Tiverton Junction
Gauge: OO Gauge
Size: 27'3" x 8'2" (8300mm x 2940mm)
Era: 1960's
HISTORY
The idea for Tiverton Junction began soon after the Club was formed in 2008. There followed a prolonged period of research and planning. Club funding became available in 2010 and materials were sourced for the principal boards and fiddle yard. These were constructed and stored for a further 2 years allowing more discussion and research to take place. The location for our now 30’ x 12’ exhibition standard layout changed several times, moving from our small clubroom to a local visitor attraction, at their invitation, where for 3 years the public were able to see the layout develop. Suddenly we were told we no longer fitted into their plans so it ended up in a member’s stable where work slowly continued. The owners of the nearby Old Well Garden Centre heard of our plight and immediately offered to provide a purpose built timber framed building large enough to house Tiverton Junction with the only proviso that we were to hold monthly open days for Garden Centre visitors. We of course agreed and the building shell was completed during the summer of 2019 followed by CVMRC members carrying out the internal finishes. This included the insulation, plaster boarding, painting, flooring, plumbing and electrics in readiness for installing the layout. We were fully operational by late November of that year.
LAYOUT BRIEF
Tiverton Junction (a main line Western Region station situated less than 3 miles from our club room) would be set in the late 50’s early 60’s era. We sourced OS copies of the site, electronic copies of original drawings of the station elements and footprint from BRB Ltd (British Railways Board (Residuary) Limited), York and organised an escorted site visit to view and measure the still remaining platforms and location of the signal box. We decided to replicate all the original features of the site. This would include as near to scale length platforms as possible, platform buildings including the signal box, footbridge spanning 5 tracks, butter platform, WW2 (Esso) oil depot, buildings to the backscene (demolished by the construction of the M5 Motorway), abattoir, Station Masters house, engine shed and coaling stage plus branchline connections to Hemyock and Tiverton.
BASEBOARD CONSTRUCTION
Construction was from birch ply 6mm tops and 90mm x 12mm frames throughout, all machine cut and generously supplied, at cost, by a local joinery company from a member’s AutoCAD drawings and a cutting list. These were glued and pinned together. 10mm cork faced office pin boards were glued to the baseboards, edged on all sides with 10mm x 10mm softwood beads for protection. Softwood legs and cross rail frames were built and attached to the boards with bespoke aluminium hinge brackets and braces to complete the job.
TRACKWORK & ELECTRICS
This layout is the largest and most complex that the club has built and we realised that a lot of detailed planning was required. It had to be switchable between DC and DCC to make the layout accessible to both factions within our membership. For the DC wiring we also defined where on each board the isolator sections would start and finish. Finally, the working signals locations were settled. Decisions were made on how the layout would be operated in DC, which was determined by which controllers would be allowed to travel over which sections of track. For example, the Tiverton branch line controller has access to all tracks on that side of the layout but in the station platform area the Up and Down controllers also have access to the Tiverton branch platform to allow trains from the main lines to be passed to the branch. Before laying any track the detailed wiring was determined and we knew exactly where each wire was going and a colour scheme for the wiring was allocated before starting, using 26 different colours. This went down to defining each wire into the many 25way D cables used for the interconnections and allocating a solder tag connection for each and every wire before a single piece of track was laid. The wiring is designed so that any of the main boards can be controlled by the control panel individually thus allowing testing of each board as it was completed. Testing as we progressed was considered very important since any errors could be fixed as they were found and not propagated throughout the layout. In reality errors were minimal and very minor.
The next task was the construction of the main control panel. Our AutoCad man produced a mimic panel with input from the electrics man to ensure all switch and LEDs would fit. This was attached to a large box. AutoCad allowed a reverse image onto which each switch and its individual number designator was added and positioned on the back of the panel to greatly assist the wiring of the panel internals.
For DC mode an isolated section can be one of up to 4 controllers defined as UP, Down, Tiverton Branch and Culm Valley line. 4 different coloured LEDs are used to show which controller has access to the section. For DCC operation these lights can be turned off.
Inter board connection is mainly via 25Way D cables. The 25Way D cables have all been hand wired using 7/0.2 wire to ensure the right lengths and current requirements for the isolated sections. Although you can buy cables of this standard it is an expensive purchase with the number of cables we required and we know, from a previous layout, the cheaper computer cables are not up to the job.
