Savoyard

Rod, How about the Cobalt SS point motors, they are small and can be surface mounted. I think I may have some so I will investigate them tomorrow and give you some feed back. Like Simon I am not in favour of Servo's, a friend swears by them but the amount of noise they can make I'd be swearing at them! Peter

HI Rod, I must admit I was wondering about the Dapol/Lionheart but they have plastic sides and I believe are thicker sides and the windows on plastic models never look quite right, so I decided to stay with Dartstead and their brass sides. I know this next bit may mean I have to seek medical help but I bought three more Mk 1's but in Western Region Chocolate and Cream on Monday whilst visiting Ellis Clarke Trains in Skipton. These new Mk 1's are an improvement on my original Darstead Blood and Custard Mk 1's. They have improved detailing around the windows including beading, the two pictures illustrate this. I have a rake of four Bachmann Brassworks Maroon Mk 1's which I now want to replace with the similar Darstead coaches.

Here is a video I uploaded earlier of a test run on the layout with a Class 31 and six Darstead Mk 1's, it gives an overview of the layout and the recent additions and changes. https://youtu.be/AhvaYvpzMuQ

After a couple of days working on the new three way point and the track around it, I had a tidy up and found I have a desk which has space! The new 3 way works OK a couple of running problems but I am sure these will be easily ironed out. I had a running session and ran a rake of my six Darstead Blood and Custard Mk 1's, this is the first time I had run them all together. I was pleasantly surprised that the station and the passing loop easily accommodated the loco and six coaches. The new three way gives an extra couple of inches or so on the outside road it can easily accommodate a six coach rake. The other end of the passing loop showing the new 3 way point (again! ) The passing loop gives more operation flexibility and freight can operate between the two goods yards whilst passenger trains are parked in either the passing loop or the station, the back road off the three way can be used for holding the passenger stock that will use the run round side of the station. I think the layout as it now is will give a lot of running options, that is if I can stop trying out new ideas like magnetic couplings and tie bars!

I finally got round to building the Greenwood Model Railway three way point and it is now on the layout and works quite well, it will probably need some further tweaking but without that it stock runs a lot better over it. I have used the tie bar method on this point as on my PECO conversions. I have some track work to finish and taken the opportunity to realign the back two lines off the three way which should all be done by the evening. On the PECO point conversions I have decided to use PECO Individually replacement sleepers instead of modifying the box sleepers, once they have arrived I will complete the conversions of all the points.

I decided to put longer blades on the three way using blades from another kit I had spare, I reduced the size of the frog by two sleepers and this gives a better anchor for the shortest blade. Here is the finished point in place with the modified tie bars on both points. It is now in place on the layout and I have been testing it and it seems to be working quite reasonably it just needs some fine tuning but it is still better than the previous Marcway three way. I have halted conversion on the other points whilst I wait for some PECO Individulay sleepers to arrive from Kernow Models to arrive and I will re do the existing conversions with the sleepers to avoid all that filling and filing, it will also make the rest of the conversion easier. I just have some track to finish off as I had to relay the track around the new point and tonight I might actually do something unusual and run some trains!

Having looked at the three way, I am considering cutting the pre-built frog section after the second sleeper from the left, this will give the smallest blade a decent anchor point. Having weighed up the options on the second prototype I think I'll revert back to the original, there is a danger of making what was meant to be a fairly simple modification to improve the appearance into something more complex and will still be a compromise.

I must admit John I did consider that but went for the complicated option, back to the drawing board! I am pleased with the 3 way point and that short blade is a problem, I also bought a normal point so I will probably redo that area with track from that point. The frogs come ready built so I just built around them but the point blade needs at least a couple more chairs, so another back to the drawing board!

I was wondering what the spacing should be but it seems PECO points are a real compromise in a lot of areas it's knowing when to stop tweaking them without more or less building it from scratch. I must admit whilst the last mod improves the look even more, on reflection I am not sure I want to be moving all the point motors on my shed layout to accommodate the mod as the original mod gives a reasonable look for what I need, if I was starting again I would probably do a lot more.

