Hi,
It's been nearly a month since our last update but with our self imposed dealine of 'All track laid by the end of Feb 2012' looming it was time to get back to it.
We managed to get a good few days work done laying track over the last week and have now managed to complete the main running lines. We are now working to complete the on-scene and off-scene sidings.
Other members of the build team are busy completing the modules for the fiddle yard, Catenary masts and soldering up MERG
Hi,
We've had a weekend of track laying on Heworth Sidings so it's time for an entry for the blog ;-)
First, a confession, if you have read the other posts in this blog then you'll know that it was our intention to use copper clad sleepers and solder the rail to them, in order to protect the rail ends where the modules join together. That didn't really work out for us, as the copper clad sleepers just didn't allow enough tolerance when it came to leveling the track and we effectively end
Hi,
Another few good hours spent on the layout today. After getting the point motors working yesterday it was time to look at laying some track.
We planned to start with the Up / Down lines and the Down siding which all run off to the right of the centre board (as you would view the layout). Our first obstacle was to mount the copper clad sleepers to the board. These sleepers will eventually have the rail ends soldered to them and needed to be stuck down with epoxy resin.
W
Hi,
Happy New Year!
We managed to get another few hours of work done on the layout today.
As we'd got allot of the pointwork done and attached the motors previously, the first job was to set their DCC Address and make sure everything was working OK. Setting the addresses was easy enough but a little time consuming as they have to be connected to the programming track or SPROG II in our case individually.
Once the addresses had been set then it was time to give them a quick test,
Hi,
Work concentrated on the main scenic board and we managed to lay the 5 large points forming the entrances to the Up/Down loops and the crossover. We were also able to lay the 3 medium points that are the entrance to the scenic sidings.
Point motors sat under Peco Code 55 Long points.
Close up of the Traintronics TT300 slow action motor. Connections shown are feeds from the Stock Rails A/B and Frog feed.
The rest of the day was spent modifying the rest of the poi
Hi,
Just a quick update with progress now that the RMWeb is back online.
A few of us were able to get together on the Thursday/Friday before Christmas to do some work on the layout's scenic boards. We managed to lay all of the Cork underlay (1/16") for the trackbed and added some plasticard sections where the track bridges the modules. The Plasticard will be used to mount the copper clad sleepers to and the rail ends will then be soldered to them, which will hopefully protect the rail fr
Hi,
Here's a pic of one of the converted Code 55 turnouts for our layout. I've removed the spring (which keeps the point blades in position) as we are using slow action motors, isolated the turnout blades from the frog (using a jeweller's saw) and tied the blades to the stock rails electrically. Finally I've added pickups to the frog and stock rails.
We've also been discussing how we can better protect the rail ends when the boards are being put up or taken down, basically we want t
Hi,
Just a quick post about turnouts for our layout. We intend to drive all turnouts on the Scenic Boards with slow action motors and have chosen to use TT300s from Traintronics. These are DCC ready motors in that they have an inbuilt accessory decoder and frog switching capability. As far as wiring is concerned, they need to be attached to the Track bus or in our case the dedicated Accessory bus and then just need the usual connections to and from the turnout to perform the frog switching.
Signalling
We had a friend of the group come to the YAG DCC Meeting who is an ex signal man and worked some of the major boxes in the York area.
He had a look at the track plan and helped us go through the signalling that we would need for a close to prototypical look and we spoke for around 2 hours, walking through potential movements across the layout to get the signalling correct. We looked at what type of signalling would be used, where it would be positioned and more importantly wh
Hi,
These are some mock ups of our proposed end loops. We just used a piece of flat board to mark out the proposed board design and lay some curves to check gauge and clearances for stock. The end loops will be made in four sections and will use 9" width boards to provide the trackbed. The radius for the inside track is 36". Each board will have 2 cuts made at 22.5 degrees so that when put together they will form a 90 degree section. Pictures will describe this better than I ever could.
Hi,
We have decided to fully seal our modular boards, by fully priming and painting them. The underside will be glossed white and a matt brown will be applied to the topside. Here are a few pictures of three of the scenic boards (the ones that are not curved), they have been fully primed and curently a single coat of white gloss has been applied to the underside.
There was also a small scenic cutting on the far right hand board, as our track plan didn't call for this then
Hi,
Here are a few images of the Scenic Modules setup during one of our club meetings, there's a 1:1 print out of an earlier track plan laid on top, but it isn't a million miles away from the one we decided to go with. Yes I had lots of fun with sticky tape
Cheers.
Hi everybody and welcome to this Blog covering the construction of 'Heworth Sidings', a modular exhibition layout being built by several members of the Yorkshire Area Group of the N Gauge Society.
The initial concept for this layout was put together towards the end of September 2011 as our group had 3 modular 4' by 21" boards available. We started putting some initial thoughts together and it was decided that we would put together a British Outline scene having a main line (up/down) with pas
