Mid-Cornwall Lines - 1950s Western Region in 00

[St Enodoc]

A longer session than usual today let me get all the Line Clear indicators working (I won't say complete, as there is some tidying-up and labelling of wires still  to do).

 

Following on from a few weeks ago, here are the connector blocks at Porthmellyn Road with all the wires to Paddington and Penzance connected.

 

Obviously there is no cable to St Enodoc yet.

 

Let's see what happens when a train runs from Paddington to Penzance, stopping at Porthmellyn Road.

 

 

 

Initially, the switches at all three locations are in the Blocked position, all lamps are red and the Line Clear releases at Porthmellyn Road are out. This is the normal condition.

 

The Porthmellyn Road signalman moves the From Paddington switch to the Clear position, which lights the green lamp here...

 

... and at Paddington (simulating the Paddington Down Advanced Starting signal), so everyone can see that the Down line is clear from Paddington to Porthmellyn Road.

 

Once the train arrives at Porthmellyn Road, the signalman returns the From Paddington switch to Blocked and all lamps are again red.

 

Now the Penzance yardmaster has moved the From Porthmellyn Road switch to the Clear position, which lights the green lamp here (simulating the Penzance Down Home signal)...

 

... and the Line Clear Release lamp for Porthmellyn Road's Down Main Advanced Starting signal (6). Now everyone can see that the Down line is clear from Porthmellyn Road to Penzance.

 

Once the train arrives at Penzance, the yardmaster returns the From Porthmellyn Road switch to Blocked and all lamps are again red.

 

It will be interesting trying this out for the first time next at next Saturday's running session but apart from the absence of any real signals yet I think everyone will find it more useful than the old temporary system.

Edited July 18, 2023 by St Enodoc
images restored

[teaky]

"Obviously there is no cable to St Enodoc yet."

 

I didn't realise you were going to be plugged in to the layout yourself !  You really are pushing the frontier of layout control.

[Stubby47]

7 of 9?

[Joseph_Pestell]

WARNING!

I have been following this thread for some years now. But this morning I went back to page 1 to get more of a feel for how John got here. His first few posts were very interesting in this regard.

But note that one of the posts contains a link that takes you to a fake virus scan purporting to come from Microsoft.

[Joseph_Pestell]

25 minutes ago, teaky said:

"Obviously there is no cable to St Enodoc yet."

 

I didn't realise you were going to be plugged in to the layout yourself !  You really are pushing the frontier of layout control.

 

Only a matter of time before someone controls a layout from virtual reality headset. Perhaps it's been done already?

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, Stubby47 said:

7 of 9?

6 x 4

[St Enodoc]

49 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

WARNING!

I have been following this thread for some years now. But this morning I went back to page 1 to get more of a feel for how John got here. His first few posts were very interesting in this regard.

But note that one of the posts contains a link that takes you to a fake virus scan purporting to come from Microsoft.

That's new. Can you tell us which post Joseph so we can fix it please?

[Joseph_Pestell]

9 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

That's new. Can you tell us which post Joseph so we can fix it please?

 

I think that it was TrevorP1's link to a photo of Burngullow Station (halfway down page 2).

[St Enodoc]

1 minute ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

I think that it was TrevorP1's link to a photo of Burngullow Station (halfway down page 2).

Thanks. That might need @TrevorP1 to delete the link but in the meantime I'll delete it from my reply to him.

[St Enodoc]

3 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Thanks. That might need @TrevorP1 to delete the link but in the meantime I'll delete it from my reply to him.

It looks as though Trevor's original post has gone. I've deleted the link in my reply anyway.

[Barry O]

44 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

6 x 4

imperial or metric??

Baz

[KeithMacdonald]

Oh dear, my eyes glaze over at the sight of miles of wiring. But I keep seeing this:

 

 

Are we going to see a new form of GWR Air Services?

 

[TrevorP1]

1 hour ago, St Enodoc said:

It looks as though Trevor's original post has gone. I've deleted the link in my reply anyway.

