New Layout - 'Hufeisental'

[brittannia]

On my Helix I did not use any underlay and do not get much noise from my running stock [HO], in fact it appears to give a "little atmosphere " for the non sound Locos and Multiple units, my 6 car units run very easily up a gradient of approx 1-38 at all speed steps [from creeping to half speed]

[DIW]

1 in 31 on 50cm radius curves is going to put a lot of strain on the locomotives even with just 5 coaches. And what about freight trains?

But it's a Swiss layout - HAG developed their multi-motored versions of the BLS Ae8/8 for just such long-freight-on-hilly-lines work! (The HAG BLS Re4/4 single-motor model would sort it out anyway in my experience). For SBB fans there is the Re10/10 combination. Again, just the HAG SBB Re4/4 part would do the trick). Combine that with some nice free-running Roco stock and you're away...

[Alan Kettlewell]

 

Also I'm finding that if a short occurs, everything, including the Train Controller software, is freezing up and locking out.  The only way to recover is to close the programme using the Task Manager, then switch off power to the DCC system and then all back on.  Something isn't right somewhere ....

 

Cheers .. Alan

Well, the above issue I ranted about earlier had an astounding cause! These switches I'd created earlier in the Z21 App were the root cause of the problem:

 

 

I would never have connected this to the freezing up issue that's been happening and I only discovered these as the problem by accident. It seems when a short occurred in a district, that switch would 'open' and for some strange reason, this caused everything to lock up, including the Train Controller programme! I have absolutely no idea why but when I removed the switch addresses (removed by setting the appropriate LNet CVs in the boosters to zero) the problem went away. The mind boggles!

 

Cheers ... Alan

[brittannia]

Well, the above issue I ranted about earlier had an astounding cause! These switches I'd created earlier in the Z21 App were the root cause of the problem:

 

image.jpeg

 

I would never have connected this to the freezing up issue that's been happening and I only discovered these as the problem by accident. It seems when a short occurred in a district, that switch would 'open' and for some strange reason, this caused everything to lock up, including the Train Controller programme! I have absolutely no idea why but when I removed the switch addresses (removed by setting the appropriate LNet CVs in the boosters to zero) the problem went away. The mind boggles!

 

Cheers ... Alan

Still it might be a good idea to let Roco know about your problem, as they will thoroughly investigate the problem, if my dealings with an android app problem are a normal practice for Roco, they have spent many hours and 2 different teams investigating on loss of work on the android app, which now [hopefully gone away] is working normally for the last 2 weeks, the problem was that annoying I purchased an Apple tablet, to use on my continental layout, but I still use my Samsung tablet on my UK layout..

[Alan Kettlewell]

Still it might be a good idea to let Roco know about your problem, as they will thoroughly investigate the problem, if my dealings with an android app problem are a normal practice for Roco, they have spent many hours and 2 different teams investigating on loss of work on the android app, which now [hopefully gone away] is working normally for the last 2 weeks, the problem was that annoying I purchased an Apple tablet, to use on my continental layout, but I still use my Samsung tablet on my UK layout..

Yes maybe worth while, thanks. The boosters are from Digikeijs and the cynical side of me says that if I report the problem to Roco they can blame the Digikeijs boosters, and vice versa at Digikeijs .. but no harm in trying I guess.

Cheers ...Alan

[brittannia]

Yes maybe worth while, thanks. The boosters are from Digikeijs and the cynical side of me says that if I report the problem to Roco they can blame the Digikeijs boosters, and vice versa at Digikeijs .. but no harm in trying I guess.

Cheers ...Alan

Good Luck , Alan

 

John

[Dixie Dean]

Thanks for that update, Alan.  I will continue to lurk and watch with interest as your layout develops.  Also very interested in anything you are doing to do with computerisation.  I'm still trying to design my layout, but only have a single domestic garage to fit it in, so it's something of a squeeze.  But hopefully it will all get sorted soon ...

[SwissRailPassion]

I have been lurking for some time and enjoying the build updates. Great to see a Swiss layout in Yorkshire it really looks the business.

You're clearly a very thorough builder, there seems to be hardly any mess too.

