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OK then,

 

I've said this more than once now, but I think I've nailed the track plan this time.

 

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I need to remove the outer curved point I laid last time as well as all the other points I've laid on the main boards, the tightest radius is 45 inches, the outer most track is about 55 inches in radius.

 

I'm rest day tomorrow so might have another crack at laying some of this track.

 

This plan does incorporate a y point but I may be able to use some of those I have in stock instead. Also one thing to work out will be the placement of a motor for the track on the inside as its right over a cross member, although having said that it may not be quite so close on the actual layout.

 

Dale

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This is looking much better.

 

Having ripped up all the other surplus bits of track I'd put down previously.

 

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All four curves so far have been tested by running a pair of Lima Mk3s fitted with Kadee No.5s over them, all appears to be OK.

 

Good news from my concern yesterday is that the point on the inside radius is a bit further in than my XTrkCad drawing would suggest which leaves enough space to fit a motor underneath.

 

On that basis I'll be off outside to do the next track.

 

Dale

 

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Didn't do too much more after I went back out this afternoon,

 

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I laid the small raduis point, tons of space for the motor underneath as well the fifth track around the corner, just one more to do

 

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Due to the close proximity of the two inner tracks I decided to do a spot of clearance testing with some of the loose mk3's I had to had,

the two coaches on the inner track stayed still while I moved the outer two around to route out any tight spots.

 

In theory these roads will be sufficiently long enough to avoid parking things on the curves but I have still to work out what I'm going to do at the other end yet being there is one extra board joint to contend with due to the removable section across the garage door.

 

Dale

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Well then,

 

Nearly 2 months since I last did anything to the layout due to work of bad weather and preferring to be indoors working on rolling stock I have ventured out to the garage this morning to get the ball rolling again, and with the next 9 days off work there should hopefully be some more progress to come during this period.

 

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First the inner radius around the corner was laid.

 

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Next came the ladder into the remaining 4 roads, because the gaps between the tracks are wider than Peco Streamline spacing but narrower than Setrack spacing I had to set the first point at a few degrees from square so that I didn't have a dogleg into roads 7,8 and 9.

 

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View from just above ground level

 

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I have also identified a space for two extra sidings which should be long enough to a 2 or 3 car dmu

 

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Second siding installed

 

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Overall view after I'd removed all the tools and given the area a once over with the hoover (not of the English Electric variety, the time for that will come eventually!)

I have also soldered the rails to the screw heads across the board joint.

 

Next stage will be to do similar to the other end, I'm not sure how the extra board joint created by the lifting section will affect the symmetry with this end - watch this space!

 

Dale 

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A quick half hour or so out in the garage due to the miserable Bank Holiday weather.

 

Following on from yesterday I tested the length of the two sidings I laid.

 

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I hoped to get a 3 car 23m DMU vehicle such as a 159 in the longer siding. Unfortunately it is only long enough for a 2 car.

 

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So, in true Mythbusters style I achieved the results I required by cheating slightly!

 

After than I turned my attention to the other end of the layout, adjusting what I had laid already and having a bit of a tidy up.

 

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I had laid the next section of track on the on the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th roads from the back, these were removed.

 

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Then I remembered how I'd done the other end, The back 2 roads were relaid with the second one straightened, the 4th and 5th roads were then moved across and straightened.

 

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The offending joint which prevents this being a mirror image of the other end, If the point had been dead square across the joint I may have considered cutting it in half, I've see it done on other layouts but not at that angle.

 

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The inner most road with a point laid on top in the same place as the one at the other end.

 

Next job will be borrowing a cutting disc from a friend so I can work on the lifting section while keeping it in a state where it can still be removed.

 

Dale

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A quick update from this afternoon.

 

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Armed and dangerous with a disc cutter - safety specs on.

 

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First track laid and cut across onto the lifting section.

 

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Two more.

 

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Overview of the corner taking shape.

 

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I have also been along and cut all the other rails across board joints, about 70 odd. Amazingly I haven't broken any of the cutting discs I've borrowed and I've only had one solder joint fail as I cut it, fortunately its on a straight so shouldn't be too tricky to repair. I have seen that the heat from the cutting disc is actually melting the solder onto the screws, but as I say only one actual failure.

 

More of the same tomorrow hopefully!

 

Dale 

 

 

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The ball is really rolling now!

 

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Forth track down.....

 

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.....And connected, the point here actually being laid over an existing point motor hole from one of the previous track plans.

