barrowroad's Blog

When Paul said you had that working i;d thought he meant attached to the layout.. I'll be interested to see the mounting bracket you use on them when Chris has one for you.

 

Are you going to run them off a separate power district or just fit a circuit breaker on the track bus?

 

I think keeping ply plain line on the mainlines will be worth the extra efforts.

At the moment the test rig has 4 countersunk M3 hexangonal nuts in the ply and the Cobalt is mounted direct onto the ply using 4 M3 bolts. It would be nice to have a mounting plate a la the tortoise units but Cobalt don't do them.

 

The Cobalt drive wire is directly fitted into one of the holes on the Z crank of the Brian Morgan units and seems to work ok.

Paul is getting mixed up with the lemaco motors Chris has for Brinkley. The problem/difficulty of mounting them this way is accurately positioning the nuts - must make a jig. Chris has offered me the use of a rivet tool [as used on Gerry's layout ] to fix M3 captive nuts to the underside of of the board.

 

Still trying to resolve how I am going to wire up the layout but am hoping to have a chat about this on Friday. At present I am thinking of having the Up and Down Main wired seperately and the yard split into two - the coal and ash roads into the shed as one; and the sidings at the side of the shed as the other. The roundhouse will be another. Then of course, when it is extended to a circular layout there will be two for the fiddle yard.

 

I'm pleased with the results of the decision to replace the flexitrack - thanks.

Oh and congrats on the job.

Could you give a bit more detail on your method of using ply sleepers please.

Are you using any rivets and cosmetic chairs in the construction?

All the turnouts are constructed with ply and rivets as, in my opinion, the soldered rivets are easier to adjust when checking the gauge. Not all ply timbers are fitted with rivets and those that are not are fitted with functional chairs - either Exactoscale or C& L.

Those with rivets are subsequently fitted with cosmetic chairs after final gauging. This is a very fiddly job as each chair needs cutting in half and each half needs the rear face filed - with a round needle file - in order to fit over the rivet.

 

The plain track, shown in the photos, is made using functional chairs but has rivets as follows:- the board joints have a pair of ply sleepers with the rivets replaced by 16mm long 12BA cheesehead screws. These are screwed into the baseboard and give added strength to the rail ends. I file the cheesehead down to give the correct rail height before soldering the rail onto them.

Metre length of rail are half cut at scale 60ft lengths and again two rivetted sleepers are used at the rail joint. I am using Palatine models rail droppers for electrical connection and have rivetted a pair to a ply sleeper [ add solder to the joint under the sleeper ] which is positioned at the half way - 30ft point - of each 60ft length. These rivets are given the same cosmetic chair treatment. All the remaining ply sleepers have functional chairs as above which are attached using Plastiweld. I used to use Butanone but do not like the fumes.

 

One final point you will see in the photos there is a line of black card parallel with the rail under the sleepers. This is 0.3mm 210gsm black card [ Art shops or Hobbycraft ] which I have cut into 6mm/8mm strips and glued to the cork or foam surface. The ply sleepers are in turn glued to the card. The advantage of this is taht if you have need to remove the track in the future it is relatively easy to cut through the card and reove the track without any serious damage.

 

Hope this helps.

All the turnouts are constructed with ply and rivets as, in my opinion, the soldered rivets are easier to adjust when checking the gauge. Not all ply timbers are fitted with rivets and those that are not are fitted with functional chairs - either Exactoscale or C& L. Those with rivets are subsequently fitted with cosmetic chairs after final gauging. This is a very fiddly job as each chair needs cutting in half and each half needs the rear face filed - with a round needle file - in order to fit over the rivet. The plain track, shown in the photos, is made using functional chairs but has rivets as follows:- the board joints have a pair of ply sleepers with the rivets replaced by 16mm long 12BA cheesehead screws. These are screwed into the baseboard and give added strength to the rail ends. I file the cheesehead down to give the correct rail height before soldering the rail onto them. Metre length of rail are half cut at scale 60ft lengths and again two rivetted sleepers are used at the rail joint. I am using Palatine models rail droppers for electrical connection and have rivetted a pair to a ply sleeper [ add solder to the joint under the sleeper ] which is positioned at the half way - 30ft point - of each 60ft length. These rivets are given the same cosmetic chair treatment. All the remaining ply sleepers have functional chairs as above which are attached using Plastiweld. I used to use Butanone but do not like the fumes. One final point you will see in the photos there is a line of black card parallel with the rail under the sleepers. This is 0.3mm 210gsm black card [ Art shops or Hobbycraft ] which I have cut into 6mm/8mm strips and glued to the cork or foam surface. The ply sleepers are in turn glued to the card. The advantage of this is taht if you have need to remove the track in the future it is relatively easy to cut through the card and reove the track without any serious damage. Hope this helps.

 

But Robin, the fumes are the best bit!?! Sorry only joking. Do you find Plastiweld does as good a job?

 

John

Seems to work fine - certainly as good as Butonane.

 

Robin

 

BTW like the latest blog photos.

Still trying to resolve how I am going to wire up the layout but am hoping to have a chat about this on Friday. At present I am thinking of having the Up and Down Main wired seperately and the yard split into two - the coal and ash roads into the shed as one; and the sidings at the side of the shed as the other. The roundhouse will be another. Then of course, when it is extended to a circular layout there will be two for the fiddle yard.

I was thinking more of the split between DCC accessory power and track power. Either using separate boosters or circuit breakers on the track to protect the command station allowing it to still change the point motors. Your sectioning make sense though. We've got 5 pairs of bare copper sub bus on slattocks approaching the junction - Bury up/down, rochdale up/down and the goods loop and we'll probably add one for our yard there too. These are currently powered off either of our two 5 amp boosters so the down and up trains cant short each other out. Its also how we've had DC on one circuit and DCC on the other.

 

The only issue i've had so far is Dick having a lose screw in the choc block on his DC controller!

 

I suppose you could laser cut mounting plates in a decent thickness of ply for the Cobalts perhaps? You may have to manually countersink them though.

 

I'm pleased with the results of the decision to replace the flexitrack - thanks.

 

Oh and congrats on the job.

I do think its an improvement even if you had been alright with your newer C+L.

 

Thanks for that, its a relief to have something to get back into after xmas. I'll be down in Cardiff Thursday for a decent break before I start.