Harlequin
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Posts posted by Harlequin
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22 minutes ago, KingEdwardII said:
1) SL-89 large radius straight points = 1524mm / 60 inches
2) SL-98 large radius Y points = 1828mm / 72 inches
I've attached a file which is my gospel for Peco point geometry (not created by me as the page headers indicate...!)
Mike.
The "Nominal radii" stated by Peco and reproduced in that PDF don't match up with the real world unfortunately.
If you do the maths you can show that the largest possible radius for a straight turnout using the Peco geometry (12° turn at 1 inch offset) is 45.76in (1162.34mm).
So more like a nominal 48in - and that makes some sense in the context of the range:
Small = 24in (nominal) = 2ft
Medium = 36in (nominal) = 3ft
Large = 48in (nominal) = 4ft
Curved and Y = 60in (nominal) = 5ft
Why Peco keep on claiming Large radius turnouts are 60in radius is unfathomable!
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7 hours ago, Neal Ball said:
This sounds great Phil.
I wonder how much of a difference that sugarcane speaker makes.... it would be interesting to compare mine and yours together. The miles makes that a bit tricky!
Thanks Neal,
(You should copyright the "sugarcane speaker" as fast as possible before someone else uses it!)
I am striving to get as good sound as possible from my steam locos. A wimpy lo-fi plastic-box chuffing sound isn't enough.
I think the sound quality comes largely from the Zimo Dumbo in the bunker, with the sound allowed to escape more directly rather than bouncing off the track in different directions. I think the sugarcube mainly just adds volume but it also pulls the sound balance forwards, which is useful.
I reckon that the most important thing for good sound is the biggest speaker you can fit with a decent enclosure volume and it has to be matched to the decoder's amp output both in Ohms and power. If you have that sorted the next most important thing is a decent sound project because it doesn't matter how good the speaker is if the sound samples are poor quality...
It's almost impossible to compare sounds at a distance because there are so many variables involved. Probably the only foolproof way would be to exchange locos.
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I don't have a specific plan for my Small Metro (Tank!). I bought it because I knew they were used on Westcountry branch lines and it seemed like a simple kit for a beginner. BLTs were on my radar at the time but I came to realise that I really want to see big locos hauling long (within reason!) trains at a range of speeds and although BLTs are lovely they wouldn't let me do that.
My long term plan is to model a fictitious location somewhere on the Berks & Hants or the Berks & Hants extension in the 1930s - somewhere where the canal is close by. (Canals in layouts seem to be in lots of people's minds at the moment.) To that end I too have a large collection of Centenaries awaiting something to be done to them (also on people's minds!
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That is all bubbling away in my head but in the meantime, I'm just doing bits and pieces on my test track such as this Large Prairie sound installation that I completed yesterday:
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Not the best video in the world...
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Here's a quick look at how I have installed an MX645 with two speakers, firebox glow and stay alive in my Hornby Large Prairie.
I measured inside the body and worked out there was space to mount the decoder above the gearbox, effectively in the firebox. (This may not be the best place but more of that later.)
I removed the 8-pin decoder socket and cut down the plastic moulding that held it. I also removed the coal bunker floor because I wanted the entire bunker/tank space to hold a big speaker and a stay alive supercap.
The decoder sleeve was removed and replaced by Kapton tape to make it a bit thinner, then the decoder was hardwired to the pickups and motor leads (which are correctly colour coded by Hornby).
A firebox glow orange LED was encased in a small blob of copydex to insulate it from the metal body weight and fixed in place using tackyblack. Wires for speakers and supercap routed around the firebox LED and into the channel provided by Hornby.
The front weight was cut down and a YouChoos sugarcube speaker installed directly under the chimney.
With all the wiring packaged using more tackyblack and masking tape the chassis looks like this:
You can see the green sugarcube speaker up front and the big Zimo Dumbo speaker sitting on top of the supercap at the back.
On the test track everything worked so it was time to put the body on. I milled out a hole roughly where the firebox door should be, cleaned up and slid the body on.
My measurements were correct - the screws pulled tight with no feeling of anything being stressed! (Phew!)
Next to fit the coal load, which is also a speaker grille: A small piece of insect mesh was cut to size and shaped to allow the coal to sink towards the cab. I protected the electrical connection to the speaker with Kapton tape before pushing the mesh into place and gluing on coarse loco coal with copydex.
I've synced up the chuff rate and she looks and sounds very convincing on the test track. The only possible downside, which I accepted early on, is that the decoder doesn't have much cooling and so the top of the firebox gets quite warm. I know the decoder will automatically shut down if it gets too hot but so far so good - she's done many circuits without any signs of problems.
