Warning: Boys at work

We thought it was about time you saw some of the process that goes into making the layouts. This sequence of photos is Isaac and his brother working out a new layout. It turned out to be one of the most ambitious layouts they have created to date.

What made it particularly interesting was that part of the way through Isaac ran out of some small but essential pieces and had to work out how to free them from where they were in the track so that he could use them else where.

These first three pictures show the initial stages of the layout. First, what will become the centre track is laid. The lift bridge and engine shed are good points of reference for later photos. The second photo shows this track has a Y junction at the other end which leads round to the turntable. In photo three the track is extended right the way back down to cross over the lift bridge.

In this next sequence of photos the track is extended again off the third branch of the turntable and the tunnel added, but the loop is left incomplete. Finally, the forth branch is completed which loops under the bridges that form the central track. Once this was done Isaac returned to the loop with the tunnel on it. To complete this Isaac used the two short double ended pieces.

Isaac then found he needed another double ended piece to complete the main loop. After a little while he figured out he could free both of the pieces by turning the turn table round by 90 degrees. It did mean having to redo the loop which went under the bridges. If you look carefully at the two similar photos to the right you can see the changes that were made. The loop joining the lifting bridge and the other end of the Y junction was completed, including the doubled ended piece.

The final elements was a passing loop that was added to the last straight and a short curving siding. It needs top be noted that Isaac's brother was definitely a co-creator of this layout and the boys cooperated beautifully to create a really pleasing layout.

Tracing my fingers round the track, as I do, I could see it had lots of possibilities in terms of routes and direction and it kept the boys busy for a long tie as they explored the options.

A break through

I have mentioned in previous posts that some times the levels of cooperation in building railways between Isaac and his brother can be fairly tense. Isaac does tend to dominate his brother when it comes to deciding the layout. This track started out that way and then something changed.

Isaac stated off with a simple loop with a viaduct in it. His brother wanted to help, but Isaac was having none of it and in the end consented to let his brother have a few pieces to build a separate track. 

After a few minutes of solitary building the two brothers suddenly decided to join their loops up. It the top photo Isaac's original loop is on the left and his brothers on the right. 

Once this had been done Isaac suggested the linking track through the viaduct. Finally the turntable and sidings were added. The rest of the afternoon was fairly peaceful with a good deal of cooperation, listening and respect for ideas.

The track itself works really well with lots of opportunities to reverse the train's direction and vary the route. I always mentally play out the possibilities in my mind and find it quite pleasing when there are lots of choices. Maybe that says something about me.

If you go down to the woods today

 Isaac and his brother co-created today's layout. It started with a fairly basic loop around the seven arched viaduct (this is definitely the most popular track piece at the moment). I thought we were going to get another simple layout and then at the last piece Isaac put in the points.

Even at this stage I thought it would just be a siding and I suppose looking at it in it's purest form that's just what it is. But, oh what a siding.

The loop back followed by the hump back bridge was the clue something bigger was planned. The next set of points allow it split into two branches. One for the engine shed and one for the repair shed. Interestingly to reach the engine shed you have to cross the points and then double back. Given that there is a lot of Y points available I'm not sure why this configuration was chosen. The turntable was added to give access to rolling-stock stock sidings.

I have to say I zoned out a little on what was going on at this point. I came back into a heated debate about the height of a 'cave'. Isaac was building a small tower near the viaduct. His brother was of the opinion that it shouldn't be that high. Eventually gravity won due to a carpet not being the best foundation for a tower. This borne out by the fact that not one major skyscraper in the last 75 years has been built on a foundation of either loop or shag pile. So Isaac's brother won the argument and the cave was dully built as low rise and occupied by a black bear. I have a feeling the wooden shape was supposed to be a sheep, but it is rather bear like.

Finally with some left over pieces Isaac and his brother constructed a small loop and siding that were completely detached form the rest of the layout. It's the thing that looks like a speech bubble. This is mummy and daddy's track. Presumably to keep us out of harms way in case we want to play trains too.

Criss cross and car parks

I came in from work to be presented with this thrilling layout. Why run parallel lines when you can have a weaving layout. I wouldn't like to be the signal operator in charge of this route or on either the up train or the down train when they had to pass.

Isaac's brother was having a car day and it was nice to see that they had decided to cooperate with their games. Isaac had built his brother access to a car park. Where presumably passengers could catch a train from the nearby station (the green building blocks).

I'm not sure the destination of the engine shed might be what the passengers had in mind, but following any journey on this line you will end up there.

The layout stayed up overnight and Isaac modified it the next morning, but sadly it didn't stay up long enough to be photographed. In essence Isaac wanted to extend the layout and go under the bridge, but he'd run out of points. So he removed the points at the head of the small siding inside the end circuit and added them into the layout near the Y points by the bridge. This then looped all the way back, under the bridge, to the points near the level crossing. The remaining points, by the car park, then became the siding. As well as extending the track it gave the trains a route that didn't always end at the shed. A bonus in my books.

Please could you elaborate

After yesterday's issues with non cooperation Isaac and his brother seem to have patched up their artistic differences. Isaac started by building a fairly compact layout with loops that interconnected through the turntable.

What was particularly intriguing was that he was experimenting with the Y points again. Instead of directly running them into the repair shed he used it to provide one route into the shed and the other branch to be  a continuation of one of his loops. To reach the other bay of the repair shed he created a separate line in.

The engine shed was used in a more conventional manner apart from the bridge that needed to be negotiated to get in.

This layout persisted for an hour or two until Isaac's brother wanted to play as well. With a bit of negotiating a new loop was added for Isaac's brother. As the turntable was deemed the best way of accessing this new loop Isaac placed the cross over piece in his side of the layout. This meant that Isaac had an interesting arrangement where a train starting from bay 2 of the repair yard would follow the route round that either led it to bay 1 or all the way back to bay 2.

Another thing I asked Isaac about was why his tunnel was blocked up later in the day. He explained that the steam trains had got it dirty so his men has washed it down and now they were waiting for it to dry before trains could pass through again.

Together everyone achieves more

The experimentation with the new pieces to the layout continues. Today Isaac and his brother cooperated very well and came up with a different way of using the track. They started by building a small layout that incorporated the engine shed, turntable, tunnel and repair shed. It was noticeable that the distance between these elements started to widen. Also there are no sidings. As I mentioned in the last post the engine shed is seen as a superior siding and the repair shed seems to occupy the same category. The turntable is still a track switching device though.

Once this was done Isaac's younger brother then busied himself with a second layout. It wasn't for himself, but for mummy. After trying for several minutes he called on mummy to help to complete the curves. It takes the form of a simple figure of eight which ingeniously uses the two small points as the crossover rather than the crossover piece or a bridge. I'm starting to wonder whether I will need to rename the blog at the rate Isaac's brother is catching up.

To complete the work there's third layout, consisting of just a small straight which is stand alone. This is daddy's track. And despite the fact that I have the shortest track I am afforded the longest train. I have seen small side layouts before, but this was the first time that there have been three. 

I am beginning to think we need more track and points in particular. Isaac's layouts, with the help of his brother, are starting to reach a level of complexity where there are not enough ways to join  up the loops and branches. 

Any ideas where I can lay my hands on cheap track, preferably free?