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Eastwood Town - A tribute to Gordon's modelling.


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38 minutes ago, eldavo said:

I'm sure Gordon said he was never going to build a layout with gradients and definitely never going to build a full train traverser again.

He also said that he wasn’t going to rebuild things many times, and did.

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Who are you and what have you done with Gordon?

Sounds like the real McCoy to me... ;)

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Ref mounting draw runners; the old traverser built for Warren Lane had 4 draw runners supporting the table, 2 mounted vertical and 2 mounted horizontal to help keep everything exactly where it should be. That was about 6ft long with 7 roads, but you could slide it from 1 corner and there was no binding in the movement. HTH.

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Thanks SG, that's useful information. I have four sets of runners and planned to use three mounted flat, rather than the four vertically as before. The traverser bed on the first one was 9' long versus the 7' of this plan, so I'm fairly hopeful the twist from corner to corner will be reduced.

 

Interesting concept, Martin. That takes me back to my first few jobs working on drawing boards over 50 years ago. I can't believe that number as it seems like yesterday. Space may well be a limiting factor. Thanks again for your instant response on Templot. I'll open up my Windows machine in a few minutes and make the necessary changes. If you're using it every day, it's second nature and you can whizz through plans. Stop for a few months and it's like you brain has been wiped clean. Maybe I should wait 50 years as I can remember that stuff....;)

 

Not sure if the 'mad' comment from my old mate, Eldavo is referring to my plan, me or both....:D

 

Of course all of this is a little like a manifesto and may never happen, but sometimes you just have to try these things.

 

Thoughts are with all those in Yorkshire. Can't imagine what it must be like at any time of the year, let alone as we approach winter.

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Gordon

 

Given your absence during the golfing season I wonder if a lid over the traverser might help to keep the dust off the stock when unused for long periods of time.

 

Another idea for you. Have you thought of having a number of "shelves" that move vertically to align with your tracks? It should keep the weight down on each shelf and could well be infinite expandable - up and down.

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Are you thinking along these lines, Ray?

 

http://www.nelevation.com/specifications/

 

They are limited to 12 trains and only 5 carriages plus a loco in length. Quite a clever design and a price tag to match, but as always you get what you pay for. The problem with a DIY vertical stack is one of weight and the height of the unit. The traverser has 15 roads and if you had them on 90mm centres, you'd have a height around 1.3m, which of course is without adding the height of your baseboard from the floor to accommodate the lowest shelf. Once the bottom shelf was lifted to the track bed, the top shelf would be through the ceiling.....:D

 

Then you have that weight to lift and then hold it in place before gravity takes over and it all comes crashing down to the floor. Perhaps I've misunderstood your suggestion......

 

Had a good day today and one that may continue tomorrow looking at the weather forecast. I suspect golf will be off the menu.

 

First job was adding all the control wiring for a dozen or so Tortoise motors. I'm so glad I cut all the tracks to separate the two boards, because it was pleasure standing at my work bench and adding the wires. The whole thing took less than an hour and no one was hurt in the process.

 

Spent a while retraining myself on Templot and then set out to check if the extra down slope track could be accommodated. After an hour or so, I arrived at a reasonable solution without too much rework, so back to printing, cutting and sticking numerous templates to prove the theory. I had three goes at it as the spacing around the edge was critical,  as was the distance to the existing tracks on the main board, but eventually I came up with a design that worked.

 

It will mean one turnout on the gradient, but I don't see an issue if the trackbed is flat. Looking at this pic, we're talking about the two tracks on the left. The outer will go to the traverser and inner to ET main shed. It means cutting away a few feet of single track base back to the first turnout, so no real problems.

 

Whilst playing with Templot, I totted up the length of each template to get an accurate figure on the gradients involved. I'm sure Martin will tell me there's a simple way, but I just opened each template in turn and then added up the overall length. The shed road is fine and came out at a gradient of 1:55. The traverser access road is not as long as first thought and that came out at 1:85, below my magic figure of 1:100, but I'm sure it will be fine for steam locos and seven coaches.