Videos to follow...
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Hi Ben,
It's not easy! Keep going and you'll find the best balance soon.
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Some feedback:
- It's very busy. I think you're trying to do too much in the space. My suggestion: Abandon the second platform and maybe one of the goods sidings.
- The goods shed needs a bit more track beyond it to be able to push, say, three empty vans through before the yard needs to be shunted again.
- The reverse curves to get into the platform and goods yard are awkward.
- The station building will obscure the top left corner. That may be OK if you have a plan for that area but if not it's valuable space not being used effectively.
- The turntable is a 75ft version for big mainline locos. Probably doesn't need to be that big.
- Do you know where the coaling stage will go?
- The points fan in the FY takes up valuable length. If you used a traverser you'd be able to make the FY a bit shorter, have more scenic space and you could have 5 or possibly 6 full-length roads. But you would then lose anything scenic in front of the FY.
- The top right corner seems like prime real-estate for the engine shed and TT. That's why I suggested flipping Launceston over (in terms of its topology).
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I’ve had a Small Metro on my workbench for over a year. My first brass and white metal kit build. Too scary to work on.
And I just had to buy a bigger box for my rolling stock kits...
One day, one day! That’s what I keep telling myself...
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Here's one:
https://twitter.com/RHummBooks/status/1246754472241569792/photo/1
As RailWest suggested, it looks like the lever is parallel to the track and connected to the points by a crank.
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Hi Schooner,
Canals and Railways - a magical combination!
It would be great to see my take on the Inglenook come to life in this form - but whatever trackplan you use will be wonderful.
Since you say that space is not a limiting factor but you've chosen a size that is "do-able", how about increasing the space very slightly to allow the plan to breathe a bit more?
To expand: Most people are limited by space and that imposes the biggest compromise on their layout designs, frequently with trackwork very close to the boundaries making it difficult to disguise the edges of the scene. You have the luxury of space and you could, if you wanted, add some space to the ends while leaving the railway plan the same size, so that the scene is no longer defined by the railway - it becomes a more naturally framed scene with a railway in it. You would have more room for road vehicles to turn and move around the yard, more room for buildings at the sides to be fully realised, more opportunity to hide the FY exit. And the extra cost on your time and effort shouldn't be that great - some of the increased area would just be more earth texture and more setts.
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I think you can just about make out the levers of RailWest's Middle GF in Karau. It's always in the shade of the trees.
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I write 2D drawing software for a living - have done for 20+ years - and we've always tried to make our program very intuitive for our users. If we had ever been given the chance to write a 3D program it would have looked a lot like Sketchup, it has a similar ethos.
I love Sketchup so much that I (eventually) stumped up for a licence for the full version! (That's why I wasn't sure of the capabilities of the free version.)
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2 minutes ago, nickwood said:
That link doesn't work, do you mean gwr.org.uk ?
GWR.org.uk was last updated in October and has had a number of updates this year.
Sorry, I screwed the link up. I have fixed it now.
No, I really do mean, http://www.greatwestern.org.uk/index.htm
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FWIW: I love Sketchup. (Couldn't get my mind around Fusion 360 yet).
Sketchup's working method is very easy to get to grips with (to explain it in very simple terms: drawing 2d shapes then extruding them to 3d) and from that simple foundation you can go on to do very complex things if you need to.
Not sure if the free online version will export STL files for 3D printing, though.
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Hi everyone,
greatwestern.org.uk is a great site for those interested in the GWR but I notice that it hasn't been updated for a long time now, there are some dead links and it's style is a bit old-fashioned.
I'm worried that we might lose this valuable resource if no-one's looking after it. Names mentioned on the Home page are: John Daniel (copyright holder), Eric A. Meyer of CWRU and Neil Johan.
Does anyone know if these gentlemen are able to update and maintain the site?
Thanks,
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8 hours ago, Neal Ball said:
Plus of course the lovely Collet carriages from Hornby.I wonder when Bachmann will replace their carriages.....
New 4-6-0; is that the new Bachmann Manor that Mike aka @The Stationmaster alluded to a couple of weeks ago? Or maybe Hornby are going to announce a new Saint 4-6-0 in January.
Not so much for us inter-war GWR types, though...
Mogul, Prairie, Collett coaches. That's it unless I've forgotten something.
We desperately need more coaches from the period, as you've said before, Neal. Would it be too much to hope for a set of RTR Toplights? Or Dreadnoughts?
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39 minutes ago, Clearwater said:
My book says no as well but I wouldn’t take that as an independent confirmation as if @Harlequinis using RCTS, my book is quoting that in its bibliography so probably the same underlying information.
