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Mid-Cornwall Lines - 1950s Western Region in 00


St Enodoc
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3 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Not sure whether Ray and his mates are taking their 0n30 Puffing Billy layout but if there are it might be fun to have that and Martin's side by side - or even one in front of the other...

 

I can't remember if 'Paradise Valley' is in this year.
I have a feeling it's on the standby list...
Don't think we had enough room for it this year with a number of newer layouts being displayed.

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Another couple of hours under the baseboards this afternoon mean that PENZANCE IS NOW COMPLETE!

 

I made the fouling point markers first before getting under - 14 at each end (I'd already made and fitted the ones at the centre of the loops).

 

20190707001PenzanceUpfoulingpointmarkers.JPG.45db27cc1871714835e48d66387ba813.JPG

Here are the markers for the Up end. The marker for loop 1 is way out of shot to the left, just before the main throat itself (401/402/403 points).

20190707002PenzanceDownfoulingpointmarkers.JPG.31dd6324d6361f3da0029212e0be5d31.JPG

Similarly, at the Down end the marker for loop 1 is off scene to the right, next to point 512, while that for loop 14 is just out of sight to the left, next to the king point (101) for Paddington up end.

 

Then it was a simple, though repetitive, matter of connecting the droppers on loops 2 to 7 to the feeders already in place for loop 1 (which were actually among the first to be installed, just about four years ago). Six lengths of red and six lengths of black for each of the three yards of Peco track in each loop, so 42 soldered joints and 72 labels, all saying "DOWN". With the 28 fouling point markers, that meant a nice round 100 individual labels came out of the printer today.

 

I don't think I'll do any new work next weekend but concentrate instead on tidying up ready for our next running session in two Saturdays' time.

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3 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Six lengths of red and six lengths of black for each of the three yards of Peco track in each loop.

Did I read that right, you use two droppers per yard of track? Or is my maths broken?

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53 minutes ago, Martin S-C said:

Did I read that right, you use two droppers per yard of track? Or is my maths broken?

"Six lengths of red and six lengths of black for each of the three yards of Peco track in each loop" was sloppy English, sorry.

 

Every individual piece of track has two droppers - the one on the near rail connects via the feeders to the red bus wire and the one on the far rail connects via the feeders to the  black bus wire (black to back - easy to remember). There's only one pair of droppers per piece of track.

 

There were six loops to be connected (loops 2 to 7), each consisting of three yards of Peco track, so the six lengths on the left were connected to loop 1 by six red and six black feeders daisy-chained to their respective droppers. The same arrangement applied to the middle and right lengths. That gave 6 x 3 = 18 pairs x 2 = 36 individual droppers.

 

If I remember I'll take a photo next weekend.

 

Hope that makes more sense!

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Clearly a big wiring job, must be nice to have it done. Very railway-like track photos. The fouling point markers add a certain drama - onward into battle! :lol:

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5 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

"Six lengths of red and six lengths of black for each of the three yards of Peco track in each loop" was sloppy English, sorry.

 

Every individual piece of track has two droppers.

 

Hope that makes more sense!

It does now. I am only using one pair of droppers on each length of plain track between any two turnouts, so where a length of track consists of several pieces, power to the other pieces is via the fishplates. It strikes me a weeny bit of overkill to power up every track piece.

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18 hours ago, chuffinghell said:

I’ve put droppers on each individual piece of track too, even pieces as short as 50mm :blink:

 

15 hours ago, Martin S-C said:

It does now. I am only using one pair of droppers on each length of plain track between any two turnouts, so where a length of track consists of several pieces, power to the other pieces is via the fishplates. It strikes me a weeny bit of overkill to power up every track piece.

A pair of droppers for every piece of track is the recommended practice. I don't bother doing that with very short pieces though - I just join them to the next, longer, piece by soldering the fishplates.

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I also try to solder to every piece of rail. I think the reliability of metal rail-joiners as conductors varies largely with humidity. Decently dry indoor layouts probably have fewer problems than ones in garages and sheds. As for ones in ca-1850 stone barns.....

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1 hour ago, St Enodoc said:

 

A pair of droppers for every piece of track is the recommended practice. I don't bother doing that with very short pieces though - I just join them to the next, longer, piece by soldering the fishplates.

 

My soldering isn't neat enough to solder the fishplates hence why I soldered droppers under the rails of even the shortest lengths (out of sight)

 

My main concern was the reliability of the fishplates after ballasting and weathering the track as I assumed watered down glue and/or paint could potentially act as an insulator if it was drawn between the rail and the fishplate through capillary action

 

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Fishplates on Grantham the Streamliner years fail very rarely. The ballasting and weathering don't seem to have affected the fishplate continuity. 

 

Baz

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I've put droppers on every section of rail on Carlisle, I wouldn't like to contemplate just how many that is....

Fishplate joints won't fail immediately, it will be many years later and a rotten job to rectify with all the paint, ballast, glue etc. all over the rail. Better to do it first when the rail is all new and clean.

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This "hotel thinking time" lark is a double-edged sword. Although I said I probably wouldn't do any new work this weekend, I've decided that I will after all.

 

I'm going to lay a temporary length of track to connect the heel of 210 point at Paddington to the Down end of loop 13.

