Shelf Marshes (first attempt at a cameo layout)

[47137]

1 hour ago, ISW said:

Richard,

 

Can you get 'undulating' surfaces with that mesh? It looks like it will only want to bend in one direction at a time (think surface of a cylinder not surface of a sphere).

 

Ian

 

Yes - the metal will stretch so you can create shapes like hemispheres, upwards or downwards.

 

- Richard.

[47137]

I have gone back to the wiring so I can have a working layout. All I needed to do was make a lever frame for the turnouts, and this is it:

 

 

 

It hangs on the front fascia of the layout, held with two screws installed from behind:

 

The box for this is 6.3 mm ply for the top, 25 x 15 mm pine for the back, 3.2 mm ply for the front and base, and 3.2 mm basswood for the ends. I was determined to make it from bits and pieces to hand and not buy fresh material!

 

The 'levers' are a job lot of genuine C&K toggle switches with long dollies, bought for a song from a seller on eBay. Hugely more reliable than the Chinese copies. These switches were intended for pcb mounting, so they have plain bosses (no threads or retaining nuts) and have gone into the ply panel rather neatly.

 

This is the connection from the lever frame to the layout:

 

I am not a great fan of multi-way plugs and sockets because they introduce new places for wires to fall off, but doing things this way meant all of the soldering for the lever frame was on the bench, away from the layout. I need barely half of the pins on the 25-way connector here, but I have spare pins if I ever try for a more sophisticated control panel.

 

And ... it all works! I might indulge myself in running some trains before tackling the scenery.

 

- Richard.

Edited April 3, 2022 by 47137
Restore lost photographs

[47137]

It has dawned on me, I can tip the layout onto its back in its alcove without having to lift it out and down onto a table. All I had to do was clear away some stuff on one of the shelves behind.

 

So here is a photo of the wiring underneath the layout. This is partly for Ian so he can compare notes with his own baseboards:

 

The cable trunking is virtually full, I have track feeds and power distribution in the wide trunking and servo control cables in the narrower trunking. I will still have to add the wiring for the street lights and building lighting, but the wiring for most everything else is done. There is space for a servo for a semaphore signal in the spot with the paper note centre right, and space for some kind of DCC zone protection board if I feel I must have one near the power distribution at the left.

 

- Richard.

Edited April 3, 2022 by 47137
Restore lost photograph

[ISW]

4 hours ago, 47137 said:

So here is a photo of the wiring underneath the layout. This is partly for Ian so he can compare notes with his own baseboards:

Richard,

 

I'd be perfectly happy with that as my wiring. All looks neat, tidy, and logical. About the only thing I'd change is to put male 2-pin terminals on the cables to the MegaPoints boards, as it makes removing / replacing the wires much easier.

 

I hope that you can remove and replace the covers to the 'trunking' without the wires falling out or getting 'snagged' during the process. But I do like the use of 'trunking' as it's really neat.

 

Ian

[47137]

On 24/03/2021 at 17:36, ISW said:

I'd be perfectly happy with that as my wiring. All looks neat, tidy, and logical. About the only thing I'd change is to put male 2-pin terminals on the cables to the MegaPoints boards, as it makes removing / replacing the wires much easier.

 

I hope that you can remove and replace the covers to the 'trunking' without the wires falling out or getting 'snagged' during the process. But I do like the use of 'trunking' as it's really neat.

 

I have jammed rectangles of styrene inside the trunking to hold the wires inside. I did this out of desperation when I was frequently turning the layout over and back up again, but it worked well and as you point out, it stops wires getting snagged when the lids go on. The larger trunking (40 x 25 mm) is big enough to hold some Wago blocks, and these let the distribution of the track wiring happen inside the trunking too.

 

I don't quite understand what you mean by male 2-pin terminals on the cables to the MegaPoints boards?

 

 

I use fine nosed pliers when I want to remove a connector e.g. for fault finding. Maybe put additional connectors nearer the servos?

 

- Richard.

 

 

 

Edited April 3, 2022 by 47137
Restore lost photograph

[ISW]

3 hours ago, 47137 said:

I don't quite understand what you mean by male 2-pin terminals on the cables to the MegaPoints boards?