 

DSCF0057.jpg.95034272b30bb7b248b6516eaa5bb3d3.jpg

 

If this all goes ahead, I'll be back to my other love, building turnouts. I'm going to try a slightly different build process as I did find myself tweaking the outer rails on ones I had built earlier as my long wheelbase locos with minimal side play on the drivers showed signs of binding. Leaving all the critical pieces in place and opening up the gauge a fraction of a mm soon solved that, so I want to bear that in mind when building the next one to see if that improves things. My goal is to have pointwork that all stock runs through freely, no matter if they are RTR or kit locos. So far 00-SF has answered all those questions, so thanks again Martin for introducing me to a standard I hadn't seen before.

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36 minutes ago, gordon s said:

Whilst playing with Templot, I totted up the length of each template to get an accurate figure on the gradients involved. I'm sure Martin will tell me there's a simple way,

 

Hi Gordon,

 

If you are sure, I had better do it. :)

 

Here you go, Just put the templates you want to measure into a group:

 

cumulative_data.png.6e6c1129824d8f008a139f9484ea2948.png

 

cheers,

 

Martin.

Edited by martin_wynne
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4 hours ago, Ray H said:

Its so good to see you posting regularly again Gordon.

 

You're right about my suggestion of having an elevator style fiddle yard. They do look rather neat though.

I had one of the nelevation units on order. After 2 years I gave up and cancelled. They also cited issues with the maximum weight they could handle. Since most of my models are kitbuilt, a quick calculation showed their product simply couldn't do what it should. In my case at least. 

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21 hours ago, gordon s said:

Then you have that weight to lift and then hold it in place before gravity takes over and it all comes crashing down to the floor. Perhaps I've misunderstood your suggestion......

A degree of counterbalance is possibly indicated?

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Golf rained off today as last night's rain meant the course was waterlogged, so spent the day on Templot re aligning the new track requirement to the lower levels. It eventually took me four go's to get in right. I do find printing off the templates and sticking them together quite therapeutic with the huge advantage you can see exactly how each track sits in the whole plan and it does pick out potential errors in terms of track bed width on gradients coming away from pointwork. I half expect the Green brigade to be banging on my door as well over a 100 sheets of A4 were printed to get me this far. Still far better to bin paper long before the track bed is cut, cork laid and track put in place.

 

I've had to bring in the outer track a few inches as once I'd calculated the distance out from the main board, the clearance under the sloping roof was very tight for 00 stock. Of course that threw out all the adjoining curves, so back to the printer, paper and sticky tape.

 

Job done now and Fridays are always good for me as my wife will be out to see her mother, so hopefully this will all be cut tomorrow and adjusted to join the existing board.

 

Football tonight, so probably time to crack open a beer. Cheers!

 

DSCF0059.jpg.0ce3cadfc07e26f45f6306e3e8b25bb1.jpg

Edited by gordon s
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So much for the football.....5-0 up and cruising when, phut, a power cut....:mellow:

 

It was a timely reminder of just how dependent we are electricity and how all those families in Yorkshire are suffering. It will takes months to get their homes back to normal. Spent an hour or so sitting in the dark, with just a few candles and torches to find our way about. Forget atomic missiles, just turn off the electricity and we're all doomed...

 

Had the day to myself, so set about cutting all the track beds out of 12mm ply and bolting them together. Two major points of concern. The end wall over the stairs where space is limited and the exact position the parallel track would come out behind the far side and under the eaves. The only way to prove it was OK was is to join them all together and try and manage each them into position. The first length was OK, but I still have to remove some of the existing boards on the far side to manoeuvre the longest section into place.

 

Eldavo made an earlier comment on my love hate relation ship on gradients. I'm not against them per se as the give interest in any layout, but I've always struggled to get one smooth incline where coaches appear to be on a single plane, rather than the up and down of a roller coaster. This time, I'm going to build the inclines away from the layout and construct two rigid sections that are flat, but with little sag over the whole length. This should allow me to then lift the whole section into position and then add the support risers afterwards, with minimal adjustment to keep everything in one plane. Long straight sections are easy, the problems are always on curved sections and here I'll probably use a length of 4mm MDF that can be bent around the curves and still act as a clamping point as the risers are slid into place. I may even add a back scene board along the edge of the track bed, which itself will help rigidity. It's probably the right time to do it anyway, as trying to affix something under the eaves and behind the existing boards will be a pig anyway.

