Lower Thames Yard

[Tallpaul69]

Good Afternoon Fellow Modellers,

Work on the layout started well this morning, I started by drawing a diagram of the electrical connections, point motors etc. on the underside of the left board, reasoning that this was easier to do when I could sit on a chair with the board on its side, rather than trying to do so later on from below when the board was on its legs.

 

I also took a photo to help me draw a final version of this diagram later. The photo looks like this:-

 

 

Next to do something constructive towards getting the layout operational.

The first two  legs went on like clockwork.

However, with them on, I realised that it was going to be difficult to get the other two legs on with the board on its side, as I would not be able to access the bolt in each leg that goes through the side resting on the floor. I also had doubts about getting the board up on its legs, with all 4 legs bolted on due to both its weight and the space available.

So I decided to tip the board forward so it rested on the two feet and its rear side, and then, having positioned the two legs ready to hand,  lift it up by the rear and holding it in the middle of the rear with one hand position a leg with the other hand. The tricky part of this procedure was to put one bolt in with one hand while still holding the centre of the rear with the other. Having captive nuts in the legs did make this process easier, as did the ledge at the top of the each side of the leg which engaged with the bottom of the base board side.

 

If the above doesn't make much sense, please read it again tomorrow when I will include a photo of a leg showing the ledge and the bolt positions. 

 

So the first board now looks like this:-

 

 

In the background of this shot you can see Wycombe End running along the far wall of the railway room. When this Bradenham board is in position it will be possible to run a connection from the double junction in the right side middle of the board into the top end of Wycombe End.

 

In fact, this view will not be possible when the board is in its final position as the foreground of the shot will be in the back corner of the room.

Initially the foreground between the camera and the curved track will not have any scenic treatment, but before moving this board into it's final position I will make a plan of the area and take an overhead photo of it with the aim of later producing a diorama to drop (not literally!) into this space. 

 

So tomorrow's first job is to get the bolts on the legs that will not be accessible once the board is in position tightened up, then move the board into it's final position and use the leg adjusters to set it level, and finally tighten the remaining leg screws.

 

If this goes well, I will have time to unwrap and draw the underside plan of the right hand board, but I will first have to move some items that ultimately will provide storage around the rear perimeter of the layout, which currently are standing in space I will need to erect the right hand board. 

 

Best regards for now,

Paul

 

 

[Tallpaul69]

On 01/07/2021 at 15:14, Tallpaul69 said:

So tomorrow's first job is to get the bolts on the legs that will not be accessible once the board is in position tightened up, then move the board into it's final position and use the leg adjusters to set it level, and finally tighten the remaining leg screws.

 

If this goes well, I will have time to unwrap and draw the underside plan of the right hand board, but I will first have to move some items that ultimately will provide storage around the rear perimeter of the layout, which currently are standing in space I will need to erect the right hand board. 

 

Hi All,

So the first job above sound like a a simple one, and not likely to take long!

Unfortunately this proved not to be the case.

By lunchtime, however, I had the board within an inch of the correct position! The factor I had failed to take into consideration was that the walls that form the corner into which the board was to be fitted are less than smooth because the structural walls are covered with insulation which then has a cloth surface covering. Also the wall cloth coverings do not form a 90 degree in the corner, so there will be a gap along one wall or the other. It now appears likely that i will need to decide which side the gap should be so as to have least effect on the whole layout's placement within the room and then make up the whole layout.

If the position of the layout seems wrong, I will have to separate the three boards again so I can reposition the first board before joining the other two boards to it once more.

    

Thus I did not get far with unwrapping and drawing the underside plan of the right hand board, but tomorrow is another day, and I know from past experience on major jobs, slow, steady, and thorough, is the best way forward.

 

I did take a few minutes to hand propel my class 121 Trailer second around the board and was pleased that it stayed everywhere that I left it, thus confirming the levelness of the board as indicated by my spirit level!  

 

Writing this, I realise that while I have taken a few photos, including one to explain my comments yesterday about the leg fixing, they are still on my Iphone , so tonight i will download them to include in tomorrow's posting.

