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Spital Bridge - Whitby MRCs 7mm Urban BLT


Boris
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  • 2 weeks later...

Having now finished the easy parts of a wiring (board A&B which were largely straight through), attention has been turned to the complex business of the rest of the layout.  We are mainly concentrating on the yard for the time being with a goal set of having the yard running completely by the meeting on the 12th of December, this is a small milestone event for us as it will mark 12 months since planning was started.  A little bit of a fuss and a load of photos will be posted on the club facebook page on that date showing how the layout has progressed. 

 

https://www.facebook.com/WhitbyMRC

 

Is the link for those of you on facebook and who want to follow what we get up to (not just O gauge happenings on there)

 

Board C is the primary electrical board with control panel attachments as well as 2 point motors to worry about, things are further complicated by several section changeovers in here.  The wiring looks horrendous at the moment, but it will be gathered and tidied up once it is finished, or parts of it are in a condition to be declared finished and tidied.

 

I am going to have to explain naming the point motors as well!  We needed something to refer to the motors by in the documentation for the layout and when asked "what shall we call this motor" a member replied "Fred", so we now have Fred, George and Elvis as our current point motors.

 

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Board D will be fairly easy to wire, yes it will be home to 4 point motors but the actual number of sections are quite small.

 

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Further research has also been undertaken into loading dock type structures, as for various reasons it is desirable to have a dual height structure for end on and side on loading of various imaginary traffics, likely including potatoes, because I married one.

 

So, after seeing a photo of a destination sign for the Stamford Bridge line from Market Weighton to York in the East Yorkshire Railways thread I found a station I had never heard of - Fangfoss.  A root round the disused stations website found the location, and guess what, a magnificent example of a dual height loading dock, complete with photos.  These have been copied from the site:

 

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This is not only almost exactly what I had in mind, it is interesting, unique and local.  I rather like the shaped edging stone and the steps up from the ramped end - presumably going back to the days of hobnail boots and them being pants on the ice.  There will be a field trip soon.

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  • 1 month later...

Like the man said, work has been progressing on the layout.  Wiring has now been completed, and we are glad that we wired a board and then tested it before moving on, it allowed fault finding to be much easier than having to trace through numerous boards, and the breakout plugs came into their own as they allowed power to be moved between sections to simulate a variety of conditions.

 

As well as fitting out the control box which will be done over the next 2 weeks or so, work is progressing on other aspects of the layout, leading up to the painting and ballasting of the track.  We currently have a number of Peco buffer stops to assemble and add to the end of the layout, and have been looking for plastic cosmetic fishplates (sourced from the USA).  The interesting bit has been agreeing the spacing for them aka the length of the track panels, with this area having a good mixture of 39', 45' and 60' panels!  So, applying a little bit of sense we are going to lay the main line as 60' panels with the goods yard being 45' lengths to represent older track.

 

I would have also liked to have included a picture of the inside of the control box, but unfortunately there is a livestock issue at the moment with the Cat Controller violently resisting all attempts to remove it.

 

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Just to prove progress has been made, these are some of the terminated connections in the control box.  We are in effect working from the bottom up, or from the layout back to the transformer feeds.  I am fairly sure there are 2 too few section feeds coming in on the left hand plug and  1 too few on the right hand plug, so at the next club night the pin chart will be checked against the layout and updated as required.

 

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Boris and Kev have fitted the buffer stops and securely nailed them down -  a O gauge train travelling at speed is a weighty object!

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Edited by kes
Images missing - were too big.
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Well, interestingly enough we connected the control box to the layout tonight and with a tiny amount of tweaking the whole lot works, there is a video that needs editing down a little bit before it can be posted anywhere.  Next job will be to finish the fiddle yard bits and poke at a few odds and ends.

 

The layout is programmed to be available for all club members to use on the 6th March which will be our next official running night.  After this we will commence track painting and ballasting, but it will be nice to give people the chance to have a play with the big toys.

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Today I soldered up the sliding bolts from square brass tube, that will align and energise the fiddle yard tracks. Wednesday night should see this correctly aligned. There is a slight complication that both bolts have to be capable of aligning with any of 5 sidings, and any two at the same time - accuracy in placement is required.

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Kes has already invested a lot of time in the fiddle yard ensuring the tracks are exactly the correct spacing apart, so it should be a reasonably straight forward job.  In the meantime I need to wire the jumper cables that will connect the fidde yard to the rest of the layout, using a recovred 5 PIN DIN male to female lead that has been cut in half.

 

Hopefully we are on course to have the layout fully running by the 6th March to allow the rest of the club to have a play with it, after ourselves of course!

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Today I have been making progress with my scratch built N10. The chassis now runs with pickups fitted, and the foot plate and valance have been made out of a selection of plasticard sections.

 

Bare chassis with pickups.

 

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The centre drivers are sprung and the rods jointed. The rear trailing wheels are arranged as a trailing truck to deal with sharp curvature, and held in line by a guitar string "spring".

 

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The curves in the valances will be filed tomorrow when it is all set hard.DSCF3400.JPG.ddf4b22be930051af33237bb82d87ad0.JPG

 

The front pick ups are hidden within the front splashers.

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A busy night saw 3 of us working on finishing the fiddle yard wiring this evening to make sure the layout is ready in time for its running slot on the 6th March.  This entailed us fitting 2 common return harnesses to the fiddle yard (one to each half of the folding over sections) and then wiring the whole lot together using 7 core trailer cable with the insulation stripped off all but a small part to get main power from the yard entry feeds right up to the end of the traverser.

 

The whole lot was then tested with a multimeter from the 5 pin feed plug so we know there are no shorts and it all connects through.

 

Next week we start adding cosmetic fishplates to the scenic boards.

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On 24/02/2019 at 19:58, JaymzHatstand said:

I recognise those hands! Who let my dad loose with a Stanley knife?! 

 

Looking forward to seeing the whole layout in action, and one day with a G5 on it! 

 

 

 

Cheers

 

J

You bring it, you can run it.  If I can shoehorn a blue 20 onto the layout (sometimes) I'm sure we can run one of those.  I would advise against loitering around the layout too much otherwise as you will likely be given a job to do.

 

My wife has now decided the layout needs a signal box and intends to build it herself, complete with interior and lighting, there was even talk of a soundboard app and a bluetooth speaker for ambient effects.  No doubt I will be made to post updates on it on this thread.

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Mrs Boris has been extremely busy and has so far assembled the basic shell of the signal box, this is as far as the main structure will now go pending painting and interior assemble.  More information should follow soon.

 

She has also undercoated the ballast bin this afternoon.

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Mrs Boris has also been busy assembling some interior bits for the signal box and has been trial fitting them.  I believe these items are from a Springside pack, there is also lighting to fit inside, a red bulb for the stove and 3-4 white bulbs form the roof to fully light the interior.

 

To provide ambient noise she has a battery bluetooth speaker from the pound shop and is programming a phone app with signal box noises, the idea being that its not making noise all the time - you'll get random footsteps, phones ringing and kettles boiling.  You'll also get random lever movement noises and buttons for bell codes/block machine operation so you can hear the signalman accepting/offering the next train, so you can start the correct sound sequence for the correct class of train to/from the fiddle yard.

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