Floating Shelf Budget Model Railway Challenge - Part 2 - A trip to Sompting Model Railway Exhibition

This weekend saw my Dad and I visiting the Sompting and District Model Railway Exhibition.

This was a fantatic little day out for the pair of us and it is about 35 years since I have last been to a model show of any kind.  

If I remember rightly it was the Model Engineers show at Olympia where I got to see the anamatronic ABC Warrior and the Landrover Mega City 1 Taxi which were going to feature in the upcoming Judge Dredd movie with Sylvester Stallone.  The team from Robot Wars were also there recruiting robot builders for their new TV Show which was still in the pre-production phase.  Yes, it was that long ago.

Sompting Exhibition Layouts

Many thanks to all the members who brought their exhibition layouts and for taking the time to chat with us.  Everyone was extremely welcoming and we both had a great time chatting and looking at the wonderful layouts.  Big shout out to Mike Potter from Budget Model Railways for publicising the event on his YouTube channel and bringing his Japanese shunting layout which was quite stunning.

Barraton - 00 Scale Layout

A charming scratchbuilt Era 1 locomotive

Thomas The Tank Engine celebrating his 80th Birthday

a 360 degree shunting layout

I could not leave without making a few purchases some of which may find their way onto my own floating shelp layout including:

Arnold 6354 / Rapido (0634) - BAUSTAZ Coaling Station - £6

When I watch my favourite YouTube channels they invariably feature industrial buildings.  Sadly I do not have many of these so I grabbed this visually interesting multi-level multi track building when I spotted it on the club stand.  Largely intact, with the exception of the coal conveyor,  this will be a great addition to my layout.  It is an impressive 22cm x 4.5cm and is intended to be flanked on each side by a track, so lots of opportunity for shunting.

Gaugemaster SS-2 Electronic Station Stop Module - £5

The club stand had a whole box of these and other Gaugemaster automation modules and I couldn't resist at that price.  See how I get on wiring this in on another layout

Lima Palethorpes Siphon-G Wagon - £8

I already have one of these for my layout and as I have a Palethorpes Sausage Factory as practically the only industry on the layout I deserve to have a small rake of these wagons. 

Obligatory Running Video

The postman delivered my haul of secondhand track so work could start on my own Budget Model Railway Floating Shelf Challenge layout.  As you can see the Coaling Station is already installed on the layout and pretty much dictates the theme for this layout.

Floating Shelf Model Railway Challenge - Part 1 - Baseboards and Layout planning

If you follow the explouts of YouTubers Mike and Doug at Budget Model Railways you will have heard about the Floating Shelf Layout Challenge.

I got really excited about this and so popped down to my local Home Bargains to snag three of the cheap shelves.

Why Buy 3 Floating Shelves?

I could go into a long essay about prime numbers or the religious significance of the number three, but it's because I am building 3 sections.  1 for me (an inglenook), 1 for my dad (a shunting layout), and the third will be a shared fiddle yard sitting between the two layouts.

Dad's scratchbuilt model of Padstow Station in N Gauge

The challenge specifies that the fiddle yard can only have 2 tracks, but in my case I am going to have 4 in total but trains from one layout will not be able to cross between the two tracks.  This should provide some excellent expansion but honestly the layouts should operate independently of each other.

Mike has alluded to a modular challenge in the future so I will have to factor this into the design without really knowing what the dimensional specs are going to be.  I am banking on a single line going directly through the middle of the short edge on each board as the easiest way to do this.  

Perhaps all that hard work designing Geomorphs for my other hobby (Role Playing Games) will finally pay off? 

The Budget So Far

This is an exercise in budget model railway building so keeping the cost to a minimum is key.  I think it is only fair to represent what it would take to build a layout from scratch so I am only going to consider things I can or have purchased from eBay or AliExpress.  Whilst Mike does espouse the recycling of old layouts for track, if you are new to the hobby you will not have an old layout to scavenge.  This will obviously push the costs higher, but I think it is in the spirit of the original question that provoled this challenge. 

I will not be including the cost of acquiring tools as I feel that this challenge assumes that you have basic tools such as a craft knife, steel ruler, hammer, drill, sanding paper, rotary tool, 3D Printer (only joking)

I have some items on order in anticipation of the challenge and whilst they have not arrived yet I will include their costs in the running total.  I have included the cost of 1 KATO 11-109 powered chassis for each layout as I have just purchased those for my own layout.

Whilst I have several 3D Printers and I will probably print some things for my own layout, I will include nominal costs as if you were ordering these items from a print farm rather than the cost to make them myself.  For example each loco body could realistically be bought from Etsy eBay or other small manufacturers for £10. 

Running Total

ITEM	Layout 1 (mine)	Layout 2 (Dads)	Fiddle Yard
Baseboards	£6	£6	£6
PWM Controllers	£2	£2	-
Kato 11-109 Chassis (1 per layout)	£23	£23	-
SUBTOTAL	£31	£31	£6

We will be attending the Sompting & District Model Railway Exhibition on May 10th, so I hope I can pick up some cheap rolling stock and track to build the actual layout.  

