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London Calling.. WR Mainline - Acton Green


SparxD428
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Ha ha. I agree, I have been very subdued tonight despite all the happenings and avoided much swearing. Yesterday I bought some Wills flexible brick sheet so after a long day of cork laying, painting and wiring although it doesn't look like much has been done, I thought I would experiment with some retaining walls or platform edges.

Now it says its flexible but I think it is false advertising. It should be "collapses into 100 pieces as soon as it spots a knife". Short of investing in a laser I am blowed if I know what you are meant to do to cut and shape this stuff? So may have to go back to the trusted printed brick paper.

 

If anyone has worked with this stuff and has any hints and tips it would be much appreciated. I have tried a variety of ways to get it to play ball without success. And if it wasn't Sunday and an early start for work tomorrow the pub would again be calling..

 

Cheers,

Stu.

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Hi Stu.

 

Note your comments on the Wills flexible brick sheeting. I assume that this is the thinner stuff they sell to provide the roof parts for the inside of arches or the tunnel.

 

I have only used this once to try to line a tunnel on my new board on Hawkhurst. I could not get it to take the shape and tried to soften it with hot water, but it just distorted out of shape. I did not have any trouble cutting it though. I decided to use Slaters brick sheet in the end which seems to be a little bit more flexible and did the job without any hassle.

 

I have however found problems with the thicker moulded brick sheets. It seems that over a period of time the plasticiser in the mouldings evaporates out and makes the plastic quite brittle, so when you try to cut it, unless you are very careful  it shatters. I therefore tend to buy new stock when I am going to make something which is going to require a degree of cutting and the newer stuff seems to be softer and cuts o.k. I do not know if the thinner sheet is affected in the same way.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Ray

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I will revisit the brickwork at a later time. For now work is continuing on track laying and wiring. 4 point motors now in place, lots of droppers and the station corner has had the 4 lines laid.

Also painted a second coat on the backboards in preparation for backscene when needed.

Slowly slowly..

Did some gauge testing with my old old Mk1's and all seems good.

 

Anything to take my mind off the Stoke v Liverpool score.

 

A few pics attached

Cheers,

Stu.

 

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Another breakthrough today. I have managed to successfully, cut and angle the inner line (Down Main) across the lifting hatch, and lay track the other side with success (for now anyway). So as a test of the size of the fiddle yard roads and positioning I have laid down loose an entire circuit. Powered as a test using my analogue controller, after a few temporary wiring bridges across isolators, it works. And I had the old Lima 50044 running a test load 6. I did not want to run anything more expensive as I need to add a corner piece to hold the inner line in the fiddle yard.

What started out as another potentially frustrating day has ended with me quitting whilst I am ahead for the day, quite happy with how its gone.

 

Cheers,

Stu.

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Another day, credit card has been well and truly flexed beyond recognition. Well,, if I am going to have a real go at this project I needed to get as much track and point motors as possible to keep the momentum. I have laid out in rough position now the scenic area and apart from a couple of possibles for the position of a single (or double) line small TMD, and a single fuel point off a headshunt or vice versa I am quite happy with it.

 

Oh, and then I saw a second hand item you may spot in one of the pictures that I couldn't resist.

So in terms of scenics there are 17 Electrofrog points to wire (7 done so far with PM-1 motors). The storage yard will be insulfrog but I will not secure that until point motor positions can be confirmed and drilled.

 

A few pics - still mainly old stock knocking around for testing with the new addition as well.

I also cut to size the road overbridge at the end of the station, and have put the scenic break in by the lift out hatch - which itself will also have a road overbridge with the station buildings to disguise the sharp bend this end.

 

Cheers,

Stu.

 

Why do the pictures never come out in order any more??

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Edited by SparxD428
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Hi All,

Another busy weekend although it doesn't look like a lot. Almost all of the cork base for the scenic section is down now with the exception of a couple of sidings and the relief lines to the west end of the station, and its currently mostly drying out after a base colour of grey paint. I think I have aligned everything correctly. I have decided that what was going to be a fenced off siding behind the up relief platform will be a bay platform now which can house parcels vans, DMU or be used to shunt/release trip freights in the yard. There is a second yard line behind that, then I have singled the 3rd line behind the platform with a headshunt for a single loco fuel point, and I will have a single road TMD/stabling shed.

 

Somehow without doing anything different, the Wills flexible brickwork is now complying with my requests so maybe just the first sheet I had was a bit duff - I did stick the main wall to 3mm MDF backing as an experiment and it came out well, so thought I would push my luck with trying the trimmings and they cut well also. I have experimented with trying to get that outskirts of Paddington colour/look to the retaining walls by acrylic wash of white on the walls, then almost drybrushing a very dark brown acrylic mix over most areas, trying not to make it too uniform. Think it looks OK and have a pic below of the experimental wall drop which will shift along in good time, as well as the road overbridge and corner showing the bay, yard and TMD lines.

 

Cheers,

Stu.

 

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Been busy tracklaying and wiring again yesterday. 15 of the 16 points in the scenic section are fixed down, holes for motors drilled, many track droppers fitted. Wiring diagram is getting a little crazy but at least I am mapping as I go along it may save problems in the future. May put some more pics up later if anything interesting develops. Pictures of spaghetti may not be much fun to be honest.

