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Eastwood Town - A tribute to Gordon's modelling.


gordon s
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43 minutes ago, gordon s said:

The only way I know out of that is to cancel the print and start all over again....slowly.

 

Is there an easy way of going back to the previous row if you've gone too far?

 

Hi Gordon,

 

Sorry, no there isn't. The only way is to cancel and start again.

 

It's also caught me out far too often, and if there was an easy fix I would have long since done it by now... There is a lot of calculation going on as you step from one page to the next.

 

However, not easy is not the same as impossible. So I have moved it from the NOD list to the TD list*. If we have any more wet days, who knows?

 

cheers,

 

Martin.

 

*Nice One Day , To-Do.

Edited by martin_wynne
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Honestly Martin, don’t worry about it. You’ve done enough already.....:drinks:

 

It was just one of those things that I put down to me rather than Templot. I’ll just have to slow down a bit when doing it.

 

Feet up right now with a glass of wine watching the darts. Enjoyed last night seeing a girl get past the first round. She won on merit, so good luck to her on Saturday. Just one of those things I latch onto each Christmas.

 

Still making progress on the layout front and never felt more positive about seeing things run. There’s a ton of work to do, but I just have to accept it all takes time and there are no real shortcuts. Everything just takes hours....

 

How others turn out complex layouts in hours, beats me......

Edited by gordon s
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Morning Gordon.

 

Forecast rain all day, so I've made a start:

 

print_go_back.png.b281a65d4311be9b0c545b94db35d40b.png

 

That's the easy bit -- now to make them work. But first a cooked breakfast before such a challenge... smile.gif

 

Ideally it needs a complete re-write of the entire function, clicking on the page outlines instead. But after working this way for 20+ years, IIABDFI.

 

On the other hand, the code is all now open-source, so if anyone fancies a go...

 

cheers,

 

Martin.

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14 minutes ago, gordon s said:

I really appreciate what you're doing Martin, but honestly, if it's a load of work that takes you away from your photographic walks in the country, don't worry.

 

Hi Gordon,

 

No walks in this weather! Don't worry, nowadays I don't do anything on Templot if I don't want to. smile.gif

 

But I do actually enjoy coding. The print pages dialog has been unchanged for over 20 years, and I've barely looked at the code for it in all that time. I have been meaning to remove some of its irritations for ages, so it's been an interesting exercise to go back through the old code. I'm well on the way to having something better, but if it goes wrong on me I shall just park it up for now. My development version of Templot is littered with such half-finished stuff, going back years!

 

cheers,

 

Martin.

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The new Marcway sleepers certainly look interesting - has the price changed at all?  And do you know if the long lengths of sleeper (300mm or so?)  have changed in any way - I seem to recall that you mentioned they could be a bit variable?

Many thanks

Brian

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Hi Gordon, I hope your locos will cope with 1 in 65 with seven on but it could be a struggle with RTR locos. When I had 1 in 80 gradients I removed the coach weights and the locos coped with seven LMS bogies. I added as much weight as I could to the RTR stuff. Kit jobs should cope much better.

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8 minutes ago, Rowsley17D said:

Hi Gordon, I hope your locos will cope with 1 in 65 with seven on but it could be a struggle with RTR locos. When I had 1 in 80 gradients I removed the coach weights and the locos coped with seven LMS bogies. I added as much weight as I could to the RTR stuff. Kit jobs should cope much better.

 

Gordon is in Templot as we speak, adding a turn-back spur for the banking engine...

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Just measured the Marcway sleepers and they are actually 3.5mm wide, so fractionally oversize x 32mm long. I’ve also found one of the earlier versions and they were 1.2mm versus the 1.5mm of the new ones.

 

Cost wise they are £9.99 for a sheet containing 100 sleepers. At 32mm long, that’s the equivalent of 3.2m length.

 

C & L are 20 strips of 220mm, so 4.4m for £18.96, but they are 3.3mm wide. I can live with the extra 0.2mm width, but not the additional 0.3mm in thickness. I’ll ring tomorrow and let you know the outcome.