 

Cheers for now,

Paul

[Tallpaul69]

Hi One and All,

I must be getting better at this baseboard erecting lark!

I managed to unwrap, record the underside electrics, mount the legs, and position the right hand baseboard all in one session today.

 

Tomorrow, I can get to grips with the third board which sits between the two I have done so far. The crunch will come when I have unwrapped it and measured it, with fingers crossed that it will fit. I think I have about 1/2 inch at the wall ends where I can if necessary get the bards closer to the walls to give me an extra inch in the middle for the third board.

I am slightly concerned by two machine dowels in the sides of the two end boards which engage with holes in the sides of the middle board. These protrude about 1/4 inch from the end boards but have no means of adjustment so the middle board needs to sit down between the ends of these and and then the end boards need to be shifted towards each other to engage the dowels in the middle board.

We will see how this works tomorrow!

Meanwhile, here is the promised photo of the board legs.

 

 

The strip of ply to the right side of the photo is a protection for the ends of the tracks which come right to the edge of the board to interface with the tracks on the next board.

 

Keep your fingers crossed for the insertion of the third board!

 

Best regards

Paul   

[Tallpaul69]

Good afternoon all you shower dodgers!

 

Between the showers I have been in and out to the Railway Room seeing what progress I could make with erecting the centre board.

 

My plan was to put the board on its rear between the erected boards, sufficiently far back that when I leant it to the front I could connect it to the other boards with two of the fixing bolts and then tip it up so that the rear fixing bolts could be inserted.

 

However, lining up the front bolts from the inside of the left and right board frames to their captive nuts in the centre board frame proved far from easy. Firstly, I had to support one side while I did the other, which needed careful selection of the boxes used to ensure the weight of the centre board didn't push the stack of boxes over. Then getting the first bolt aligned proved difficult.

I managed it eventually, and then found the second bolt a bit easier.

The next problem was aligning the back end of the centre board with the fixing bolt holes. Eventually I had to stack up boxes to support the rear corners of the board at the right height, as it was just too heavy to hold in position and pass through the bolts.

 

This process was further complicated by finding that the right and left boards were not correctly aligned due to the previously mentioned irregularities in the room wall!   

 

Currently the centre board is fixed at the front by bolts and supported at the rear by stacked boxes. I have a few things on tomorrow, so I may not get to finalise the centre board fixing until Tuesday.

 

Cheers for now

Paul

[Nick Gough]

It's surprising how uneven, and out of square, even modern buildings can be.

 

When I built my boards I did a lot of the assembly in the position that they would eventually occupy and squared up to the adjacent board(s). Even so it still can be difficult to get everything in the right place.

[5BarVT]

43 minutes ago, Nick Gough said:

It's surprising how uneven, and out of square, even modern buildings can be.

 

When I built my boards I did a lot of the assembly in the position that they would eventually occupy and squared up to the adjacent board(s). Even so it still can be difficult to get everything in the right place.

I’m cheating. I have a design for a square room but there are some bits where I have ‘give’ so can adjust the size of the board to suit when I build.

Paul.

[Tallpaul69]

The saving grace in all this is that at least the floor of my Railway room is nice and level!

[Tallpaul69]

Good Afternoon All,

Things went better than expected in town this morning, so I was able to capitalise on that by spending some time on Bradenham after lunch. 

Thankfully things continued to go well and I now have the centre board bolted in place although  I am not 100% happy with the gap between it and the right hand board, despite the fact that my test wagons run over all the track joints ok.

 

Knowing from past experience the folly of trying to hurry things when I am starting to get tired, I decided to stop work on the layout, and take one of the DCC Concepts Cobalt Alpha Central switch boxes into the house and unpack it so as to read the paperwork.       

 

From the manual this looks deceptively easy to set up, but if all does go smoothly, I might have a train running by later tomorrow? 

Tomorrow I will also take some photographs to put up here as a visual update. 

 

Take care folks, I wonder what Boris will say tonight, will we be asked (but not ordered?) to still mask and keep our distance after the 19th?

Cheers

Paul     

[5BarVT]

49 minutes ago, Tallpaul69 said:

Take care folks, I wonder what Boris will say tonight, will we be asked (but not ordered?) to still mask and keep our distance after the 19th?

