It's taken a few months to make much progress on the level crossing. I made some gates but hit a problem as I tried to mount them on the stepper motors but needed to make them removable. This meant that there was a bit of slop introduced and that allowed the dreaded backlash to rear its ugly head. It took sometime to adapt the code to deal with this as I had to make the stepper motors 'take up the slack' every time the gates change direction.
Here is a little video.
David
Blog postings have been a bit lacking over the last months as the house becomes a building site. We have now got walls, a roof and windows and things start to progress on 'first fit'. I can see the size of the railway room, as well as the other bits like new master bedroom and study for my wife. It is all quite exciting but taking a long time! Still we are making progress and at least have use of some of the house even if the kitchen has no ceiling and the kids have nowhere to sleep if they come
I've got to the point in this little project where I need to make some gates. We are talking great big LNER gates here, with enormous concrete posts and guy rods.
Some drawings were published on here a few years back so I drew these up in TurboCAD and chopped then out on the laser-cutter. Two thicknesses of .7mm plastic seemed to give the right thickness. I nipped in to John Lewis at lunchtime and purchased some material to try and make the mesh. I've sandwiched this between the two pieces o
As I mentioned in my previous entry, one of the issues with a stepper motor is that you can only tell it to step! You can't get it to go to a certain position unless you have some mechanism to set a 'datum' point first. This often means that you have some kind of limit switch which you can run the motor against so you 'know' you have reached the limit of travel, and therefore, know that if you move a certain number of steps you will also be at a known position.
The practical issue with my fi
Over the last week or so I've been inspired by an article in the MERG magazine to have a go with an Arduino. These little micro-controllers are ridiculously cheap and can be programmed to do all kinds of things. I've chosen to control a couple of stepper motors to make a pair of level crossing gates.
David
A good few months back I was working on a Rumney models chassis and tried to fit a Parkside Shocvan onto it before realizing that it was planked and it should have been plywood to match the chassis type.
http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/186/entry-15555-a-little-bit-of-suffolk-or-learning-to-love-templot/
it was helpfully pointed out that Red Panda actually did a kit of the plywood version and so I purchased one of these from a trader at the Ely show. An offer over the weeken
A bit of standard gauge for a change. I took delivery of a couple of the new Bachmann grain wagons which have been on order with Hattons for what seems like years. I've got a P4 wheel set in it now and replaced the coupling with Alex Jacksons. I can (just) remember seeing these being loaded at Sandy on the occasions when I used to cycle over there to watch some proper main-line trains in the later '70s. By then they were in a 'rust based livery' but I think they had been going that way for some
Our modelling day in Sawston today gave the Ruston LBT its first outing on Fen End Pit. I was really pleased with how it looked and performed. We had an excellent day meeting up with old friends and making new ones, everything this hobby should be about!
Now I still to remember who does a decent 16mm scale driver to put in it.
and finally one of the dragline.
David
Please forgive the shameless plug and cross-posting from Middlepeak's blog.
Our regular group of 'Friday Nighters' here in darkest Cambridgeshire are putting together one of their 'mini-exhibitions', this time to give some financial support to the activities of St Mary's Church in Sawston. This will be a very informal affair - just a collection of layouts and modelling displays from our group across a range of scales from 2mmFS to Gauge 3! Among the exhibits will be -
Alex Duckworth, a f
I realized that I needed to get some better photographs of the engine of the Ruston LAT that I'm trying to build and, as the one which was at the Threlkeld quarry museum had moved, I decided a trip to the North Ings Farm Museum http://www.northingsfarmmuseum.co.uk/museum/ was required. My family refer to this particular organization, very unfairly, as 'The chicken sh*t farm' because the line was originally installed to move 'waste product' from poultry sheds. Don't be put off by the sound of it,
Over the last couple of weeks I got to pretty much finish off the LBT, the most noticeable change being to clean off the etched builders plates. I then went on to make some changes to the drawings based on what I'd learnt putting it together and then laser cut the body work for the LAT. There are a few subtle changes to the frames (the LBT has a hole near the front which the LAT doesn't have) and the bonnet (which has a different shaped grill for the radiator and the sandbox fillers). The LAT ha
The Ruston LBT moved into the paint shop this weekend. Unlike all of the Simplex locomotives on 'Fen End Pit' I thought this one should be a non-manufacturers standard colour. A bit of contrast seemed like a nice idea and looking through my photographs of LBTs I could find them in standard Ruston green, blue, orange and yellow. You pays your money and takes your choice. Roy Link had commented what a nice colour yellow was to weather so I decided on a standard 'plant' yellow as the basis colour.
I've made a lot of progress with the Ruston over the weekend. I decided to build the locomotive using 'split axles' for the pick-ups.I decide to try something new here and use the delrin gear as the space to keep the two parts of the axle aligned. The gears are about 8mm wide so each end of the axle is pushed into the gear by about 4mm. A little circle punched from a piece of thin paper is enough to keep the ends electrically separate and the whole lot is flooded with loctite so hopefully it won
On Friday night I started to look at the Ruston bits. The bits for the horn-guides were pretty good.
