“WASHBOURNE”

[Donw]

I see you are a belt and braces man using both sets of contacts. Useful idea there with the baseplate to avoid the screws being right on the edge of the hole.

 

Don

[Northroader]

It’s only a cheap switch so you may as well use all the contacts. Bit of a contrast with what you’re planning for Dolgelley!

[Edwardian]

I’m lucky in that usually with my modelling I don’t get black dogs coming towards me, or mojos running away, but the last fortnight plus I’ve been at a standstill, just because of the heatwave. The loft has windows that open and give a cooling draught, so you can stay close to outside temperature in a hot spell, but it’s just been too hot outside as well, nudging 30C most days. Is it just me that can’t keep going? I thought Sunday afternoon typified it well, looking out at the cloud formations, just the smallest little clouds in a big blue sky, the American Midwest comes to Wiltshire.

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Anyway, today the temperature dropped to 24C, and after doing some gardening for the boss, I found I had enough get up and go to do some model work at last. One job is trying to organise how the trains are kept, and I need some more storage boxes. As I make most of the stuff from scratch, they don’t come with any boxes, and I keep them in made up sets, with a few pooled “spares”. I do long boxes from 3mm greyboard, which I buy in sheets from an art shop. They’re roughly 34” long, 4” x 3” section, so today I was marking out, cutting and scoring, then folding and gluing with pva. I use those useful elastic bands the postman scatters about to hold them while it dries, but I reckon the quality of the bands is going downhill.

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Good idea for the stock.  Must do similar.

 

And you're right about PO elastic bands; only yesterday I had one fairly fresh one snap on me (proving that they are not strong enough to hold my wads of cash together  ). 

 

 

A job for the repair crew recently, as running trains I’ve noticed that entering the platform from the fiddle yard is a smooth run, but going into the goods loop there can be a slight hiccup. Checking with a meter confirms that the feed to the frog/ crossing of the entry point only works for the platform setting, the other direction the frog goes dead. As the run continues straight into the back of the other point for the goods siding, only the length through the crossing is down, and this is about equivalent to the span of the pickup wheelbase of a loco, so taking the route at a gallop and there’s no worry, it’s just showing when crawling. I checked the point switch when I installed it, but anyway it must need changing. Luckily I have a few spare new ones, I usually get them from Squires or Eileen’s at a show. Some attention to get it ready, I file the mounting plate flat to remove the ridges from the mounting screw holes and tin it. I then solder it to a larger baseplate made from brass strip. This is done because I fit the switch into a hole through the baseboard ply, but I find the mounting screws are placed too close to the edge of the hole, so the baseplate can move them onto terra firma, and also the screw heads are moved sideways out of the way of the point rod. Next I drill through the knob of the switch slider for the point rod. The layout is wired up with a fairly hefty multi strand cable, mainly with a view to keeping voltage drop down. The terminal tags under the switch are a bit small for this, so I put some brass rod through each pair of tags, giving a side extension under the baseboard which will allow the wiring to solder up easily, and be wrapped up with insulation tape. The wire from the frog goes to the centre terminal, and then it’s a case of working out which way the switch moves to feed the right side of the point to the frog.

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The switch then goes into the baseboard hole, is screwed down, and gets the point rod fed through the knob. The rod was already tinned, and has a tube and washer on the point side. The travel on the slider switch is around 5.5mm, and the throw of the point is about 3.3mm, so the switch movement is a bit more than the point needs, which is the right way round. I place the point blades hard against the stock rail for the one way, the switch thrown for that direction, then solder up on the point rod. There’s a length of brass tube around 2.5mm o.d. over the point rod, with a 10BA washer on the switch knob side. I have to be careful, as the switch knob is plastic, so if I linger with the soldering iron the point rod melts into the knob, and I apply the solder at the end of the tube away from the knob. The washer helps to spread the pressure over a wider area of the knob, and stops the tube cutting into the knob. The point is reversed, and the switch moved the other way, and the tube and washer soldered up for the other end. You then get full travel on the switch to feed the frog, and the point can move the right amount. Sure enough, I’m now getting smooth working both ways through the point. Here’s a scruffy close up of the switch before it gets an overall coat of paint, and you can just make out the working gap on the left hand side of the knob. Then there’s an overall view of the point run. The point is a Peco medium radius, but I change the tie bar, as I don’t like the little plastic nib for the throw.

