Another as yet unnamed 7mm Layout

[brossard]

For a change of pace I decided to have a go at Scalescenes Water Tower:

 

https://scalescenes.com/product/r025a-water-tower/

 

 

I made the windows from 0.060"x0.060" Evergreen strip.

 

 

Door is an offcut of Evergreen 0.040" sheet.  I scribed it for the planks and then sanded to get a representation of grain.  Door knob is the ubiquitous pin.

 

These do make up into good looking buildings I think.  The lack of textured mortar lines is made up for by the excellent brick rendering.

 

I want to get the layout looking good as quickly as possible and these kits take a lot of the effort out of the job.  I can always go back later and add better ones.

 

John

[brossard]

Some loco weathering this week:

 

 

Dapols A1X Terrier:

 

 

 

The rear cabside looks crooked.  I had a go at tweaking it but it's not shifting.

 

Dapols LMS Jinty:

 

 

 

 

 

The process I use is always thesame and an airbrush is necessary.  I spray earth/dirt over most surfaces first.  I then follow up with a dusting of black.  Following this, I apply powders as I deem necessary, umber, black and rust.

Real coal in the bunkers.

The crews really set things off I think.

 

John

Edited January 26, 2018 by brossard

[Andrew P]

Very nice work indeed John.

[brossard]

A milestone today or maybe deja vu.

 

The original curve discussed earlier was unsatisfactory.  The radius was smaller in one section than I wanted and those plywood blocks at the baseboard were not nice at all.  I ripped it up and started again.

 

I finished the track on the curve today and I'm very pleased with it.  The radius ia constant 4' 6" (I'm constrained by space).

 

I made up some trains and ran them back and forth through the curve.  Critically, when propelling there is no buffer lock, even with the Dapol Autocoach.

 

When propelling the buffers compress very nicely but don't come anywhere near disengaging.  Notice the 3/screw link couplings.  This is kind of a dream come true for me after struggling with couplings on 4mm stock for all those years.

 

I made a couple of tools for uncoupling:

 

 

These were made from old brush handles and bent 0.5mm NS wire.  Took about 5 minutes.  I'll let my buds have a play with these to see what they think.  I think the wire should be thicker, maybe 0.032".  A big impediment to using these things has been lack of light.  I bought some torches from Walmart which are really bright.    I'll look for something better because the pushbutton (seen on the left) is difficult to press one handed.

 

John

[GWR57xx]

Have only just stumbled across this thread. It's looking great. Will follow your progress with interest.

Peter

[brossard]

I got my team together on the weekend (yes there are actually 3 people into British 0 gauge in the Montreal area) and we pushe some track around to get a semblance of a plan.  After much tooth sucking and navel gazing we realized that Stephen Williams' Faringdon is a good plan to base ours on.  (https://britishrailwaybooks.co.uk/books/ISBN/1874103135.html).

 

Here's where we got:

 

 

From left to right:  Engine shed, station with runaround (long enough to hold two 57' coaches), parcels bay, cattle dock, warehouse and coal merchants.

 

 

The most critical area of the layout is the throat.  The consensus from Saturdays session was that we need a curved 3 way turnout.  I've been working on this over the last while.

First step was to establish our radii.  We need two left radii and one right.  These turned out to be:  8', 12' and 10' respectively.

 

I used the flex track that we curved to calculate the radii using the chord and segment method. (Measure from two points on the curve to get chord and then the distance from the chord center to get the segment.  Plug these into your circle calculator:  http://www.1728.org/circsect.htm).

 

After some faffing about and realising that there is no "off the shelf" curved 3 way turnout template, I used a simple idea from Rice.

I made a left curved turnout template with 8' and 12' radii respectively, then a wye with 12' and 10' radii.  I cut the common track in half and taped the two together, being careful to maintain gauge.  This seems to work well.

I spent much of yesterday gluing timbers to the template:

 

 

I had to draw inthe crossings and you can see where the vees are highlighted in black.  I did this in order to trace the vee onto a piece of paper.  The vees and common crossing will be constructed off template as sub assemblies.