 

That's the theory anyway....:D

 

DSCF0063.jpg.25967953247a8df9470b72f5659a867b.jpg

 

DSCF0065.jpg.c9ff16e216b7078c63fd86125b785bdc.jpg

 

Note to self. Tidy up!

 

DSCF0066.jpg.a4c0dad9869e334a39318f3a82cf75a7.jpg

Edited by gordon s
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Her indoors reckon that looks similar to my layout room! :jester:

 

Just spent two hours looking for a reason why my three way point wiring didn't work...simples! You need to have a feed wire to both sides of the track... Doh!

 

Baz

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'rather than the up and down of a roller coaster'

 

....which is entirely prototypical e

gGradient_Profile.jpg.c3c4fdbfcfd68bd3bf19088c33c3801b.jpg

 

edit..this image also illustrates the point quite well I think

 

1213172739_No._31806_Medstead_and_Four_Marks_station_1979.jpg.90fba7bb42c9390561e9098ccce1145e.jpg

Edited by PhilH
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1 hour ago, gordon s said:

So much for the football.....5-0 up and cruising when, phut, a power cut....:mellow:

 

It was a timely reminder of just how dependent we are electricity and how all those families in Yorkshire are suffering. It will takes months to get their homes back to normal. Spent an hour or so sitting in the dark, with just a few candles and torches to find our way about. Forget atomic missiles, just turn off the electricity and we're all doomed...

 

Had the day to myself, so set about cutting all the track beds out of 12mm ply and bolting them together. Two major points of concern. The end wall over the stairs where space is limited and the exact position the parallel track would come out behind the far side and under the eaves. The only way to prove it was OK was is to join them all together and try and manage each them into position. The first length was OK, but I still have to remove some of the existing boards on the far side to manoeuvre the longest section into place.

 

Eldavo made an earlier comment on my love hate relation ship on gradients. I'm not against them per se as the give interest in any layout, but I've always struggled to get one smooth incline where coaches appear to be on a single plane, rather than the up and down of a roller coaster. This time, I'm going to build the inclines away from the layout and construct two rigid sections that are flat, but with little sag over the whole length. This should allow me to then lift the whole section into position and then add the support risers afterwards, with minimal adjustment to keep everything in one plane. Long straight sections are easy, the problems are always on curved sections and here I'll probably use a length of 4mm MDF that can be bent around the curves and still act as a clamping point as the risers are slid into place. I may even add a back scene board along the edge of the track bed, which itself will help rigidity. It's probably the right time to do it anyway, as trying to affix something under the eaves and behind the existing boards will be a pig anyway.

 

That's the theory anyway....:D

 

DSCF0063.jpg.25967953247a8df9470b72f5659a867b.jpg

 

DSCF0065.jpg.c9ff16e216b7078c63fd86125b785bdc.jpg

 

Note to self. Tidy up!

 

DSCF0066.jpg.a4c0dad9869e334a39318f3a82cf75a7.jpg

 

 

SNAP

 

Yesterday I went to a local timber yard and got them to cut up a sheet of ply (only made one error with my cutting instructions). Today I have made the first of four boards for my next layout, other than wrongly cutting two lengths in half yesterday, I struggled fitting the alignment dowels. Still the first one is built, back to the second board tomorrow which should be quicker as most of the prep was done today

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On 14/11/2019 at 16:18, gordon s said:

I'm reminded of this.....Priceless...:D

Priceless indeed. Was introduced to that by a friend over 40 years ago - remembered it ever since. Thanks for posting.

At the same event I think he did a selection of phrases of foreign ‘advertisements’ for guest houses:  “you will be well fed up”; “a french widow in every room”; equally brilliant and worth a listen if you can find it.

Paul.

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14 hours ago, hayfield said:

I struggled fitting the alignment dowels.