 

Off the top of my head that probably makes Marcway 25% cheaper per metre and you don’t have to cut them to length.

 

Gradient wise, I forgot I have now taken the gradient almost to the traverser, so now have a run of 7m for 82mm height which is 1:85, so much better. Like you, Jonathan, I remove the weights from all Bachmann coaches, so feel I should be OK. If not, Martin has the answer.....

 

The line up to ET shed will be around 1:65, but that will only be light locos.

 

Edit: Apologies, Brian, these new sheets are really consistent and have sharp edges, certainly on a par with C & L. The single sided strips are far more variable and because some were undersize width wise, I cut them up into single sleepers.

 

 

Edited by gordon s
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Gordon

I have noted that Bachmann Mk1s are not the most "rollable" of items. I have tried using a pinpoint bearing adjusting tool to no avail as yet.

 

However, my kit built stock fitted with Bahmann LMS bogies are fine. I will do some checks to see if I can suss out the real problem.

 

As for RTR locos, well Shap is sorting them out as is the exit from the Fiddle Yard on Barnbow East. It just means you need to have lots of nice kit built express and freight engines!

 

Baz

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Just had a very pleasant discussion with Mark of 'Marcway', which prompted me to go right back to the beginning and try to understand how I arrived where I am now after years of building my own pointwork to align with SMP track.

 

It was certainly a very worthwhile exercise and one I probably wouldn't have done without the chat this morning. I find it amazing how we forget some things and remember others and sometimes between those thoughts, the reasons why you do things the way you do often gets crossed over.

 

The starting point was to stick a vernier across SMP flexi and note all the major dimensions.

 

In some cases the dimensions did vary along a length of track, so these are my closest estimates. The overall height of the track is 3.3mm and the height of the rail 1.88mm. That leaves the space between the bottom of the rail and the track bed as 1.42mm. Give or take a a fraction of a mm in overall height and it's easy to see why the loose sleepers are 1.5mm. Many track builders use 1.6mm sleeper strip, which would mean the finished turnout would be slightly higher at 3.48mm (1.6mm + 1.88mm), but builders either live with it or insert a small shim under the flexi to bring it to the same height.

 

The thickness of the plastic sleeper on SMP is 0.9mm and because of ballasting issues I've had over the years, I chose to go with 1mm strip which enabled me to easily follow the 'Captain Kernow' ballasting method of painting PVA between the sleepers. A few years ago, I tried some tests on 1.6mm sleepers and the results weren't as good as I found the PVA shrank back once dried and personally, I wasn't as happy with the results, so I chose to stay with 1mm sleeper strip.

 

Doing the maths once again and you have the sleeper at 1.0mm plus the rail at 1.88mm, giving an overall height of 2.88, so lower than SMP by 0.42mm. After all these years I'd forgotten that I slightly lift the last few sleepers to make up that difference in height and was convinced that 1mm sleepers gave the better match.

 

This is where I will add a caveat as surprisingly, I found differences in the overall height. Taking several measurements along the track, I had variances between 3.20mm and 3.4mm in the overall height. Using 1.6mm strip and you end up 0.18 higher and 1mm strip means 0.42mm lower.

 

Using 1.5mm sleeper strip and 1.88mm rail would almost be spot on to the finished SMP flexi height of 3.3mm, hence the 1.5mm thickness of pre cut sleepers.

 

Mark then very kindly said he probably had some 1mm x 3.3mm strip laying around and offered to send me some.

 

It doesn't physically change anything, but at least explains how I got here...:D

Edited by gordon s
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Gordon

 

When building track with copperclad timbers with the known rail height of most commercially available track there has always been a mismatch in heights, then if using either ply or plastic sleepers/timbers with plastic chairs you have a similar issue if using ether thinner timbers or flexitrack. I decided to use exactoscale timbers and sleeper flexitrack/track bases, as you say harder to ballast, but the thicker track base in my opinion is a bit sturdier though I doubt if this is an issue in 00 gauge

 

I don't know if you use rail joiners or fishplates, if the former they should level things up 

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8 hours ago, gordon s said:

Just had a very pleasant discussion with Mark of 'Marcway', which prompted me to go right back to the beginning and try to understand how I arrived where I am now after years of building my own pointwork to align with SMP track.