 

20190512003PD210pointlaid.JPG.bae3ef6291c66c2f3c128a51fedf569e.JPG

I'll wire loop 13 to the Up bus using temporary jumper cables and fit a frog jumper to 210 points, then program the Mini Panel for the route into loop 13. That will let us use it for the long clay train and free up loop 2 to receive a couple of trains from Penzance that, up to now, have had to continue round to where they started from. Only about an hour's work there (famous last words...).

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On 07/07/2019 at 23:28, St Enodoc said:

"Six lengths of red and six lengths of black for each of the three yards of Peco track in each loop" was sloppy English, sorry.

 

Every individual piece of track has two droppers - the one on the near rail connects via the feeders to the red bus wire and the one on the far rail connects via the feeders to the  black bus wire (black to back - easy to remember). There's only one pair of droppers per piece of track.

 

There were six loops to be connected (loops 2 to 7), each consisting of three yards of Peco track, so the six lengths on the left were connected to loop 1 by six red and six black feeders daisy-chained to their respective droppers. The same arrangement applied to the middle and right lengths. That gave 6 x 3 = 18 pairs x 2 = 36 individual droppers.

 

If I remember I'll take a photo next weekend.

 

Hope that makes more sense!

For Martin S-C's benefit here's a photo, not of the work I did last weekend but from much longer ago and with less clutter under the baseboards, that shows how the feeders are daisy-chained between the bus and the droppers - in this case Paddington loops 1 to 4:

 

20160221001Paddingtonloops1to3wiring.JPG.316caf811255fd4723a4017e3d4c1443.JPG

I hope this is all now clear.

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2 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

For Martin S-C's benefit here's a photo, not of the work I did last weekend but from much longer ago and with less clutter under the baseboards, that shows how the feeders are daisy-chained between the bus and the droppers - in this case Paddington loops 1 to 4:

 

20160221 001 Paddington loops 1 to 3 wiring.JPG

I hope this is all now clear.

I am so glad I am not the only one who numbers his wires. I can never understand why others don't. How do they wire the layout up? How do they fault find?

 

I worked for a few years as an assembly inspector at Marconi's and some of the cable forms (wiring looms) would be a few thousand wires inside a large cabinet and every wire was pink, thankfully with its own number so I could check it had been assembled correctly.......I also think the numbers helped the guys wiring them up.

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It's ok Clive, I have generally noticed the faults find me. I don't need to look

for them.

 

I would concede that labelled wires may help with rectification, but again the eyes don't generally

work well enough to read to read anything under the baseboard!

 

 

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3 hours ago, Brinkly said:

Nice to see some progress @St Enodoc all starting to come together. :)

 

Regards,

Nick.

Thanks Nick, good to see you back here - and thanks for all the "likes"! Won't see you at Railwells this year unfortunately.

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21 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Thanks Nick, good to see you back here - and thanks for all the "likes"! Won't see you at Railwells this year unfortunately.

 

What a shame.

 

No problem: it is always nice to see good modelling. I haven't had a lot of time for RMWeb since May, hence the massive catch up!

 

Regards,

 

Nick

 

 

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I laid the temporary track at the right end of Paddington loop 13 today.

 

20190713001PDUpendbeforelayingtemporaryPD13R.JPG.c41afd00e015cfaa0f11579ba3ba796e.JPG

This is how it looked before I started...

 

20190713002PDUpendafterlayingtemporaryPD13R.JPG.094afdfc9460f21dc1ca2cba8462c7bc.JPG

...and here it is with a length of SMP held down by masking tape. 210 point on the right is isolated from the rest of the layout at the moment so I had to feed it from the "wrong" end, which doesn't matter as it is clipped and padlocked in the reverse direction for the time being. To get power across to the toe I fitted one of my usual frog jumpers, which is the loop of green wire that you can see on the right.

 

20190713003jumpersfortemporaryPD13R.JPG.0496e141898ccc3c35570d15ff50dbe3.JPG

This is how the power actually gets there. I've jumpered across from the Up bus, as shown here, to one of the new pairs of droppers on loop 13.

 

201907130044206andlongclayintemporaryPD13R.JPG.85ba2c1620cbfa0e9720d8b0e0365965.JPG

Here is 4206 with the long clay train in its new home, which frees up loop 2 for other trains. I ran all the main line trains to test that the sequence worked with the new tracks at both Paddington and Penzance and with all trains terminating where they should instead of running through as before. The yardmasters will be very happy with that. I only had to make one very minor change to track occupation, which was good.

 

20190713005D601onUpPostal.JPG.1b08dbae9a6703eea927fe28a83ea8e7.JPG

I also brought D601 into service, having fitted a DG coupling last night. Well-known photographer W C Wolseley was out and about while the testing was going on and this is his photo of D601 crossing Nancegwithey Viaduct with the Up Postal. This picture is especially for one of the regular followers here, to whom I must apologise because I have yet to fit the discs and front-end detail that came in the box with the loco.

 

Everything is now ready for next Saturday's running session - I think...

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So here we are on Page 100. Four-and-a-half years on and, I hope, plenty more pages and years ahead. Thanks to everyone who has read, reacted to and contributed to the story so far.

 

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