JackB95 Posted July 3, 2019 Share Posted July 3, 2019 Been following this thread for quite a while now but never commented. Absolutely incredible work on here. A true inspiration regardless of what you model. 2 1 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Les Green Posted July 24, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted July 24, 2019 (edited) Finally the Glasgow to Liverpool sleeper train is completed. For the first time today it ran into the station hauled by Coronation Class locomotive 'City of Liverpool". The seven coach train is made up of seven Comet coach kits, Each coach has pickups so we can add lighting at a later date. The corridor connections are made up of two 3D printed components and remain in contact with the adjacent coach around any of the curves, Weathering is next as they are a bit too clean at the moment! Edited July 24, 2019 by Les Green 48 2 12 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Popular Post Steve Hewitt Posted August 1, 2019 RMweb Gold Popular Post Share Posted August 1, 2019 (edited) Preparing for Wigan..... The lime Street crew haven't had any chance to run the railway since our last exhibition, which was Warley last year. In the meantime a number of new items of rolling stock have arrived, and John has built them into the operating sequence. Its now time for all the crew members to brush up on their operating skills and familiarise themselves with all recent developments. Yesterday was the first of some fourteen operating sessions which have been scheduled between now and late September, when the layout will be dismantled and packed for transporting to Wigan for their annual show on October 5th & 6th. John H, Les and I had a very successful days operating, with the layout behaving very well. The operators were the cause of a couple of minor hic-coughs. During the day we managed to find time to play with a miniature WIFI Video camera which we mounted on a flat truck propelled by the Station Pilot. I've put together this video, of three short clips. Clip 1 is a conventional "drivers view" Clip 2 is an angled view as a passenger might experience Clip 3 sees the train held at the signal gantry until it gets the road to Platform 6. This view provides some unique views of the station roof and the surrounding buildings. I hope you find this of interest? More soon, as our operating sessions progress. Steve. Edited August 1, 2019 by Steve Hewitt Spelling corrections 34 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Les Green Posted August 3, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 3, 2019 A 3D printed model of the boiler house that will fit at the back of the layout. The tan coloured brickwork is brick plasticard, put there as the bricks failed to print as they were 0.1mm proud of the surface!! The model is made of 9 printed components, namely: The walls The roof The two doors The top slide for the doors The chimney The ventilator roof and ends The two ventilator sides Now for the painting. 21 9 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stanley Melrose Posted August 3, 2019 Share Posted August 3, 2019 On 24/07/2019 at 19:36, Les Green said: Finally the Glasgow to Liverpool sleeper train is completed. For the first time today it ran into the station hauled by Coronation Class locomotive 'City of Liverpool". The seven coach train is made up of seven Comet coach kits, Each coach has pickups so we can add lighting at a later date. The corridor connections are made up of two 3D printed components and remain in contact with the adjacent coach around any of the curves, Weathering is next as they are a bit too clean at the moment! Hi Les, Can you tell us a bit more about the corridor connections, please? Thanks, Stan 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Les Green Posted August 4, 2019 Author Share Posted August 4, 2019 18 hours ago, Stanley Melrose said: Hi Les, Can you tell us a bit more about the corridor connections, please? Thanks, Stan The corridor connections were designed so that we could minimise the distance between the coaches. The buffers were modified to be as as short as possible and the gap between the coach buffers was set to 3mm. On a curve of four foot radius meant the compressed connections could protrude 1mm from the buffers. Making the connections expand by 1-2mm allowed them to stay in contact at all times. They were designed on Autocad with all the correct size of Comet components included on the drawing. The above shows the connection in its compressed state with the end cover omitted. The two components, an inner piece and an outer piece were then printed. The following drawing shows the two components ready for sending to the printer. Once printed the two components were joined with a short section of B&Q draught excluder. The completed connection was then fixed to the coach end. The support arms are made from 1mm brass angle and the moving part made from a small 0.45mm diameter lace pin with a small spring glued onto the pin to keep it in place. This photo shows a test piece. It does need a bit of tidying up before it is painted, but this was effectively a proof of concept model. The final connections do look good and were worth the effort. They do stay in contact when the coaches traverse our curves. The coach connections of the outer coaches in the rake are fixed in the compressed position as our rakes do not change. Hope that helps! 