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I do like the look of that as a solution to point control.

[N15class]

One thing about changing the layout spec. to slightly increase train length is that some more wagons are needed. Here's one the shops have just completed, using a kit from Furness Wagons. It has a one piece resin casting for the body and underframe, white metal axleguard/ box/ spring units and buffer housings, steel buffers, and brass etching details. It's a LSWR lowside with fixed sides and ends. They classed this as a 'stone' wagon, and used it for traffic from the quarries on Portland and in Cornwall. I thought a suitable load would be paving slabs, which I made from plastikard, but hollowed out to take steel strips in the middle, to give plenty of weight. (I think a heavy wagon will think twice about derailing, where a light wagon will just go "yippee") Photos show they were normally very dusty from the quarries, so I scuzzied it up with pastel chalk dust, though I don't try to "fix" this with any sprays. Looking at the picture, it looks very grey, but it is umber brown, honest.

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Thin slabs would travel on edge, standing up. They would be less likely to break.

[Donw]

Thin slabs would travel on edge, standing up. They would be less likely to break.

 

A trip to your local builders merchant will show that paving slabs are packaged with the slabs upright.

 

Don

[Northroader]

Out of interest, I worked out the weight of the load as modelled is just under six tons, for a ten ton wagon. You could safely increase the layers by around another two. Now if they were stood on edge, you would get lots more in, but you couldn’t load the full width before you overloaded the wagon. Would they have done a single upright stack along the middle? The other thing is a two foot slab centre of gravity would be above the wagon side, inherently unstable. A welsh slate quarry wagon would relatively have smaller slabs, higher sides, and a much smaller size body for the rating, and the slabs are thinner.

Agreed, the modem way is to band a pack together and handle with an hydraulic crane, and in a yard I suppose with manual handling they’d stack on edge, but putting them that way on a lowside wagon with the chance of a rough shunt does seem a bit dodgy?

Edited August 8, 2018 by Northroader

[Martin S-C]

If you got near wagon load capacity before the whole floor of the wagon was covered I imagine the lads would leave a central empty well but secure the slabs to front and rear of the wagon and pack the centre space with something like a crate and sacking. It makes sense to me to load the weight evenly as possible over the wagons whole wheelbase, rather than, say, at one end.

[N15class]

Low sided wagons tend to be use on a large rock or items that are heavier and that do not need the sides for support, rather than lots of smaller items.

[sir douglas]

all aggregate type loads like coal, coke, limestone or ballast have different weight per volume such as 12 tons of coal or limestone goes into a 7 plank wagon, 12 tons of coke goes into a 7 plank with extra railings because its lighter so you can more into a wagon for the tonnage, but 12 tons of ballast is only 3 planks high because its heavier

 

loads that dont need sides generally goe on flat beds with no sides

[Northroader]

Any regulars to this thread may wonder what has started off the last few posts. A new enquiry about loading LSWR stone wagons, http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/136360-lswrsr-stone-wagon-load/&do=findComment&comment=3260322, led to me putting in a link to the one I’ve built for Washbourne.

Well, summer continues, with plenty of distractions, besides the heat wave slowing things down. The granddaughters have been through, although I haven’t seen so much of them this year as previous. We had my wife’s handicapped sister with us for four years, but she’s now in a care home, and my wife’s efficiency in finding jobs that need doing has gone up as a result, mainly gardening.