I wish people would stop giving me ideas! John would something like this look better. I took out one sleeper at the end and moved them down and spaced them out a little. I must admit I was wondering about this the other day after building the Greenwood Model Railway three way point which I have nearly completed to replace a Marcway three way. On this one I will keep the original tie bar in the middle but use my version on the end.

I tried a different method for the sleepers between the tie bars, instead of trimming the existing sleepers I used sleepers from scrap pieces of track. Here is the method I used. Firstly I trimmed the sleepers I trimmed just one part of the original sleeper which will need filling. I removed the existing chairs on the donor sleepers. I then glued the PECO replacement chairs to the donor sleepers. The result looks a lot better. And with the tie bars fitted. I will use this method from now on, I may even redo the existing conversions.

I'd taken off the excess box on one of my curved points so today I replaced the plastic tie bar and it works OK.

They look good John, you've reminded me I need at least two trap points on my layout! I have just done a thread on how I modified the points and made the tie bars at Improving Peco Points

As a result of a thread on the Gauge O Guild about improving PECO points I came up with the following low cost method to improve the look of the points. Firstly a before and after photo. The converted point on the right is an older point without the box so needed little work to improve the look of the sleepers. The first step is to remove the actual box. Then remove the point blades and the tie bar. Next remove the excess plastic around the sleepers Then the tags on the bottom of the point blades are removed. Next pieces of old sleepers are cut to size to fill the gaps, the height of the piece on the left is reduced to fit on top of the strip in the middle. The pieces are glued in place. The sleepers will need some tidying up and filling when the track is weathered and ballasted. The next stage is to cut two pieces of double sided copper clad to 60 mm lengths. The height of the copper clad pieces were reduced by about 1 mm. The marks show where the holes will be, the centre mark will also be hole for the point motor rod, though on this first conversion I used a small brass loop soldered to the copper clad. The holes are 14.4 mm from from the centre making a gap between blades of 29 mm,.The original conversion was 28 mm but I tried 30 mm to reduce the gap between the point blade and the rail, but it was a little too small for some locos so 29 mm was a good compromise. The top is rounded to improve the look and will also stop the pin making contact with the copper clad and preventing a possible short. The holes were made using a .7 mm drill bit. Next two small brass pins are placed in the holes and the bottom is crimped and cut. Using an old sleeper I made a jig to fit the new tie bar. This made it easier to position the tie bar for soldering to the point blades. The jig with tie bar ready to be soldered. The second tie bar is fitted in the same way. On the point above I used a piece of brass to provide a loop for the point motor rod but on the latest version I drilled a .7 mm hole in the middle and used this instead which improves the appearance further. I have tested the various points several times and they work perfectly, I use slow motion point motors, in this case SMAILS (Tortoise point motors with a DCC accessory decoder built in) and so there is no excess strain on the copper clad, I don't know if this would be the case with a solenoid point motor. I am very pleased with the results and for very little outlay and about a hours worth of time the look of the PECO points is greatly improved. I only have another twelve to convert!

I have doing various work on the layout. I am still waiting for the motor for the turntable but I've added the rails on the bridge. I started work on the replacement three way point from Greenwood Model Railways. I needed some details to do the point blades which I got today so I should be able to finish that tomorrow, here is the work so far. There is a thread on the Gauge O Guild Forum about improving PECO points and came up with the following using double sided copper clad and a couple of pins, The photo shows a before and after. I've done some minor tweaks increasing the space between the point blades from 28 mm to 29 mm and drilled a hole in the centre for the wire from the SMAIL point motor. The original conversion was on an older PECO point the one below is a current point with the box over the tie bar so I removed this and filled in the gaps with pieces of sleepers, with some weathering it will hide the joins. I will do a seperate thread on the conversion.

