ikcdab

Hi guys I don't want this to run away with itself. This is a model railway that, like most, is imaginary. I have included features I like, not necessarily all fully plausible. So I have no runrounds because I enjoy the fun of engine release. I have a gantry by my tunnel because I like signal gantries and tunnels. I also have an engine shed with 10 engines sat in it doing nothing and a track gauge of 16.5mm.... But I want it to look right. Plausible (that word again). This is 1960s on the southern region. It's double track mainline probably West of Salisbury. But it could be East.....but definitely the LSWR main line to the west. I have a double track branch to an urban terminus that was modernised. Above Tulse Hill was mentioned and, coincidentally, the signalbox is a model of Tulse Hill. So imagine Tulse Hill, 1960s, but transplanted to the west and modelled as an expanded Minories terminus. Photo below shows the approach. I now want to add some signalling cables that look right. I like the concept of the concrete trunking being like a tree and individual wires out. How many wires run to a point machines such as the one in the foreground? I now plan to have a location cabinets on the left, the trunking running towards it, then a cable going under the lines to the point machine.

Hi Michael thanks for the comments. All valid points, but the railway is built and I'm not changing it now. It works well and we use shunt release for incoming trains. The layout is basically Minories with added sidings. So the two crossovers are as designed by CJF. My thread shows progress. What I am doing now is adding the details such as the point wiring. Ian

Ok. HW on the plan is hand worked so no GPLs needed there. I think I am just missing one on the exit from the top left goods headshunt. I do actually have RIs on the gantry, just didn't show them on the plan. I am sure you are right about the shunt signal on the gantry, but I like gantries and wanted to have one! I also have RIs on the platform starters.

Here is a site plan. I imagine concrete troughing out of the signalbox along the southern side of the track towards the gantry and tunnel mouth (there are signals the other end of the tunnel). Then wiring from the troughing towards each point machine or signal. If so, would these be single wires or multiple cables? A location cabinet near the gantry At the tunnel mouth, the wiring emerges from the troughing and goes up onto racking inside the tunnel. Images such as this appear to show multiple wires emerging from the troughing, maybe they go to other point machines in the vicinity.

My layout is 1960s southern. The main terminus has been upgraded to colour lights and point machines operated from a local signalbox. So my assumption is that the semaphores were replaced sometime after WW2 with the colour lights. I have installed (for better or worse) Peco dummy point machines which I believe are HW1000 types. I have a signal gantry, platform starters and two gpls. My question is what sort of trackside wiring do I need? I guess I need to run concrete trunking from the signalbox to each point or signal. Then thick wires from the trunking to the motor? Photos I have seen show multiple wires crossing the tracks near the paintwork. Also, location cabinets? Is there one near each installation? You can see that I don't really know what question to ask. I guess, what trackside infrastructure (wires, troughing, cabinets) do I need to supply? Would it help to post a track plan for clarity? Ian

Needed to complete my set. A Hornby Pullman Brake. This needs to be the more modern type with working lights. Steelsided. I think the catalogue numbers are r4430, r4166a, r4487, r4166. Decent price paid! Thanks

You are always going to be challenged in a 5ft length. But I think your second design is much more of a model railway and makes the most of the space. In reality there would probably have been some sort of headshunt otherwise all goods yard shunting fouls the single line. The fiddle yard is unusual and turns this into an end to end layout with the possibility of through running. With the four sets of points, you might be able to reconfigure it with two loops instead. I think it looks very promising and great to build skills and experience. Ian

Ok thanks. That means that in my train of 8, I have too many parlours and not enough kitchens! I need to sell a parlour and swap for a kitchen then. Thanks

Just to pick this one up again.. are we saying that a kitchen could serve the diners in its own vehicle and the one in the adjacent parlour car? And i assume that a "third class kitchen" was not a kitchen of a more lowly standard, but a normal kitchen in which its seating is for third class passengers?

Agree with that. It's not the lack of lubricant, it's that the old lubricant will have solidified. That needs cleaning out first. Any light machine oil is fine, I use this https://amzn.eu/d/f9QlN8R Ian

So success with printing the piers. Both sets now made. One I've cleaned up, the other needs to wait it's turn. Really pleased with these.

Excellent stuff. Brilliant looking building. I have now cracked the 3d printer problems I had so I can also now progress on my work. How will you glaze all of those windows? Ian

Taunton and we even have little windows that you can open and look down at the road.

Hi Ian, yes, there has to be a cross member of some sort. I have just looked at this picture. You can clearly see the cross members and if you look closely, i think you can see a further one right up by the concrete pads. Ill have a play on fusion 360 and see if I can add it in. The concrete pads at 8ft square, and the girders rest equally on them, so it means that any cross girder would still be 4ft from the ends of the deck. A visit is called for!

Having just posted that, I realise that the diagional braces on the main girder should lean outwards! As it is, I prefer the look of what I have done and I'm not keen to change now. I think that what I have done will still be structurally sound. I might change it, we will see, it depends how much it nags me.