3 9 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stanley Melrose Posted August 4, 2019 Share Posted August 4, 2019 Many thanks, Les! Now if only they were available commercially . . . Stan Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Les Green Posted August 4, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 4, 2019 The boiler house painted and ready to go for weathering. 21 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Popular Post Steve Hewitt Posted August 6, 2019 RMweb Gold Popular Post Share Posted August 6, 2019 New operating sequence - First trial. Many will know that a long held ambition of the team has been to operate the layout to the 1947 Working Timetable. During the past few months, Noel Coates and I have spent many hours creating the necessary operating instructions to achieve that. Having developed the sequence to cover the timetable from the 05:50 departure to Leeds until the 09:57 arrival from Leeds, we decided to try to actually run the sequence on the layout. Today was the day chosen to try it out. There are two sets of operating instructions - one for the two Station operators and the other for the Sector plate guy. The number of instructions for the Station end was 162, whilst the Sector Plate took 197 which were successfully performed in a total of about three hours. As we have only so far covered about one sixth of the days timetable, Noel and I still have a great deal of work to do. However, the success of today's experiment gives us the confidence to tackle the rest of the task. If the two of us can find sufficient free days in our diaries, we hope to complete the whole days schedule by about February next year. It is quite possible that the whole days sequence will take two full days of operating to run through once. Steve. 17 1 1 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Les Green Posted August 18, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 18, 2019 And in a moment of madness, the Lancashire Boilers inside the boiler house. These probably get the prize for the best detail that no one can see! 20 17 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Steve Hewitt Posted August 19, 2019 RMweb Gold Share Posted August 19, 2019 Why? 'Because we can! ' Steve 5 1 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Les Green Posted August 29, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 29, 2019 Finally the boiler house is installed on the layout. 35 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Popular Post Steve Hewitt Posted September 21, 2019 RMweb Gold Popular Post Share Posted September 21, 2019 Another new toy..... I recently bought a tiny "Sports Camera" which can be operated by linking it to my Mobile phone with WIFI. This means you can use the phone as the view finder, and also control the start and end of Video recording. I have installed a 32Gb micro SD card, which should give more than enough recording time. Fully charged it will give about an hour's recording time. During our current series of operator training sessions I had the opportunity to try it out, with the following result....... The very wide angle lens gives a lot of barrel distortion, but I hope the result is still entertaining, and even informative. I hope the small size of the camera will allow us to make some "Drivers Eye View" videos. Steve. 21 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
runs as required Posted September 22, 2019 Share Posted September 22, 2019 Thank you for posting your trial video. I have to admit I never knew about the existence of a 1938 Stanier 'suburban' articulated triplet set until I watched it drawn through the tunnel in your video. more ... more ... dh Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Steve Hewitt Posted September 23, 2019 RMweb Gold Share Posted September 23, 2019 Hi dh, Thanks for your comment. If you're interested in the articulated stock, please refer to Essery & Jenkinson's book "The LMS Coach 1923 - 1957" Chapter 12 is "Articulated General Service Stock". There were 11 Triplet sets built during 1937. There were also a total of 55 twin sets, built to 3 diagrams. Steve. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
LMS2968 Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 Is the stop at the Down gantry simply to transfer the train to the station operator? I'd imagine that many real trains would have been halted there, so acceptable in the model, but I don't think it was a mandatory stop and some would have entered the station without stopping. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Steve Hewitt Posted September 24, 2019 RMweb Gold Share Posted September 24, 2019 You're absolutely correct, we do use the Gantry stop to hand over control. It's not absolutely necessary, as there is a handover position just "off scene" in the tunnel at the edge of the scenic section. From there a train can be driven through to the station without stopping. However, that location is not very visible to the station operators, who check for the presence of a train before setting up its route. Stopping at that location would also leave the train bridging the Sector Plate, so preventing it's use for any other movements. As you say, we believe most if not all trains stopped at the Gantry and anecdotal evidence supports this. (Not many of us can remember such details from 1947). The location on a falling gradient to a terminus may have required such a stop to prevent over-speed driving??? Steve. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