Richard,

 

That's the method Dave at MegaPoints Controllers uses in all his videos, so I simply followed suit. Here is a screenshot / cut from one of Dave's YouTube videos showing the male 2-pin connector:

 

The pins make for much more reliable connection in the screw terminal block. Yes, you could also tin / solder bare wires to get a similar connection, but I prefer the plug method as it's neat and tidy, plus the plug provides a good place for a label!

 

3 hours ago, 47137 said:

 

What's the blue & purple wires (top-centre of Servo board) for?

 

Ian

[47137]

Oh! Yes, I could go around the layout crimping on pins or ferrules, there are quite a few screw terminal blocks dotted around now. Thanks for the tip.

 

My blue and purple wires are for the 'mode' LED, I have moved this off the servo controller and onto my route setting panel:

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blogs/entry/23872-route-setting-panel-for-megapoints-servo-controller/

 

 

This panel is surprisingly effective (you program it by setting a route and holding down one of its three route buttons), but it can only work if the servo controller is under local control. I will lose this panel if I decide to expand my MegaPoints system one day and go for a Multipanel for the whole railway.

 

- Richard.

Edited March 25, 2021 by 47137

[47137]

Going back to the Magnorail, Clyde has uploaded his third video production. This film includes a moving train too :-)

 

https://youtu.be/d5entV-adUk

 

- Richard.

Edited March 31, 2021 by 47137
My attempt to make an embedded link failed, so the link is a simple one.

[47137]

Here are some stills which did not make it into the video:

 

There is a blue LED in the middle of the push button, but this is extinguished in this photo because the car is running.

 

By luck not judgement, the ply fascia is just the right thickness:

 

A photo of the Arduino to explain some details too involved for the video:

 

Pins A0 and A1 have the input from the push button switch and the output to its LED.

Pins D4 to D7 handle the inputs from the four microswitches, these act as waypoints so the system knows where the car is and can adjust the motor speed to suit.

Pin D10 is a PWM output to the servo moving the Magnorail chain.

Pin D11 is a PWM output to the Magnorail motor via a MOSFET driver.

Pin D12 is to a buzzer to give some audio feedback when the start button is pressed for an extended period to engage car swap mode (included in the video) or the debug mode.

For future use, pin D8 is for a 'remote start' switch, this does the same as the push button but the display backlight stays off, and D9 is spare for a second servo if I add an animation to the sequence.

 

Finally the MOSFET driver connecting the Arduino to the Magnorail motor:

 

The transistor is rated at 800mA and the Arduino motor takes 80mA, so there is no heatsink. These boards don't include a diode to protect the transistor from the back emf from a motor, so I soldered this across the terminals of the motor. This is my third method of driving the motor. The first was an Arduino shield, which consumed too many i/o pins, and the second was a a pair of stand-alone H-bridge circuits, neither lasted more than a few hours.

 

So ... the Magnorail has now been running for nearly a month without changing the software. I have promised myself and my partner I won't touch the Arduino until I can get back to work, this is scheduled for 12th April. I have ordered up a Magnorail bike, a ready-to-run-one. I would like to see this running on the system before I glue down the roadway.

 

- Richard.

Edited April 3, 2021 by 47137

[47137]

Ever since I started the Magnorail project last October I have been pondering the design of the "workshop" where the car will hide between outings. Every design I came up with looked like "oh look, he's made a sort of a shed building to hide the car in".

 

Well, a couple of weeks ago I bought the April "Railway Modeller" and inside is a layout with a narrow-gauge engine shed built from the Wills kit for a Victorian chapel. This gave me a bit of a light bulb moment, a kit was duly ordered up, and after a couple of hours of model-making I have this:

 

With a mirror behind:

 

Solved for all normal viewing angles!

 

These buildings were frequently re-purposed after congregations built better churches and moved out, so a motor vehicle workshop is a reasonably prototypical application.

 

This is a first-class kit. The mouldings are really clean, everything went together extremely easily. I haven't used any filler yet either. The foundation of a tin chapel was usually a dwarf wall with a timber floor, or a mixture of rubble and cement. I've added styrene strips below the walls to represent the edges of a concrete floor.

