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Foxcote New Pit - formerly Highbury Colliery


queensquare
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  • RMweb Gold

Oh he's full of ideas, thankfully he's in New Zealand so can't lead me astray!! When he gets back he will be too tied up getting Padstow working.

 

Mind, the ability to occasionally have the tipper move up and down the batch would be fun...........

 

Jerry

 

Looks like a simple cliff railway to me.  Just need to put the fun in funicular.

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  • 1 month later...
  • RMweb Gold

Foxcote went to Utrecht with cassettes at the Bath end hidden sidings but I wasn't happy with the set up

so work continues on converting them to a four road sector plate with a turntable at the end. It will

be working, though perhaps not quite finished, in time for Railex Aylesbury in a week or so time!

 

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Jerry

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Jerry and Tom were brave enough to let me have a play with Foxcote at Railex yesterday. The new fiddle yard was really effective and made for very stress free running (aside from the time I aligned the wrong track).

 

I wonder if the old trick of freeing up drawers on old furniture by rubbing wax candles on the runners might work to free up the underside of the sector plate?

 

J

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  • RMweb Gold

Had a great day yesterday at Railex operating Foxcote. The redevelopment really changes the dynamic of the layout, and some careful shunting is required to avoid snookering yourself with too long a rake of wagons!

 

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Tom.

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  • RMweb Gold

A successful weekend at Aylesbury with only a few minor issues, the main one being the failure of one of the tie bars on the slip early sunday afternoon which brought an end to any traffic in and out of the exchange sidings. We could still run trains on the mainline and also shuffle wagons around the colliery so not a major disaster.

 

Many thanks to Tom and Mark for all their help over the weekend, great fun.

 

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On Sunday my great friend Simon 'Titfield' Castens did a turn on the vintage bus - a lovely green double decker and nothing to do with those wicked Crump brothers!!

 

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Jerry and Kim 

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  • RMweb Gold

I never travelled any of the S&D, but at least I’m typing this just after leaving Templecombe on the LSWR line. Lovely to see Foxcote in good form yesterday, and if I can get my images off the Nikon onto Sherry’s iMac I may post a pic or two.

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  • 1 month later...
  • RMweb Gold

Took a couple of snaps this morning to email to a friend demonstrating how the rebuilt colliery fits into the home layout and thought I would share them here. 7F 88 on down freight running past the colliery with Twinhoe bridge, Tucking Mill viaduct and Combe Down tunnel in the distance.

 

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Jerry

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  • RMweb Gold

We seldom see such expansive 2mm home layouts. The pictures show very well the opportunities 2mm offers for a panoramic view. The fact the its top quality modelling helps. I do like the arrangement of the lever frame out front.

 

Don

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  • 1 month later...
  • RMweb Gold

Just to let anyone who was hoping to see Tucking Mill at Swindon this weekend, sadly I've decided to withdraw it. On testing this evening I've had two more Cobalt point motors fail, making the horrible clicking noise. Im heartily sick of having to nurse these motors through everytime I take the layout out and have decided to take them all off and junk them - probably with a large hammer which will make me feel much better! I'm told the recent Cobalts are better than the early ones but I would never touch them again, they are junk.

I will be taking Foxcote instead which has a combination of wire in tube and Tortoises which I can rely on.

 

Jerry, just a little bit grumpy!!

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Sorry to hear your woes Jerry, however, Foxcote is still an excellent layout and very much looking to see both the layout and your good self on Saturday.

 

G

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  • RMweb Gold

Sorry to hear of your troubles. A point of interst on the Cobalts What voltage are you using I have seen it suggested that they are better on a lower voltage. I have a batch and don't really want to bin them or would I be better cutting my losses.

 

Don

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  • RMweb Gold

Sorry to hear of your troubles. A point of interst on the Cobalts What voltage are you using I have seen it suggested that they are better on a lower voltage. I have a batch and don't really want to bin them or would I be better cutting my losses.

