Hinksey Yard (c.2010)

[Grimleygrid]

Excellent thread, the boards and carry case are very impressive. This is going to be an excellent layout and I look forward to seeing more progress.

 

I wouldn’t mind a team of helpers like that!

[D1059]

These are very nice products (I have some for 4mm scale) and on a smaller layout I would seriously consider them.

 

Anyone have any pics of these in use ? The C&L website link for such a shot appears to be missing.

 

 

Thanks

STEVE

[Dave Searle]

I see you are using copper clad to strengthen the track at the baseboard joints at the rear, are you doing the same on the scenic side?

 

Hi,We are using small brass screws under each rail for the scenic side rail joints. The idea is that they will be easier to disguise with cosmetic sleepers. I'll try and take some photos later today.

 

First, the copper clad in the fiddle yard, these are strips about 8-10mm wide cut from a larger sheet (about A4 in size)

 

 

The scenic side uses these small brass screws No.2 x 1/2", hopefully they will get hidden by the cosmetic sleepers and ballast.

 

 

Some other close-up photos. The baseboards alignment dowels:

 

 

We have modified the large radius Peco code 55 electrofrog points on the scenic side by removing much of the extra plastic around the switch blades. Just visible at the top of each tie bar is an 8mm diameter hole through the baseboard to allow for the point motor drive. The shine is from the Copydex we have used to stick them down with.

 

 

Hope this is of interest.

 

Cheers,

 

Dave

[Kris]

Those detail shots are interesting to see, as they are not something that you normally get shown.

[richard60098]

Stunning layout,

 

Wat a cracking big sized setup in n gauge too superb must stop looking at these n gauge threads i'll be selling all my oo again and reverting back to the little scale

 

Keep up the good work guys i shall follow as always.

 

Cheers.

[rob D2]

Dave,

It's almost a shame you are not modelling the mid -late 90s - Brain Daniels fotopic (before it went down) had hundreds of photos at hinksey with lots of 37s/58s etc and some of the old order of wagons i.e seacows , rudds and such like.

 

I still find freight/engineers trains interesting but it's always a bit predictable now what will be on the front...

[robrailltd]

Really dense question here. What is the purpose of the screws/copper at then end of base boards. I'm just commencing work on my first multi base board layout and was wondering.

[Kris]

Really dense question here. What is the purpose of the screws/copper at then end of base boards.

 

It adds extra strength to the rail ends, and makes them harder to knock out of place.

[Tricky-CRS]

Excellent close ups, wish I had used brass screws (as I was advised) instead of copper clad on scenic section as it is hard to hide.

Keep us updated.

[robrailltd]

Cheers Kris. another question regards the copper clad its not obvious to me in the pics but i'm guessing its all properly insulated to prevent shorts?

[Kris]

Cheers Kris. another question regards the copper clad its not obvious to me in the pics but i'm guessing its all properly insulated to prevent shorts?

 

If you look closely you can see that the strip has been gapped (had the copper surface removed). I have borrowed Dave's photo (hope you don't mind Dave) and highlighted these.

 

 

[Dave Searle]

Cheers Kris. another question regards the copper clad its not obvious to me in the pics but i'm guessing its all properly insulated to prevent shorts?

This is a closer view of the copper-clad, you can see the gaps (off-white) where the surface has been scraped away between the rails.

 

 

Edit: Looks like Kris just beat me to it!

 

Cheers,

 

Dave

[Dave Searle]

Hi,

 

We made good progress at the club last night. This is where we started from:

 

 

The south end team worked very hard and managed to complete all their track:

 

 

The north end team had a bit more to do including a tricky "sneak back siding", which connects through to the fiddle yard via a small hole in the back scene. This will allow us to replace loaded ballast wagons with empties and vice versa to simulate the unloading and loading of ballast from the rear two sidings. This is at the top right of the picture.

 

 

So very nearly there with the track. Those who know the north end of Hinksey will be aware that we have modified the track plan there to give us a usable headshunt - even with 20' to play with, we ran out of space.

 

The highlight of the evening was the arrival of some of the partially completed auto-ballasters. David who is building these has made great progress. He said he would be interested in building something for the layout and how about an autoballaster. I said "Thanks, could you do 25 of them!" - and he agreed! He's building 5 of the earlier ex-Railtrack JJA (N Gauge Society kit-035b), 10 Network Rail HQA (035c) and 10 ex-Railtrack HQA (035d). As you can imagine he was "chuffed" to hear that Farish are now bringing out the JJA in N gauge.

 

Here's where he's got to. It was really nice to see that we could get 10 of them in the rear ballast siding.

 

 

So a bit more track to finish and then fix the point motors to the 34 scenic side points. Then we hand over to the wiring guru, whose been busy working on wiring diagrams and ordering wire & switches.

 

Cheers,

 

Dave

[Glorious NSE]

Nice Dave - they look like a perfect fit!

 

He could always swap some of the JJAs to do examples that Bachmann aren't likely to come out with, at least on the first run? For an example how about a Carillion one, a flat-top genny etc?

[Dave Searle]

Hi Martyn,

 

Nice Dave - they look like a perfect fit!

 

He could always swap some of the JJAs to do examples that Bachmann aren't likely to come out with, at least on the first run? For an example how about a Carillion one, a flat-top genny etc?

I believe that's a distinct probability, especially as we have photos of Carillion ones. We will need quite a lot of these and a variety will be useful.

 

Cheers,

 

Dave

[Dave Searle]

Some quiet progress last night at the club. Last bits of track are now in place and the first bits of wiring have started - droppers from the rails ready to join to tag strips under the boards (sorry no photos this week).