Board Dimensions and Layout Design

The Home Bargains Loft Floating Shelves are are (L) 800mm x (W) 235mm x (H) 38mm which means a single length of PECO flexi track will run straight across the board with plenty to spare.  It is far too  early in the design process to be detailing which track sections need to be purchased but I imagine it will look something like this:

 

N Gauge Model Railway - Episode 13 - Secondhand Buildings from eBay

As I aluded to in my last episode, I bought a joblot of secondhand N Gauge buildings from eBay for the bargain price of £19.

I decided to buy kits because whilst I would love to scratchbuild every model on my layout, to be honest, I do not have the patience or the skills.  The aim of the game here is to get something on the layout to fill in the gaping void in the middle and to add some lighting.

Each building will have its own blog where I will document the customisation process in more detail and explain all the trials and tribulations involved when working with 40 year old plastic kits.

These kits are namely:

KleiWe - 203 Stadthaus (Townhouse)

I didn't realise that these kits are so vintage having been produced between 1967 and 1971 before being bought by the Arnold brand.  In unbuilt boxed condition these are quite the collectors item so I feel a tiny bit sad that I am going to hack them up.  I found a little bit of information regarding this short lived range on The Birth of N Scale blog. 

This is a very European looking structure, but I quite like it.  The fancy stepped gable detail is very reminiscent of Dutch "trapgevels" architecture. This is clearly a more upmarket or municipal building. 

On the layout it currently sits directly opposite the Heljan Meat Packing Plant I built last episode and it would seem fitting if this were the offices of the local district council.  Perhaps the fortunes of both entities are somewhat intertwined. 

Heljan 672 - Furniture Factory 

I appear to be missing some of the parts to this model namely the base which includes a sort of loading dock.  No matter, as this is going to be my "Tex Mex" restaurant in the style of Chiquitos or Nandos.

KleiWe - 202 Mietshaus (Tenement House)

Another KleiWe kit, but this one is a lot less European in it's roof detail an looks much more utilitarian.  I'm thinking that this would be a perfect fit as a police station.  It sits on a dead end which will provide ample parking for the MFP liveried Falcon XBs that I intend to police Upper Carrom.

Kick her in the guts Barry!!

Auhagen 14475 Factory Building

This kit is still in production and readily available.  Sadly I only have the rectangular administrative building part, but it will serve admirably as the Carrom College Halls of Residence.

Bizarrely this building had an entire set of windows with white frames instead of black.  This will not do and so I have already ripped them out and will replace with carefully laser etched replacements.  

Unknown Modern Warehouse x2 

Despite some hours spent searching I could not identify the manufacturer or model of this kit.  However, given that the rest of these models appear to be of german origin I expect this to be a long discontinued Faller or Pola kit.  Please feel free to comment below if you know the origins.

For my layout it absolutely screams budget German supermarket so I am going to make it an Aldi.  I have a second kit so if I get bored then I can always swap it out for a Lidl.

Bonus cardboard model - Builder Plus BPN9 Signalbox

I was surprised to find that hidden inside one of the buildings was this very dilapidated cardboard signal box.  This will be perfect sitting on top of the tunnel mouth overseeing the small shunting area and the station platforms.  

I understand that no railway architect in their right mind would ever dream of building a signal box on top of a tunnel and there is nowhere for the leverframes to go and all that real world stuff.  But this is my layout and I want it to be visually interesting rather than an exercise in prototypical modelling.

This thing is too cute for school, especially as it has an interior.  I feel it is only right and proper to do a full restoration and update it with some 3D printed replacement parts and lights.

I had never heard of the Builder Plus range but it was apparently part of PECO and after a bit of googling I discovered that some of the range is preserved in the Robert Freidus Paper Model Collection

Ressurection and Plug & Play

It is my intention to make all of these buildings as plug and play as possible and as I mentioned before my layout sits on top of a carrom table so there can be no dangling wires underneath the baseboard (as is tradition).  This means I have to carve out channels in the MDF baseboard to snake the wires from my 5V USB powered chinesium distribution box through to each foundation and then terminate in a 2-pin female JST socket.  Each building will then plug in with the matching male connecter and feed power to a hidden distribution circuitboard to which all the lights will be wired with the appropriate resistors.

I am taking this bold step because it will take me some time to ressurect each building one at a time and that is a much easier task if it is done at the workbench rather than huddled over the layout.

To make this a robust solution, I designed a JST baseboard adapter which can be glued onto the MDF and provide a sturdy location to seat each female socket.

2-Pin JST Socket Baseboard Adapter - Thingiverse - thing:7026971

I printed a bunch of these in resin fished the wires through the hole and glued them to the baseboard.

I bend over the pins of the JST socket before soldering on the wires.  I have adopted consistent polarity for connecting the pins making it a trivial task to wire up the male JST plugs safe in the knowledge that they will always be the right way round.  

What I love about the ubiquitous and cheap as chips JST connectors is that if you get this wrong you can quickly depin the plugs and swap around the wires.

Anyway here's a shot of one of my buildings with the JST socket baseboard adapter installed.

This is a free download from all the usual places including Thingiverse, Cults 3D, Printables.  If you like it and find it useful please drop a comment and give it a like wherever you downloaded it from.

Obligatory Running Video

Enjoy...