Julian, Apologies for not replying sooner. Whilst the points are DCC friendly I didn't want to rely on the point blades for the correct polarity on the frogs so I modified the points in a similar way to the Peco points and use one of the switches on the SMAIL to switch the polarity. I will take some better pictures to show the mods better and post them on here. Whilst the Marcway points are nicely made I found using them with slow motion points not ideal as soon as the point motor hits resistance it stalls, so it took a lot of tweaking to can them working but them I ran into other problems so I decided to use a Greenwood Model Railway 3 way point instead, which I am part way through building at the moment and I hope to have it completed and installed early this week. Peter

There has not been much activity on the layout building over the last few weeks but the last two days I installed the turntable and wired it up. The bridge still needs to be finished which I will do once I've got the motor and tested it.

I've not really done much on the layout over the last month or so with holidays and a site visit to Ramchester over the Bank Holiday, a truly inspiring layout, well done Rod and Howard. I have been tinkering with some ideas and this last weekend I finalised these. Firstly the station area, the track layout for this has changed slightly and I've made a mock of the station platforms, the station building has been borrowed from another layout. The next area which has been modified is the engine shed and turntable area, I've changed the position of the turntable so that there is a bigger gap between it and the main line. Here is a mock up. I will hopefully have Greenwood Model Railway turntable built and fitted soon. Over the weekend I decided to try and incorporate a passing loop to improve the operational flexibility and after a mock up I purchased another Peco RH curved point and relaid the track and it all works quite nicely. This area was originally going to be the fiddle yard but I've decided to make it scenic and it will be another goods yard. I've also changed the track layout at the other end of this area as shown here. I have decided not to use the Marcway points on the layout as I had to do a lot of modification to the three way point to get it to work with a SMAIL point motor, this will be replaced by a Greenwood Model Railway three way once I've built it. Here is the Marcway three way showing the mods I had to make to get it to work and it still has running problems with some stock. I am waiting for some more SMAILS and once these have arrived I will wire up the new Goods/Fiddle Yard area.

Thanks Rod and glad to hear you got it sorted, the joys of model railways. The Patriot has been running OK tonight, I am just repairing the links on two of the coaches. I fitted some lights to the Class 101 using some Digirails OO Gauge light bars, it seems OK except for a drop on the trailer car which I will investigate further. I would also like to add directional lighting though the access to the cab area is not easy so I will give it some thought/

Glad you like it, I'll post a couple of the other after I've checked them. You'll be pleased to know you have been passed out on TouchCab! My visit certainly gave me a lot to think about for my layout and the first thing I thought I'd try is banking the curves using the thin cork, it seems to look OK.

HI Rod, Here is the video. Peter

Hi Rod, It's a Bachmann Brassworks Class 101 fitted with a YouChoos Class 105 sound chip and I think that is where the confusion came in. I was going to post something last night but the journey home caught up with me and sleep won instead. I am going to sort out the pics later including the video of you controlling the 101 with TouchCab. Peter

Rob, Thank you for a great time and your kind hospitality, I really enjoyed seeing Ramchester for real what a cracking layout and a standard I aspire to for my layout. I am pleased to have introduced you to wireless control and I am sure will increase the pleasure operating Ramchester. I will post the pics when I get back home as it is not easy on my iPad. Thanks once again, Peter

The original video was corrupted so I reloaded it this afternoon.

I have been experimenting further with the magnetic coupling ideas, I have modified my original idea to use a more powerful 3 x 2 mm magnet, the original was 3 x 1 mm. I have moved the magnet to the third link to avoid potential buffer lock on my slightly tighter curves, the third link is also slightly wider to accommodate the 3 mm wide magnet. I kept the original screw link connection between the loco and the first coach. Here is a new test video using five coaches. PLEASE NOTE: The original video was corrupted so I reloaded it this afternoon. I am using a slightly different method on the wagons based on a suggestion by Andrew Booth. I will be testing this a further before I do a video.