The bearing is held in a carrier which then springs in the elongated hole in the carrier. These were made up and then epoxied onto the chassis and the wheels test fitted.
We now have a chassis that rolls.
A close-up of the horn block shows the bearing end in the guide, this will get covered with a bit of plastic in the end but I wanted to make sure that the springing wa
I received my etchings back from PPD yesterday. Apart from an error with the J17 coupling rods which were on the same etch the Ruston bits look super. The intention is that these bits provide the strength I need for the axle boxes and motor mount together with lots of nice bits to detail the laser cut plastic body, This is the first time I've used PPD and actually produced etching for myself rather than just doing art work from others and I'm very pleased with the results.
The idea is t
I've spent this afternoon trying to draw up a plan for the new layout. I'm waiting for PPD to come back with an etch for the narrow gauge Ruston and felt like an afternoon in front of the PC. Having received the structural engineers report which means that hopefully we should soon get a quote from the builder I hope this isn't tempting fate.
I started off taking a scan of the OS map into Templot and then trying to draw track over it. This is an interesting task as I'm sure that what you thi
So we've now had three major purchases for my Ruston project.
As usual the final drive to the axles will be delrin chain and the actual gearbox is being positioned in the same place as the prototype, central between the two axles and driving to one from the left and the other from the right hand side. I need a gear box with enclosed gears (owing the large amount of sand moved around on Fen End Pit) which ruled out my usual options from High Level. I remembered using on enclosed box on my J39
As the scalefour layout takes a rest while waiting for major house redevelopment I've been working on stock. Given that the E4 and various other coaches are complete I thought it was time for 'something different'.
Until this point Fen End Pit has been an all Simplex affair (ok, apart from the Lister) but given the Ruston and Bucyrus dragline it seemed only a matter of time before the Ruston locomotive salesman came calling for business.
I've always liked the LAT and LBT ever since I bui
I finally got around to fitting the buffers, crew and coal to my E4. I also converted the bogies on my second Hornby Gresley to make a nice short branch passenger train.
I'd be tempted by the 3rd coach, possibly seeing if there is something suitable in the Ian Kirk/Cooper craft range may be an LNER 51' Non-Corridor Full Third ?
I'm not sure what the typical make up of train down the Stour Valley might have been.
I'm rather pleased with the way this kit went together, I've n
After several evenings of fun, and I guess something about 20 hours work in total I have now got to the point of getting the replacement Penbits bogies under my Class 24. The initial 'rolling test' where you leave out the gears so you can just roll the locomotive along was great fun! I had used Black Beetle wheels in the original conversion and these went back into the bogies with no problems. Being insulated on one side only they made opting for what some people call 'the American System' of pi
I spent most of this afternoon with soldering iron, files and a 'hold and fold'. My 'Traction Ears' now slide smoothly in my 'Traction Horns' and even the job of dismantling the Bachmann chassis and modifying the gear drive was only made difficult by not being able to find a sharp drill that could cleaning cut the rather soapy plastic of the bogie easily. So far I am vary impressed with how this is going together and I'm looking forward to the 'rolling test' to see how the springing works.
So the E4 got some transfers and looks a lot better for it. I have then picked out the various brass fitments in Humbrol metallic paint and finally given the loco a light covering of Humbrol matt varnish before adding a light dusting of Railmatch Frame Dirt.
I'm quite pleased with the results, it has blended the areas where I'd had to retouch the black nicely.
Left to do are the crew, the buffers and enough coal to get from Cambridge to Marks Tey and back.
As a half painted loco
One of the things about keeping a blog is that it makes you photograph your models and one of the things about photographing your models is that every time you do you just can't avoid seeing the faults in the results - things that somehow the eye only picks up when blown up on the screen when you look at the photograph.
So, here is the current state of the E4. I had to go back once and clean off around the dome which I didn't really pick up until I took some pictures last night. Tonight I ca
A few months back I was tempted by a pair of Hornby coaches while in Model Junction in Bury St. Edmunds. I had a rake of 3 old Bachmann suburban coaches in BR Blue but these weren't really suitable for my period and move to a less urban setting.
I was prepared to re-use the Bill Bedford sprung bogies from the Bachmann set to go under the Gresleys. The shape isn't quite right but you can't really tell. While wandering around Scaleforum I had looked to see if anyone had any Gresley bogie sidef
I had assembled the tender chassis originally using the Alan Gibson hornblocks supplied in the kit. This were the units with a tiny spring which provides some downward force but where the hornblock itself is designed to sit on the end of a bolt which passes through the top of the horn guide. The theory is that you can adjust the bolts to get the ride height for each axle correct. From my experience I find this very difficult and the resulting ride is very 'hard' and it is too easy to have one ax
