Obbekaer & Ribe Skibbroen - P87

[Robatron86]

I went out first thing to grab it, as my layout is in the same issue! I had been following Obbekaer on here for a while now, just in awe really.

[Brian Harrap]

Nice to see Obbekaer in CM this month. Excellent modelling of course and a delightful article and good to see P87 in the spotlight again. Well done Geraint and all concerned. keep up the good work. Brian.

[Middlepeak]

Thank you Brian. I made a conscious effort to make the article a bit different from most layout descriptions. Sounds like it worked!

 

Hope to see folks at Railex next weekend. Please drop by for a chat if you're there.

 

Regards,

 

Geraint

[Brian Harrap]

As it happens I shall be sampling the undoubted delights of the Western Isles that weekend, but for those not sampling the delights of the Western Isles I would definitely recommend a trip to Aylesbury to see Obbekaer. Excellent though the pictures in CM are it looks much better close up and moving, - 'in the flesh' as it were. Have a good weekend. Baron.

[Phil Copleston]

Hope to see folks at Railex next weekend. Please drop by for a chat if you're there. -Geraint

 

I will be at Railex too, operating a layout. So will come over and say "hello" to you, Geraint. 

 

As it happens I shall be sampling the undoubted delights of the Western Isles that weekend, but for those not sampling the delights of the Western Isles I would definitely recommend a trip to Aylesbury to see Obbekaer. Excellent though the pictures in CM are it looks much better close up and moving, - 'in the flesh' as it were. Have a good weekend. Baron.

 

I agree, Brian. I last saw 'Obbekaer' at the Wells show a couple of years ago and was completely enthralled. It is a very simple layout, yet beautifully executed. For me, it's a little like a straight version of Ian Futers' minimalistic circular layouts from the 1970s. And similarly, inspires me to create a layout containing the same virtues. So I can't wait to see 'Obbekaer' again next weekend!

[richardswain]

Wow! I've just spent a happy hour wandering through the pages after a link from Scalefour's fb group. Although English, I live in DK and lived an hour or so north of Ribe in the 90's. Your layout is incredibly evocative! I have a friend in Jutland with an enormous H0 layout in his roof (eg. it takes trains about 4 minutes to get from one station to the next, and there are about 7 stations - it's all done with very intricately concealed loops), and since he is slowly building west Jutland in H0 I've sent him a link. It is a staggering layout, especially the conversion of the loco's etc. Incredible!

[Oldddudders]

As Sherry ('Ashcombe' on here) was coming over for a few weeks, I asked her to pick up Continental Modeller, and have greatly enjoyed Geraint's article. It is well-written and illustrated, and has detailed and informative captions. Being at Railex would have been better, I'm sure, but the printed page is a good-enough substitute.

[The Stationmaster]

I thoroughly enjoyed watching this layout at Railex on Sunday - the first time I've had a chance to get 'up close & personal' as whenever I've come across it previously it has had deservedly attracted crowds in front of it.

[railroadbill]

I bought Continental Modeller for  this article, as there are not many Danish layouts being written about in the UK.

I've travelled  through this part of Denmark fairly regularly so it is very interesting to me.

 

Well written article and the layout itself looks superb. 

 

I especially liked:

1. The ballast/trackbed which is reminiscent of  Danish preserved lines like Mariager-Handest  (MHVJ)  or Veteranbanen Bryrup Vrads (I travelled on Triangel railcars on that one so impressed with the stock on the layout. I didn't know that Heljan had made a Triangel railcar).

2. The very distinctive transformer tower, many of which still seem to be standing in the Jutland countryside.

3. The backscene, with the typically Danish church.

 

Great feeling of place, it couldn't be anywhere else!  Spot on.

 

 

A very well produced layout and I hope to be able to see it on display  some time.

Edited June 3, 2016 by railroadbill

[Middlepeak]

Thanks all for your nice comments. It's always a help to be able to frequently visit the area you're modelling, if nothing else just to soak up the atmosphere - which is what I'm doing this week! There's always a danger that if you rely on what you remember, the mind begins to play tricks in time, and you end up with a bit if a pastiche. Besides, repeating your research is all the more enjoyable!

 

Regards,

 

Geraint

[Middlepeak]

I suppose you would call it welcome plagiarism.

 

A chance encounter with Danish manufacturer Witzel Hobby during Obbekaer's appearance at the DMJU exhibition in Kolding two years ago led to an enquiry last year about the station building, which as I've described before is a model of the ticket office at the old Farup station on the line from Ribe to Bramming and Esbjerg.

 

I responded by sending my CAD drawings of the building to the manufacturer, from which they have produced a laser cut card kit of the building, which now retails as the 'Obbekaer ticket office' on their website. It requires details such as gutters and downpipes to complete the model, but now the modeller can complete his or her rendition of the building in a much shorter time than it took me!

