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Life in a Northern Town


Neil
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Guest Jack Benson

Neil,

 

This thread has been most useful for the development of Chandlers Row, your use of Code 100 has been an eye-opener as I need to employ extremely small radius turnouts due to the restricted nature of the trackplan.

May I ask, do you think it possible to upgrade Setrack turnouts by making the crossing Vees conducting? I need an opposing pair of curved turnouts for the quayside loop, all my motive power is short wheelbase and needs as much electrical contact as possible.

Finally, do you intend to make some of track into inset track, I will be interested how you achieve this.

 

Thank you

 

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Hello Jack,

 

It's not difficult to turn Setrack turnouts into live frog examples. Pull the existing rails of the vee out horizontally to keep the fixings to the sleepers intact, carve away the plastic tip of the vee and either slide the rails back in (they may need some filing to fit) or fashion new rails from spare lengths of code 100 and slide them into place. A bit of solder to join the rails, hot iron and work quickly and the mechanical work is done. I did one some time ago and I've tackled a couple of diamond crossing too.

 

I've tackled inset track, quite a lot of it on my Belgian layout and I've described the process here.

 

 

I will be having some inset track on Northern Town too but that will be a good few months ahead.

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2 hours ago, backofanenvelope said:

Just found your thread Neil and looking forward to this progressing, as an ex resident of York :)

 

Is Jolly cabs building based on the rank near Micklegate Bar? Looks very evocative if nor..

Tom

 

Well spotted, it's one half of the Fleetways office on Queen Street, between the station and Micklegate Bar.

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Over the last month I've been busy on the layout adding point motors and wiring. It's not very visually interesting so I'll try to whizz through things at a decent rate.  Before I start I need to state that I really dislike working underneath the baseboards so I'm making all the connections on the baseboard surface where they will ultimately be hidden by removable panels. This extends to the point motors too, though there will only be six of these to hide (those points which I hypothesise would be controlled from the box) all others being hand points.

 

919378491_cc020.jpg.63679c982ad597e607e70e5b026964a8.jpg

 

The rodding from motor to point runs in grooves in thin ply let into the foam underlay. Microswitches actuated by the crank of the point motor change frog polarity. Note the thin black card used to cover the point rodding and wiring runs carved out of the underlay.

 

289457345_cc025.jpg.42c90f44ed677a80a6d1fc9da1781316.jpg

 

I will contrive concealment of the point motors, avoiding a hut by each point by adopting a range of cunning disguises.

 

457402788_cc023.jpg.87d6efd0ccc276b3eeebc272054f8394.jpg

 

The feeds to the point motors have been brought out to a shelf out of the way of the driving positions ....

 

845345496_cc029.jpg.519a9c51414a83aa991b342601f4a454.jpg

 

.... and connected up to the lever frame.

 

1799345822_cc033.jpg.0d188aa7e4a286d0e47f09f32318d365.jpg

 

 

 

 

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Since the last update I've been slowly working away at the layout. It's been slow because the good weather tempted me out into the garden with some large things to plant and to build an arch over the front path.

 

1399203528_gar03.jpg.144ffef7e66ba1a4081f98f41285f12a.jpg

 

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gibbet.jpg.9a49fa6f315a43e8b75617eaf75cc145.jpg

 

Once the weather was back to its normal summer setting work on the layout resumed. One thing that I should have tackled in the very early stages was the need to paint the rear of the dividing wall between layout and fiddle yard. I finally got round to it last week which has given me somewhere to fix the signal box diagram.

 

1546436623_cc041.jpg.affb75425d47a1c6b371d0ba869a5104.jpg

 

Also receiving attention was the undeveloped side of the layout where the light railway will run alongside the river and warehouses. My first attempt fitted everything in but didn't float my boat.

 

1325686161_cc042.jpg.1eb0d90aa8e9cf8ee0bc3554777467a5.jpg

 

In these situations I know not to try and force a solution, so I shut the door and left it overnight to see what a fresh day brought. Normally when I'm unhappy with the composition of a layout I try paring it back; so this is what I did.

