Brighton East - EM Third Rail

[kipford]

The signal gantry is painted just needs a bit of weathering and will be planted over the weekend. The additional wiring took 5 evenings to complete and I still mount the under board loom to the boards! Hence no operation photos yet. In the meantime lunchtimes this week have seen the completion of the artwork for a Ginsters liveried class 158, I started this project back in 2010! Its a Marmite livery (literally as well as love it or hate it), I think its great and very rare on layouts (James Malkins Wells TMD is the only other layout I have seen one on). The photo shows the first test of the transfers, printed on sticky label paper, on the donor vehicle. apart from enlarging the posters a little it looks about right. Initially I will try printing my own Transfers, but if that does not work out so well I will get Precision Labels to quote on them.

 

[kipford]

Final images of the platform signal. Its amazing how difficult it is to photo LED’s working. Anyway photo 1 shows the finished signal, not properly planted. As mentioned before the signal heads are CR Signal ones and they are very good value for money. However the theatre indicators! As per my previous post we had to revert to plan A with these, the AA ones sold within a couple of hours of placing them in the classified section. This involved making our own. So how did we do it? The theatre body was modelled in CAD from drawings I found on the interweb, see picture 2. Note the letter shape ‘E’ and the two dividing walls that block off the upper and middle horizontal bars of the Letter. These two areas form light boxes and if we put individual LED’s in theses boxes then we can make up two letters depending on whether one or both LED’s are illuminated. One LED = ‘L’, two LED’s = E. The bodies were 3D printed by Shapeways a couple of years ago, see photo 3. The LED’s were the surface mount ones you get on thecheap strips from eBay. Prewired they were stuck (with filler) in the light boxes and a back plate added to seal it all off. The result is what you see in photo 5, with all the sparkly bits working. The lettering is not quite as a crisp as it could be, because of the use of holes for the dot matrix. If I were to do these again, the letters would be printed as bars and I would use a PC board to mount the LED’s and also form the backplate.

 

 

The last photo show a couple of Seagulls, we have only put a few on, less is more plus they are a tadge over scale being about the size of a medium dog! So they have been placed at the back where the size does not notice so much.

 

 

Anyway that's it before Southampton, if go please come and say hello.

[DutyDruid]

Here's hoping I can escape from the demonstration zone long enough for a decent look!

 

Elliott

 

 

Anyway that's it before Southampton, if go please come and say hello.

[Mike Storey]

Really looking forward to seeing this at this weekend's show! (and getting my buddlea!)

 

Mike

[kipford]

Mike

All finished, see you Sunday.

[kipford]

All set up at Southampton. At home now for a glass or grape while we wait for Matt to turn up from Plymouth. Mike storeys Buddlea are all ready for him to pick up on Sunday. Just hope nothing untowards goes wrong.

[Andrew P]

Have a good Show Dave, hope all goes well.

[kipford]

Well Southampton was interesting! After two one day exhibitions (under construction) and its formal first appearance when nothing un-towards happened, This was slightly different. I seemed to spend most of the weekend on repairs and only operated for about an hour or so in total. So what went wrong despite checking all the stock etc etc etc before packing up.

 

Controllers

We have an NCE Cab 06, this was to allow me to release my spare Power Cab for testing duties on the separate programming track. It also alleviates the problem with running two Power Cabs together. If get a into a short circuit situation which reboots the system, 553 Bachman Chips will cause it you get a short on a turnout frog despite having a circuit breaker. With a coin test though the circuit breaker works correctly, fathom that one out, all the DCC experts look blank at me about that one. Anyway I digress if you have two Power Cabs and you get a full short you have to reboot the master with slave disconnected then plug in the slave, which although ok is a bit of a pain. The procab and 06 controllers do not have the problem. We first used the 06 at DEMU and it was starting to exhibit the problems there, we think has a potentiometer problem. It will start off ok but almost randomly if you increase the speed a bit more you it shoots off at speed and is almost impossible to stop, despite turning the throttle down ( before anyone shouts it is set in the correct mode of turn one way to accelerate the other way to decelerate). This caused a lot of agro on Saturday morning until we swapped over to the spare power cab and borrowed another one for the programming track from Great Shefford. Not sure what to do with the 06 as its well over a year old but only used twice in anger, apart from putting a hammer to it.