[Alan Kettlewell]

I have been lurking for some time and enjoying the build updates. Great to see a Swiss layout in Yorkshire it really looks the business.

You're clearly a very thorough builder, there seems to be hardly any mess too.

 

Hi,

Glad you're enjoying the thread.  Here's an earlier photo showing plenty of mess ...

 

 

Cheers .. Alan

[Alan Kettlewell]

For those who have recently started following this thread and might not have read back through all the pages, I thought it worthwhile copying an extract from page 1, shown below ...

 

 

.... I've changed my plan and will be making my layout based around the southern parts of Germany, same region generally but on the north side of the Tyrol.  This slight deviation from the plan is due to the fact that I bagged a massive amount of used Somerfeldt catenary (from Rails of Sheffield) which is German style.  I estimated the cost of new catenary to be around £1000 for my planned layout so I was pleased to see this job lot of used catenary come up for sale which I got for £325 - quite a saving!  So DB it is then but of course I'll be running trains from Switzerland, Austria and other neighbouring countries.  The main thing for me is modelling the fantastic scenery from the region, hills, mountains, high bridges going over deep ravines etc, 

 

.. I thought about re-starting the thread over in the German Railways section but opinion of those following was that that might be confusing and we should leave things as they are here in the Swiss Railways forum. But, to repeat the last sentence from above, the overall aim is to create a scene from the general region based around Bavaria, Austria and Switzerland. Although strictly not prototypical, I will be running the odd Swiss loco (it's my train-set ...lol).

 

I hope Swiss rail fans will carry on following.

 

Cheers... Alan

[Allegheny1600]

I would have continued to follow had you remained entirely Swiss!

Adding D and A trains to the mix only enhances the pleasure for me, well done!

Cheers,

John.

[Alan Kettlewell]

One day I'll get round to giving the layout a name. I've been scouring maps and Google Earth for a suitable location that will lend itself for the style of landscape I have in mind and the type of international trains I want to run. There will need to a main station as I have one already laid out. I also have planned a second, smaller station, higher up in the hills which will also be the change over to a rack and pinion railway (still not quite firm on that yet, depends on the space available when I build level 3). So far the closest I've seen might be Garmish Partenkirchen. It will all be fictitious of course, and very much compressed, but it would be nice to get somewhere close or representative of an actual area.

 

I'd be very happy if anyone wants to join in with suggestions - but don't be offended if I go completely off on my own tangent .. Lol. Just a bit of fun ..

 

Cheers ... Alan

[eastwestdivide]

Looking at the amount of woodwork, there's a village in Liechtenstein (with views of the railway, and probably of A and CH too), called Planken, which might be a suitable name from a suitable area...

[DIW]

Hmm... border regions, a bit hilly, linguistically Germanic - perhaps something derived from "Grenzberg"?

[Alan Kettlewell]

Well, while I ponder on a name for the layout (thanks for the suggestions), here's another video of a running session from yesterday.  (Must get on with some work one day soon!)  This is all happening automatically under control of Train Controller. 

 

Apologies for the background noises - the floor creaks a lot, my shoes clump noisily, there are birds twittering away outside, neighbours doing gardening and so on.  This is all done on my mobile phone and you'll see I'm no expert at making videos!

 

Anyway, enjoy ..

 

 

Cheers ...Alan

[brittannia]

Enjoyed your video Alan, plus the extent of the layout looks really good,bet the dog enjoys the big room, but if he/she? is anything like mine don't let anything drop on the floor that you both want.!!

[duff man]

Hi Alan.

Very much enjoyed your latest you tube post. Its been a pleasure watching your layout develop.

Well done and looking forward to more in due course.

Craig.

[bgman]

Hi Alan

 

Thanks for posting the video, did I spy a K.Bay S3/6 lurking in the shadows ? That's one loco I do like very much ( in fact I have three of the Roco ones, plus similar ones from other manufacture too ).

 

Whilst I appreciated it's a while before the dreaded ( whispering the word ) ....... ballasting...... you will have quite a task on your hands there. I've just begun mine and have used a Green Scene Ballast Spreader to place mine. It's a tedious part of layout construction IMHO and it does make life slightly easier than the traditional method I've found.