In between times there is a bit happening on the line. Another backscene is being knocked into shape ready for a variation of the setting. The main work is on the storage boxes I pictured. Trains are being made up as sets, which will fit on to the fiddle yard cassettes. In some cases I’m having to reallocate rolling stock, so far two wagons are being repainted, and Ive got two coaches to fit in somewhere. The couplings are all being brought up the type shown near the start of this thread, and then the set is test run on the line, with tweaks when needed. It would be nice to have auto couplers, but the amount of messing needed is putting me off. At present I’m up to eighteen boxes, with complete sets in fourteen. There’s about the same to do again, with more stuff incompleted as I progress, beyond that it gets very woolly, and I’m out of greyboard. None of this really warrants a picture, so it’s just dry text for now. I went to the recycling tip this morning with an old baseboard forming part of the rubbish. One of the workers was most interested, “model railway??” he says. Wonder if it’s been “rescued”.

[Edwardian]

Any regulars to this thread may wonder what has started off the last few posts. A new enquiry about loading LSWR stone wagons, http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/136360-lswrsr-stone-wagon-load/&do=findComment&comment=3260322, led to me putting in a link to the one I’ve built for Washbourne.

 

Ah, I had wondered.

 

Mind you, incipient flange climb sounds very nasty, and I hope for the sake of those affected there is a cure.

[Northroader]

One thing to report whilst forming up sets and doing running tests, is that I’ve made up a mineral set, but the couplers are giving trouble. My coal wagons usually get a piece of 2”x1” deal shaped to fit inside, a paper collar round the top, and crushed real coal to fill up, secured by diluted PVA, and as a result they’re quite heavy. Doing some shunt moves with this set gave the occasional wagon derailment, something I haven’t been getting with the rest of the stock. At the start of this thread I was showing how my couplers were formed from a single link, with the main purpose to keep the buffer faces away from each other on tight curves. Since then the curves have increased to Peco Medium Radius size, so I can run six wheelers through. I formed the view that the derailments were due to the thrust from the single link couplers, so I tried propelling with the buffer faces, as they’re now lining up better on the wider curves. No problems, so I’ve dropped the single link on the coal wagons for 3links, which just fold up when pushing. The ones I come across in kits are usually steel wire ovals with the ends butted up. I’ve made some from .030” brass rod, with an overlap on one side which is soldered up. Rather fiddly, but I find it works quite well, but I’m still looking over the fence at what other folks are doing.

[Donw]

One thing to report whilst forming up sets and doing running tests, is that I’ve made up a mineral set, but the couplers are giving trouble. My coal wagons usually get a piece of 2”x1” deal shaped to fit inside, a paper collar round the top, and crushed real coal to fill up, secured by diluted PVA, and as a result they’re quite heavy. Doing some shunt moves with this set gave the occasional wagon derailment, something I haven’t been getting with the rest of the stock. At the start of this thread I was showing how my couplers were formed from a single link, with the main purpose to keep the buffer faces away from each other on tight curves. Since then the curves have increased to Peco Medium Radius size, so I can run six wheelers through. I formed the view that the derailments were due to the thrust from the single link couplers, so I tried propelling with the buffer faces, as they’re now lining up better on the wider curves. No problems, so I’ve dropped the single link on the coal wagons for 3links, which just fold up when pushing. The ones I come across in kits are usually steel wire ovals with the ends butted up. I’ve made some from .030” brass rod, with an overlap on one side which is soldered up. Rather fiddly, but I find it works quite well, but I’m still looking over the fence at what other folks are doing.

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If you are doing a lot of coupling/uncoupling you can make the bottom link slightly bigger to ease the job. I found using a fine steel wire on the end of the uncoupling rod meatn it could be thinner than brass for the same strength which avoids it jamming between the hook and the link.

 

Don

[Nearholmer]

Interesting.

 

I can’t quite understand why having the pushing forces run through the buffers, rather than the drop-links, should make a difference, but if it works, it works.

 

I need to make some more coal loads like yours - rainy autumn day job, I think.

[Northroader]

It was happening on the reverse curve entering the station. With the buffers they’re pushing with the faces on the inside of the curve in a fairly level plane, but the single links could have quite a variation in height of drawhooks between wagons, something that really I should have gauged when I mounted the couplings, so you could get an upward component as well. The heavier wagons would increase the resistance and the vertical force more. Hope that sounds plausible? Still, it works, which is the main thing.