He’s going to be optimistic and gung ho like he always is and then regret it later when the impact on the rest of us becomes clear.

Apologies for politicking, but I have a feeling I will be much less happy to go out on public transport and to “eat out to help spread” if relaxation is as predicted.

Paul.

[Tallpaul69]

Hi All,

Despite having to dodge the showers, today went well on the modelling front. I was able to get the boards connected electrically, set up the NCE Power cab and therefore test run a few locomotives round Bradenham.

Fearing there might be complications, I had not intended initially to set up the DCC Concepts Alpha Centrals to control the points, as I thought that the points in the up and down mains were set for main line running, but I soon realised that the up line had the yard entry point set towards the yard.

Because the Cobalt iP Digital point motors are motor driven rather than by solenoids, it was not possible to reset the errant point manually, so there was nothing for it but to get some points useable.

I was pleased that I only had to connect the Alpha Central to the Power cab socket, and then found that the LEDs lit up showing how the points were set, and that pressing the correct button reset the yard entry point! 

So six or so of my locos got a welcome stretching of their legs and I was pleased that there were no problems where the tracks crossed the board joints.

So the next time the rain eased, I shut things down and retired to the house before anything had a chance to go wrong.

 

Take care everyone,

Cheers

Paul

[Tallpaul69]

Good Morning All,

I am pleased to confirm that Bradenham is installed, the boards connected, and level. Electrically the layout is operational with two provisos:-

 

Firstly, and I think I can deal with this ok, I have only been able to check the points operated by one Alpha Central, that is the ones at the front of the layout,  numbers 1 to  12 (but no number 3?). This is because I need to carefully follow the instructions in the manual to set the second Alpha Central for points 13 upwards rather than 1 to 12.

 

The second problem is that electrofrog point pair 1 changes over correctly via the point motors but the one of the pair of points nearest the front of the layout is dead of traction power. I have tried with a number of different locos and used them to approach the point from all three directions, but it is consistently dead. I am guessing that there is a wiring fault under the point, but I have yet to investigate underneath the board.

 

Hopefully there will be an obvious detached wire, but I would welcome peoples' thoughts in case this is not the answer?   

 

Best regards

Paul

[Tallpaul69]

Good Afternoon,

I managed to cure the point control panel problem at the second attempt, but the point frog problem took a  lot more discussion between my self, the builders, and those who contributed to a thread I opened specifically for the problem.

Firstly, there wasn't an obvious loose wire!

However, some photos I took (but didn't get to post here, but the best one is below), revealed that the wiring to the frog switch on this point (labelled 10differed from that on the point behind it (labelled 2) which worked correctly.

 

 

So I am pleased to tell you that reversing the yellow and blue wires on the problem point (point 1), has removed the problem, locos run well over the point in all directions !

Having said that, while getting the wires out was easy enough, getting them back in correctly was tough. It reminded me why I was aiming to minimise the amount of wiring I had to do under the layout.

 

Getting the lighting, my eyes and the wire in the right position where for instance, I was close enough to see the detail of the holes for the cable and the securing clips, without my fingers being between the light and the point switch, was not easy and took a lot of patience.

I couldn't get to see the wire connections as clearly as they show on the photo above.

 

So now the layout works fine, but the railway room needs a serious tidy up, and I need to catch up on work in other areas, so the layout will take a back seat for a few days!

 

Take care All,

Regards,

Paul

[5BarVT]

2 hours ago, Tallpaul69 said:

Getting the lighting, my eyes and the wire in the right position where for instance, I was close enough to see the detail of the holes for the cable and the securing clips, without my fingers being between the light and the point switch, was not easy and took a lot of patience.

Difficult enough when the board can be upended to do it.  Almost impossible working upside down - as you have discovered.

Pleased (for you) that it’s sorted.
Paul.

Edited July 10, 2021 by 5BarVT
Added words.

[St Enodoc]

11 hours ago, Tallpaul69 said:

Getting the lighting, my eyes and the wire in the right position where for instance, I was close enough to see the detail of the holes for the cable and the securing clips, without my fingers being between the light and the point switch, was not easy and took a lot of patience.

