Staging and Hidden Sidings

An electrical fault on the Up loop necessitated accessing the hidden sidings to solve the issue. I used the opportunity to take some photos of this hidden part of the layout.

B65 is on a Up Mildura fast goods in the Mildura hidden siding, An Up Melbourne express goods is in the adjacent Serviceton hidden siding. The Down hidden sidings are the three tracks in the background with C501 at the head of a Down Adelaide Express goods.

The hidden sidings represent all locations east, west and northwest of Ballarat. The original concept for the railway was for a double deck around the walls design with a helix leading to staging on a lower deck. About 12months into the build, I dropped the plans when after building the ramp and helix I found that the curve and gradient was too much for the older Lima locos in the fleet to be able to haul the long interstate goods trains, Overland and Vinelander up from the lower deck.

The Melbourne end entry to the hidden sidings, C507 sits on the Eureka line that runs into the hidden section of the layout to form an additional loop. The TPs are at the end of a Up Mildura fast goods entering the Mildura hidden siding.

The Ararat entry to the hidden sidings which is partially hidden by the Ballarat North Railway workshops. The 8300 guards van is at the rear of interstate express goods.

The design was then changed and the hidden sidings on the main deck  (originally designed to hold only Up and Down Melbourne passenger trains) were modified to form expanded staging. The hidden sidings consist of two loop sidings on the Up and Down tracks. In addition there is a short loop siding off the long loop of the  down tracks, which is the continuation of the Eureka branch off the modelled portion of the layout (and into the hidden sidings). This is occasionally used to stage pilot workings to Eureka with one or two oil pots or open wagons. Usually it holds the coil steel train or the Horsham or Mildura block oil trains.

Coil steel train is in the short Eureka loop, in the foreground a Mildura goods is entering the loop that forms the Mildura line the unsceniced area is the Ballarat cattle yards and Redan.

One of the Down loop sidings is usually used to stage the N set running the  Ballarat - Melbourne pass. The outer or longer of the sidings usually stages an interstate express goods.

Of the two Up loop sidings one forms Serviceton line destinations while the other forms Mildura line destinations. This loop also has a dead end extension used to stage the Donald Railmotor.

DRC43 sits in the dead end extension of the Mildura hidden siding. This is used to stage the Donald Railmotor. The pine frame supports the backscene. The ballasted track is the Mildura line which enters the layout behind a row of pine trees.

These hidden sidings aren't large enough to stage all the the trains that run during an operating session.  There are 3 large draws (representing Melbourne, Serviceton and Mildura) which are used hold locos to stage other trains, plus plastic containers in which wagons are stored.

The Melbourne draw with a full house of locos awaiting the start of the next operating session. The teacup B and passenger cars and orange VBPY will form the morning Horsham pass.

These containers are labelled with laminated doublesided cards that indicate the train that they hold. For example 395/398 Ballarat - Skipton Goods and 391/392 Ballarat = Pittong Goods  are shown in photo below. The Skipton Goods is awaiting it's turn in the operating sequence, in the container is a 3rd series T with 5 GH's and a ZL. These will be placed on the layout at the appropriate time for its run back to Ballarat. In the Pittong container are open wagons with shipping containers awaiting loading with Kaolin at Pittong and the GHs left by the T at the Skipton silo.

The fault was from the seasonal moment of the baseboards causing the isolation gap in the gaps rails to close resulting in a short. This was fixed by filing down the end of the rail and inserting a piece a styrene between the rail ends.