[Caley Jim]

The links will also be exerting a lateral force due to the fact that there are two pivot points, one where the link is attached to the hook and the other where it is lying on the other hook,so it can twist sideways. As a result the link will not always be pushing along the long axis of the wagon, especially on reverse curves such as going through a crossover.

 

Jim

[Martin S-C]

I have encountered all species of scale and not-so-scale 3-links in modelling and I have never really seen one that is fully satisfactory scale-wise. Our model forces and loads are a lot out of scale of course and our track and wheel geometry likewise, even in the finer scales but looking at how slender a thing a real 3-link coupling is compared to the massive weights it has to cope with I am amazed they functioned at all!

I like 3-links and your variant on it Bob, but have always been dissuaded by the intricate, eye-watering fiddling needed to couple and uncouple and the need for sprung buffers and excellent track geometry.

 

I am somewhat regretful to say that, partly in laziness, I fell back on the commercial tension hook couplers simply out of being daunted by the amount of work in changing. The smallest ones available today do not look anything like as bad as they did 30 years ago but they are still ugly intrusions into my suspension of disbelief compared to 3-links.

[Northroader]

Sprung buffers? Excellent track geometry?? Nah. Intricate, eye watering fiddling? Yup.

Edited August 13, 2018 by Northroader

[Nearholmer]

The old-style drop-links that I use have a more pole-like action, because the construction resists twisting, in a way that wire ones don’t and, of course, with the silly curves in coarse scale it’s important to keep the buffers apart.

[Caley Jim]

By twisting, I wasn't meaning torsional twist of the coupling. What I was meaning was that, when viewed from above, the coupling would not always lie in line with the vehicles, but might lie at an angle to their longitudinal centre line thus pushing the leading wagon to the side.

 

Jim

Edited August 13, 2018 by Caley Jim

[Nearholmer]

I got that Jim, and yes, the force via a rigid link will always resolve into a component along the track and a component across the track, whereas with buffers the across track force should be close to zero, if they slide properly. What I was driving at was that round-wire single-links also have a habit of ‘crabbing’, which the ones made from bent sheet don’t. But, as Northroader says, height difference can also cause trouble; if there is height difference, it’s better for the ‘high’ wagon to do the pushing, otherwise the wagon being pushed can head skyward.

[Northroader]

One funny thing about buffers, talking about sliding properly, and thinking more on 12” to 1’ goings on, quite a lot of BR buffers were domed, so theorectically a “high” wagon could be picked up by “low” neighbours on either side when buffering up. Over on the continent you can see buffers on one side of the wagon were flat, and the other side domed, so this wouldn’t happen, but the domes would allow for meeting at a slight angle on a curve. I think Jim’s acme of perfection, the North British, did them like this as well, maybe other pregroup lines, too? Just a detail.

Edited August 13, 2018 by Northroader

[Donw]

One funny thing about buffers, talking about sliding properly, and thinking more on 12” to 1’ goings on, quite a lot of BR buffers were domed, so theorectically a “high” wagon could be picked up by “low” neighbours on either side when buffering up. Over on the continent you can see buffers on one side of the wagon were flat, and the other side domed, so this wouldn’t happen, but the domes would allow for meeting at a slight angle on a curve. I think Jim’s acme of perfection, the North British, did them like this as well, maybe other pregroup lines, too? Just a detail.

 

So we would have to agree at our club to say always have the left hand buffer domed  as you face them. I am sure some bu99er would want the right hand one domed. 

 

Don

[Martin S-C]

Perhaps the domed side was presented to engage most efficiently with the expected majority of the direction of curved trackage at the station where that wagon was to be shunted off. This could explain the plethora of wagon turntables our forefathers added to stations. Perhaps their true purpose has now been forgotten in the mists of time.

[Caley Jim]

...... I think Jim’s acme of perfection, the North British, did them like this as well, maybe other pregroup lines, too? Just a detail.

North British?  Acme of perfection?  Ya cheeky monkey!!

 

The True Line had domed buffers from, certainly, the 1880's and probably before.

 

Jim