I couldn't get to see the wire connections as clearly as they show on the photo above.

 

9 hours ago, 5BarVT said:

Difficult enough when the board can be upended to do it.  Almost impossible working upside down - as you have discovered.

Pleased (for you) that it’s sorted.
Paul.

 

I place the wire into the (right - don't ask) hole and hold it there, then open the spring clamp with a small screwdriver (small enough for the blade to fit into the slot on the clamp). Push the wire in and release the clamp, then do a gentle pull test. Work towards yourself if you have a choice.

[Tallpaul69]

18 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

 

 

I place the wire into the (right - don't ask) hole and hold it there, then open the spring clamp with a small screwdriver (small enough for the blade to fit into the slot on the clamp). Push the wire in and release the clamp, then do a gentle pull test. Work towards yourself if you have a choice.

My slightly tongue in cheek comments on Sainty's perfectly sensible approach, based on my experience with these joints:-

 

Place the wire into the right hole -first problem- multi stranded wire- you would think that if it came out of a hole, it would go back into a same sized hole?- wrong, it has a mind of its own and expands, the strands seem to spring apart, and if you are cack handed - like me - and touch the wire on the side of the hole - even worse!

If you try to twist the strands together with small pliers you stand the chance of them breaking. If you then strip more insulation off you are shortening the length of wire you have to play with because the other end of the wire is fixed and it is bound with cable ties to other cables along the way with the ends of the cable ties cut off. 

 

Second problem -  multi strand wire in small gauges is flexible, so to get it into the hole you need to hold it fairly close to the end, then you have difficulty keeping your fingers out of the way of the light and the screwdriver . 

 

My eventual solution was to find some short lengths of suitably sized single strand wire, which is stiffer(!) than the multi strand. Even I managed to quickly insert them into the holes and clamp them. I then made temporary twisted wire joints at their outer ends to see if the problem I was trying to cure, was cured. Once I was satisfied that this was the case I replaced the twisted wire joints with choc bloc joints.

Time scales:-

 

Struggle with multi strand wire-couple of hours(!)

Time to find and prepare single strand wires, fit them to the switch, joint to multi strand wire, run first test train-30 mins

 

Just wish I had had the flash of inspiration to use single strand wire, which came to me when i stopped for a coffee, earlier!

 

Cheers All

Paul  

[5BarVT]

2 minutes ago, Tallpaul69 said:

Place the wire into the right hole -first problem- multi stranded wire- you would think that if it came out of a hole, it would go back into a same sized hole?- wrong, it has a mind of its own and expands, the strands seem to spring apart, and if you are cack handed - like me - and touch the wire on the side of the hole - even worse!

If you try to twist the strands together with small pliers you stand the chance of them breaking. If you then strip more insulation off you are shortening the length of wire you have to play with because the other end of the wire is fixed and it is bound with cable ties to other cables along the way with the ends of the cable ties cut off. 

Noting your tongue in cheek, here’s my threpeneth:
Been there, done that and always worse when the wire is ‘just’ the right length.  My recommendation (for future use) is to retwist the strands by hand.  It takes a little longer before they fracture.  Cable ties can be cut off and replaced with new.

 

7 minutes ago, Tallpaul69 said:

Just wish I had had the flash of inspiration to use single strand wire, which came to me when i stopped for a coffee, earlier!

Single strand (=solid conductor) is more prone to fracture in use.  So long as it is firmly supported near the ends you should be OK.

 

Paul.

[Tallpaul69]

Good Evening everyone,

As I want to keep this thread football free, (other sports are available!), I must just say that I have two grown up sons and three grand children who are so disappointed at last nights events!

 

Meanwhile, in the railway Room I make no apologies for planning on spending this week playing trains. although I do intend to tidy the room up and put my tools etc. away at the same time.

I have also to devote a good amount of time to catching up on non railway related jobs around the house and garden. 

 

So today i sat and watched the world go by as two trains circulated around the mainline while I shunted another loco in the yard.