 

If it gives Obbekaer a little bit of recognition, then I applaud his initiative, but I wonder how many Danes will be disappointed to find that Obbekaer isn't actually on the railway map!

 

For those of you who are interested, you can see the finished item on the Witzel Hobby site at http://witzelhobby.dk/spor-h0-byggesaet/8-obbekjaer-billetsalg.html

 

There's also a short YouTube video illustrating the research, manufacture and construction of another of their models, this time of the station building at Bindeballe on the Vandelbanen, at

 

And for those of you who haven't seen the 'prototype' of Obbekaer's station, here's a photo below.

 

I'm quite chuffed really!

 

[Re6/6]

Feather in the cap there Geraint ! well done.

[Horsetan]

 

 I've spoken to Dave Doe http://www.ddwheelwrights.com/and he might be able to help but I've got to get round to making the thing go first!,

 

 

Any luck on this so far?

[Re6/6]

It's a bit down the list right now Ivan!

 

Other stuff to be doing!

[Horsetan]

It's a bit down the list right now Ivan!

 

Only asking on the off-chance 

 

I really should get round to ordering a boxed set of P87 gauges from DDW at some point.

[Middlepeak]

With Scaleforum to look forward to tomorrow, I thought I should make the most of the positive 'mood' by finishing off the jigsaw pieces for Skibbroen.

 

You will recall a while back that I set out the argument for doing it this way. In short, I don't have room to accommodate the full layout at the moment, and were I to build the baseboards in their entirety, they would just have to spend their time in a cupboard with occasional forays into the workshop.

 

Instead, the idea is to focus on smaller jigsaw pieces for the moment, which will be attached to the main baseboard frame at a later date. For now, the main area of activity will be on trackwork and the station area, and these can be accommodated on two basic jigsaw pieces, which are much lighter and easier to work on when it comes to track laying and wiring. There's also a bonus that they will just fit down one side of the workshop, so in due course there will be the opportunity to nip in there for a while to 'play trains' - an essential ingredient if momentum is to be maintained.

 

So the jigsaw pieces have strange shapes, determined by such things as the quay wall and the edge of the street that runs along the back of the layout - Skibbroen.

 

The jigsaws are designed on TurboCAD and laser cut from 6mm ply, and were very easy to put together. Track centrelines are also marked on the surface to aid the laying of a cork underlay for the track. In my continuing battle against noise (these boards, although light, are likely to 'drum' if I'm not careful), I've decided to go for a thick 15mm layer of cork this time. I chose this thickness partly because it matches the depth of the turntable well. We'll see how that works!

 

The attached picture shows the jigsaw laid out on the dining room floor, looking from the turntable towards the exit to the fiddle yard at the far end. I've also attached a layout plan as a reminder of what I'm trying to achieve.

 

Plenty of work to do now on winter evenings - track and turntable building and wiring. The aim is to get it working by the spring of next year!

 

Regards,

 

Geraint

Plan with track jigsaw pieces.pdf

[Middlepeak]

Let me start off with some sincere apologies for not posting for a while. In truth my wife has been seriously ill since the middle of November, including a period in intensive care in early January. Thankfully there is now some progress and we can begin to think about her homecoming, but modelling has really taken a back seat for a while.

 

Because of the above, I'm sorry to say that I have had to withdraw Obbekaer from the Eurotrack exhibition in Southampton later this month. For me, that's a real shame, because I have always enjoyed the continental flavour of this show. Please try to get there if you can. I'm sure it will be an excellent event.

 

There is however one small project on the workbench at the moment. Conversations with my Danish mentors over a coffee in early November led to a discussion about the use of foreign wagons on Danish lines. One that caught my eye was an Italian 'F' van with a characteristic peaked roof, which was typically used to transport early season vegetables such as new potatoes north from sunnier climes. My colleague Ian Thomson has come up with a Tutto Treno kit (now produced by Itelieri?) for one of these wagons, which is currently being fitted out with new w-irons and suspension.

 

However, the prototype information on these wagons is a bit sparse. Does anyone know of any websites containing photographs of Italian wagons that might shed some light on underframe and body detail?

 

Will post some photos as the project progresses.

 

Regards,

 

Geraint

[5944]

Sorry to hear about your wife, glad she's on the mend.

 

There are a few photos online if you look for FS Carro F, but nothing I could see that showed the underframe in any great detail. I've built a couple of these, along with most of the others that Tutto Treni/Italeri have produced. They go together pretty well, though I need to buy new wheels for them, as the plastic ones are awful. I also need to buy a few of the ballast hoppers, about a dozen will do nicely for a decent sized formation with a FS GR 940 2-8-2T on the front. The problem is trying to get a parcel delivered from Italy without my girlfriend spotting it!