 

This morning I placed the template in position and overlaid some track templates of the appropriate radius, to get a clearer sense of where things are going:

 

 

It all looks well I think.

 

 

I daresay that there will be head shaking and tut tutting among the cognoscenti, but you gotta do what's comfortable.

 

I'll make one turnout at a time, fix and confirm we like it before going on to the next.  There will be some RTP turnouts but I like the idea of a curving layout.

BTW, for those who want to make their own turnouts, you can't do better than these books:

 

 

Trax2 comes with track planning program.  Sort of a poor mans Templot.

John

 

 

[AJon30]

Hello. Some nice idea's there, keep up the good work. Nothing better than getting real stock and track out and seeing what looks right.

 

Ref TRAX. I have used TRAX for a lot of my layout planning and found it much easier to use than Templot - that just gave me a headache as, after an hour of trying I could still not connect 2 pieces of track!

 

Rgds Andrew

[brossard]

Agree Andrew, Trax2 is more intuitive.  I'm from the pencil and paper drawing generation so extensive clicking is not for me (my brother would probably get on with it since he's done CAD and Unigraphix).  My first effort was a 3 way default template from Templot.  This is essentially two tunouts overlaid on one another, not a lot different from my final version.  There were a lot of extraneous lines on the Templot print though, making it confusing.  Sorry Martin.

 

John

[brossard]

I got the vees done this afternoon:

 

 

Here's a cruel close up of one of the vees:

 

 

There is a bit of art to it.  The front of the vee is planed slightly and the nose rounded over to give wheels a smooth transition.

John

[martin_wynne]

Ref TRAX. I have used TRAX for a lot of my layout planning and found it much easier to use than Templot - that just gave me a headache as, after an hour of trying I could still not connect 2 pieces of track!

 

Hi Andrew,

 

Templot is not intended for connecting 2 pieces of track. If that is what you want to do, Templot is the wrong program to use.

 

regards,

 

Martin.

[AJon30]

Hi Andrew,

 

Templot is not intended for connecting 2 pieces of track. If that is what you want to do, Templot is the wrong program to use.

 

regards,

 

Martin.

 

If Templot is used for track/layout planning I would have thought joining 2 pieces of track was a minimum? Or have I miss-understood its function?

 

Rgds Andrew

[meil]

If Templot is used for track/layout planning I would have thought joining 2 pieces of track was a minimum? Or have I miss-understood its function?

 

Rgds Andrew

Well yes you have misunderstood its function. It's for the design of track-work based on prototype standards. So first off you need to do some work on understanding real track-work. However that said it is very easy to join two pieces of track - you just have to take a little time to read the instructions/follow the tutorials on the Templot Forum.

[AJon30]

Well yes you have misunderstood its function. It's for the design of track-work based on prototype standards. So first off you need to do some work on understanding real track-work. However that said it is very easy to join two pieces of track - you just have to take a little time to read the instructions/follow the tutorials on the Templot Forum.

 

OK, thanks for the explanation, I will need to put some time aside to re-read the information

 

Rgds Andrew

[martin_wynne]

If Templot is used for track/layout planning I would have thought joining 2 pieces of track was a minimum? Or have I miss-understood its function?

 

Hi Andrew,

 

Templot is intended for track planning, but it works in a more prototypical way than snapping individual track items together (but you can do that if you wish).

 

Here is a bit of video to watch, showing a small track plan being created in Templot. You will notice that at no time are 2 track items snapped together:

 

 https://flashbackconnect.com/Default.aspx?id=QBDJMDgdiC7PwRqLS2U3jg2

 

Sorry it is an old video. I'm in the process of making a new one, but the basic methods are still the same.

 

regards,

 

Martin.

[brossard]

This is the method I'm using to make common crossings:

 

 

I photocopied the template at the location of the crossing.  This tells me where the timbers go.  I taped the copy to a scrap piece of ply and glued down strips of copper clad strip in between the timbers.  I have a ton of this stuff left over from my 4mm days.

