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Newcastle Central and ECML in late 1980s

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Building a switch panel - part 3

I now have the switch panel, points motors, and electrical all done for the main part of the station. Very happy with how all this came together. I built a frame from the same 1x3" lumber that I used for the benchwork, so it fits in nicely:     I tried to keep the wiring as neat and tidy as I could, but it pales in comparison to some of the works of art I've seen other people produce! At least here everything is mostly color-coded, wires are bundled together by function, and everything is l

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Building a switch panel - part 2

Slow but steady progress with building the switch panel. I have all of the LEDs wired up to the connector blocks, and all of the jumper wires for the toggle switches and common power from the capacitor discharge unit. The rear of the panel is starting to look pretty busy!     All of the point motors and electrical work on the north side of the station is now complete. I still have to wire in the status LEDs for which way the points are thrown, but all the motors and toggle switches work cor

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Building a switch panel - part 1

Slowly been making progress on point motors. All 23 motors around the main Newcastle Central station are installed, and I've planned out wiring for the capacitor discharge unit, frog polarity, and LED status indicators. I need to then get all the point motors wired up in order to correctly run trains, as I don't want to keep manually throwing the motors with the accessory switch and I want to make sure the motors themselves do work before I trim the pin that runs in to the points.   I'd had so

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Initial electrical work and first trains running!

Pretty exciting events at Newcastle Central - trains are starting to run!   I ran the mains bus power and attached the first dropper wires which meant a large portion of the track became electrified and I could start to run a few trains up and down the main lines around the Tyne Yard.   The bus power is 12-gauge solid core and I'm planning on droppers on each section of track. Since I'm mainly using flex track, that shouldn't be too big of a deal, it's all the points that will slow me down.

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Trackwork all complete

It's taken a little while to get all of the Woodlands Scenic TrackBed foam underlay in place and then all of the Peco code 100 track attached, but Newcastle Central is now starting to really take shape! I had a couple of areas where I had to re-lay the track underlay to get the curves around the platforms on the north end of the station just right, but pretty happy overall with how it turned out. Once the track is ballasted, you won't be able to see any of the areas I had to re-lay, so it will b

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Laying track and underlay

Lot of work and progress in the past couple of weeks. After receiving delivery of all the Peco track from Hattons, I've slowly started laying it down along with foam Woodlands Scenic Track-Bed. Here's a couple of photos from the track work going in to place. First, from the north of the station:     And then another the shows an overview of the whole station trackwork, complete with some pins to hold things in place     I had a little trouble with clean cuts from the Xuron track cutte

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DCC conversion of older Hornby locos

As I've started to slowly lay down track and I'm waiting on some more supplies for that, I took the time to fit DCC decoders to the fleet of older Hornby locos. I'd already completed a decoder install a few months ago on one of the HSTs using a Bachmann decoder, but was a little concerned as to the cost outfitting the remaining locos. I'd read good things about the Hattons 8-pin decoders for £10, so picked some up and found they work just great given how basic the older locos are. This was the f

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Starting to lay track

First delivery from Hattons came in at the end of last week, so I started placing down actual track. I'm still trying to decide what to do for track underlay, so I haven't actually attached the tracks to the baseboard yet. I'm torn by between strips of cork or Woodlands Scenic Track-Bed foam. I've used the foam underlay before on previous HO gauge builds and wasn't blown away. It seems to raise the track rather high.   But, here's a shot looking across what would be on the King Edward Bridge f

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Track templates and rough layout

Little quiet the last few weeks as I've waiting to to order track. But, that order has now shipped and should arrive in the next couple of days!   I'd originally been planning on using Atlas HO gauge code 100 track since that's a lot more available here in the US, but when I was then trying to figure out point motors, there are no electrofrog points in code 100. I looked at a couple of other more US-centric manufacturers, but also ran in to similar problems. Ideally, I had wanted to use Peco O

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Benchwork - Part 3

Final steps on the benchwork and baseboards completed this weekend. Now it's all starting to look like something you can run trains on After sanding down all the top of the benchwork to make sure it was smooth, I laid the sheets of plywood down. I screwed these baseboards to the benchwork, then ran two or three passes of different grit sandpaper to smooth it down enough to comfortably work with. Quite happy with how it's all turned out. Here's an overview of the layout with all the benchwork an

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Benchwork - Part 2

More benchwork completed this weekend. I built the the left-hand side benchwork that will carry the express lines around the layout and the area where the Tyne Yard will sit. I'm still trying to finalize plans for what I want the yard to look like, but at least have the dimensions pretty much set for the area that I'll make available. I need more 1x3" before I frame out that section, but will be quick to then do so.   I drilled holes in all the cross pieces around the benchwork to run the DCC

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Benchwork - Part 1

After leaving the shed for a few weeks once the weather sheeting and siding was put up, I was pretty confident I now had something that was going to withstand the elements and I could start on the benchwork.   I chose to work with 1" x 3" lumber for all the benchwork, partly through research and partly from experience. With my first 8x4ft build many years ago, I used 2x4s. This was down to utter lack of research, admittedly, and figuring 2x4 was strong. It was strong, but it was also very heav

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Design and prep work

This build has been a long time coming! I've made a couple of different 8ft x 4ft builds over the years that I was never really happy with once I started making progress on them, mainly as they just weren't what I was truly wanting to model. Space limitations and then a few different moves also didn't help. Now that I'm in a spot where we're likely to remain living for quite some time, I've been able to get down to some real planning and prep work for what I've really wanted to model all along -

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