 

Servos.

One turnout for reasons I have not fully fathomed ( I have an idea why but it requires dismantling the TOU) blew three tower pro servos. So that put one siding out of action thankfully not an important one.

 

Uncouplers.

Someone left a kaydee electro magnetic turned on, which blew it. Fitted a replacement but the could not get any power through the switch for that uncoupler so I jury rigged it to work from the switch one of the platform ones which we do not use. Then the power supply decided not to work.So jury rigged it again to work off a laptop power which they are not entirely happy working on. So another investigation job.

 

Stock:

A VEP decided that all its back to backs would go out of kilter then not run properly at all. Resetting of the back to backs and eventually a new decoder a sorted that out.

 

Class 33 normally runs like a dream decided to go jerky, played around with it a bit, one of the cardan shafts was a bit sticky and that seemed to cure it.

 

A warwell bogies fell apart. So that got fixed as well.

 

Once we got over the controller problem, the operation was fine. The layout and stock was stored in my car from Thursday until Friday night over one of the coldest nights of the year and I wondered whether some of the problems may be associated with that. But then again it is one of the perils of exhibition running and that first hour can sometimes be an absolute nightmare. Anyway I have put it in the spare bedroom and will not look at anything now until next week.

[mudmagnet]

Hi Dave

 

Sorry to read that you had problems over the weekend.

On the Cab 06 front have you changed the speed steps from 28 to 128?

I had a similar problem when I first tried mine at Warley in November. Tried changing the "ballistic" rate, but made little difference. So thought that had better read the manual properly. You need to cycle through the settings and can the change. Since I did this, have found works very well and in some ways prefer using this to the Powercab for shunting moves, although changing the points is a little more awkward than the Powercab.

[Siberian Snooper]

Shifting layouts and reassembling them usually invites an attack of the gremlins at the start of a show, especially if extremes in temperature are involved.

 

.

[kipford]

Mudmagnet

Thanks, I will give it try once the layout is back up and running, we bought that one because of the similarity to a conventional controller and its stripped down functionality would aid those a bit scared of the full size cab. I do not run points off the cab so it is not a problem.

[Andy Reichert]

Lovely layout! Pity I'm too far away to see it in the flesh.

 

BTW. Here's an  interesting youtube review of "Tower Pro" servos. I can't imagine what it would be like if he said what he really thought.

 

I think more complex servos plus their needed electronic controllers only came into use as point motors, once they were cloned enough to have silly cheap prices. But it seems the silly cheap prices have their own drawbacks. Personally I get 100% satisfaction using almost as inexpensive overall stall motors, which of course have fundamental power limiters to prevent them ever burning out.

 

Andy

[Anthony566]

Very well done ... Some fantastic detail

[kipford]

Forgot to mention despite everything we still had more invites than we can remember, 2016 is booked out and we are looking at 2017 and 2018.

[alanbuttler]

 

DSC01442arm.jpg

 

 

If it wasn't for the gantry being the wrong orientation, I thought initially that this was a real photo.  Awesome work Dave, I really hope I can get to see this one day.  I don't live in Brighton any more though, moved to Wales now!  Any plans to take it to shows outside the South/South East Dave?

[kipford]

Alan

Most certainly we will travel, it debuted at DEMU (Burton on Trent) last year and is at Stafford in 2016, EXPO EM north (Manchester) have expressed an interest as well (its at EXPO EM in Bracknell in 2016). We do not want to over expose it, that along with commitments to another layout (or 2) and my family means we are restricting its out outings to 3 max 4 per year. In fact we have a 10 month break this year before it goes to our club show in November, then things REALLY kick off in 2016. Holiday destinations (Devon say) could be a draw, combining hobby with a bit of holiday.

[Mike Storey]

Thanks for the buddlea Dave (or Mrs Dave) - they are fantastically realistic. As for Brighton East, none of the photos do it justice - a staggering piece of work. I am so glad I got to see it in the flesh. It seemed to be working pretty well whilst I was there. Great to have met you too!

 

The Soton (actually nearer Eastleigh) exhibition standard was overall very good, plenty of variety in the many layouts and with a good number of useful traders. A good venue with plenty of space and good catering. Much better than average.