[Middlepeak]

Hello 5944 and thanks for your good wishes.

 

I thought you would like to see some pictures of the Italieri ballast wagon that has now found its way into the RGVJ's PW train. It seems a bit wide for the loading gauge to me, but being a rather squat wagon, that may be a trick of the eye.

 

Construction was, as I recall, rather complicated, given the need to pare away a part of the chassis to accommodate my springing units. This resulted in the whole wagon initially going out of shape in the middle, and was finally resolved by soldering the two springing units into a brass frame that the rest of the body was built around.

 

Wheels are Alan Gibson 10.5mm disc, fitted to 2mm OD x 1mm ID muffs, which in turn run on Exactoscale 1mm steel square ended axles. The springing units are my own etchings.

 

The springing units can be seen better on the shots of the F-van under construction. More on that when I've made more progress!

 

Regards,

 

Geraint

[Middlepeak]

It's been a bit of a topsy-turvy year so far. My modelling activities usually peak over the winter and the summer is by comparison a rather fallow period but a good one for thinking and researching. However, my wife's lengthy period in hospital effectively killed off any modelling for a protracted period at the start of the year, and now as the sun begins to shine the modelling impetus is gaining momentum again - strange!

 

At the end of the main series of posts in 2016, I had just completed the jigsaw boards for the trackwork on Ribe Skibbroen, and was looking forward to getting some track down and having somewhere to run trains. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realised that one of the main determinants of track geometry in the station was the turntable, and in that respect it would probably pay to concentrate on that first.

 

What I am trying to produce is a 15m table, known in Denmark as a 'drejeskive med kongestol'. I had access to a drawing of a similar 20m table, so this gave me a reasonable start in terms of the shape of the girders and the depth of the pit. From this I determined that rather than cutting a hole in the baseboard to form the pit, by using a 15mm thick layer of cork as a track underlay (in itself an interesting experiment in sound deadening on a light plywood board), I could build the turntable on top of the baseboard and then align the tracks to it. This felt as though it would be more geometrically sound!

 

So, how would it be powered? An informative chat with John Redrup at London Road Models produced a combined motor and gearbox that he had sourced for his turntable kits, so one was purchased, along with a set of well-engineered 2:1 bevel gears from Ebay. The basic mechanism was designed on the CAD package and was laser cut in 3mm Perspex to give a base, a motor mounting plate and a 150mm diameter index disc. The latter has four indentations laser cut into the edge, which allows a roller from a microswitch to drop into the slot. The roller arm is soldered to the gainstroke arm of a 12v DC relay. As it drops into the indentation, it cuts off power to the drive mechanism. Applying power to the relay lifts the roller out of the slot and the turntable starts to rotate again. A double pole changeover switch can reverse the direction of travel, a push to make push button supplies power to the relay, and a simple potentiometer circuit adjusts the voltage supplied to the motor and therefore the speed of rotation of the table. For moment, without the deck in place, the mechanism requires about 2.8v to turn at the required speed for what in real life would be a hand operated turntable, but there is scope to increase this to cope with the weight of the deck and loco in due course.

 

The critical element of the design is the diameter of the index disc (the larger the better) and the accuracy of cut of the indentations. The first attempt had them too deep, which resulted in a slight overrun and slack in the movement when the table was at rest. This could have played havoc with the alignment of tracks in due course. The second attempt reduced the depth of indentation, but kept the same curved profile, which seems to have done the trick.

 

Hopefully the pictures will tell the story better than these words. The only thing that shows above the baseboard at the moment is the top of the drive spindle and a Perspex drive bar. The intention is that the table will not be attached rigidly to the drive spindle, as any offset in the latter away from the vertical could result in the table deck not being horizontal. The deck is therefore designed to run on the flangeless wheels that bear on the circular pit rail, and the turning force is transmitted by the Perspex drive bar bearing on the inside of the deck girders - out of sight!

 

Hopefully this will become clearer in future installments as the construction progresses, but the theory is well described in the Scalefour Society's publication from the South London Area Group on the construction of their layout 'St Merryn' (ISBN 978-0-9561273-1-0).

 

Meanwhile, a search on Google.dk for 'drejeskive' led to an excellent series of photos from the South Funen preservation group, who have constructed a new turntable at Korinth station.

 

http://old.sfvj.dk/projekter/drejeskive/drejeskive.htm

 

A bit like following photographic instructions for constructing a kit - now I just have to design it and follow their lead!

 

Regards,

 

Geraint

[Middlepeak]

Attention has now turned to the pit above the baseboard, and in particular to the ring rail which will support the table and provide the power supply to the track on the table itself.