Possibly too late for you now, but may I recommend the DCC concepts dowels.  Very easy to fit and accurate with a little care. (I discovered the hard way that too thick an end panel can lead to misalignment if your perpendicular drill isn’t, but 12mm is fine.)

Paul.

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15 hours ago, PhilH said:

'rather than the up and down of a roller coaster'

 

....which is entirely prototypical e

gGradient_Profile.jpg.c3c4fdbfcfd68bd3bf19088c33c3801b.jpg

 

edit..this image also illustrates the point quite well I think

 

1213172739_No._31806_Medstead_and_Four_Marks_station_1979.jpg.90fba7bb42c9390561e9098ccce1145e.jpg

 

Of course you are right, Phil. It's not the transition in the vertical curve as such, but more over the length of a train of say seven coach where the trackbed sags between the risers to create the roller coaster effect I refer to. It's one of those things that does appear in real life, but somehow in 4mm scale it appears so much worse.  Just one of my personal hang ups.....:D

 

I guess some of it is not chamfering the top edge of the riser to the appropriate angle, so when you screw down the trackbed, it pulls it square which creates the effect. I'll see if I can pull out a pic which shows what I mean. I have no problem with the transition on and off the gradient as I usually set that at half the gradient for the first foot or so. Its between the transitions that bugs me....

 

Maybe I should get out more....:D

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47 minutes ago, gordon s said:

 

Of course you are right, Phil. It's not the transition in the vertical curve as such, but more over the length of a train of say seven coach where the trackbed sags between the risers to create the roller coaster effect I refer to. It's one of those things that does appear in real life, but somehow in 4mm scale it appears so much worse.  Just one of my personal hang ups.....:D

 

I guess some of it is not chamfering the top edge of the riser to the appropriate angle, so when you screw down the trackbed, it pulls it square which creates the effect. I'll see if I can pull out a pic which shows what I mean. I have no problem with the transition on and off the gradient as I usually set that at half the gradient for the first foot or so. Its between the transitions that bugs me....

 

Maybe I should get out more....:D

If you use a Fixit block at the "downhill" side of the riser that will pull the trackbed down on to the edge of the riser and allow it to follow its own alignment.

 

I probably haven't articulated that very clearly but I hope you get my meaning.

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Had to look up a fixit block as I've not heard them called that before...:D

 

Now I know the blocks you mean, can you give me a quick freehand sketch of how you are suggesting their use?

 

Stupid thing is having done the calculation, the angle on 1:100 is only half a degree and 1 degree for 1:50, so maybe that's not the cause.

 

I found this pic from years ago, which is goes someway to show what I mean. This is not a gradient at all, but you can see the rise and fall in the 12mm ply forward of the loco. I would have cut the blocks the same height, but for some reason ended up with packing pieces under the trackbed. Perhaps this was just rubbish ply as it was 2007 and I was probably less selective about my wood supplier and it has bowed of it's own accord. Looking at the voids, it must have been cheap stuff.

 

Either way (other than the loco) it's all gone to the great modeller in the sky now....

 

IMG_2364.jpg.4b1edbc354e4a356d798e84c2b26ab95.jpg

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13 minutes ago, gordon s said:

Had to look up a fixit block as I've not heard them called that before...:D

 

Now I know the blocks you mean, can you give me a quick freehand sketch of how you are suggesting their use?

 

Stupid thing is having done the calculation, the angle on 1:100 is only half a degree and 1 degree for 1:50, so maybe that's not the cause.

 

I found this pic from years ago, which is goes someway to show what I mean. This is not a gradient at all, but you can see the rise and fall in the 12mm ply forward of the loco. I would have cut the blocks the same height, but for some reason ended up with packing pieces under the trackbed. Perhaps this was just rubbish ply as it was 2007 and I was probably less selective about my wood supplier and it has bowed of it's own accord. Looking at the voids, it must have been cheap stuff.

 

Either way (other than the loco) it's all gone to the great modeller in the sky now....

 

IMG_2364.jpg.4b1edbc354e4a356d798e84c2b26ab95.jpg

I'll try to do a sketch tomorrow Gordon - it's a bit late at night now!