Cheers,

Stu.

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Thanks guys, much appreciated. I have the cork base laid now for all of the scenic section, and the rest of the grey paint is drying so this is almost complete. I now only have the one line of the yard to align and lay, and I have held off this for now as I may try and run it under the upper scenic into an unload building, or I may just use curvature to the buffer stops. Either way it won't hurt to have this wait a short time so I can better think through what I want to achieve with it, as there is still plenty to do with laying the rest of the track, not to mention the fiddle yard. The wiring is now getting crazy and I have run out of 1.5mm2 flex, so a trip to the DIY store later this week beckons.

I will let the paint dry and re-pin the track, then take some photos of the progress later this week.

Cheers,

Stu.

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Having a couple of wiring issues tonight as I have continued wiring droppers and bus together but think I have found the cause of both.

But rather than rush I will leave it for tomorrow.

Issue 1: Had a dead point issue so wired up the polarity switch to see if that would overcome it, which works one side of point but trips the breaker on the other road and I have since found on that route both + and - are trying to power the frog - so removed the point motor which has fixed the problem as blade contact is OK and working. So think I must have created a short on the motor during soldering, so taking no risks and will put a new point motor there

Issue 2: Had blade contact issue on another point, and also a dead section on the lead up. Found one of the droppers loose so fixed that, and again removed the point motor which fixed the blade contact, so I need about 1mm more drilled so the point throws the blade fully. That is going to be fun to do with the point solidly glued down !

Hence leaving this for another day.

 

Cheers,

Stu.

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  • 1 month later...

Well 5 weeks have passed since I last updated the thread and to be honest the only time I have spent on the layout is a couple of hours tonight filling in gaps in sleepers and sticking 1 piece of track down. Though I do have 3 loose fiddle yard roads which enable me to run a single train round the whole layout, so let a couple of the 50's stretch their legs for  bit tonight. The joins across the lifting baseboard are a bit clunky but everything is staying upright at reasonable speeds. I have a week off late in August so hope to have a couple of days to make some real progress.

Next job is to finish laying the scenic section track, then start thinking about painting the rails/sleepers, modelling the infrastructure and starting to construct the platforms and the overbridge which hides the scenic break and think about the backscenes.. not much to do then!

Cheers,

Stu.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi All,

 

Well after clearing space and getting the garage back to respectable state of tidiness, today was spent doing some of the required mundane stuff.

I began by painting the rail sides a rust colour, and due to viewing points did this on all sides , even though the rails I have painted are under the scenic break bridge. After an hour and a half and a grand total of about 4 feet of track painted I decided to move on to other tasks.

 

I have constructed the scenic break road overbridge which will have a station building and road across it. I have also cut the MDF backing for the retaining walls around the station area, as well as positioned some of the old backscene off Westquay which may be replaced or stay in situ if I feel it sits right for the location I am now modelling.

 

To finish off I posed a few what ifs with buildings/stock etc. which may not stay, as well as looking at the possibility of a covered ex loading bay under the road at the Berkshire end of the station.

So at least I have kicked off my week off with some work !

 

Will add some pics shortly

 

Cheers,

Stu.

 

 

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Pics include "posed" Station building ex-Westquay just to show position on the bridge, views of the station area with 2 of the 3 platform ramps marked by position and also a view over the top of the layout from the station end.

Photo file sizes seem to have dropped heavily on upload so hope they look OK !?!

 

 

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Hi Ian, Thanks bud, yes must be time for a play day again soon. I have the exhibition pencilled in on the calendar and look forward to re-acquainting myself with Tidworth.

Am pretty busy the next few weekends as have 2 birthday parties, a stag do and a wedding to shoehorn in the next 4 weeks but let me know when your having a running day/night will be good to come over.

Cheers,

Stu.

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Have been doing a little bit more of everything on the layout at the moment with the overbridge, part of platform 1, more wiring and some little details.

Today I have continued wiring up and positioning point motors of the SM-1 variety. It seems a 50/50 chance with me that they don't short when connecting the frog to the F terminal and D/E to the bus. I can only presume the switch is not properly contacting but any feedback welcome from anyone else who has experienced this. It may be I am positioning some slightly off centre due to how painful it is to fit them single handed. Anyway I will forego the frog polarity backup if necessary in favour of blade contact only.

 

I have also created a couple of little dummy point motor scenic from card and cable mounted on cork like the track, so hopefully when the ballast detail and weathering is done in the future they will look like real infrastructure. Have attached a pic below

 

Hope to crack on a little more tomorrow before back to work next week.

 

** Forgot to add - have wired the first pair of crossover point motors together and they work .Hurrah !! **

 

Cheers,

Stu.

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Edited by SparxD428
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Been cracking on again today with more point motor wiring, painting the dummy motors on the layout, putting down some card trunking to simulate infrastructure as well as continuing slowly on the retaining walls. Purchased a few more bits n bobs earlier to carry on the fiddle yard so need to consider seriously the fiddle yard layout in the next few weeks. Continued rail side painting also, laborious as it is.

A few more pics below. Slowly, slowly..

 

Cheers,

Stu.

 

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