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eldavo

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eldavo last won the day on September 26 2010

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  1. eldavo

    Steaming

    The liquid is simply water, preferably distilled to avoid limescale buildup blocking the microscopic holes in the piezo disc. Cheers Dave
  2. Some while back as part of the work on the Winchester Railway Modellers Redbridge Wharf layout we decided to add smoke and steam effects to a model of a TID tug. After a bit of research we harked upon cheapo piezo electric mister units as used in humidifiers. These can be obtained in various sizes and with various control boards from all the normal sources. The unit we settled on was a 16mm disc connected to a control board that takes a 5v input. This was rigged in in an old plastic bottle, fed by a wick and supported by a 3D printed contraption underneath the baseboard. Fed with 5 volts from the layout and set on it's random setting it gives a quite pleasing effect and certainly catches the attention at exhibitions. Of course it was never going to stop there! Would it be possible to do something in a loco? Others have done it so it had to be done. I happened to be respraying a model of the A4 Mallard to create a model of Sir Nigel Gresley as running in 1967. An obvious candidate for running on a model of the ex-LSWR mainline to Weymouth! Quite a lot of space in the smoke box of an A4 so with a bit 3D printing a mounting and water tank was produced and all I had to do was figure out the electrickery bits. It's currently very much a prototype but it seems to work... The loco is fitted with an ESU loksound micro decoder but that isn't man enough to drive the mister circuit which needs 150+ mA. To get round that I've rigged up a rectifier and voltage regulator to provide enough 5volt oomph. That feeds the supplied control board but with a slight twist. Giles of this parish produced a chuffing narrow gauge radio controlled loco and poked around in the control board mechanism. He found that in order to get the mister to chuff reliably you need to trickle 2 volts or so to it all the time then when you give it a squirt of 5 volts it responds immediately. Very very useful info. In my case I have a solid state relay controlled by Aux 1 on the DCC decoder. This function output is turned on by function 4 and is defined to trigger on every sound chuff. The relay effectively switches the power supply to the mister control board from 2 volts to 5 volts. The problem at the moment is that all the control gear takes up rather a lot of space... I have my work cutout to miniaturise all this. Cheers Dave
  3. Take a look at the link below. Cheers Dave
  4. Well done Nick. The layout was certainly looking good when I stopped by. Cheers Dave
  5. The Winchester Railway Modellers are looking forward to attending with Redbridge Wharf. Having recently lost our permanent clubroom let's hope it all comes out of storage safely and behaves itself! Cheers Dave
  6. Another hot glue gun dabber here. The key is to be organised and don't be afraid to redo joints or trim back overly long wires. My work isn't pristine but it's neat enough to make problem solving and repairs easy. Cheers Dave
  7. The curves into the fiddleyard are back in place and seem to work much better. It's still a tight turn being under 6ft radius but the Flatiron, which has a longish 6 coupled chassis, and other locos seem to be able to cope. My favourite compound managed to haul a rake of 54ft corridor coaches in and out of the yard so being my normal inpatient self I started ballasting! Of course with my mojo in place the house guests arrived and work stopped. Hopefully the mess of latex glue will set.
  8. I've fitted a compact worm and spur MSC box which sits down low and drives the leading pair of drivers. There's a bunch of lead in the ash pan and space above the motor for more lead. Hopefully with the compensation the little engine should pull a decent load. Of course this has developed into another of those almost complete projects. The tender is pretty much complete but the weather hasn't been good enough to contemplate getting it into primer. The loco needs the fiddly bits like handrails and details. It runs but the tender hasn't got pick ups yet and there's no linkage between the loco and tender. Cheers Dave
  9. After several months of working on other things I actually got on and started to sort out some of the layout problems. Some while ago I had to relay the rather tight curves leading to the fiddleyard. I thought I had nailed it but after a while I realised I had somehow managed to create a distinct kink in both lines leading to problems with some of my locos. There was nothing for it but to try and lift and relay some of the curves. A lot of water and scraping allowed me to unseat the track without damage so I should be able to get things relaid. It's all pretty messy! The fiddleyard board link tracks will have to be revised but hopefully this time I'll get it right. Cheers Dave
  10. I realise this is an old thread but if anyone is still interested here are couple of shots of a stay alive install I've just completed in a Hornby class 08 with a Loksound 3.5. The basis was the information referenced elsewhere: https://www.sbs4dcc.com/tutorialstipstricks/esuloksound52400v35keepalive.html I've used a Kung Fu 2 wire stay alive for the traction. For the decoder I've used a 5.5v 0.47f super cap wired with a 47ohm resistor and a diode. I couldn't get the traction stay alive to work with with the 2 wires soldered directly to the poles of the big capacitor but when the +ve is soldered to the diode as shown it works fine. The yellow wire in the pic below is connected to the 5.5v super cap and the blue to the Kung Fu stay alive. The stay alive unit and the super cap are crammed into the cab. It should be possible to disguise the gubbins with a bit of paint and maybe a driver. It will run for a few seconds and there is no interruption to the sound. More than good enough. Cheers Dave
  11. Looks like a jolly decent start in the 3D printing game to me. Keep at it. :-) Cheers Dave
  12. Well that plan went well. I sort of nearly finished off all the partly complete wagons. Just some of them still need painting and lettering. Maybe one day. So now we are into second level distraction activities. Actually I did do one session of track fettling but then got distracted. This time I really should have known better. This little project is another of my dubious eBay purchases, a Shedmaster kit for a Midland 1400 class 2-4-0. It came complete with wheels (except one pair is missing). Instruction no. 1 in the kit is to sweat together the loco mainframes and ream out the holes for the axle bearings. Spot the problem. Ah yes, I remember now, the last Shedmaster kit had the same problem. A kit with bearing holes 20% too big. Top quality NOT! Good job I intended to fit compensation. Cut out a couple of blanks for compensation beams out of scrap nickel silver and sweated them together. Drew up a paper template and stuck it to the blanks then set about drilling pilot holes for the axle holes and the fulcrum. Of course when I came to open out the bearing holes I wrecked the lot as the metal was too thin. Start again with some thicker material then. Worked out a bit better this time so on to marking out the mainframes to drill the fulcrum hole for the beams. The instructions then say to fit the 2 chassis cross members which "create a reasonably rigid chassis". My mum made custard with more rigidity! As you can see fitting the beams and trying to use my alignment axles and springs turned the thing into a banana. To be fair the instructions do say you might wish to add a base to the ashpan and extra cross members. I think this should be "must". I did add a base to the ashpan and then fitted the upper brake hanger support wires across the chassis. This made the thing rigid enough to allow me to fit the compensation beams and align the bearings. Time to fit the wheels. Oh look they've come with Slater's optional extra heavy rust pitting! These have been sitting in my workshop for a year or two and of course I have no idea where they've been since they left Slater's and before they arrived with me. It does seem to be a shame that the manufacturer can't pack their product adequately or at least provide some sort of protection. I cleaned them up and chemically blackened them and fitted the crankpins. These were then fitted to the chassis and seem ok. The leading axle is carried in a tube which can rock to provide the 3rd weight bearing point of the compensated chassis. It ain't pretty engineering but hopefully will be good enough. Lots to do. Cheers Dave
  13. Eastleigh will have their work cut out trying to get a decent paint job on 69008. Look at the state of some of those bodywork welds! Cheers Dave
  14. Not had experience of 009 unifrogs but I have seen shorts on the 00 variety. If the back to backs are not spot on it is possible to get shorts. If I recall the break in the closure rails was too close to the crossing and was sorted by cutting new ones further away and bridging across the old gaps with conductive paint. A Google search may provide more info. Cheers Dave
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