 

We discovered a problem that we had created for ourselves with the small screws used on the scenic side to support the rails over the boards joints.

 

The scenic side uses these small brass screws No.2 x 1/2", hopefully they will get hidden by the cosmetic sleepers and ballast.

 

In a number of cases these had pushed the surface ply up and away from the board end plates, causing a distinct hump over the joint

 

However some patient work with a slitting disk in a Dremel sliced through the problem screws and some large (1") screws were used to pull the surface down onto the top of the end plates. A lesson learned - glue it all solid before adding the track.

 

We are beginning to run out of time - our NESCOT Exhibition is in less than 3 weeks time. Even though we will be showing the layout as under construction, we hope to have some trains running. So point motors, switches and wiring are next. And some stock

 

Cheers,

 

Dave

[dave ottney]

We have a colloquialism her in the States - Holy C....p! You guys are like whirling dervishes. I can't believe how far you've come in such a short time period. This is amazing. I'll be looking forward to seeing some more of your magic.

Great job,

Dave

[brian daniels]

How acurate do you want to be? Some of the South Yard track is concrete sleepered

[Dave Searle]

Hi Brian,

 

How acurate do you want to be? Some of the South Yard track is concrete sleepered

For this layout I want to be reasonably accurate (within the time and space constraints we're working with). So we may re-lay some of the yard track with concrete sleepers later on. I may have to see if they are visible on Google Earth or Bing.

 

As it happens, I've got a photo of some of the mixture of rails, chairs & sleepers in use:

 

 

However I think I'll leave worrying about that level of details for a 4mm scale layout (unless we rebuild this one in 2mmFS). With N gauge the subtleties are less easy to portray successfully.

 

Cheers,

 

Dave

[Dave Searle]

Another Monday night and good progress.

 

Phil, the wiring guy, had made up the looms of wiring during the week from tag strips to the inter-board connectors and the connector cables themselves - some 1100 soldered joints! John was delegated to test these for any dry joints or shorts. They passed successfully.

 

Phil then continued with more dropper wires on the middle board:

 

 

Meanwhile the rest of us attached the Peco twin accessory switches to the point motors in the fiddle yard, and added the first of the Seep point motors to the scenic side. Both have their individual challenges. It would have been a lot easier if we had fitted the Peco switches to the point motor before fixing it to the point. Fortunately we can turn the boards upside down or put them on their side, but it was still fiddly, especially where the point was very close to part of the baseboard framework or another point.

 

 

The Seep points (with their built in switch) were easier once we mastered the knack of using a modified wooden clothes peg to hold the pin centrally and then use the two point positions (left/right) to guide us where to put the fixing screws. This ensures that the switch actually changes polarity when the motor operates.

 

In this photo the Seep point motors are at the top and the Peco ones at the bottom (along with the back of a Gaugemaster twin controller)

 

 

The idea is to have the fiddle yard, the main line and one scenic loop operational ready for the exhibition in less than two weeks time.

 

Cheers,

 

Dave

[Dave Searle]

Another Monday - the last before the show and wiring continues.

 

Phil has been busy with the rest of the droppers, the power supplies and some of the switching. His plan is to put as much of the "final" wiring in place as possible (to avoid redoing things later), but to ensure that we can run the fiddle yard, the main line and a couple of the loops at the front. After the show we will re-assess what still has to be done and think about the main control panel.

 

The fiddle yard will be controlled by two small control panels, one at each end of the layout, for the up and down drivers (there will be a third driver for the yard at the front). These panels can be seen in the picture below together with the twin controller to allow the driver to move a second train forward in the fiddle yard.

 

 

The switches are quite complex beasts, as they will be switching several things behind the scenes, making life easier for the operator. They will just need to select the fiddle yard road and whether to use the scissor crossovers to change lines:

 

 

Meanwhile, we turned the boards upside-down for fitting of tag strips. Each point will be connected to a six-way tag strip (to allow easy swap-out in the case of a failure). The dropper wires from each rail will also be connected up to their own tag strips.

 

One of the advantages of making the backscene a structural part of the baseboard is that we can do this safely:

 

 

Here you can see three of the five baseboards with all their dropper wires, having the inter-board wiring attached by Phil:

 

:

 

Eventually a few of the others came back from tea & the Chairman's pep talk and lent a hand:

 

 

So, still quite a lot for Phil to do this week, but we should be ready for a test run on Thursday.

 

Cheers,

 

Dave

[Kris]

Looks like Phil has his work cut out at the moment with all that wiring.

[grahame]

It's certainly very impressive and a big undertaking, but it appears to be coming along very nicely and very quickly. Well done.

 

I'm hoping to get along on Saturday (after visiting the Redhill all N gauge exhibition first).

 

G.

[Dave Searle]

Looks like Phil has his work cut out at the moment with all that wiring.

Well, Phil & I have just finished working on it after a very long working session this evening! Phil has worked very hard and made excellent progress with the wiring:

 

 

 

A couple of minor glitches were sorted out and we were able to run the first test loco round at about 1am (after I'd put my camera away). The fiddle yard and main line through the scenic section are all working. We will come back to the rest (the yard and the control panel) when the dust from the show has settled.

 

So we're ready for the show setup later today Maybe I need some sleep first.

 

Cheers,

 

Dave

[Kris]

That's come on loads. Hope that you got a good nights sleep and that the show goes well. After the work that you have done over the past few weeks everyone involved deserves it.