 

Thanks for letting me know. Yes, the original post has been deleted - possibly by a Mod? - so hopefully all is well now. Apologies for any inconvenience. I can remember the photo but at this time not exactly where it came from.

 

I've just realised that was over 5 years ago. Where have those years gone!?

[St Enodoc]

54 minutes ago, Barry O said:

imperial or metric??

Baz

Yes.

[St Enodoc]

26 minutes ago, KeithMacdonald said:

Oh dear, my eyes glaze over at the sight of miles of wiring. But I keep seeing this:

 

 

Are we going to see a new form of GWR Air Services?

 

Don't you start! It's bad enough with Barry O reminding me every time he sees the box that I should be building the thing!

 

That's a long way off. Eventually, it will get built and hang from the ceiling somewhere over Pentowan station, on a very low approach to RAF Lanherne (my camouflaged St Mawgan).

[St Enodoc]

11 minutes ago, TrevorP1 said:

 

Thanks for letting me know. Yes, the original post has been deleted - possibly by a Mod? - so hopefully all is well now. Apologies for any inconvenience. I can remember the photo but at this time not exactly where it came from.

 

I've just realised that was over 5 years ago. Where have those years gone!?

Thanks Trevor. Yes, more than five years on with the MCL. For various reasons it's taken me that long to do what I thought would take about three when I started. Still, as I always remind myself, it's not a race!

[Joseph_Pestell]

35 minutes ago, TrevorP1 said:

 

Thanks for letting me know. Yes, the original post has been deleted - possibly by a Mod? - so hopefully all is well now. Apologies for any inconvenience. I can remember the photo but at this time not exactly where it came from.

 

I've just realised that was over 5 years ago. Where have those years gone!?

 

I reported it as "spam", so it probably is a moderator that has picked up on it. There did not seem to be a facility on the report button to explain the problem more precisely. 

[St Enodoc]

Given the latest Government advice to avoid non-essential gatherings, I've cancelled Saturday's running session so I'm afraid that the sequence will be stuck at train 79 for another couple of months.

 

A shame, having flogged myself at the weekend to get the line clear indicators working, but there we are. Perhaps there will be some uncoupling electromagnets by the May session.

[Tallpaul69]

On ‎16‎/‎03‎/‎2020 at 10:23, St Enodoc said:

Given the latest Government advice to avoid non-essential gatherings, I've cancelled Saturday's running session so I'm afraid that the sequence will be stuck at train 79 for another couple of months.

 

A shame, having flogged myself at the weekend to get the line clear indicators working, but there we are. Perhaps there will be some uncoupling electromagnets by the May session.

If I was of a gloomy disposition, I would ask if that is the May 2021 session??

 

I can't imagine what all the folks of a certain age who don't have a hobby will do if we have to stick to this  for the quoted 12-14 weeks!

 

Never mind, all those modelling jobs we promise ourselves will get done when we have a minute will stand a chance in the following 14x7x12 x 60 =70,560 minutes (I am allowing 4 hrs a day for other activities and 8 hrs a day for sleep!).

But as the Government have probably underestimated the length of time (as they do with most projects), it could be up to 4 times as long??

 

Never mind,

Keep smiling!

Paul

[M.I.B]

On 16/03/2020 at 10:23, St Enodoc said:

Given the latest Government advice to avoid non-essential gatherings, I've cancelled Saturday's running session 

 

A shame, having flogged myself at the weekend to get the line clear indicators working, but there we are. 

 

Good on you for digging in and finishing it.  There are lots of folks who have put all sorts of work into things only to have them put on hold.  I worked late on Sunday on my motorcycle only to have the ride-out in April cancelled.

 

Enjoy the quieter "enforced modelling" time - when the restrictions lift there will be so many events on that we'll never have time for anything else.

[St Enodoc]

My Melbourne trips are CAPE FURNO so no more hotel thinking time for a while. On the other hand, I can do some odd model railway jobs at home in the evening now.