And here are all of the main span components laid out. For printing I had to break it up into sections, so i will print the end girders as a unit, then the central girder and join together. I do have an outstanding question though. At the top of the cast iron piers are square bearing plates which the main girders are sat on - you can see in the picture below. What is unclear from any pictures or drawings is whether these are two separate pieces (as per my drawing) or whether it is infact a single piece spanning the piers. Both answers are problematic. If its two separate pieces, then how are the ends of the deck supported...if its a single piece then how is that supporting itself? As i wont be able to print anything now til after easter, i might take the opportunity to drive down and have a look - its not that far from me. In the meantime, if anyone has any insights, I would be pleased to hear them! Ian

At the moment my focus is on the viaduct. The span is about 1.5m with a depth of about 200mm. Originally I had planned for this to be a standard brick arched viaduct of which there are numerous real life examples. I erected some plywood piers with the intention of covering with brick paper. This idea morphed into a girder bridge on brick piers and I spent a lot of time designing and then 3d printing the girders. This again gave me issues as the 3d printing warped and I found it difficult to get nice, straight girders. That was a long story and changing the type of resin in the printer helped hugely - but I was not 100% convinced I had the right look for the bridge. One of my issues was that I had laid a 6mm plywood track base and traditional sleepered track, whereas what I really wanted was the unballasted "baulk road" effect you see on girder bridges. I had also made the wooden piers too narrow and i needed to add extension pieces to widen it. All in all, I was not happy. Then a friend visited and threw another massive spanner into the works saying that I had too many piers... So yet another rethink. This is the (rather embarrasing) current situation with the abortive 3d printed girders (all now scrap!), the ply track bed and the ply piers. My new (and final answer) to this is to rip the whole viaduct section out and replace it with a structure based on Little Petherick Creek bridge on the North Cornwall LIne. Many pictures here. I had amazing help from fellow RMWeb members who sent me drawings and pictures of the bridge. A lot of hours later I have drawn the structure in Fusion360 and i am now ready to start printing. Although based on the original bridge, that was single track and my bridge will be double line and my piers are much taller. But it will resemble the original. here are the piers drawn up and ready to go. I will have a trial print tomorrow and see how it goes. Luckily I only need two sets - each one is going to take 13 hours to print! I am still looking for pictures and details of the bridge if anyone else can help! Ian

Its been a long time since I did any updates, but we have not been idle. Since January we have been concentrating on scenics. I had been reluctant to do this, I am not sure why, but my daughter firced me to start and we have not looked back. Now i have sat down ti write this, I realise I have not taken many suitable pictures, but here is one looking round the sweep of the lines to Charlton Bridge Junction. More soon

So I guess the canal engineers had an even more difficult job. They had to build an exactly level line and the maps 100 years before the railways were built were even more Spartan.

i really struiggled with my 3d printer when i first got it - a elegoo saturn. I had failure after failure. after much heart rending and almost throwing the thing out of the window, I can now get reliable prints every time. My learning points are: 1. use decent resin. I started with water-washable which was rubbish. Now i am using standard resin, things have massively improved. 2. as said above, make sure things are warm. I heat the room to 20C before printing, and switch the machine on 15mins before i use it. 3. shake the resin bottle or stir whats in the vat. 4. make sure the build plate is exactly level. Take your time, this is critical. 5. check the settings in the slicer software. Mine came with chitubox and the default settings were not appropriate. I had to joggle the exposure time, lift speed and dwell time to get reliable results. 6. supports are critical. i always use "medium" in chitubox as i found that "light" snapped. go through the model layer by layer in the slicer and check the supports are adequate in chitubox. There are various check models you can download to test the settings. 7. accept that it is not "plug and play". it takes loads of fiddling to get it working right. 8. make sure the models are washed very well. I saw no need for a washer and i use a plastic tub and a soft brush to clean the pieces. I find it very effective. Do it very well as any residual liquid resin will result in stickiness. i sometimes think that the UV curers are quite aggressive. If the weather is at all decent I prefer to lay out my models in the conservatory and let the sun do the job, turning from time to time. Its imprecise, but sun-cured do seem to be less brittle than those cured under UV lights. perserve, as once its working well, its brilliant.

to be honest i think it looks brilliant. I can't wait. I am frustrated by those who criticise the most trivial items - "the widgets along the top are at slightly the wrong angle and this means i cannot buy the model" - yet are content to run their trains on totally underscale train set track, use budgie grit as ballast or have cavernous gaps between corridor connections. All modelling is a compromise between accuracy and the cost of production and i think this model captures the look and feel of the original excellently.

One of my current jobs on the West Somerset Railway is to write a short souvenir guide celebrating our 150th anniversary. In doing so, it has occured to me to wonder how lines were laid out before modern surveying techniques were established. For example, in the early 1830s when Brunel stood somewhere on the outskirts of London contemplating which route to Bristol, how did he know which way to set off? Maps were then fairly spartan then and didnt show any contours, just form lines. He might set off in one direction then find himself at the foot of steep hills or with unacceptable gradients - so have to turn around and try another route. When he laid out the WSR he mostly followed small streams which i guess he knew where they ran, but even then he managed to find the lowest crossing point between the Quantocks and the Brendons. I just don't know how they got that "helicopter" view you need in order to make sure you have the best and most efficinet route between two towns. Any insights on how our victorian forefathers determined the route of railways?

There is no single resource for that. You have to dig around and see whats available. To be honest, for a modenr station, the easiest thing is to go there ane measure it up. You can alslo generally estimate dimensions good enough for our purposes from photographs. you can get a reasonable idea of the overall footprint by measuring on google earth. Bearing in mind how recent Newton station is, I would start by looking at the local authority planning permission website and see if plans were submitted for that (do railways need to get planning permission for station rebuilds?) or try and track down to contractor or designer?

looks perfect! thanks. now to find more details about it. Ian

The three big ones seem to be: Fox transfers Railtec Cambridge custom transfers. they all have large ranges - happy browsing!