hayfield Posted September 24, 2019 Share Posted September 24, 2019 5 hours ago, Steve Hewitt said: You're absolutely correct, we do use the Gantry stop to hand over control. It's not absolutely necessary, as there is a handover position just "off scene" in the tunnel at the edge of the scenic section. From there a train can be driven through to the station without stopping. However, that location is not very visible to the station operators, who check for the presence of a train before setting up its route. Stopping at that location would also leave the train bridging the Sector Plate, so preventing it's use for any other movements. As you say, we believe most if not all trains stopped at the Gantry and anecdotal evidence supports this. (Not many of us can remember such details from 1947). The location on a falling gradient to a terminus may have required such a stop to prevent over-speed driving??? Steve. Also gives the paying public the opportunity to see the models close up 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
LMS2968 Posted September 24, 2019 Share Posted September 24, 2019 8 hours ago, Steve Hewitt said: You're absolutely correct, we do use the Gantry stop to hand over control. It's not absolutely necessary, as there is a handover position just "off scene" in the tunnel at the edge of the scenic section. From there a train can be driven through to the station without stopping. However, that location is not very visible to the station operators, who check for the presence of a train before setting up its route. Stopping at that location would also leave the train bridging the Sector Plate, so preventing it's use for any other movements. As you say, we believe most if not all trains stopped at the Gantry and anecdotal evidence supports this. (Not many of us can remember such details from 1947). The location on a falling gradient to a terminus may have required such a stop to prevent over-speed driving??? Steve. Thanks for that. I don't remember such a requirement from my guarding days at Edge Hill, but they started in 1973. But there was a very severe speed limit all the way from Edge Hill station,15mph if I remember rightly. Things might have been different in 1947, but I wasn't around then either! 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold 5BarVT Posted September 24, 2019 RMweb Gold Share Posted September 24, 2019 The aspect on the home signal looked yellow to me, not the green that I would have expected. Is that what was done at Lime St in LMS days? Paul. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
LMS2968 Posted September 25, 2019 Share Posted September 25, 2019 Even in 2014 the two Down signals on the similar gantry showed only two aspects: Yellow and Red, the equivalent of a Fixed Distant with semaphores. As far as I know, that was always the case at that location. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Steve Hewitt Posted September 25, 2019 RMweb Gold Share Posted September 25, 2019 On 24/09/2019 at 18:52, 5BarVT said: The aspect on the home signal looked yellow to me, not the green that I would have expected. Is that what was done at Lime St in LMS days? Paul. As LMS2968 has already explained, the Yellow aspects are equivalent to semaphore fixed distants. I understand the meaning "Proceed with caution, expect the next signal to be Red", is appropriate. The next signal will be the Red lamp on the Buffer Stop. 5 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Steve Hewitt Posted September 25, 2019 RMweb Gold Share Posted September 25, 2019 WIGAN Exhibition, 5th & 6th October 2019. I regret to have to announce that due to ill health we will not be able to exhibit the layout at the upcoming Wigan exhibition. Three of the Lime Street Crew will instead be demonstrating their skills (or lack of them) as a small compensation. Please come along for a chat and to ask any questions about the layout. Steve 6 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold 5BarVT Posted September 25, 2019 RMweb Gold Share Posted September 25, 2019 15 hours ago, LMS2968 said: Even in 2014 the two Down signals on the similar gantry showed only two aspects: Yellow and Red, the equivalent of a Fixed Distant with semaphores. As far as I know, that was always the case at that location. 2014 was yellow, I agree. BR had a campaign change from Red/Green to Red/Yellow in (I think) mid 80s. Prior to that it was Green up to buffer stops at a terminal stations (with a few specific exceptions to that general rule). My interest is whether anyone knows for certain that the LMS were different to BR pre 1980 rules. Needs someone with very old colour photos or an old diagram! Paul. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffP Posted September 26, 2019 Share Posted September 26, 2019 Best wishes on your recovery 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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