After that I soldered on the vee making sure the nose is over a timber.  I then shaped the wing rails making sure the knuckles line up with the vee.  This took a few tries on the first one but I got better as I progressed.  There should be a sight line along the wing rail and through the vee.  Wheels must go through this smoothly and it is the key to a successful turnout.

I completed the othe two, removed them from the template and trimmed them:

 

 

Just a matter of joining everything up.

John

[martin_wynne]

I then shaped the wing rails making sure the knuckles line up with the vee.  This took a few tries on the first one but I got better as I progressed.  There should be a sight line along the wing rail and through the vee.  Wheels must go through this smoothly and it is the key to a successful turnout.

 

Hi John,

 

There is no need for such a sharp bend in the wing rail at the knuckle. The prototype uses a radiused bend.

 

Templot nowadays marks the limit of the bend radius on the templates:

 

 

If you make it too sharp, the alignment becomes more critical. With a radiused bend there is a little more leeway.

 

regards,

 

Martin.

[brossard]

Thanks for that Martin.  I'll ease the bends with a file.

 

John

[brossard]

This afternoons task was to install the crossings:

 

 

I had to redo the leftmost crossing and sharpen the vee angle in order for it to line up with the other two.

Here's a closer look:

 

 

John

[Podhunter]

These LCut kits are really great as a basis for modifying.  I'll be getting more.

Another source of robust building carcasses is Petite Properties.  I obtained good results in the same way as you: by applying ScaleScenes brick paper to a Petite Properties building.

[brossard]

That looks to be really nice stuff and a good price too.  I'm not certain yet what I'll do for houses.  I'm thinking of a row of half relief semis at the end of the layout.

 

John

[brossard]

Over the last couple of days, I've been working on the 3 way turnout.  It is more or less finished:

 

 

 

The plywood to which I taped the template was warped so I screwed it down to another layout board to keep everything flat.  To that end, I added weight as I added rail to ensure things were kept flat as the solvent went off.

As far as I can, I have tested that the crossings work, so quite pleased.

I've done two blades so far and have two left to do.

I've also got tiebars to install.  I want to do better than the old copper clad strip and have some JLTRT etched tiebars.  Never done that before.

I'm also using Exactoscale lost wax brass fishplates as can be seen at the heels.

 

The timbers look a bit ragged in places, so I'll shorten some and lengthen others.

John

Edited February 23, 2018 by brossard

[martin_wynne]

Hi John,

 

That's interesting, a Type 2 tandem, with the second switch in the turnout-road of the first switch. Not modelled very often.

 

I expect you know that you still have one check rail to fit:

 

 

cheers,

 

Martin.

[brossard]

Hi Martin, actually I didn't but now that you've pointed it out I see it.    Many thanks, I'll get right on that.  I also didn't know the name of what I built, it was just what the layout seemed to need.

 

John

[brossard]

3 way turnout has been sorted and blades fixed.  Still need to do tiebars.

 

I knocked out a Peco curved turnout clone today:

 

P1010001-021a by John Kendall, on Flickr

 

ine doesn't have rebates for the blades and uses cast brass fishplates for the heel connection to the blades.  I'll do the tiebars later.

 

P1010001-021 by John Kendall, on Flickr

 

Loose heel blade connection.

John

[brossard]

Todays main job was to get some tiebars made up:

 

 

These are JLTRT etches.  I'm using thin copper clad strip that I got from C&L.  Now JLTRT shut up shop last week so not sure how helpful this is.  Ambis Engineering do some which look very good.  I have a pack.

The idea is to make a sandwich with each side of the tiebar and copperclad.  Apart from spacing the blades apart, the tiebar must be insulated.  I didn't fancy using glue.

 

 

I made a jig to help me space the tabs to a constant length - 27mm seems about optimum based ona previous turnout I made that I know works.

You can see the tiebars made up for the 3 way turnout, 2 tiebars per switch.

 

 

First pair installed, these look much better than that nasty old copperclad thing.  You can see a tab in the middle of the first tiebar.  The pin from the motor (Tortoise) will go in that.  Note the set on the left stock rail.

John

Edited February 28, 2018 by brossard