 

It was certainly a very worthwhile exercise and one I probably wouldn't have done without the chat this morning. I find it amazing how we forget some things and remember others and sometimes between those thoughts, the reasons why you do things the way you do often gets crossed over.

 

The starting point was to stick a vernier across SMP flexi and note all the major dimensions.

 

In some cases the dimensions did vary along a length of track, so these are my closest estimates. The overall height of the track is 3.3mm and the height of the rail 1.88mm. That leaves the space between the bottom of the rail and the track bed as 1.42mm. Give or take a a fraction of a mm in overall height and it's easy to see why the loose sleepers are 1.5mm. Many track builders use 1.6mm sleeper strip, which would mean the finished turnout would be slightly higher at 3.48mm (1.6mm + 1.88mm), but builders either live with it or insert a small shim under the flexi to bring it to the same height.

 

The thickness of the plastic sleeper on SMP is 0.9mm and because of ballasting issues I've had over the years, I chose to go with 1mm strip which enabled me to easily follow the 'Captain Kernow' ballasting method of painting PVA between the sleepers. A few years ago, I tried some tests on 1.6mm sleepers and the results weren't as good as I found the PVA shrank back once dried and personally, I wasn't as happy with the results, so I chose to stay with 1mm sleeper strip.

 

Doing the maths once again and you have the sleeper at 1.0mm plus the rail at 1.88mm, giving an overall height of 2.88, so lower than SMP by 0.42mm. After all these years I'd forgotten that I slightly lift the last few sleepers to make up that difference in height and was convinced that 1mm sleepers gave the better match.

 

This is where I will add a caveat as surprisingly, I found differences in the overall height. Taking several measurements along the track, I had variances between 3.20mm and 3.4mm in the overall height. Using 1.6mm strip and you end up 0.18 higher and 1mm strip means 0.42mm lower.

 

Using 1.5mm sleeper strip and 1.88mm rail would almost be spot on to the finished SMP flexi height of 3.3mm, hence the 1.5mm thickness of pre cut sleepers.

 

Mark then very kindly said he probably had some 1mm x 3.3mm strip laying around and offered to send me some.

 

It doesn't physically change anything, but at least explains how I got here...:D

That's very interesting Gordon.

 

For years (more than 40) I've used SMP track and built my points using SMP point timber strip and SMP rail soldered direct to the strip, on the assumption that, being from the same manufacturer, the dimensions would be compatible.

 

After reading your post I measured some odd bits that I have lying around on the bench, to the nearest 0.1mm.

 

Track height = 3.1mm

Rail height = 1.9mm

Difference = 1.2mm

Point timber strip thickness = 1.2mm

 

So my assumption seems to have been correct based on those samples and I've never experienced any problems in practice.

 

I'll go out to the railway room later and measure some SMP sleepers (as distinct from point timbers) and also some newer lengths of track to see if there is any difference.

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SMP copperclad prior to being taken over by Marcway was made from Paxoline and I guess imperial in thickness, the last batch I bought was soon after Marcway took over and there was issues with the Guillotine cutting widths of consistent width. After a price increase I started to use C&L strips which were cut on a router giving squared sides. I have now only got some old 7 mm strip at 1.2 mm. I guess what Marcway now supply is glass fiber and is much the same over broth brands. 

 

As has been pointed out rail height will be constant 1.9 mm. I do have some older C&L thin track base which comes in at appx 3.4 mm with rail. Their latest track base is now appx 0.8 mm higher

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1 hour ago, hayfield said:

the last batch I bought was soon after Marcway took over and there was issues with the Guillotine cutting widths of consistent width

Yes, I experienced that too. I use the narrow strips for off-stage points , keeping the full-width ones for the scenic area.

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Wizard Models also sell copper-clad strip for sleepers:

1.6mm thick by 3.3mm wide.  6m in total (20 x 300mm) for £12.00.  (Also 4mm wide for £13-50)

(C&L Finescale price for the same stuff is £18.96 for 4.4m, so significantly more expensive.  Also 4mm wide for the same price - £18-96)

 

C&L have a wider range (e.g. 1mm thick);  I've no knowledge of the accuracy of the Wizard product, however.