 

The advantage of building the whole table, pit and all, on top of the baseboard, is that the drive spindle can be used to determine the centre of everything. The first stage was to draw out the concrete plinth on which the pit rail is laid. This was laser cut from 3mm white perspex. The design included four webs and a central boss to fit over the drive spindle, which would be used to accurately position the plinth in a concentric location, and then would be removed once the plinth was stuck down.

 

The second stage was to determine how to attach the pit rail. Conscious of the forces at play when flat-bottom rail is curved through a sharp radius, I decided that soldering the rails to plates made from 0.5mm thick PCB was the answer. The plates are located at 10 degree intervals around the circle, with double plates attached at the 90 and 270 degree positions where the rail breaks need to be. A trial on a spare piece of perspex confirmed that the plates could be attached with the gel type of superglue and still remain firm when the soldering iron was applied to attach the rail.

 

The rails themselves are PECO Code 60 FB, the new standard for the layout. Although slightly higher than the code 55 used previously, the foot is narrower, and overall the profile looks more convincing. The rail was eased into a half circle using fingers and thumbs, checking the alignment and smoothness of the curve against the template.

 

In order to get the curved rails concentric with the plinth, a simple jig was made up from bits of brass that pivoted around the central spindle, with a notch to hold the rail at the correct position. In the end, it was quite an easy and satisfying task, occupying a pleasant hour or so at the workbench. The attached photos will hopefully illustrate the process.

 

The next stage will be to add the retaining bolts to the railplates and to paint the plinth and rails before installation on the baseboard.

 

Regards,

 

Geraint

[railroadbill]

Hi Geraint,

 

Very impressive modelling!  Thought the control system for the turntable was very clever, using notches to operate a microswitch at the appropriate point. Been following your thread since reading the CM article. Can I ask; you design the  jigsaw base boards using CAD, but how do you actually get the laser cutting done?

 

Recently (in fact 2 weeks ago) we travelled on the Mariager - Handest  veteran jernbane and that has a turntable at each end.  The Handest one is hand operated and the Mariager one is electrically powered. It seems to be used as points to switch between lines for the diesel but used to turn the steam loco, [but  I expect you know all about this]. The turntable does look of fairly recent construction.  Here's a picture of it. Hope it's of interest.

[Middlepeak]

Hi Railroad Bill

 

Thanks for your kind comments. Progress on the project thus far has made quite a lot of use of the laser cutter as a convenient way of cutting complex shapes accurately. In my case I have access to the machine at the local MakerSpace facility, courtesy of a good friend and modelling colleague. These places are springing up all over the country, and a Google search will I'm sure reveal the nearest one to you. Most will offer training on the machines, essential if you have no experience and no-one to assist.

 

In many ways the trick is in the design, and it pays to have a solid understanding of a suitable CAD package before you start. I had been using TurboCAD for many years before I used laser cutting. There are however a number of companies who will offer you a design and cut facility, which is very useful for model buildings, and I noticed the other day that my usual source of ply (SLEC in Watton, Norfolk) is now offering a laser cutting service.

 

Thanks for the picture of Mariager. There was no such facility when I visited some years ago, but one of the highlights of the visit was being asked to help push the table at Handest! The fact that several of the preserved lines in Denmark are reconstructing their own turntables and documenting progress pictorially on the internet is a great help for us modellers!

 

Regards

 

Geraint

[unklian]

Gonna be at Manchester next weekend

[Middlepeak]

 

I'm afraid Unklian's post of yesterday ended up being a little premature.

 

In view of my wife's continuing ill health, and something of a downturn in the last couple of days, I have very reluctantly had to withdraw from the Manchester show this year.

 

This was a considerable disappointment. As a Manchester lad, the Christmas outings with my Dad to the MMRS show at the Corn Exchange were a highlight of the year, and a major influence in my taking up this hobby in the first place. When the time came for me to be involved in setting up a small annual exhibition at my secondary school, MMRS stalwarts Norman Whitnall and Sid Stubbs, both of whom had connections with the school, were generous with their advice and assistance. Over the course of the last 40 years or so, three of my layouts have been exhibited there, culminating in Middlepeak's farewell appearance in 2003. I was therefore really looking forward to going back with Obbekaer.

 

Still, one look at the line-up reveals that it will be a great event, and well worth seeing. Hopefully we will be there another year.

 

My thanks to show organiser Philip Sweet for being so gracious in accepting the situation. It is very difficult for exhibition managers when they are presented with withdrawl like this at the last minute.

 

I will post some further news on the development of Obbekaer and the Ribe Skibbroen project in due course.

 

Regards,

 

Geraint