Short Street Trams  009

Originally built by Bob Hughes as a Challenge Project, I later acquired it and have plans to extend it on each side, still keeping it on one board of around 3' 6" or 4 foot by 1 foot.

Although the original method of power was fishing line, I intend to electrify it and have sidings each end for quick change over of the trams. There will be buildings added along the front of the layout, which will feature a roadway with cars/lorries of the period (1950s/60s) parked along. The trams will be HO scale running on 009/N gauge chassis on 009 track and changing them around seemed to work alright on Summit, so there's no reason it wouldn't work OK on Short Street. 

STOP PRESS:

Further thoughts on Short Street, is that I rebuild it with 16.5mm tram track on the road in front of the building, add some more 'Northern Industrial' type buildings each side, keep the 009 track the in front of buildings and add a couple of Y points at each end, then I can run HO trams on N gauge chassis on 009 track.

At the front, I'd add a pavement and an area to park a row of 1950/60s vehicles and then lay a 00 gauge tram track in front of it with a point at each end, then there would be a low relief building at each end to hide the tram changeovers. Each tram track can have trams running 'back and to' alternating. I'll mock this up on a 3 foot/3 foot 6inch/four foot board and see if twelve inches depth is enough to get it all in or perhaps eighteen inches would be better? to see if that will work alright, when I feel OK.

Later: Well, feeling OK this afternoon, I got out a twelve inch depth board, placed what I wanted to be seen on the layouts and decided it was too cluttered, so I went in search of a wider board and found along forgotten one, which was four foot by eighteen inches, at the back of the garage. Placing the tracks, buildings, paper to represent roadways and paths and parked vehicles at the side of the road, I decided that it had to be eighteen inches wide and four foot long, so that's what I'll be doing shortly...

There will be some ready built 'industrial' type buildiings to locate and a few kits that will need to be constructed (some making as low-relief), 00 tram track and points and 009 track and points to lay with pavements added. That will keep me quiet for a while!

Although I have a reasonable collection of both HO (running on N gauge chassis) trams and 00 gauge running on 16.5mm track trams, there are a few that need repair and some that need motorising, so they'll have to be 'found' in the boxes they're stored in. Then they can all be checked for running qualities...