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7 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

Can I ask the source of those metal brackets that are holding the diagonal piece on the legs?

 

Getting the legs nice and rigid is one of the areas that I struggle with.

 

I am convinced they were a B&Q find although they are years old as all of our layouts fit on the same legs

 

john 

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On the very front right of they layout we want a pub and a couple of shops to add a little interest and show the start of the town. This is the design work for the caucus and now printed. It’ll be clad in flemish bond slaters plastic card

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  • RMweb Gold
1 hour ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

Can I ask the source of those metal brackets that are holding the diagonal piece on the legs?

 

Getting the legs nice and rigid is one of the areas that I struggle with.

I feel your pain!

If there’s a Screwfix near you, try these:

Hafele Corner Gussets Zinc-Plated  65 x 65 x 19mm 10 Pack

Flat plates doing a similar job are:

Angle Plates Zinc-Plated 76 x 76 x 16.5mm 10 Pack

Half the battle is knowing what things are called when fighting B&Q etc so the names might help.

Paul.

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Basic design of the control panel and how we intend it to be used, your thoughts would be highly appreciated as when you design it yourself it’s hard to think about how easy it is for somebody to learn it

 

Method

 

Signalled routes

 

Press the red signal button required for the route providing it is illuminated (if not illuminated it is locked out by another route).
The signal button pressed will extinguish to acknowledge the button press. 
Any conflicting route buttons and points buttons within the route will extinguish to show they can’t be pressed.
Points will call to the correct position (indicators on the panel show there location).
The signal will clear (repeat on the panel will also show clear).
The signal button will re illuminated to show it can be pressed to cancel the route.
Once the train has completed the route, the signal button is pressed again to cancel the route.
The signal button pressed will extinguish to acknowledge the button press.
The signal is replaced and the indicator on the panel will show red.
All conflicting route lights and point buttons will illuminate.
The signal button will illuminate bringing the panel back to normal.

 

 

Train movements around the yard

 

Providing there are no conflicting routes cleared the point buttons will be illuminated.
The point indicators show the position of the points.
If the points are in the wrong position the press the associated button to change the point position. 
The point button will extinguish to acknowledge the button press.
The points will be called to the opposite of their current position.
The point button will illuminate again to return to the normal state.

 

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  • RMweb Gold

Would you not be better working on an entrance exit (NX) style panel? Just thinking that it would be easier for others. As you are at the present time, you need to know what the route each signal corresponds to. On an NX it’s one button to start the route and one to finish it. Your principal of illuminating potential route options could still work, but an NX style would be more friendly. Just a thought

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9 hours ago, MarshLane said:

Would you not be better working on an entrance exit (NX) style panel? Just thinking that it would be easier for others. As you are at the present time, you need to know what the route each signal corresponds to. On an NX it’s one button to start the route and one to finish it. Your principal of illuminating potential route options could still work, but an NX style would be more friendly. Just a thought

Being an S&T man I’d feel very at home with an NX panel. Something for me to consider, I’m a bit limited on the number of buttons I can use. A digitrax bdl168 is about £130 and that gives me 16 inputs, I’d rather spend that again for a second only to add an extra 1 or 2 buttons

 

John

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49 minutes ago, Johndc120 said:

Being an S&T man I’d feel very at home with an NX panel. Something for me to consider, I’m a bit limited on the number of buttons I can use. A digitrax bdl168 is about £130 and that gives me 16 inputs, I’d rather spend that again for a second only to add an extra 1 or 2 buttons

 

John

 

If your on digitrax have you thought about using a CML (Now Signatrak) Tower Master card, which was designed to work specifically with Loconet?  Can accept inputs from buttons, and power LEDs and I think there are 40 input/outputs on it.  I have one here I'll have to dig it out and check, but it would be far better than a BDL168.   You can even configure the TowerMaster to set up routes if you wish.


Rich

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13 hours ago, MarshLane said:

 

If your on digitrax have you thought about using a CML (Now Signatrak) Tower Master card, which was designed to work specifically with Loconet?  Can accept inputs from buttons, and power LEDs and I think there are 40 input/outputs on it.  I have one here I'll have to dig it out and check, but it would be far better than a BDL168.   You can even configure the TowerMaster to set up routes if you wish.


Rich

 

Just had a look at the manual for the tower master, what I’m not sure about is if a push button being pressed will show up on the loconet as a sensor and also if a command from the computer on the loconet can operate any of the LED outputs?

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13 hours ago, MarshLane said:

 

If your on digitrax have you thought about using a CML (Now Signatrak) Tower Master card, which was designed to work specifically with Loconet?  Can accept inputs from buttons, and power LEDs and I think there are 40 input/outputs on it.  I have one here I'll have to dig it out and check, but it would be far better than a BDL168.   You can even configure the TowerMaster to set up routes if you wish.


Rich

 

Just had a look at the manual for the tower master, what I’m not sure about is if a push button being pressed will show up on the loconet as a sensor and also if a command from the computer on the loconet can operate any of the LED outputs?

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  • RMweb Gold
11 hours ago, Johndc120 said:

 

Just had a look at the manual for the tower master, what I’m not sure about is if a push button being pressed will show up on the loconet as a sensor and also if a command from the computer on the loconet can operate any of the LED outputs?

