Bontal - "Olten" Station

Swiss Chris Railways

BONTAL - “OLTEN” STATION

Bustal Junction

Jessdorf Station

Olten yard. Just somewhere to leave the stock. Since construction has started the position of the turntable has been moved to the right hand end of the plan. This is because of lack of room in the Y. The points used here are Peco Streamline. Spurs have been added at the Y end to help with loco & stock storage.

The working catenary was created by the use of Code 100 rail soldered to brass 1/4" tubing, then more rail is soldered to the underside of the cross bars. I am also experimenting with a copper wire variant of the crossbar, which after a modification now works perfectly. The rail came from sections of track damaged when I dismantled my previous layout.

The station throat at York. The right hand line at the top of the picture goes off to Bonham, and the left hand line (truncated in the photo) goes off to Bonton. This photo shows the home built (and working) catenary. The locomotives are, from left to right, DB BR01-220 4-6-2 Pacific (Fleischmann), BLS AE 8/8 273 (Hag) SBB A3/5 604 (Lilliput), BR 60163 "Tornado" and LNER 4468 "Mallard") (both Bachmann). Notice the Lima D9600 "Claydon" in the background

Further down the York board showing a modification to the catenary, with the cross section made from copper wire soldered to the 1/4" brass tube uprights. The stock in the picture is, from Left to Right), Eurocity Gottardo RaBe set, SBB AE 3/6 (both Lima)m SBB BE 6/8 Krokodil (Marklin) LMS / BR Night Mail, Class 9F 92221 (both Hornby), Midland Pullman (Bachman), BR APT/E and Javelin 395 class in Olympics livery (Hornby)

Close up of the OHLE with the E10 having made it safely from Leostadt.

Olten

Olten as it was finally built. The lines are numbered from 1 (at the bottom) to 8 (at the top). With 1 & 2 being used for multiple units, 2 - 5 for loco hauled, 6 & 7 Freight, 8 light loco.

9 is above the turntable and is the steam loco servicing facility, and can be used to put new stock onto the layout.

10 - 14 are the spurs on the left, above and below the Y leading to Bontal junction and the return line to Bonstadt. These are used for loco and stock storage.

Point motors are Peco PL10 mounted above the board at the right hand end with the 3 way point frogs being selected by Peco Pl13 Accessary switches.

At the left hand end, the points are activated using the Peco Smart Switch system with SG90 slow acting servos, controlled by Miniature On/off toggle switches, DPDT for most of them as 2 motors are controlled from 1 switch, sometimes on different control boards. The 3 way point is controlled by a centre off DPDT switch. Setting up the 3 way was a challenge as I had to do the settings on servo 7 with servo 8 disconnected, and servo 8 with 7 disconnected. As this point is Insulfrog, there are no extra frog switches. The y at the extreme lefdt is operated using an under board mounted Pl 10.

For the PL 10’s, the power comes from a Guagemaster Quad using the AC output. And for the smartswitch system, the power comes from a 13.8V regulated and smoothed Power supply. Eventually the smartswitch system will also control starter signals built on a 3D printer with LED lighting

Model Railways