 

Mike

[kipford]

Mudmagnet

Problem with the controllers solved. I have two PowerCabs plus the 06. At DEMU both PowerCabs were running the original NCE chip with only 2 recalls. Since then one of the cabs has had the upgraded chip from NCE fitted. The cab used on the layout was the non upgraded one, the upgraded one I was using as the spare and for my programme/set up track, because I thought their was a problem with the loco recall function. I took all the controllers and a loco down the club last night and tested them on our big EM roundy roundy Hope under Dinmore. Interesting result. The 06 I have is the decoder version. If you use it with the non upgrade cab, you get loco runaway. Use it with the upgraded cab no problems what so ever. I cannot find any reports of anyone else having the same problem. Anyway we now know it works and like you said very good it is too, played around with te ballistic tracking a bit but the default setting of 3 seems about right. Also the upgraded cab recall stack works fine (probably finger trouble) Just servo's and uncouplers to sort out.

[mudmagnet]

Hi Dave

 

Strange results,but if it works OK, then that's good. My powercab is the older version with only 2 recalls and not obtained the upgrade yet. However, the clubs powercab has recently been upgraded (had another problem with it and went back to the states for repair) and worked with no issues...

[kipford]

Everything now fixed and layout up at home for normal operation, next show is not until October at Tring. followed by our club show 2016 though is all fully booked! In between catching up on all the household jobs I have not done for 2 years, I decided to build a new set up/programme track as the old one a bit of a dogs dinner. So out with the CAD system and the result is what I think is a very posh looking product! Laser cut from 2mm mdf, it slot and tabs together in about 5 mins. It has pre-cut holes for the PowerCab interface, Kadee electro magnet in the track bed, Switches, Power supplies etc. Space for two track (both mine are in EM) and you could also squeeze a cross-over in if you wanted. I am thinking of selling copies, as have 4 people at the club are already wanting there own.

 

[Andy Reichert]

 

This type of programming/railing track rail makes putting wheeled stuff on and off a lot easier, especially those of us with elder eyesight and fingers, or if in a hurry at exhibitions, etc. It's good in hidden sidings too.

 

No separate sleepers needed obviously

[DutyDruid]

I think a few folk @FarehamMRC might be interested as well Dave!

 

Elliott

 I am thinking of selling copies, as have 4 people at the club are already wanting there own.

 

[Mike Storey]

 

This type of programming/railing track rail makes putting wheeled stuff on and off a lot easier, especially those of us with elder eyesight and fingers, or if in a hurry at exhibitions, etc. It's good in hidden sidings too.

 

No separate sleepers needed obviously

 

Looks really useful. Is this a commercial product Andy or something you made?

[Andy Reichert]

Looks really useful. Is this a commercial product Andy or something you made?

 

I made it for myself originally, so I could put my model trams on street track that has extremely narrow flange ways. (And that's actually even more difficult than it sounds).

 

But it helps in many other situations, so it is now available as a separate product from the Proto:87 Stores.

 

If you have street track, you can stick it down as is. If you are using it to fit in with normal height flex or sectional track, then you need to mount it on some flat ~ 1/8 material like fine ply or MDF, to keep the rail head height the same.

 

Andy

[kipford]

First post since March! Brighton starts a run of exhibtions now that stretches over the next two years.

This Saturday we are going to Tring fo their one day show. Following that is our club show, the SHMRC show at Portsmouth on Saturday 17th November then Stafford in February. I have spent the summer on two projects. First the design of 4mm kit of the LNWR 0-4-0 shunting engine for London Road Models, this now at the prototyping stage and I hope to have 90% engineering mock up finished in the next few weeks ready to LRM at the club show. The second is the weathering of Brightons stock (plus fitting sound decoders) which is now 98% complete, just the Virgin 220 to go.

 

I have also decided to add a change of tack in my modelling. I sold my hooligan car (A Westfield) and have bought a lathe with a mill to follow. Why? Iam going 5" Gauge live steam as well and my first loco is going to be an L & Y Aspinal 0-6-0 tender engine. Its going to be a long project, starting with me creating a 3D model from the Don Young drawings to check where the problems are. I have the boiler and regulator assembly almost finished and will eventually put a build thread in the kits and scratch building section. If you at any shows where we have Brighton please come and say hello.