The boards may be bare, except for track, the track unballasted and without signals, but what does that matter when there are trains running? Heaven!!

On a serious note, one lesson learnt, is to check all points are in the straight ahead route when leaving the railway room, so that when you come back, the main lines can run without having to think about point settings? 

 

Keep up the good modelling,

Best regards

Paul

[Nick Gough]

Glad to hear that you're starting to enjoy the new part of the railway Paul.

[Tallpaul69]

Good Evening All,

I had an enjoyable session in the railway room today.

First, I set two steam hauled trains running round Bradenham, and followed with one steamer ready for shunting in the yard. 

I then decided I would try some more atmosphere by setting up some steamers on Wycombe End letting off steam, with the aim of doing some shunting with them while the two trains ran round Bradenham.

This worked well, but did alert me to the need to reset some CVs so as to balance the sound levels, as some of the locos were not too audible. 

While this was going on, I made a start on tidying the Railway Room, so hopefully I can find things more easily!

 

Tomorrow, I intend to do a similar process with diesels, which will I hope demonstrate the difference in tone between types of diesels, thus demonstrating that not all diesels sound the same. 

 

A job that I have pencilled in for next week is to mock up the signals, so that I can make final decisions about some of their designs and send the details to  Stephen Freeman so he can get going on their manufacture. I also need to decide about their operation, whether to use the accessory switching on the NCE, or manual switches. Accessory switching on the NEC saves the need to find space for another switch bank, but slows the use of the loco controls on the NCE.    More on this later......

 

One job that will be easier, is the building of the down platform, which I had thought would need a sub board fixed to the main board. However, in the end there is sufficient main base board space to support the ends and the rail side face of the platform, so it may be possible for it to be self supporting. I will post a photo tomorrow to illustrate this.

 

Cheers for now,

Paul

[Tallpaul69]

Good evening,

Yesterday I promised you some photos to show the position of the down platform at Bradenham, so here they are:-

 

In the first photo below, the rake of coaches on the left are drawn up at the proposed platform position. You can see that there is quite a wide space below the door and first two windows of the first coach, but then the space is quite narrow for the rest of the first coach and the first half of the second coach, beyond that the space widens again although the track starts to curve to the right.

 

The second photo taken from the other end of the platform shows the curve in the track and the baseboard in more detail:-

 

 

So hopefully the platform can be a self supporting shelf above the shelf shown in the photos which supports the points switch units.

 

In a day or two I will post another pair of photos from the same locations showing cardboard mock ups of the platform.

 

Happy Modelling,

Cheers

Paul

 

r

[5BarVT]

No reason why that can’t work.

Paul.

[Tallpaul69]

hi All,

Well, it had to happen eventually, today I had my first trouble with locomotive running on Bradenham!

 

The loco concerned was my Bachmann Standard class 4 2-6-0 76069. I think the root of the problem is the light weight tender. The loco did not like running tender first, derailing at points. Whether it will run ok with a load behind the tender , I have yet to see, as the fault happened towards the end of my running session and I did not have time to investigate fully.

As often happens, I had a few minutes to spare, and saw 76069 sitting on a siding waiting for its code to be checked. So I put it on my test track, set the code, and immediately put it on the layout.

Firstly I had a problem with the loco to tender connection, and it took a bit of fiddling to get that right, then off it set round the down main from the station area only to come to grief at the down to up cross over, which was when, having righted it, I found out about the poor reverse running!

So looks like I need to dig out some lead.

Tomorrow I hope to finish the cardboard mock up for the down platform.

Hope everyone is ok and that unlike our area, your Covid level is dropping?

Cheers

Paul   

[St Enodoc]

6 hours ago, Tallpaul69 said:

hi All,

Well, it had to happen eventually, today I had my first trouble with locomotive running on Bradenham!

 

The loco concerned was my Bachmann Standard class 4 2-6-0 76069. I think the root of the problem is the light weight tender. The loco did not like running tender first, derailing at points. Whether it will run ok with a load behind the tender , I have yet to see, as the fault happened towards the end of my running session and I did not have time to investigate fully.