 

Yesterday I did some more work on the Pentowan signal box lever frame design. I completed the SigScribe 4 .ss4 file, which creates the signal box diagram itself; and the Interlocking Text File .itf, which defines the locking in text form. Unfortunately when I put them together there was an error, which I can't spot, so I've sent the files to Graeme in Queensland for him to check. With luck it will be something stupidly simple that I've done wrong.

 

Tonight I repaired a point for my good friend hongkongmike of this parish. He ordered it from Marcway but it didn't work properly, so after our last visit to NZ I brought it back to fix. Well, apart from:

 

- the blades catching on burrs from gapping the coppercald

- the blades being soldered to the tiebars at random angles

- the blades not being soldered for a length of about 200mm (it's a 48"/36" LH curved point)

- the gauge varying from 15.8mm to 17.2mm

 

it was fine, so tonight I sorted out the gauge and blades. It took a bit of brute force with the soldering iron and roller gauges but we got there.

 

I now need to check with Mike how he plans to power the frog and if necessary modify the gapping, which is set up at the moment so that the blades take current from the adjacent stock rail directly to the live frog. If he's going to use slow action point motors, which I think he is, I'll convert the point to a conventional live frog with the blades bonded to the stock rails and the frog isolated.

 

It would actually have been quicker to build a new one, except that it uses thicker timbers than the SMP ones I have.

[St Enodoc]

30 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

With luck it will be something stupidly simple that I've done wrong.

Well, that's exactly what it was. I had another look tonight and, like an idiot, I'd missed out a key character from all the signal number interlocking rows in the .itf. I'd only entered the signal lever number without the 'N' that indicates that it's in the Normal position. No wonder SigScribe4 threw a wobbly. Stupid boy!

 

That was easily fixed and so I now have the design for a 54-lever 12-slot frame. Not quite such a monster as Porthmellyn Road, which also has 54 levers but with 15 slots, 8 of which are "conditional" to deal with signals that protect more than one route.

 

Graeme and I will now try to beat the interlocking and make any necessary adjustments to the detailed design before sending it on to Harold for a constructability check.

 

 

[St Enodoc]

I tidied up the PM-PD and PD-PZ 6-way cables today. I also labelled the wires, so the Line Clear indicators for the main line are now complete. No photos, coz I forgot.

 

I also started messing around with a piece of plywood to form the vertical backing piece behind the levers at Porthmellyn Road signal box. I've worked out what I want to do now so if I get a chance to work on it tomorrow I should get that done too. Then I can fit the lever numbers. I've got an idea on how to locate them in position but I haven't decided what glue to use to stick the etched brass numbers to the epoxy-painted levers. Cyano is one possibility, or Kwik-Grip (Evo-Stik). What does the team think?

 

I finished Mike's point, gapping and bonding it in the conventional way as he's confirmed that he'll be using either slow-action motors or servos to work his points. I now need to find a suitable box to pack it in, then send it off to NZ. When I cleaned it up today most of the thick black paint came off - which probably isn't a bad thing.

 

Finally I had a look at Graeme's suggested changes to the Pentowan lever frame interlocking but came up against a snag - the SigScribe .ss4 file isn't behaving properly at all, with signals showing free when they should be locked and vice versa; FPLs not actually locking their points; and one or two other oddities.

 

The next step might be to uninstall then reinstall SigScribe 4 but if that doesn't work I'm not sure where to go next.

[St Enodoc]

Now, here's something that's been niggling away in my brain for a week or so.

 

Why are Governments across the world insisting that senior members of the model railway fraternity (and sorority) (other "-ities" are available) should stay at home and pretend to be Peco Streamline Insulfrog points??????

 

A free sheet of toilet paper to whoever comes up with the best answer.

[chuffinghell]

3 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

.......should stay at home and pretend to be Peco Streamline Insulfrog points??????

 

 very clever