 

There is room for a customer car park on a disused goods platform to the right, and a yard with a caravan-c u m-office and some left-over car parts to the left:

 

This is good - all the big decisions for the Magnorail are done. Also, I've done some model-making for the first time in months.

 

- Richard.

Edited April 3, 2022 by 47137
Restore lost photographs

[47137]

Many months ago, I changed the title of this post to include the words “roads and fences” because I thought if I could define these then the structures and landscaping would follow automatically. This has not worked out at all, and instead I have found myself struggling to decide what buildings to include so I can work out the roads and fences around them. The only road defined is the Magnorail section, and even this isn’t glued down yet.

 

Building the Wills tin chapel has helped a lot. It gives me a nice contrast with the chemical plant, and is taking me towards an “old-style/run-down” treatment for area nearby at the right of the layout, with modern structures closing in from the left.

 

I am finding it incredibly difficult to build a modern setting with any kind of regional or even National flavour when there is no train in sight. Every time people ask me what scale I use and I reply “H0” they knowingly reply, “oh, Continental or American?”. So - the old chapel/car restorers gives me an excuse to park some customers' cars nearby, and these will be classic British cars with right-hand drive. I have some Minis, a Minor and a Triumph convertible, all right-hand drive and not looking like Continental tourists. And of course the Magnorail runs the cars on the left side of the road.

 

I also have an LMS square post signal, made for 4mm scale but not looking desperately overscale. This also says the layout is in Britain; and probably away from former GWR and Southern territory.

 

Thinking about buildings, there will be next to no brickwork on the layout. The older parts can use corrugated iron and asbestos cladding, local stone and cobbles; and the modern parts can use corrugated steel, concrete blocks and poured concrete. There can be a tarmacadam road to connect these together.

 

The block of flats has gone. The only place it could fit was just too close to the tin chapel. I have quite a few new structures underway – a goods platform, a low-relief warehouse, a mess hut, a new substation, some portable toilets and a warehouse flat – and I will post some photos when these are starting to look presentable.

 

- Richard.

[47137]

Two weeks on I have now "made" some structures for the background of the layout.

 

An old-style loading platform behind the PW siding, this being used as the customer car park for the classic vehicle restorers. I think the platform finishes off this corner of the layout quite well, and the Transit minibus takes the edge off the end of the road. Also, the platform takes up less space than a buffer stop:

 

The end of a modern warehouse, this is Pikestuff and some Wills 4mm concrete blocks:

Photo lost, cannot be restored

 

The warehouse comes apart to reveal the display for my 'scenics processor' but I expect it will be complete for most future photos:

Photo lost, cannot be restored

 

A mess hut near the tram stop, this is from the Faller barracks building:

 

The toilet is Faller as well. The kit built four of these so I expect they will be appearing around the whole railway.

 

I have also made a platform for two vertical storage tanks I originally made for the main baseboard of "Shelf Island". These add a bit of visual balance behind the chemical plant. I am imagining these are for gas not liquid, because a bund will look a bit intrusive. Hopefully the whole scene will retain a reasonably open and desolate appearance:

 

I have taken all of these photos today, with the layout in its alcove. This location is good for viewing and running trains but awkward for working up the ground surface, indeed doing much of anything on the layout. So I expect I will put the layout onto a trestle table in the middle of the room this week to have a go at the landscape.

 

- Richard.

 

Edited April 3, 2022 by 47137
Restore lost photographs where possible

[Allegheny1600]

Hi Richard,

The layout is looking good now, it’s developing a very nice ‘industrial’ appearance that I really like and I was aiming for this kind of look with my erstwhile “Flixborough”.

 I still want to achieve something like this, one day!

Cheers,

John

[47137]

I am going to have to be really careful with the landscaping. It needs to look bleak, unpleasant, probably poisoned.

 

The mini roundabout and the road with the Magnorail can look freshly built, as though some kind of road improvement scheme has happened recently. I'm planning to put a hoarding with gates on the stub of road behind the roundabout. To hint at some kind of development or redevelopment going on behind.

 

But the rest needs to look pretty grim and bare. The general arrangement is rather compressed and if I overdo anything the layout could end up looking twee. I am sure, the chemical plant is really 1:100 scale, and still undersize.