 

I'm sure you've got great satisfaction by reaching this stage being able to sit and watch the trains run and it is giving me pleasure too !

 

Very happy to follow your progress matey.

 

Cheers for now

 

Grahame

[Alan Kettlewell]

Hi Grahame,

 

Glad you're enjoying the videos.  The loco you spotted is a small K.Bay 2-6-0 so not the S3/6.  It's an older Trix model and it was quite a pig to fit the DCC chip into.  It runs and looks OK though pulling a short rake of old time bavarian coaches.  I've got my beady eye on the lookout for a Roco S3/6 - I want the model with the blue and gold livery as I think it looks fabulous, but I feel I might have a hard time finding one.

 

Yes, the dreaded ballasting will raise its head soon.  The last time I ballasted a large layout it took me a month to do and I used 8 of the large plastic jars from Woodlands Scenics.  It was a very tedious task indeed and gets quite costly on large layouts, but I found using the ballast spreader helped a lot.  Most of the layout is double track so even with the spreader there's quite a lot of pushing and shoving the ballast into place to do.  Deep joy! 

 

I found these photos from that previous layout, a British 00 layout based on the S&C line.  It was shaping up to be a good layout but it had to go when we moved house.  The pictures show a small part with the spreader in action and some of the empty jars:

..phew ..

 

Cheers ..Alan

 

 

 

 

[Alan Kettlewell]

...

I'm sure you've got great satisfaction by reaching this stage being able to sit and watch the trains run and it is giving me pleasure too !

 

 

The trouble is I keep doing that instead of getting on with things ...    

 

Alan

[Alan Kettlewell]

I thought this might be interesting - especially to anyone interested in sound files and how the computer can be put to good use. 

 

The BR01 4-6-2 running on my layout in this short video is fitted with DCC but there's no sound on board.  Warning: this may well blow your mind .. lol  

 

 

If you were quick enough  to follow the captions you'll see that the sound was being played through the laptop.  The sound file was something I did a while ago and is actually composed of real sound bites from a British 8F loco, then put together and synchronised to the loco speeds.  There'll be those of you following that know RR&Co's  'Train Controller' software, which is used to control this layout, well, the sound file was created using their add-on programme 'Train Animator'.  This rather clever software is basically a sound file editor where you compose your own loco sounds from real clips.  The clever bit is that you play the sound by connecting up a 5.1 Sound Surround system in your train room and then the software synchronises the sound to the actual location of the train in the room.  In other words the sound 'follows' the train as it moves around the room, fading out from one speaker and fading in to the next speaker as the train moves around - the term is 'using spatial sound'.

 

It sounds complicated - and it is!  It also takes quite a lot of setting up, and those that have dabbled with loco sound projects will know how trying that can be.  However, once you've composed the sound project and have it all nicely synchronised with the loco movements - it's a very simple matter then to assign that sound to other locos, or tweak it a bit where, say, you might have two or more similar class locos.  This is a great system if you have the time and patience to make your own sound projects and compared to the cost of on-board sound chips works out very cheap (but you have to have a licence for Train Controller).  It's also ideal for the smaller scales where fitting a sound chip can be challenging.  The other benefit is that you're getting the full depth and quality of sound played through a 100W or more speaker system!  My 5.1 system was only £30 but it sounds great.

 

I've got to add that I haven't got my 5.1 Surround system fixed up in my shed yet so all that sound in the video is coming from the laptop speaker - but hopefully you'll get the idea and perhaps find this different take on 'sound' a bit interesting.  I'm quite happy to provide further info if anyone is interested enough.

 

Right, enough of these distractions - I've began work on building level 3 track beds so I'd better get on with it.               

 

Cheers .. Alan

Edited May 20, 2016 by Alan Kettlewell

[Alan Kettlewell]

Track Cleaning Wagons

 

​With all the tunnels I'm creating on this layout I'm thinking that a track cleaning wagon or two (or three!) would be very useful.  I've looked around the online shops and see there are several types available from Fleischmann, Roco and so on.   I've previously owned one of the Dapol DCC vacuum and scrub models, which was good but expensive.  So I'd be pleased to hear from anyone who can recommend a good one they've used or currently have working.   