In addition to the 25Way D connectors we have a Bus comprising the track common, down and Up lines. The bus is mains cable with XLR audio plugs and sockets. Due to the size of the layout digital filters are required and have to be positioned carefully as a result of the ability to switch between DC and DCC running.
The fiddle yard has two smaller panels built in the same way as the main panel. Each fiddle yard panel has an extra controller for DC operation to allow the fiddle yard operator to shuffle trains while the main line operators are at work in the station area.
All the wiring of the layout has been carefully documented for reference by any club member.
TRACK
Track is Peco Code 75 with Peco Electrofrog points throughout operated by Cobalt point motors. Mechanisms were constructed to allow the point motors to be flipped round by 90 degrees to reduce the depth. The gentle curves through the station have been carefully replicated with a suitable camber to the track and loads of dummy point rodding.
Signals
Each signal is unique, and as they were to be fully operational with working lights, scratch building was essential. Brass tubing was used for the signals with metal posts whilst Ratio plastic kits were used for signals with wooden posts. The junction signals used larger diameter tubing for the posts with “Ratio” plastic gantries. Lamps came from “Ratio” kits, and have a minute LED pushed into a hole drilled in the lamp housing. Etched brass signal arms were fitted, with small pieces of transparent coloured plastic as lenses, and a control wire passing down through the base plate to a 9g digital servo fitted below the baseboards. The signals are controlled by MegaPoint controllers and it is possible to set the correct signalling for any train passing through the station from the control panel.
The most interesting signal was the starter to the Tiverton Branch and associated sidings with its route indicator and to replicate this, a piece of translucent white plastic card is used for the screen, with the letters “BR CH” and a minute LED behind it. The shunt signals are, for now, dummies and have now been made removable as, however careful we were, they did keep getting demolished when track cleaning.
Telegraph poles
The very tall telegraph poles are a feature of Tiverton Junction Station, and have many arms and insulators. The posts are bamboo skewers with plastic strip for the arms and small pieces of half round plastic strip used for the insulators. For those interested full construction details are on our website.
SCENERY & BUILDINGS
The buildings are scratch built by members in plasticard and made, as accurately as possible. The station buildings were built with details from drawings supplied by BRB Ltd. Further information was gleaned from photographs in railway books, web sites, Tiverton Museum and visitors bringing in their own photographs. The Abattoir Buildings, whilst representing the site, had to be somewhat reduced in area due the space limitations of the layout. Local visitors to the layout are constantly updating our knowledge and we endeavour to add revisions to the model where possible.
The oil depot
The oil depot, opened in 1943 by the Air Ministry, supplied the four RAF stations in the area, remaining open to supply Exeter Airport until the early 1980’s when it was finally closed.
Photographs of the depot and sidings in the 1950’s were sought, but none were found, thus local anecdotes and photographs of other oil depots around the country was used to construct the oil unloading gantry. It is made of plastic girder strip, with brass rod for the upright pipes and thin plastic tubing for the flexible hoses. The buildings are typical RAF wartime structures, reduced in size to fit the available space. American HO scale kits are used for the oil (kerosene) tanks and are slightly undersize, acceptable as OO ones would have over-powered the front of the layout. The result gives a good impression as to how the depot looked.
LOCOS & STOCK
Members provide stock for the public open days, the 2nd Sunday monthly is 1958-62 era using DC whilst the 4th Sunday is DCC when as well as steam, blue Westerns, HSTs and 800’s are often in action!
CONCLUSION
Having spent over 10 years on Construction and Modelling to date (January 2024), being held up by location changes, 2 years of Covid restrictions and trying to be as accurate as possible, we are still hard at work on the layout. All the trackwork and infrastructure are as complete as possible but progress continues on the scenic elements.
Our Location offers the layout to public viewing at The Old Well Garden Centre (EX15 3ES) on the 2nd (WR 1958-62) & 4th (anything goes) Sundays of each month from 10.00am – 4.00pm.
Our sincere thanks must go to our hosts, The Old Well Garden Centre, without whom we would not be able to regularly show off our layout to the public.