 

A friend has sent me some photos of the private railway at Longbridge, and these will help. The ballast especially needs a lot of care because really, most of the industrial railway lines I've seen seem to merge into the ground around them.

 

- Richard.

[Ian Simpson]

Looking very good - and the grime and decay can only improve it!

 

BTW I gather the British 1:87 Scale Society have just produced a new issue of Satellite, their newsletter - the first one in several years.  Ken Clark says the PDF copy is on the Society's Io group.  

Edit: if anyone doesn't want to join the Society (membership is free), I can send them a PDF of the newsletter on request.

Edited April 26, 2021 by Ian Simpson

[47137]

I feel I ought to keep this account going with an update every week or so, but in the last two weeks I have done no modelling at all. I have bought a new camcorder, and have made and deleted loads of test footage, and I will probably have the World's most-documented Magnorail system.

 

I ran some light engines to try out different settings on the camera. The most notable thing is, the  engines I used always ran perfectly, and never stalled. They were my Mehano class 66, my NMJ Di-8, my Trix 6400 class (NS) and my REE Gaston-Moyse. The chassis and mechanisms of all four really are first-class. The Trix especially seems to have been built to last forever.

 

It seems best to keep their lights turned off. This way, I can play a clip backwards and no-one will be any the wiser. I find it much easier to set a train in motion than to stop it accurately in front of a camera :-)

 

- Richard.

[47137]

I have taken the layout out of its alcove to attend to a likely wiring fault, and this is a good time to re-work the spur shelving on the wall behind.

 

So, I went into Wickes this morning to buy some Polyfilla and a fresh shelf. He we go:

 

Me: do you have any white-faced chipboard?

Young "assistant": doesn't exist

 

It's very popular - are you sure?

We don't stock it.

 

I'm thinking of the chipboard with a white melamine face?

We do melamine panels if that's what you mean.

 

Sounds good. Can you show me?

(we walk)

These are the melamine panels.

 

Okay ... (gentle pause) ... look, they are chipboard on the inside.

Yes, of course they are. I thought you meant white-painted chipboard.

 

What do they learn in schools nowadays? Do their parents not build anything, or even have a fitted kitchen? Am I supposed to thank the guy for his help (I tried to) or just curl up and weep?

 

I didn't buy one. I wanted a short panel for a little shelf, not the entire side of a wardrobe. But I did try. The filler is Wickes own brand, it looks good and is now drying in the holes in the wall.

 

- Richard.

[shipbadger]

The spotty youth may have recognised Contiboard, this being one of the longer established brands.

 

Tony Comber

[47137]

Yes - Contiboard was better. The Wickes own brand (when you can get it) has a rather thin facing and I find this flakes away too easily during cutting, even with the cut line scored with a knife.

 

Anyway - this has been a good weekend. I got two offcuts of chipboard from a mate and the new shelving is done:

 

The four-way socket strip is a bit OTT but this will let me plug in some general lighting, the layout itself and a photo lamp, and keep trailing cables off the floor.

 

If I have done my sums right, then if I remove the TrainSafe tube and its three shelf brackets at the bottom, the layout will stand on its back below the long white shelf.

 

- Richard.

[47137]

The Magnorail is working again. There was an intermittent fault in the display module - possibly a broken pcb track. This fits in with the fault appearing in the last week after I tried to clamp a video light onto the back of it.

 

As it happens, I had a spare display module to hand. This seems a depressingly sensible way to tackle these Arduino projects; buy a spare of most every bit of hardware. Then if the project doesn't work, you can swap bits out one at a time.

 

- Richard.

[47137]

I have finally fixed down my road surface, and my beautiful Magnorail installation is hidden forever. Well, at least I hope it is! I have given the road a slight crown, this is very subtle in H0 scale but I think it is worthwhile. The kerbs are 1mm square styrene.

 

I am going to have to admit, it is going to take me ages to do the scenery on this layout. Mainly because I want to present the layout as a coherent and balanced sort of a diorama, and so I want to mock up every major detail before painting and fixing things down. The area around the Magnorail currently looks like this:

 

 

I suppose, this area is almost a micro in its own right - it is plenty dense enough. Yet really what I want to present is a fairly open, bleak setting. I am putting most of the  buildings away from the backscene to try to do this. The backscene itself can depict an open sky and some marshland or other empty space. If I get it right, the model will look bigger than it is. The curved corners will help.