 

Don

I use a 9v regulated supply as recommended by DCC supplies. Having taken one apart to have a look the problem lies in flimsy, crap gearing. One of those that failed had been replaced twice - I've been through about fifteen for the six required on the layout. To be fair DCC have always honoured the lifetime guarantee but I'm just tired of them constantly letting me down. I can't see that shifting code 40 rail puts them under undue strain.

 

Jerry

 

Jerry

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  • RMweb Gold

I use a 9v regulated supply as recommended by DCC supplies. Having taken one apart to have a look the problem lies in flimsy, crap gearing. One of those that failed had been replaced twice - I've been through about fifteen for the six required on the layout. To be fair DCC have always honoured the lifetime guarantee but I'm just tired of them constantly letting me down. I can't see that shifting code 40 rail puts them under undue strain.

 

Jerry

 

Jerry

 

Thanks for the info Jerry. It sounds as I have wasted my money. I should have stuck to Tortoises. I may try Servo's instead. 

 

Don

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I'm pondering (not very urgently) the question of point motors myself. Trouble is I'm not convinced that any of them are reliable. The thing that put me off Tortoises was the article (in MRJ?) a while back on how to make them reliable... basically by replacing a whole bunch of their innards. After reading that article I had hoped that Cobalt might be the answer but apparently not.

 

The Fulgurex motors on St Ruth have been a pain - the main issue with these is the microswitches. They are OK out of the box but soldering wires onto them tends to soften the plastic and make them go out of adjustment... which usually manifests itself as a failure at a show. Sometimes the two switches that stop the motor itself go wrong and then the motor either doesnt go or (worse) tries to keep going when it should stop and then overheats. Some of them are hideously noisy too, in spite of whatever we do to lubricate them.

 

Anything else? Seep? I don't think I know anyone who has used these.

 

Servos may offer an answer but there are *soo* many variables there - servo brand, whether what you buy is really the brand that it says on the outside, controller, mechanism to turn the rotary movement into a linear one and switching arrangements.

 

There is certainly less to go wrong with wire in tube straight to the facia. I may go that way but I also rather like the idea of having the controls all in one place.

 

Good luck at the show, whatever the layout!

 

Regards, Andy

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  • RMweb Premium

Sorry to hear about the problems. 

Most of my mechanical workings are done by hand power, usually by rods and cranks.  I do have have some motor driven pointwork etc, all powered by Fulgurex and Tortoise.  In over twenty years now, these have never given any problems, and I wouldn't hesitate to use them again.  In fact, I picked up a secondhand Fulgurex yesterday.

Cheers, Dave.

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  • RMweb Premium

After 'going round the houses' with point motor control I have now reverted back to the basics used in the past with rod movement worked by dpdt switches, the latter of course changing the polarity as well as providing movement. They also allow a simple level of colour light signal inter-locking so they won't show green when the points are set wrong, those (quite often!) whoops moments I have these days.

 

Of all the motor systems I tried - I did purchase a Cobalt as a test and didn't like what I found in terms of size/ease of fitment (in respect of 2mm use especially)  -  the last efforts using 'hacked' servos proved the best/cheapest/simplest/most reliable. There is a thread on here with the last versions I made. They still work quite okay, as do the previous versions made, all of which I still have, they just need another layout on which to be used. I think Mick Simpson has used a similar system on Callaton and might have more insight as to ease of use/reliability/worth using. I used them for working un-coupling magnets as well as points.

 

I'd be happy/pleased to see either Foxcote or Tucking Mill in the flesh, something I have still not managed so far. I had hoped to get to Southwold this year but it didn't proved possible. One day.....

 

Hope you find a solution that suits what you need.

 

Izzy

Edited by Izzy
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I started at 6v but had to go to 9v because some of the cobalts didn't operate at all and some still took ages at anything less than 9v. I hacked various parts of the multiple mountings off a number of mine to make them fit so warranty probably isn't an option. Like Andy I've considered servos and reached the same conclusion. The megapoints boards looked like a useful solution for control of them, mainly because they also do signal bounce in the same unit. I guess I'm at tortoise with separate micro switches right now. It seems that tortoise are reliable if you don't rely on the auxiliary contacts?

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