I am building a model of Ilfracombe Station situated in North Devon, and have captured the atmosphere of the station with steep gradients, multi double slips and the isolated engine shed. The station model is housed in the garage, and as I do not have room to build a continuous run, the double track line terminates outside in the back yard at a fiddle road, probably called Morthoe.

I am on my third design of fiddle yard with the first two discarded because they did not work to my satisfaction. I have tried a traversing yard, using kitchen draw runners and this jammed regularly with mating stationary lines due to the long length of yard. I have also tried a cassette based system using aluminum angle extrusion as the rails, but lifting a cassette with four carriages on board was heavy and cumbersome. It was an accident waiting to happen. Cassettes and traversers seem to work in smaller gauges but I needed a reliable and safe solution. My good friend Ian Norman, also based in Melbourne, was clearing out his garage and gave me an automotive window lift motor. It was an old fashioned screw thread rod with a motor driving an annular nut. I am not sure what car it came from, but even a modern scissor lift mechanism would probably have done the trick. As a matter of interest Ian also gave me a Mazda Three series rear window wiper motor, which is standard fair here for O gauge turntables and deployed on the Ilfracombe shed. Perhaps a separate article is called for to describe the working turntable.

The third design of fiddle yard took shape very quickly based on a pivot at one end of a two meter, four road bay and using sliding external glass door runners to support the fiddle yard at the entrance end. Each of the two door runners were mounted perpendicular to the axis through the pivot at the other end of the yard and the wheels cut an arc on a long length of brass strip. My desire was to have the yard operated electrically and considered integrating this with the DCC system. It was all too complicated for me so I turned to Ian Norman for advice and hopefully an electrical circuit. The challenge is that the system needs to know which road it is set to, which road it wants to go to and then work out the direction of travel.

What I got in return from Ian was a circuit diagram with nine relays in it, I put in an extra two relays in case I ever wanted a fifth resting position. In a similar manner to the design of the turntable circuit there are two feed sources for the operating motor, a 12v feed for normal travel and a switched in 9 volt feed to slow the motor for the last half inch of travel towards a stop point. The fiddle yard is physically locked at each of the four positions using a solenoid to lift and drop a lever into a slot (see picture above). When a new position is selected on the control box, the first action is for the solenoid to lift the lever out of the locking slot. The micro switch arm on top the lever triggers the feed to the motor, the polarity of which has been determined by the control box to decide where to go next, (pictured right – control box minus lid). I am sure anyone with a knowledge of micro controllers could do this more simply but it works well and was easy to wire up. I have avoided publishing the circuit diagram as it is not very interesting but I could post a picture on the guild gallery if desired. There is one fault with the circuit, after setting the next direction on the control box, if a new setting is then immediately chosen before the completion of the first move, it gets confused, travels to the end, bends brackets and generally goes mad. So I have installed an emergency stop to let every relay calm down.

The sector plate fiddle yard uses aluminum angle for the track work with short sections of normal track flowing from the aluminum to the adjacent stationary point work. The aluminum works fine as long as it is cleaned well before a running session. Added recently to the fiddle yard structure is a table outrigger to accommodate a short cassette which can be used to turn locomotives or to load up new stock. The cassette is cable connected to the DCC system through a specially formed hole which allows the cassette to be turned without electrical disconnection. In the cable line is a NCE reverse polarity sensor as used for a reversing loop, and this helps the DCC system to decide the direction of travel of a locomotive after turning. I considered a next step of replicating the control box onto the main Ilfracombe switch panel so that the fiddle yard could be operated remotely, whilst using a camera and monitor from the garage so that I could see the fiddle yard without moving from the fat controllers chair.

Since this idea, I have invested in a NCE radio cab which allows me to walk around the layout untethered to a cab bus socket and I wish I could have my time again in choosing controllers because radio is a tremendous advantage compared to the normal tethered controllers. Apparently the NCE Radio system is only legal in Australia and USA. To see the sector plate in operation, I have posted on YouTube a short video, search for ‘O gauge fiddle yard 008’. The whole fiddle yard structure is on castor feet, so that it can be wheeled into the garage for storage after a running session. I like the consistent operation of the yard and the positive locations for each of the storage lines. It was also very cheap to build.

Perhaps I may be permitted in future Gazettes to post a write up of the main Ilfracombe layout. (Editor’s permission granted with great pleasure)