Building the staging yard

The staging yard framing is now in place beyond Philden Street overpass.

After 12 weeks of nursing my torn knee back to health, I finally ventured into the garage for the first time since mid-September to start work on my staging shelf for Philden Street Yard. If I hadn't torn the meniscus in my right knee, I would have had the staging yard operational by now and be working on the finishing touches in readiness for the layout's first outing in 2022. Unfortunately that will no longer be the Bundaberg Model Train & Hobby Expo next year as hoped. The application deadline was just too soon for me to gaurantee having Philden Street Yard completed by March. I'm now hoping for the layout to debut at the Railway Modellers Club of Queensland's Pine Rivers Train & Hobby Expo on July 9 & 10, 2022.

The staging shelf is something that I've given a lot of thought to, while also managing to resist the urge to turn it into a second scenic module. As such, its just going to be a big 1575 mm long, flat expanse of sidings holding trains waiting to venture into Philden Street Yard. I'll be painting the timber framing white to match in with the existing layout furniture, and am still deciding exactly what I'll do for the surface. Either clear stained ply, painted satin black or painted gloss white are the leading contenders so far. But for now, I at least have the framework finished.

I drilled 2 holes to glue some dowel locator lugs in place.

The 6 mm dowel joins are glued on the staging frame only, and slide into the holes on the layout end.

The staging yard's ply surface will have a lip that straddles the join to butt up against the existing track.

The next job for me to complete is to line the top of the staging shelf with 7 mm plywood, which is the same thickness I used on the layout. The ply surface will give the lightweight frame the rigidity it needs and I'll glue the track to the surface to avoid having track pins come through the plywood. I can then work out where I'll mount the power cab faceplate for the NCE Power Cab DCC system that I'll install over the Christmas break.

The staging framework for Philden Street Yard is in place, while my new Queensland micro sits below.

After Philden Street Yard, I now only have plans to build the Queensland micro layout that you can see is already sitting below the staging yard shelf for Philden Street Yard. The paper plan shows the track design for the little 4 track switching layout, and I just need to trim 90 mm off the end of the frame so that it lines up with the IKEA shelving units that it rests on.

It feels good to be working on the layout again! Bad knees aside, I at least used my downtime wisely to finish the first of my Philden Model Railway books. It is currently waiting in the publisher's queue over the Christmas break, ready to have the first copies printed when they return in the new year.

The other big thing for me right now, is the anticipation of turning Philden Street Yard into a sound equipped theatre of model train bliss! The NCE Power Cab system is wrapped and waiting under the tree, and I have a DCC sound B65 West Coast Railway B Class and an FL220 CFCLA 422 Class rearing to hit the rails. With 2 more DCC sound locos on the way in the form of my long awaited Indigenous NR Classes, I'm wondering if 4 DCC sound locos will be enough? (I do have a trio of quiet DC locos in the form of NR75, P19 and A81). But the temptation is always there to add just one more! I feel it would have to be another Victorian locomotive however to even up the score. With what's available now, and what has been announced for the future, that leaves only the C Class, G Class and BL Class in my era if I wanted to play the waiting game. Or another B Class right here and now, that would have to be either B74 in preserved VR livery, or the B80 in Murraylander yellow which I also quite like.

I'm not sure what to do there as I also like the ex-NSW 442's in the form of the R&H Transport JL404 and CFCLA JL406. From what I'm led to believe they were mainly Sydney-based locos in the early 2001-2004 period. For a change, its a real nice problem to have.