 

I fancied the side of a modern warehouse along the back here, but it enclosed the scene too much. The stone wall looks better. The caravan is a Faller kit, I built this onto its chassis the wrong way round so the door is on the left-hand side (with the towing hitch at the end nearest the camera). It has dull and gloomy curtains on this side (tissue paper and coloured plain paper) and pretty curtains on the other side, so it can appear on another layout. The caravan can be the office of the classic vehicle restorers. There are spaces to park some Magnorail-fitted cars so hopefully the scene will look British without a train in sight, and indeed still British if there is a ferry wagon in view...

 

I want to add a couple of miserable-looking silver birch trees, these often grow near industry and its pollution. Where can I buy good model trees after a year+ of lockdown modelling? I expect the suppliers will need another year to catch up.

 

The plan now is to work up the left hand side of the layout to a similar level. Then work out the colour palette, and do the next "layer", and so on.

 

Richard.
 

[Allegheny1600]

Hi Richard,

The layout is coming along nicely!

 I used MBR models of Poland for my trees on Leberecht, I think they do have a British importer but what the supply situation is now, I can’t say: https://mbrmodel.eu/en/ If you were to go direct, you risk getting stung for import duty now, sadly.

They’re not cheap at all but I believe they are well worth the cost and I’ve never seen better. 

Cheers,

John

[47137]

23 hours ago, Allegheny1600 said:

Hi Richard,

The layout is coming along nicely!

 I used MBR models of Poland for my trees on Leberecht, I think they do have a British importer but what the supply situation is now, I can’t say: https://mbrmodel.eu/en/ If you were to go direct, you risk getting stung for import duty now, sadly.

They’re not cheap at all but I believe they are well worth the cost and I’ve never seen better. 

Cheers,

John

 

The layout appears to be coming along but I keep thinking of new features to add to its electrics! The latest idea is a train describer for the passenger platform.

 

The MBR trees do look very good, and the cost is much the same as a hand-made British one by Jacqui of Ceynix (she used to go to shows as "the tree lady"). I have written to Jacqui but no reply yet ... I know she suffered health problems and I can only hope she is still with us.

 

Buying models from overseas shouldn't attract import duty because HMRC classify scale models as "toys" and these have a 0% rate, but there could be VAT to pay at 20%. For the time being, I have ordered up a 7.5cm apple tree by Noch, from a UK supplier. This will let me visualise the overall effect. I could steal the silver birch tree from my Fairport layout, it would get a more prominent position on Shelf Marshes because it won't be forever hidden behind a train.

 

This leaves me to ponder MBR for a another day. Their larger models do look particularly good ... perhaps, for the "Wellwood" section of my layout when I get this underway.

 

- Richard.

[47137]

A Roco V60 has just arrived from Italy, an ex-DB engine in a private grey and orange livery. The idea here was to take the chassis for a British outline industrial or even a BR class 14, but the model is so good I might just keep it as it is. As far as I know, the V60 never ran in Britain but somehow it will look the part beside my Di8. Also I need a shunter for short trip workings, somewhere between the size of the Di8 and the Moyse locotracteur.

 

Anyway - the price was reasonable enough; perhaps this livery is unpopular. The eBay seller levied the 20% VAT UK at the point of sale, and there was (as expected) no import duty to pay:

 

- Richard.

[47137]

The hobby room slowly went out of control this year and I ended up keeping camera gear on the floor.

 

So I have done some decluttering. About 50 books went to a charity shop.

This let me move my photo albums from the wardrobe to the living room.

This let me move my clothes from a chest of drawers to the wardrobe.

And this let me move my camera gear from the floor to the chest of drawers.

 

I was so pleased with this I finished off the alcove with an Ikea Kallax:

 

This has turned out very nicely really. I do wonder sometimes, if this is all the model railway layout I really need. It is my best layout to operate (more interesting than it looks) and the tracklaying turned out well too. It is however getting heavier and less portable as I keep on adding new "features" to its electrics.

 

(The books went to the St Helena Hospice book shop in Frinton-on-Sea, not all railway ones but there were 20 odd titles on the Southern Railway).

 

- Richard.