Gauge: OO Gauge
Size: 27'3" x 8'2" (8300mm x 2940mm)
Era: 1960's
HISTORY
The idea for Tiverton Junction began soon after the Club was formed in 2008. There followed a prolonged period of research and planning. Club funding became available in 2010 and materials were sourced for the principal boards and fiddle yard. These were constructed and stored for a further 2 years allowing more discussion and research to take place. The location for our now 30’ x 12’ exhibition standard layout changed several times, moving from our small clubroom to a local visitor attraction, at their invitation, where for 3 years the public were able to see the layout develop. Suddenly we were told we no longer fitted into their plans so it ended up in a member’s stable where work slowly continued. The owners of the nearby Old Well Garden Centre heard of our plight and immediately offered to provide a purpose built timber framed building large enough to house Tiverton Junction with the only proviso that we were to hold monthly open days for Garden Centre visitors. We of course agreed and the building shell was completed during the summer of 2019 followed by CVMRC members carrying out the internal finishes. This included the insulation, plaster boarding, painting, flooring, plumbing and electrics in readiness for installing the layout. We were fully operational by late November of that year.
LAYOUT BRIEF
Tiverton Junction (a main line Western Region station situated less than 3 miles from our club room) would be set in the late 50’s early 60’s era. We sourced OS copies of the site, electronic copies of original drawings of the station elements and footprint from BRB Ltd (British Railways Board (Residuary) Limited), York and organised an escorted site visit to view and measure the still remaining platforms and location of the signal box. We decided to replicate all the original features of the site. This would include as near to scale length platforms as possible, platform buildings including the signal box, footbridge spanning 5 tracks, butter platform, WW2 (Esso) oil depot, buildings to the backscene (demolished by the construction of the M5 Motorway), abattoir, Station Masters house, engine shed and coaling stage plus branchline connections to Hemyock and Tiverton.
BASEBOARD CONSTRUCTION
Construction was from birch ply 6mm tops and 90mm x 12mm frames throughout, all machine cut and generously supplied, at cost, by a local joinery company from a member’s AutoCAD drawings and a cutting list. These were glued and pinned together. 10mm cork faced office pin boards were glued to the baseboards, edged on all sides with 10mm x 10mm softwood beads for protection. Softwood legs and cross rail frames were built and attached to the boards with bespoke aluminium hinge brackets and braces to complete the job.
TRACKWORK & ELECTRICS
This layout is the largest and most complex that the club has built and we realised that a lot of detailed planning was required. It had to be switchable between DC and DCC to make the layout accessible to both factions within our membership. For the DC wiring we also defined where on each board the isolator sections would start and finish. Finally, the working signals locations were settled. Decisions were made on how the layout would be operated in DC, which was determined by which controllers would be allowed to travel over which sections of track. For example, the Tiverton branch line controller has access to all tracks on that side of the layout but in the station platform area the Up and Down controllers also have access to the Tiverton branch platform to allow trains from the main lines to be passed to the branch. Before laying any track the detailed wiring was determined and we knew exactly where each wire was going and a colour scheme for the wiring was allocated before starting, using 26 different colours. This went down to defining each wire into the many 25way D cables used for the interconnections and allocating a solder tag connection for each and every wire before a single piece of track was laid. The wiring is designed so that any of the main boards can be controlled by the control panel individually thus allowing testing of each board as it was completed. Testing as we progressed was considered very important since any errors could be fixed as they were found and not propagated throughout the layout. In reality errors were minimal and very minor.
The next task was the construction of the main control panel. Our AutoCad man produced a mimic panel with input from the electrics man to ensure all switch and LEDs would fit. This was attached to a large box. AutoCad allowed a reverse image onto which each switch and its individual number designator was added and positioned on the back of the panel to greatly assist the wiring of the panel internals.
For DC mode an isolated section can be one of up to 4 controllers defined as UP, Down, Tiverton Branch and Culm Valley line. 4 different coloured LEDs are used to show which controller has access to the section. For DCC operation these lights can be turned off.
Inter board connection is mainly via 25Way D cables. The 25Way D cables have all been hand wired using 7/0.2 wire to ensure the right lengths and current requirements for the isolated sections. Although you can buy cables of this standard it is an expensive purchase with the number of cables we required and we know, from a previous layout, the cheaper computer cables are not up to the job.