 

Hi John,

Yes you can configure the Tower Master card in various ways. One is as a direct conversion so a button press results in a sensor message being put out.  Equally, an input can be configured to watch for particular messages that would turn an LED on.  Depending on how your going to be working, you can also configure as an NX card, so press Button 1 then press Button 4 sets a route from the Up Main to the Up Slow (for example), but in reality its sending a series of accessor decoder messages over Loconet, so even the computer can pick up what's happening.  Very versatile card as you can also cascade routes as well if you wanted.

 

You can configure each cell on the board as a different type - ie point cell, display cell, copy cell etc.. Have a look in the System Variables Guide - 3.1.8 details cells lighting LEDs, and 3.1.9 details cells with push buttons.  Any queries, let me know - I am no master by any means, but I have played around with these cards!

 

Rich

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Last night we managed to cut all the baseboard tops and dry fit them on the layout. The main part of this is trimming the risers which we put in as we were building the layout, either sanding the ones too high or adding plasticard to the ones which are too low

 

It’s great to see the tops on the basboard as you can really see how some of the layout is going to look

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Last night's task was o confirm the positions of all of the points, this wen surprisingly well so with the spare time available we had a play with some of our structures and stock o ensure the planned movements would work and it looked how we wanted it to

 

a Branch line freight is stopped at the signal waiting for the midday passenger to arrive at Elmore

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the same positions but in this shot the leat bridge can be seen which needs to be cut in and fixed underneath the baseboard

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After arriving at Elmore the Midday passenger has run round ready to depart

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The passenger, now departing, passes the freight as it crosses onto the mainline 

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The freight now arrives at Elmore and runs round

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The freight has now proceeded up to the end of the loop where it waits for the local suburban train to arrive

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Seen as the signals are coming along and the track plan is drawn on the layout, we have been able to drill the holes for the signals. This gives us another glimpse into how the layout will look when completed

 

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The 2 platform starters, the full brake is in the main platform and the track closer is the bay, the shunt signal on the main platform is to go into the yard area

 

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 This is the end of the double track section, the left signal is the normal direction which clears the train into the main platform. The bracket on the right is for trains from the branch which travel wrong direction down the double line, this signal clears into either the main platform on the left or the bay

 

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at the other end of the double track section, this bracket clears either to the branch on the left or the main line on the right

 

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The 2 signals on the branch and mainline which protect movements onto the double track section. These have both been cut down for sighting through the bridge

 

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The sighting of the signal through the bridge

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servo brackets for points

 

This week we we have also fitted all of the servo brackets, below shows the process we followed to fit them, the brackets are our own design although they are available on ebay should anyone need any.

 

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The servo mount, drilling template and a 2mm hole which was worked out from the templates as the centre of the drive

 

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with a 2mm drill bit in the hole, the jig is aligned with the point timbers, the first 3mm mounting hole is drilled. An M3 bolt can the be placed into this hole to hold the alignment while the second mounting hole is drilled

 

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The operating hole can now be opened up to 6mm

 

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all 3 holes are then countersunk

 

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M3 countersunk bolts are then pushed through the holes

 

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Nyloc nuts are then fitted to the underneath to fix the brackets

 

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when fitted the bolts heads must be flush or lower than the baseboard and the pivot point of the bracket should be directly in the centre of the operating hole

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Experimenting with Kadee couplings

 

We have used kadees for many years now and one of the big problems for british outline stock is the way the magnet pulls the vehicles towards the magnets causing them to uncouple.

 

The way we have always got around this is to fit foam brakes which rub on the axles of the stock and prevent the pull. This has always worked well for us but on the longer trains of Elmore and having gradients another method had to be found

 

following a thread on here, we have been experimenting with cutting down the length of the magnets to 15mm, this reduces the pull, but also when the stock is pulled by the magnet the couplings are off the magnets so the vehicles won’t uncouple

 

 

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  • RMweb Gold

Is that the ‘soft’ undertrack magnet with steel baseplate?  Just cut lengthwise but still full width?

I can see it works well with FFC (fine finger control): have you tried it with a loco yet? (I have enough bother with  missing the long magnets due to slow reaction time!)

Paul.

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Hi Paul,

 

so yes these are the soft undertrack magnets which we’ve cut down the length but kept the width the same.

 

we have tried it with a loco and it seemed to work better, I think the loco is smoother than a finger. 
 

on Shwt we have to aim for small neo magnets which are marked with a bit of highlighting on the chairs so these should be a bigger target that those

 

John

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The other bridge that had to be cut in is the mill leat bridge. 
 

The reason for this goes back to having the river going across the baseboards, we didn’t want a cut straight across the river as that would look unsightly. The answer was to put a weir on the edge of the baseboard. So the water going over the weir will hide the gap on the baseboard.

 

we then had to think of a reason for why a weir would be in the river. A common use was to control the level to keep a constant feed to a mill pond, so this is what we are going to try and model. Here is the 3D printed bridge which can now be clad in brick plasticard05E9A71B-1915-4B99-82A9-349DED39D70A.jpeg.9180183f8dcd23b5a5bc46a126485397.jpeg

 

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A little bit of work on the engine shed base/pit and also the ash pit and concrete surround

 

The pits will now be brick lined and steps added before they are stuck in from underneath.

 

The concrete pads have the correct size hole cut into them but also L1 chairs glued in place. This rail was only for construction and has now been removed

 

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