Time For a Refresh
Entry posted by traction
613 views
I had forgotten I had written a blog about Thomas & Friends!!!
I hadn't really done much on the layout until the end of 2010 start of 2011 where I went round and upgraded the grass to static grass and generally made the layout a little neater for the Mansfield exhibition.
While I was doing it I thought about extending the layout so keeping within my initial reasons for building the layout I went to the Hornby track plans book 11th edition and built the TraKMat extension 3 layout "The Grand Terminus"
There are 3 extensions in the track plan book for the full TrakMat layout and as I had already built the Large Station building thought I should use it.
The Scalescenes overall large roof canopy was also built....all three of them along with the subway steps, I think once it's all been completed it will look pretty good.
Went for it to try and get it finished for Mansfield and almost succeded, why do we think of these ideas at the last minute.....always when it needs to be done for an exhibition?
I didn't realise just how much there is to do with ballasting, scenery and then the electrics!!!!
Get things to run wasn't too bad, but making up the mimic panels takes a fair time, I also fitted two SMD82 accessory decoders to control all of the point motors.
I like these as they can be programmed to do many things, and are easy to program.
Whats really nice is they can be used with push button or toggle switches along with the DCC controller.
They have a built in CDU so a nice power boost to operate the point motors.
To make sure that I had reliable point operation on the extension I fitted the Peco low power point motors so they don't need so much current to throw them over.
This has worked well, but they still take a fair amount because of the switches that you have to fit on the bottom of them for frog polarity change or in my case as they are insul frogs, I use to operate the LED's in the mimic panels.
I have attached all of the point motors to the points themselves I've just found them to be more reliable that way, if not time consuming cutting out the base board!
A word of warning when fitting them as a cross over the holes are close which does weaken the baseboard a bit, I would advise using something more than 6mm mdf if cutting holes close to each other!
So it almost got completed for Mansfield with only the station needing finishing, still it ran all weekend very well and got mobbed as per usual!
It's getting there!
Must remember to keep this one up to date now.
Cheers
Ian
1 Comment
Recommended Comments
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now