In addition to the 25Way D connectors we have a Bus comprising the track common, down and Up lines. The bus is mains cable with XLR audio plugs and sockets. Due to the size of the layout digital filters are required and have to be positioned carefully as a result of the ability to switch between DC and DCC running.
The fiddle yard has two smaller panels built in the same way as the main panel. Each fiddle yard panel has an extra controller for DC operation to allow the fiddle yard operator to shuffle trains while the main line operators are at work in the station area.
All the wiring of the layout has been carefully documented for reference by any club member.
TRACK
Track is Peco Code 75 with Peco Electrofrog points throughout operated by Cobalt point motors. Mechanisms were constructed to allow the point motors to be flipped round by 90 degrees to reduce the depth. The gentle curves through the station have been carefully replicated with a suitable camber to the track and loads of dummy point rodding.
Signals
Each signal is unique, and as they were to be fully operational with working lights, scratch building was essential. Brass tubing was used for the signals with metal posts whilst Ratio plastic kits were used for signals with wooden posts. The junction signals used larger diameter tubing for the posts with “Ratio” plastic gantries. Lamps came from “Ratio” kits, and have a minute LED pushed into a hole drilled in the lamp housing. Etched brass signal arms were fitted, with small pieces of transparent coloured plastic as lenses, and a control wire passing down through the base plate to a 9g digital servo fitted below the baseboards. The signals are controlled by MegaPoint controllers and it is possible to set the correct signalling for any train passing through the station from the control panel.
The most interesting signal was the starter to the Tiverton Branch and associated sidings with its route indicator and to replicate this, a piece of translucent white plastic card is used for the screen, with the letters “BR CH” and a minute LED behind it. The shunt signals are, for now, dummies and have now been made removable as, however careful we were, they did keep getting demolished when track cleaning.
Telegraph poles
The very tall telegraph poles are a feature of Tiverton Junction Station, and have many arms and insulators. The posts are bamboo skewers with plastic strip for the arms and small pieces of half round plastic strip used for the insulators. For those interested full construction details are on our website.
SCENERY & BUILDINGS
The buildings are scratch built by members in plasticard and made, as accurately as possible. The station buildings were built with details from drawings supplied by BRB Ltd. Further information was gleaned from photographs in railway books, web sites, Tiverton Museum and visitors bringing in their own photographs. The Abattoir Buildings, whilst representing the site, had to be somewhat reduced in area due the space limitations of the layout. Local visitors to the layout are constantly updating our knowledge and we endeavour to add revisions to the model where possible.
The oil depot
The oil depot, opened in 1943 by the Air Ministry, supplied the four RAF stations in the area, remaining open to supply Exeter Airport until the early 1980’s when it was finally closed.
Photographs of the depot and sidings in the 1950’s were sought, but none were found, thus local anecdotes and photographs of other oil depots around the country was used to construct the oil unloading gantry. It is made of plastic girder strip, with brass rod for the upright pipes and thin plastic tubing for the flexible hoses. The buildings are typical RAF wartime structures, reduced in size to fit the available space. American HO scale kits are used for the oil (kerosene) tanks and are slightly undersize, acceptable as OO ones would have over-powered the front of the layout. The result gives a good impression as to how the depot looked.
LOCOS & STOCK
Members provide stock for the public open days, the 2nd Sunday monthly is 1958-62 era using DC whilst the 4th Sunday is DCC when as well as steam, blue Westerns, HSTs and 800’s are often in action!
CONCLUSION
Having spent over 10 years on Construction and Modelling to date (January 2024), being held up by location changes, 2 years of Covid restrictions and trying to be as accurate as possible, we are still hard at work on the layout. All the trackwork and infrastructure are as complete as possible but progress continues on the scenic elements.
Our Location offers the layout to public viewing at The Old Well Garden Centre (EX15 3ES) on the 2nd (WR 1958-62) & 4th (anything goes) Sundays of each month from 10.00am – 4.00pm.
Our sincere thanks must go to our hosts, The Old Well Garden Centre, without whom we would not be able to regularly show off our layout to the public.
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A signal man at work
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Main Control Panel
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Look at that neat wiring!
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