 

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Followed quickly by the fifth and final track off the lifting section.

 

Some tinkering still required to connect all the remaining tracks to follow in the next couple of days.

 

Dale

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More from today,

 

Looking at the last picture from yesterdays post it seemed that the fan into the remaining roads might be a little bit tight, so -

 

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The point at the bottom of shot laid yesterday has been taken up, the length of track shortened by about 3 inches and what was a left hand point replaced with a right hand point.

 

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I only had one small radius left hand point in stock so went out and bought two more, this is roughly what the finished set up will be, but I appear to have run out of rail joiners, so perhaps another trip to the local model shop will be in order tomorrow so I can finally finish off the fiddle yard. Then I can get on with some wiring!

 

Dale

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Finally this stage of the layout was finished this morning

 

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The completed fan into all the roads and the point for the three sidings installed

 

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And here is the finished product after all the tools were removed and the area given a quick hoovering. Three sidings at this end, given there was one less track coming around the corner.

 

Most conductive rail joiners have wires soldered to them however there are a few sections of track that aren't in contact with any of these now that the rails have been cut, so I now need to identify where these need to go then I can dismantle this side of the layout so I can start fitting point motors and wiring it up with each board turned up on its side, that will be much easier than crawling underneath and lying on my back trying to wire it in place.

 

Dale

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Bit of a sticking point

 

Looking at my lifting section hanging on the wall (at a slightly jaunty angle) I was wondering how I might continue on towards what will be the scenic part of the layout.

 

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As with the completed side of this board efficient use of the space is paramount to maximise the operational of the layout. The front 4 roads in the fiddle yard are the shortest so will mainly be used for the storage of DMUs and light engines and as such I see it is necessary to be able to access these from both running lines but in the same token the other 5 lines are all very long, the outside 2 are both over 20 feet and it would be good to be able to access these from both running lines too.

 

So, after laying out and trying various set ups using some old code 100 points I had lying around I decided I needed a Scissor crossing.

 

Fortunately I made one last year again using some old code 100 points and a diamond crossing bought cheaply and without an intended use, basically I did it purely to see if it were possible.

 

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The finished scissor, it is code 100 so no use on the layout as I'm using code 75 but the same principal applies. I intend to use more second hand items to make my scissor crossing, this will be mirrored at the other end of the layout too so hacking up 8 brand new points and 2 diamond crossings is a bit extreme but second hand items will be fine in the fiddle yard.

 

Dale.

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Just a quick update.

 

Thanks to a fellow RMweb colleague I have managed to source the 8 points and 2 diamond crossings to make the two scissor crossings.

 

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The first on in exploded form

 

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And put together. The top left point seems to have a bit of a curve in it but this will pull straight when its pinned down.

 

Unfortunately sod's law has dictated that I only seem to have 7 insulated fishplates in stock, each scissor requires 4 so another trip to the local model shop will be in order at some point this week before I can assemble the other one.

 

Also I need to work out how I'm going to wire them up to work with both DCC and Analogue control with potentially 2 separate controllers, I like to make things complicated for myself!

 

Dale

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Hi Dale, it's good to see you're making good use of those points. Hope your stock runs through the formation okay!

Thanks Jonathan,

 

The previous code 100 scissors I made seems to work fine, it just needed the rail ends tweeting slightly so everything lined up.

Also there was a problem with the frogs at the ends of the crossover was causing a short but some black nail polish borrowed from my sister did the trick, but that scissors uaed insulfrog parts whereas this one uses electrofrog parts so the wiring is slightly different.

 

Dale

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Just a quick update

 

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The second scissor crossing has now been assembled, having sourced another insulating joiner.

 

I have borrowed some SMP joiners to fit between the cut rails off the point frog to the crossing as these are smaller than the Peco equivalent and might fit without me having to cut them down.

 

Turning my thoughts how I might wire them up, I have constructed them so that the triangle of the 2 point frogs and the crossing on the diamond are 1 piece, the polarity of these would reverse as one when the points were thrown. The crossover itself only needs to be energised if a train is to be routed across it, I'm yet to work out whether I will have to throw all 4 points simultaneously or just the 2 relevant to the train for this to work correctly. I think its best I suss out the wiring before I install them.

 

I will have to do some drawings and some head scratching!

 

Dale

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I have now had time to sit down and figure out roughly how these scissor crossings are going to be worked.