As often happens, I had a few minutes to spare, and saw 76069 sitting on a siding waiting for its code to be checked. So I put it on my test track, set the code, and immediately put it on the layout.

Firstly I had a problem with the loco to tender connection, and it took a bit of fiddling to get that right, then off it set round the down main from the station area only to come to grief at the down to up cross over, which was when, having righted it, I found out about the poor reverse running!

So looks like I need to dig out some lead.

Tomorrow I hope to finish the cardboard mock up for the down platform.

Hope everyone is ok and that unlike our area, your Covid level is dropping?

Cheers

Paul   

i woudl start by checking the tender wheel back-to-backs.

[Tallpaul69]

More on back-to-backs later, but I didn't get to post anything yesterday, as I was having trouble with the full size railway, or more correctly, the advanced ticket system!

 

We and our two sons and their families have booked a holiday house in Cornwall this August. So I needed to book my wife and myself on the trains to get us there and back.

Now up to the beginning of the Pandemic, we had frequently booked advanced tickets on Virgin for trips to stay with our youngest son and his family in Flintshire. So I thought, Great Western Trains system can't be that different to Virgins can it- I know the trains are different - class 800s, so the seating layout will be different. All seemed well to start with, but getting seats from Paddington to Truro was difficult, we ended up   on a later train than we had hoped for, and the return journey is via Birmingham! So having sorted all this out, it got to paying, and then I was stuck. Initially the system wouldn't accept either my credit card or Paypal, and kept warning me that there was a 45 minute limit on the transaction. It took three goes round this system and luckily in that time noone else wanted to book on the trains we were wanting, so we managed to keep our seats!

In the I worked out that the Bank Security software on my laptop was braking the link because it didn't recognise the website, because I had not used it before! So I had to tell it that I accepted the use of the website and then the payment went through! What a Faff!!

 

I know these systems are there to protect us, but when they get in the way, they become a pain.

 

On to the back-to-back measurements that John sensibly recommended:-

Not being a loco builder, I don't have one, so this afternoon, i looked for one. I found several, but then the question was, plastic, aluminium, or brass, and a cost range from c£3 delivered to c£12 delivered. And then off course I preferred the sellers whose names I recognised, and all of them had all sorts of other goodies on offer!......., so I am still considering what to go for.

 

On the platform front, I can attach some photos of my first mock up from card, posed beside the down main with a train posed beside it.

 

 

It may be that these mock ups are too wide, and the right hand board is narrower. However, it will need to be longer as the end of the 4th coach is beyond the end.

 

 

More on this topic later...

 

Cheers for now,

Paul

 

 

 

        

[Tallpaul69]

Hi there,

Doesn't time fly when you are enjoying yourself, or getting to grips with a difficult problem?

 

I decided that I would wait to finalise the down platform that I posted the first mock up for here, on Saturday, until I had done a similar exercise for the up platform and looked at the two together on the layout. It looked to me that the up platform would be straight forward. However, I had not taken into account that this would be on the far side of a train in the up platform and therefore more difficult to view, than the down one. An added difficulty is that the up platform sits between the up main line and the bay line.

 

So I have been fiddling around over the last two days trying to get something in place as a mock up that i am happy with. There is some way to go on this. What I have done so far is ok for the straight portion of the platform up to a Mk1 coach length or so along the bay, but it gets more tricky once the two tracks start to curve. I have yet to decide how far to take the curve of the platform. I then have to decide whether it is more prototypical to have the two platforms ending at the same point, or whether one should be longer than the other.

Hopefully I will have something to show you tomorrow.

 

Another factor in all this is the British weather doing its usual thing of going in 24hours flat from too cold to too hot! I think the last couple of days have been the warmest I have known it in the railway Room in the 4 years we have leaved here. 

 

One thing I have moved forward is the purchase of a wheel back to back gauge. I was in AGR this morning collecting a couple of Locos that had been chipped for me, and found that Anthony stocked one. I will run the locos tomorrow and report on them and the application of the gauge to the standard class 4 tender.   

 

Meanwhile, here is hoping you are all ok and Covid safe, and have not been pinged by the dreaded NHS App!!

Cheers for now,

Paul