In the early seventies I was in the Gladstone Model Railway Club. We built a donut shaped layout. It was basically a flat table without scenery. It had a single track with two crossing loops. One might think how could this possibly draw a Crowd?
Well it did because of one thing, automation. You see one could have three trains continually running on it and crossing each other in the loops. It worked like the normal railway worked on single line sections. Trains would take their turns on the two single line sections. They would wait in the loops for their turn.
This setup could run for hours unattended. The speeds of the trains could be said to be normal track speed. That is usually much slower than a lot of models are operated but it is realistic.
One of the problems with operating it was the fact that members would want to run their trains too fast. When this happened, the inevitable run through would occur. Then the train in the opposite direction would be hit as it was entering the loop. Maybe this was what the observers were looking for. However the patrons would clear out until the trains were running again.
All this magic was done by the humble surplus telephone relay. There were two banks of them in one of the end sections of the donut. The plugs and sockets for the wiring were octal type as used in thermionic valve equipment. Another problem occurred during moving the layout. The relays did not handle the traveling too well. The clappers would often become dislodged requiring realignment.
In 1975 I got classed to Cloncurry as driver. When I returned this layout had been changed. They had made it three tracks, no more automation. It was just three trains racing each other around and around. The interest in it was never the same after that at Exhibitions. It simply lost its appeal.
I thought it would look good with Moura Short Line CTC of the era. It was already setup for right hand running. It just needed trailable facing point’s indicators and colour light signals. Once that was done, a backdrop could have been added. Then a little scenery wouldn’t have gone astray. Alas! That wasn’t to be. Ah well, maybe someone who reads this might be inspired to do something similar.
Take care to add details and defined expressions on the foreground layer of people in your crowd, as this is the part of the drawing the eye will be drawn to first.
I ve been meaning to do a tutorial on how to do a crowd scene illustration, and in late November I was assigned a tough one for