 

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First the straight ahead position on both tracks, that's the easy bit!

I figured that with the straight ahead routes set the acute crossings on the diamond would not need to be live, hence the shading in blue

 

Now it starts to get a bit complicated, I know what needs to happen but I still need to work out how it will happen, if possible I would like to make it all work so that all I have to do is operate the point motors

 

For the facing crossover the left hand crossing frog would need to take the negative feed from the outside track and the right hand frog would need to take the positive feed from the inside track

 

For the trailing crossover the left hand frog would need to take the positive feed from the inside track and the right hand frog would need to take the negative feed from the outside track

 

Also as mentioned previously I have built the scissors so that the two point frogs and the crossover are one electrical piece and as such will all change polarity to cross over as one but hopefully without having to throw all 4 points as I was hoping to use the route setting of the required crossover to sort out the polarities of the 2 acute crossings.

 

To complicate matters further I had envisaged using a separate controllers between the two tracks for DC operation, with the possibility to select between the two on all the fiddle yard roads, again this is easy for going straight ahead but gets a bit tricky when crossing over, if this proves too complicated I will have to suffice with a single one.

 

Any assistance on this one would be much appreciated, hopefully I've not bitten off more than I can chew here!

 

Dale 

 

 

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Scissors wiring worked out

 

As posted on the thread I started the other day in the Electrics forum I think I have now figured out how the scissors are going to work

 

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Basically the triangles of A,B&E and C,D&F will be feed to a double poll double throw (DPDT) relay linked to one motor from each crossover so that when one is thrown the relay will be energised and reverse the polarity.

 

Similarly the other 2 points will then work G & H with a pair of double poll single throw (DPST) relays. one relay will provide positive to G and negative to H and the other one the reverse of that. This also makes G & H dead when both routes are straight ahead, otherwise I could just have used another DPDT relay linked to one motor.

 

The motor switches will be interlocked, probably using a fifth and sixth motor mounted on the control panel to prevent both crossings being reversed at the same time.

 

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The many wires required to make all that work

 

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I have also had to solder in four of these wire links to the crossover from the points as when I chopped up the crossover the factory fitted links had to be removed.

 

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Pictured in place on the lifting section.

 

Dale

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Thanks Bob,

 

I'm currently doing a bit of electrical testing with a Gaugemaster controller and a heap of red and black jump leads, all seems to be ok so far.

 

I'm trying a few items of stock which are more likely to cause trouble, namely a Hornby 142 and even a 4 wheeled pump trolley which sailed straight through!

 

Dale

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A few pics of the electrical test.

 

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The mess of wires beneath the board

To reverse the polarity of the outer frogs to switch between crossings I had to swap the red and black leads with the purple wires but keep the purple wires with the same feed swapping them over to go straight ahead while releasing the two bare wires from the frogs

 

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My little 4 wheel pump trolley (is that the correct name) sailed through both ways first time, I was absolutely gobsmaked! Also as mentioned before the old Hornby 142 seemed to be fine as well, a Bachmann 158 power car derailed going into the crossover, I may have to look into extending the check rails slightly, but then again it might just be the back to backs on the 158 need looking at, might have to compare with another one.

 

I am going to show a friend at the local club who is good with electrics before I wire it up permanently just so he can give it a quick once over.

 

Dale

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A quick bench test (on my bedroom floor) of the electrics,

 

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The mess of wiring, should be a bit tidier when I do it properly!

 

The left relay controls the reversing polarity of the triangles, wired to the 2 left hand motors on the floor, meanwhile the other 2 relays do the outer frogs operated by the 2 right hand motors. When I started testing after taking this photo it became apparent that the orange and yellow wires on the centre relay were the wrong way around, this was corrected before taking the next photos.

 

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The LEDs are held in opposing polarities in the crocodile clips so will change when the polarity changes.

Blue LED on the right and no lights on the left means normal on the 2 triangles and no feed to the outer crossover.

 

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Orange LED on the right shows the polarity reversed on he triangles by operating either of the 2 left motors by hand. Blue LED on the left shows feed across the outer crossings by operating one of the right motors.

 

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Same again with the other right hand motor thrown.

 

A slight concern is that the centre and right hand relays make quite a loud buzzing sound when the coil is active, the left one doesn't but it is the one I had been testing with originally, it's LED seems to have failed and my friend replaced the diode after that shorted but the relay still works, maybe its not getting a clean 12v feed, that I do not know.

 

Dale

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