 

Many thanks

Cheers ... Alan 

[Alan Kettlewell]

Level 3 South Spirals

 

​Meanwhile work's began on construction of the spirals/helixes up to Level 3 of the layout.  Level 3 will be single track.  On the south side of the layout will be a small passing station with a platform for the rack & Pinion line which will go up to the top of the mountain above the south spirals.  On the opposite side of the room will be a 4 track storage yard inside the mountain.  Pictures may explain better so here are a few:

 

Long shot down the south side taken form the south spirals.  The vertical profile of the layout is becoming clear in this picture.  On the top board will be the small passing station with the track for the Rack & Pinion line to the left of it:

  

 

All 3 levels seen here with a test train driven up to level 3:

 

Another similar shot showing the level 2 lines diving into a tunnel under level 3.  I always find it takes quite a bit of thinking about the juxtaposition of civil engineering where a bridge crosses over the line just before a tunnel.  Picture references help so let's hope I get it right. 

 

Another example where a bridge crosses the line before a tunnel portal.  I've cut some funny shaped pieces of wood in my time ..but I hope this looks right:

 

Cheers .. Alan

 

 

 

 

 

[Alan Kettlewell]

Level 3 East Spirals

 

I haven't got far with the East Spirals to level 3 yet but here's the thing currently under construction:

 

This is helix on top of a helix, different diameters, so it needs quite a lot of working out.  This is effort number two as I got it in the wrong place first time round ..doh .. must do better!

 

The top helix with go around another turn yet covering 1 1/2 circles to reach level 3.  You can see my preferred construction method using threaded bar and nuts to get the correct clearances and gradients.  Luckily I enjoy a bit of maths mixed in with the construction.  I like the threaded bar method as it takes less space than timber supports and of course provides infinite adjustment. 

 

I'm using 6mm MDF here, which is quite thin for a track bed so it needs plenty of support to prevent sagging.  My lowest clearance is 90mm to allow for partly raised pantographs (I'll be tying the pantographs with fine fishing line so they don't spring up to full height in the tunnels.  There'll be no catenary modelled in out of sight areas. 

 

You might see that I'm having to span the lower level with horizontal pieces supporting the track bed.  I've used this method before and when all the nuts and screws are tightened up it all becomes quite stable.  I'll also add in some timber braces where space allows.  Quite a bit of work to do on this section yet.

 

Another view.  You might see the level 3 framework further back where this will eventually join.  The overhanging support piece sticking out on the right will have some timber bracing later when I've got the helix right.

 

 

With the current nice weather it's great to be able to do the cutting and sawing outside - less mess and less risk to the models. 

Cheers... Alan

[Allegheny1600]

Track Cleaning Wagons

 

​With all the tunnels I'm creating on this layout I'm thinking that a track cleaning wagon or two (or three!) would be very useful.  I've looked around the online shops and see there are several types available from Fleischmann, Roco and so on.   I've previously owned one of the Dapol DCC vacuum and scrub models, which was good but expensive.  So I'd be pleased to hear from anyone who can recommend a good one they've used or currently have working.   

 

Many thanks

Cheers ... Alan 

Hi Alan,

For a project of this size, you're going to want to make this job as easy as possible otherwise it's going to become such a chore it may put you off. Did I mention that my old layout was a multi track affair 27' x 9'!?!

That will mean an investment I'm afraid!

However, don't look on such an investment as denying you a couple of locos - look at it as protecting your catenary from damage, saving your back and fingers from pain and above all, saving you a shedload of time.

You should be able to get track and wheel cleaners (even a whole train cleaner!) here: http://www.lux-modellbau.de/

A somewhat cheaper version here: http://www.dccsupplies.com/item-p-101071/cmx-clean-machine-ho-oo I now have two of these, they're good but still require some occasional assistance from the best track rubber going: http://www.helmsmanuk.co.uk/Contact.html

However, my mate recently started using this: http://woodlandscenics.woodlandscenics.com/show/Item/TT4550/page/1

It works rather well but you have to put in the effort AND be very aware of catenary masts, signals etc.

I still have my Dapol powered machine but only consider it worthwhile as a vacuum cleaner as I don't recommend anything that scratches the railhead.

Hope this helps,

John.