 

In the meantime here's a post from my layout topic showing how I use the blocks on closed top baseboards. I haven't got a photo of any open top ones yet.

 

The secret is that the blocks distort as you tighten the screws to conform to the shape of the joint.

 

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3 hours ago, gordon s said:

I guess some of it is not chamfering the top edge of the riser to the appropriate angle, so when you screw down the trackbed, it pulls it square which creates the effect.

 

Hi Gordon,

 

Don't use risers on gradients, otherwise that effect is almost inevitable. Use long vertical side panels with spacers. They can be quite thin for flexing into curves -- these were 1/8" hardboard:

 

 ada_boards_1985.jpg.8c696886f4add0b2b00d9b9ab21cd12a.jpg

 

The spacers are a fraction below the top, the trackbed is fixed down into them, not too tight, the glue on the side panels does most of the work.

 

Apologies if I have posted this before, my memory is now hopeless.

 

cheers,

 

Martin.

 

Edited by martin_wynne
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Thanks for that Martin. Been giving some thought as to how I can cut side rails on an angle. My bench saw has a parallel fence, but that is not adjustable and cutting an angle over a length of 1200mm to create a 1:80 gradient means the bottom edge needs to be moved away from the parallel position by 15mm. I could use a small block to hold it away, but I'm limited to the length of the parallel fence. A little more thought and I'm sure I can come up with something, but no doubt someone will beat me to it....

 

Thanks for your input also St Enodoc. I completely forgot you were in Australia.Had an enjoyable half an hour though admiring your woodworking skills, particularly the lift up section. Most impressed.

 

Bit of an abortive day in some ways as I was at my local wood yard bright and early to get another 3 sheets of 12mm ply and two sheets of 6mm mdf. They very kindly cut them all down to 4' x 2' pieces so they will fit in the back of my estate, but I hadn't appreciated they can't use their saw mill on Saturdays as part of their planning permission, so turned round and came home.

 

Decided to plough ahead and get all the sheets printed for the traverser and shed inclines and they came together well, so it will be all systems go once I get some more ply next week.

 

DSCF0069.jpg.088dcaadd83707a432ca4e3dfe65b8fc.jpg

 

One of the things that has bugged me with the plan so far was the original carriage sidings, in the bottom left of the plan. When I had trains running a few months ago, I realised that empty stock left in those carriage sidings was going to block the view of approaching trains from the other side of the room. Having the traverser option as a possible solution, it meant that train storage was no longer an issue and that freed up that space. I'm sure you'll fall about laughing, but working on the 'less is more' principle the five carriage sidings have been removed and I have included a two road goods shed. The other building in that area is a two road diesel shed and refuelling station.

 

That has opened that space considerably and I may well remove the spare holding siding next to the diesel shed.

 

The original plan also had a couple of sidings at the top of the plan inside the main lines. Access to those was via a couple of turnouts from the main line, but the Tortoise motors would have clashed with the traverser access, so they have to go. Started playing around with access to what will become a coal yard and coal drops, but didn't like the idea of backing in from the main line, so with a little work an inner goods loop has been added so as not to block the running line.

 

....and that started me thinking...;)

 

ET has always been a layout to watch trains run, hence my choice of a continuous run. Adding this latest goods relief line has improved things, but I am aware there are still a couple of bottlenecks either side of the station with just two main running lines.

 

I think there could be a possibility of extending the both the inner and outer goods relief lines to join the main running lines between x-x and y-y. This would allow four trains to run independently, rather than two running and two waiting for their turn.

 

The difficulty is space at the bottom of the plan, but I could utilise the line down to shed and bring that off the traverser line. That would create the space for the additional line back to ET station. The down gradient would then be 1:80 down to the traverser, with a second spur down to the shed with may be 1:40, but that shouldn't be an issue as it will only be light loco's going down to the shed.

 

Certainly food for thought...

 

1598505926_sketchboard_2019_11_16_2039_39(1).jpg.0cb06446ae7102a9eaf915fcab73e32a.jpg

 

 

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