HTH

Brian

 

 

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Thanks Brian. The bulk of my purchases are 4mm strip x 1.0mm thick. I now have 500 SMP sleepers that have very clean cut edges and even though they are 3.5mm wide, rather than 3.33mm, I will use them as the odd three or four sleepers at the each end of each turnout and where I need to add droppers for power feeds. They are ideal for those situations.

 

I was going to try their 4mm strip and see how it compares to C & L, but had forgotten they don't do 1mm strip. In all fairness to C & L, the quality of their sleeper strip is very good, but they are more expensive. Personally I'm disappointed they have cut the strips in half as the amount of wastage is now higher from 220mm strips versus 440mm. I suspect it may be something to do with postage costs, but there may be more to it. Perhaps, I'll ask Phil next time.

 

Currently laying track on the station approach board. Both turnouts are in place and ballasted, so just the plain track to do. Hopefully another couple of weeks will see this board completed.

 

Hope you all had a good Christmas. I spent most of it coughing like a good 'un as I managed to pick up a bug just before the holiday. A few more days of anti bionics and I'll be all systems go again.

 

Great to have the family here for a few days, but lovely to have the place just to ourselves this evening. It's so peaceful again.....;)

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On 22/12/2019 at 20:32, Barry O said:

Gordon

I have noted that Bachmann Mk1s are not the most "rollable" of items. I have tried using a pinpoint bearing adjusting tool to no avail as yet.

 

However, my kit built stock fitted with Bahmann LMS bogies are fine. I will do some checks to see if I can suss out the real problem.

 

As for RTR locos, well Shap is sorting them out as is the exit from the Fiddle Yard on Barnbow East. It just means you need to have lots of nice kit built express and freight engines!

 

Baz

 

Especially in EM, have you tried this Baz?;

Works for me.

 

 

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12 hours ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

Especially in EM, have you tried this Baz?;

Works for me.

 

 

Yep, I have something similar. What happens is you get a squeaky axle. You check the bearings .. fine. You check the pinpoint axle length..also apparently fine. Add a bit of GT85 to the axlebox..it helps a bit. Next up. Swap out the Bachmann wheelsets ..

Baz

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28 minutes ago, Barry O said:

Yep, I have something similar. What happens is you get a squeaky axle. You check the bearings .. fine. You check the pinpoint axle length..also apparently fine. Add a bit of GT85 to the axlebox..it helps a bit. Next up. Swap out the Bachmann wheelsets ..

Baz

 

How do you get a squeaky axle with a brass pinpoint bearing Baz? Is part of the wheelset catching on the sideframe maybe?

 

Mike.

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2 hours ago, Barry O said:

Yep, I have something similar. What happens is you get a squeaky axle. You check the bearings .. fine. You check the pinpoint axle length..also apparently fine. Add a bit of GT85 to the axlebox..it helps a bit. Next up. Swap out the Bachmann wheelsets ..

Baz

 

1 hour ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

How do you get a squeaky axle with a brass pinpoint bearing Baz? Is part of the wheelset catching on the sideframe maybe?

 

Mike.

 

1 hour ago, Barry O said:

Pinpoin4 bearing only fitted as a matter of last resort.

Could the Bachmann axles have a non-standard taper on the ends?

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7 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

 

 

Could the Bachmann axles have a non-standard taper on the ends?

 

Speaking from personal experience only, Bachmann axles tend to have a slightly blunted pinpoint, presumably to save the plastic sideframes from becoming  damaged.

Whilst converting to EM I use the existing axles in brass bearings without any detrimental effect, only swapping the ones which are under the standard 26mm length, but, obviously, results may vary from one batch to another.

I suppose in the perfect world, which I don't live in by any means!, the RTR wheels should be junked for the correct wheels to the correct standards (can't use that word, a fight breaks out!) dimensions and then theoretically all would be well.

 

Mike.

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