include for the future.

While I was happily working away on Philden Road and feeling grateful for the list of models I have been able to purchase for the new layout this year, the reality of what is going to be the new normal for the forseeable future does make you stop and evaluate your hobby. How much do you get out of it? And how much time and money do you put into it? I'm sure I'm not the only one asking myself these questions this year.

I'd reached the point where I had laid all the track for the rationalised Phills Harbour yard arrangement that I talked about in Part Fifteen, when I stopped and thought about what next year may bring for our hobby. In some ways 2020 has been kind to Aussie modellers, with new models still being released, a plethora of still available models to choose from, and a host of sales being offered over the course of the year. It will probably go down as the year that I spent the most on my hobby, ever!

But for someone who usually only wants one or two of the same type of wagons or rollingstock on his modest layout roster, having to buy freight rollingstock in packs of four and be bothered listing, selling, packing and posting the rest on eBay has long been an expensive and rather annoying way of going about it. By the time you deduct postage costs, eBay fees and PayPal fees from the sale price of the models you move on, it often ends up to be a rather uneconomical way of going about it. I for one much prefer the individual wagon approach that everyone else in the world seems to be able to do except for Australia. Although I did snap up a few of the repackaged individual wagons that Australian Modeller had released during one of their 20% off sales. When I read that Auscision Models were having to put their prices up because of cost increases from their China factories, any thoughts of taking the same approach in the future went out the window. If a $260 4 pack of freight rollingstock has gone up $40 to $300 per pack, its a big risk to take on just to get the one new wagon you're after! And if that's the case, you can rest assured that in 2021 a $335 locomotive is going to increase at least $40 also to somewhere around $375. It seems that in 2020, plastic has just become the new brass.

One switch or turnout, if installed now, was going to future-proof any expansion plans.

I never started constructing this layout with a budget in mind, but 2020 will ensure that I now finish within budget just the same. Prices going up when household income has come down, became my jumping-off point in the hobby.

So... the solution to future-proof my hobby should I get the opportunity to expand it in the years to come, was to take one of my omitted left hand PECO turnouts and cut it into the jetty siding at an angle that steered the track towards the layout edge. As you can see below, the position will allow for a sharp right hand curved turnout should I eventually expand Philden Road into an L-shaped layout. Its a feature I didn't incorporate into my last layout Philden, and one that if I didn't incorporate now would be an opportunity lost. I can then build the jetty to the shape of the future track extension, and simply leave the rails off from the straight section of the turnout to resemble an old wharf that has had part of its' rails removed. The rails will simply join to the existing turnout if I do proceed with an extension at some point in the future.

It is a much more budget friendly outcome than planning for another layout post this one. Building materials would be minimal, as would track, and it won't require any further rollingstock or locomotives other than the ones I have now.

For now I'll cut the rails at the edge of the layout, but the switch is there should I extend in the future.

The rationalised and COVID-influenced track arrangement then came together rather quickly, and I next soldered the rail joins and wired the toggle switches to the blocks I'd created within each insulated track section. The narrow gauge tracks will operate independently from the standard gauge, with the standard gauge blocks being divided into a platform/yard precinct, a jetty precinct, (wired for both present and future) and the Saw Point visible mainline staging at the other end of the layout. I could then paint the rails up and continue with construction once more.

I airbrushed the track with 3 shades of Model Master acrylics. I'm starting to love my airbrish!

I stuck blue painters tape over every pair of point blades before airbrushing.

Finally I airbrushed the sides of the cork tiles in aged concrete

The completed Phills Harbour track arrangement, with a split-level QLD and NSW yard.

With the track configuration completed, I next looked at what I could recycle from my old layout. As you can see, with the platform track now flipped to face the front of the layout, there was room for me to place Philden's old station building from the August 2018 cover of Australian Model Railway Magazine beside the modern Countrylink Travel Centre that I'd built as part of my Beach Extension. I think they'll look great together as some sort of 1990's station upgrade program, and although the detailed interiors will face away from the viewer, I can still see most of it when I peer through the windows. Recycling quickly became the theme for 2020, and the signal box from Philden will soon occupy the area to the left of photo between the NSW and QLD lines.

Next up, I had to come up with something that would future-proof my interest in the layout long after it is finished. The track arrangement had already been simplified to the point where the operational aspect was effected also. So I turned to YouTube and an excellent video put together by Steve's Trains. If you haven't seen his small layout videos or the 21 part series on building the Tulsa Spur, check it out. It's a track plan I would gladly have copied if it wasn't for me trying to incorporate two layouts in one.

Instead of just having a 3 track yard alongside Phills Harbour station, Steve's warehouse idea would give my QLD line a sense of purpose, by moving loaded fruit wagons from the siding at the Saw Point end of the layout to the refrigerated warehouse at the Phills Harbour end. By delivering each loaded wagon to the correctly specified door, I could extend switching moves for each carded running session by as long as I'd like. The Wuiske Models QLX wagons have two doors on each model, and the Walthers Modern Cold Storage kit that features in the Tulsa Spur video above, has a modular approach to make positioning the doors easier. More importantly, I only have about 15 mm of space between the back drop and the rear siding to play with, so the kit could be built as a flat to run the full 520 mm along the rear siding, with only the rubber door seals protruding from the buildings' wall. I could construct it to have the 6 warehouse doors line up with the 3 QLX wagons that would occupy the siding, while the track beside becomes the workable siding while positioning each wagon at the correct door.

I couldn't track down this specific kit anywhere in Australia, so I had to order it direct from Walthers website and get it posted from the other side of the world. There will also be enough leftover components from the kit to kitbash a modern addition to the side of my recycled goods shed for the Saw Point siding, and whatever I decide to build as part of my jetty extension in the future. In doing so, this became my very last purchase for this HO scale bookshelf layout....ever!

With 2021 indicating that a move back to a small apartment is going to be on the cards for my wife and I following our Son's wedding, I don't know when, or even if for that matter, I'll ever get around to building the jetty extension. But at least I've included a provision to do so. 2020 on the other hand has probably killed off any plans or ideas for another Australian outline layout. At least for the next few years.

Thoughts now turn to the N scale layout that I've been constructing to sit beneath Philden Road. To future-proof my interests with it, I've moved the setting from Canada's canyons to an urban scene on the fringe of Chicago. Modelling an urban scene with a lot of structures is going to take a lot longer to complete. And I find building structures is a more enjoyable aspect of the hobby compared to building benchwork or wiring. So with my existing fleet of Canadian Pacific locomotives and modern-era rollingstock, I've gone and aquired a Chicago Metra passenger set and an armful of N scale Walthers kits. That little bit of spending now, will need to justify a whole lot of non-spending in the years to come! Especially considering N scale prices in America are now jumping through the roof also! However, I was lucky enough to find online a Metra Operation North Pole Christmas set marked down by 40% and buy the last one.

It will be nice to rekindle my fascination with Chicago railroading, given that my first exhibition quality layout was my C&NW Overton Subdivision back in 2002! And as a whole, My QLD/NSW Philden Road layout, and the CP/Metra as yet unamed Chicago layout beneath it, will provide me with a whole lot of fun in the years to come, without taking up any more space or budget. But as usual, I'll let that be a story for another day!