Office of Steam Forum for Model & Toy Steam Gas & Hot Air Engines

Hi Stoker,

I would make one observation however, and that is you may wish to modify the trailer a bit further to include an opening tailgate, possibly a drop gate / ramp combo so that you can make you modular sections roll in and out with board edge wheels. Barring that, you would at least be able to slide the modular sections in and out, without having to lift them up out of the depths of the trailers sidewalls.

A very good idea! Yes this thought had occurred to me but as I didn't design the trailer from scratch I though waterproofing the tailgate would be a problem and the ingress of water to both camping and layout trailer would be a disaster.

Having designed and built three portable 16 mm scale layouts along with three garden railways and made an entrance for the 16 mm Narrow Gauge Modeller ‘Modular Layout’; as mentioned the construction of a new portable layout is being considered.
 
The first portable layout known as ‘Rhydypenau Light Railway’ was an exhibition layout for our own use.  The second portable layout was for the ‘Cardiff Model Engineering Society’ to use on public open days.  The third portable layout known as ‘Rhydypenderyn Light Railway’ was an exhibition layout to replace the Rhydypenau layout, this is the layout we play with now.  The new layout being considered might possibly replace this layout as well as doing some R+D work for the Modular Layout.
 
The first garden railway replaced the CMES portable layout as land had become available for its construction.  The second garden railway known as ‘Rhydypenau Garden Railway’ is in our own garden.  The third garden railway was a new track which was raised on posts and erected inside the existing CMES garden railway.
 
The layout being considered will probably use elements of most of the above model railways design and construction as well as other ideas seen being used at exhibitions.
 
The design criteria being considered is as follows: light weight, easy to erect, have folding legs for support, be fairly inexpensive to build, oval in shape to allow for the continuous running of model steam engines, have an entrance and probably the most difficult to achieve; to fit inside a small trailer with inside dimensions of 1486 mm (58.1/2”) long, 883 mm (34.3/4”) wide and 610 mm (24”) deep.
 
Some initial thoughts: For easy of removing the baseboards from the trailer they will have to be stored on their edges as is done with Rhydypenderyn. There are two alternatives regarding the length of the baseboards; the length of the trailer or its width giving a maximum of 1486 mm or 883 mm.  The width of the boards will have to be either a maximum of 610 mm (height of the trailer inside) or half or less than this so they can be stored edge to edge one on top of the other, this is also done on Rhydypenderyn; this with the thickness of the boards will govern how many boards the trailer will hold.
 
I usually start with the design of the boards that will make up the curved ends of the layout of which there are usually eight.  The number of straight boards really doesn’t matter as long as it is a multiple of two.  So, first see how much room will be left in the trailer having designed these boards which will decide how many straight boards can be used.
 
So, will there be a single or double track?



In a few hours we drive North when in the evenings I will probably add more to these muses.

Regards Tony.