 

1361954136_cc045.jpg.9bb1cf20e4ef1acdca097e0d9b60db9f.jpg

 

Everything just seemed to drop in place and I'm much happier with the result.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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On 21/03/2020 at 13:38, 31A said:

Beat me to it!  My aunt used to have the cafe on the corner of Fetter Lane & Skeldergate down from Joe Capaldi's factory.  Now flattened for a car park.  Hello Neil! Very evocative modelling, especially for us Yorkies of a certain age.

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Today I've been concentrating on the factory site to the rear of the boards, just where the little yellow diesel is in the above photo. The first job was to convert a set track Y point to a live frog example.

 

1168060841_cc053.jpg.045118959bff013dbf04dbefac6aa645.jpg

 

It's pretty easy to do this by extracting the rails of the V, carving away excess plastic, filing the rail ends to suit, pushing them further home and soldering up when happy. As this shortens the V and I'm using set track curves for the tight radius tracks leading to the point then the curves had to be cut to fit too. As I had the soldering iron out I tagged on wire tails underneath so it will be ready to install. This area will have the trackbed raised up on 2x1 battens to match the rest of the yard tracks but I couldn't resist a few photos with trains just to see how it might look.

 

1293618609_cc054.jpg.9552a95e2cd9bbdc29e42234af3ed59d.jpg

 

447199221_cc055.jpg.ac546d3fa00b11cbcffb5a7ca5eb5397.jpg

 

 

 

 

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1 minute ago, Jon Gwinnett said:

How tight radius are you going with the Settrack curves? I’m trying to stick at R4 or above (and then only on one one curve which is tight-ish on the prototype) even “off-stage” as it were.

 

I'm using the sharpest radius stuff for the factory, R2 (I think) for parts of the light railway but far gentler curves for the BR area of responsibility using flexitrack.

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14 hours ago, danstercivicman said:

What do you mix the sharp sand with to get that look?  Looks really good! 

 

Thank you, it's black powder paint. I sieve the sand first as there's a surprising amount of larger particles in the bag. Unfortunately, as I mentioned above,  some of the colour leaches out of the ballast during the wetting and glueing stage so I've had to go over it with black spray paint from a rattle can.

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I've just noticed that in between some earlier posts the forum software states how much time has elapsed, 'two weeks later' or 'four weeks later'. I'm not really sure if this will act to speed me up or whether with my contrarian nature it'll slow me down, maybe in time I'll make my mind up.

 

This week it's the bad weather which has moved things on. At the right hand end of the layout I cobbled together a mock up for a low relief row of shops to stand opposite the coal drops. The layout needs to look like it's in the heart of the city here and that the city continues past the boundaries of the modelled scene.

 

1241948509_yk151.jpg.b155e40153975ace4abac016db238375.jpg

 

I was happy with the proportions of the shops but there's obviously a need for more low relief stuff to close off this end of the layout. As the structure I want was demolished years ago and as this is my only photo ...

 

738945533_Skeldergatewarehouse1.jpg.062b6a47936cb92aa563b6ffbb0d38e9.jpg

 

... I got the card and pens out to create this.

 

1863642555_yk155.jpg.798de79443817b2444256d385b6bb53d.jpg

 

However I thought it still a bit lacking so I borrowed another card and pen mock up from the industrial sidings area to see if it improved things.

 

377089635_yk156.jpg.a1b8e1031a3127ec0b9a16c7383fa72f.jpg

 

I think I'm getting there though the style of this building is all wrong. The next step will be a two pronged assault, one being to find and draw something more suitable for the Skeldergate area of York the second being to sort out the road surfaces at the end of the layout which will have to start off at the same level as the coal drops and then gradually gain height as it winds around the yard to being level with the upper surface at the rear.

 

3944630_yk153.jpg.771711c87994f59fca725c6502a8ae1d.jpg

Edited by Neil
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