David
Yes, it would be good to have confirmation from independent sources. I'm using "Great Western Moguls and Prairies" by David Maidment, 2016. I can't see RCTS mentioned in the Bibliography...?
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2 minutes ago, Mallard60022 said:
Thank you very much both...in that case, any chance of looking for 6320 as well? Same time period. Apologies but I am not a GWR/WR person, but these two worked diversions through my depicted area in December 1960. I have 7310 and it has Pipes; I will use it unless 6320 had pipes and then I'll renumber if relevant.
P
6320: No
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48 minutes ago, rprodgers said:
- Hi Neal I might have a similar problem whilst testing mine on a rolling road it just suddenly stopped. Checking further I discovered that the crank pin on the one leading wheel was caught on the back of the cross head and it had moved the slide bars etc from the horizontal to a diagonal. I moved them back into place but it has happened again. I am wary about using glue there is a “pip” on the top of the cylinder assembly that fits into the bottom of the running board .
- I will try to post pictures to illustrate what I mean.
- Ps Before this it was running very smoothly, the slow running issues some others mentioned I assumed was down to the mechanism having to overcome the initial “reluctance “ of the fly wheel. Maybe without the fly wheel it would run as slow as some people would want?
Richard
The crank pin might just have not been tightened properly at the factory and worked loose. This is quite a common failing for new steam locos in my experience.
Tightening it back up might be all that's needed - if you can get at it...
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5 minutes ago, Mallard60022 said:
Quick question please, to the obvious experts here. 6372 in 1960; did it have Steam Pipes?
Thank you,
Phil
My book also says, No.
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9 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:
Absolutely no surprise to me at all.........after the farce I had with Dapol they will NEVER get any of my money again.
Is it fair to keep on characterising Dapol this way because you had a bad experience with a particular configuration of a particular product?
I'm not surprised that Dapol were unable to say anything conclusive about Neal's problem because it may have been the first report of these symptoms they heard. It's still early days for this model.
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You only need a turntable big enough to turn the locos likely to be used on your branch line.
Here’s Launceston: https://maps.nls.uk/view/105992299 (annoyingly in the very bottom left corner of the map).
Notice that there are two stations right next to each other. I’m only thinking about the GWR terminus to the North.
From the top:
- Back/mileage siding
- Goods shed siding
- End loading dock
- Platform loop
- Release loop for both platform and goods loop either side
- Goods loop / cattle dock / engine shed headshunt
- Kickback engine shed
- Kickback turntable
The goods yard is splayed out for access but everything else is tightly packed. The TT and engine shed are very neatly arranged.
You can see how similar it is to your plans and flipped over and compressed it might fit very nicely into your space.
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That's a lovely plan and concept.
I see that although your layout is end to end, the station itself is a through-station and the loop really is a passing loop, not a terminus run round loop as I had assumed.
So please excuse my incorrectly labelled switches above!
P.S. Don't forget the trap points on exit from the goods yards...
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1 hour ago, David Schweizer said:
Thanks for that Phil. Just one question. Are the four locations marked - To switch labelled "Platform and Loop" supplied by one (presumably double pole) switch, if so, does that switch source it's power from the Controller? Well two questions, Does the power supply to the switch labelled "Loco Release Spur" also come from the controller. To clarify my earlier post, it is a one section end to end layout, with a total length of less than 3metres without points motors, The illustraion I supplied was perhaps confusing because it included reference to points motors, wheras I meant to only show the control switches.
Just to muddy things, prototypically the passing loop was hardly ever used, except to store spare carriages, so it would probably be easier to include the converging loop points for visual realism, but use insulating rail joiners at both ends of those points . That way I would not have to worry about any switches, but could modify it to be live at some future stage, which given my age will probably never happen. In the first instance the only real reason I embarked upon a layout was so that I had somewhere to display, and use, the prototypical K&ESR locos and rolling stock I have built, and continue to build.
Yes, and Yes.
You might have section switches on your end-to-end so that you can shunt at one end while locos at the other end don't move without having to set the points against them. Even if the entire layout is one section I think it would still be wise to isolate the loco release spur and feed it through a switch. It's a very simple thing to do and gives you some insurance if your plans change in the future. (Just having a layout that you can run stock on changes things!)
The wiring could be more minimal than I showed, as Chimer suggests, and I did think about leaving out the feed at the toe end of the loco release points but then it gets more complicated to explain and understand. The drawing shows the most obviously understandable solution - the one that most people would be comfortable with.
).
Theory of General Minories
in Layout & Track Design
Posted
There are a number of other mistakes in that PDF regarding the OO turnout radii. I suggest chucking it in the bin!