Canterbury Road (Mk2)

[chuffinghell]

But is it available in Great Western Livery?

[MrWolf]

4 hours ago, chuffinghell said:

But is it available in Great Western Livery?

 

It does look a bit like a pannier after all...

[Fishplate]

On 29/03/2023 at 14:09, chuffinghell said:

But is it available in Great Western Livery?

 

22 hours ago, MrWolf said:

It does look a bit like a pannier after all...

 

 

I know you GWR types mutter on about Shirt Button Livery. So as requested. . . . 

 

 

[Fishplate]

Looking back, it was just over two months ago that I did the last bit of wiring up to the joints between boards 2 and 3.

 

Boards 1  & 2 were up at the previous house, so best laid plans were to demolish 1&2 as part of the house move and continue wiring on the other side of the joint when we got here. 

 

So a wet BH Monday has seen a period of pondering of wiring diagrams to figure out the continuation . . . . .  😁 

 

In a nutshell, solder and soldering iron saw zero action today. But my brain is less befuddled 👍.

 

Onwards McDuff . . . 

[Graham T]

Pondering always helps 🙂

 

[Nevermakeit]

19 hours ago, Graham T said:

Pondering always helps 🙂

 

Depends how long it takes!  I've been pondering over 40 years, and not yet made a start! :-)

[Fishplate]

In other news, this weekend sees 4 year old Grandson No 1 (of 1) initiated into the world of Model Railway exhibitions.

 

(Granddaughter No 1 (of 2) is off with Mum and Nana to look at butterflies).

 

Wish me luck. I suspect Grandsons brain will explode, especially if any of the layouts also have a tractor.

[Graham T]

Ah.  Yes, that’s quite a lot of pondering to be fair.  Hence your username?

 

[Fishplate]

An evening spent following and numbering wires between Boards 2 and 3. They've been apart since September 2020. Coming back alive slowly.

[Fishplate]

Moral of the story No.1: Do in 4mm:1ft what I do in 12":1ft scale: Design something, build it. If amended on site, mark up and revise Approved for Construction Drawing to As Built status so what is on site matches the drawing/ diagram. 

 

Saves a lot of head scratching when looking at the Designed (Final!) Wiring Diagram for the layout and compare to the current state of play underneath the boards (with temporary wiring to make running trains possible). 

 

Not aided by the numbered tabs I made from cut up sticky postage labels about 4 years ago, which have come unstuck/ peeled off. Moral of the story No.2: Now using Mrs FP's proper labelling machine (with permission!). 

 

Current state of spaghetti wiring for general amusement. If I had done this in DCC I would only need two wires. . . . . . . apparently. 

 

 Boards 2 and 3 partially joined electrically.

 

Board 2 getting some TLC

 

 

Will also be adding point control and associated microswitches on these two boards.

[5BarVT]

7 hours ago, Fishplate said:

Moral of the story No.1: Do in 4mm:1ft what I do in 12":1ft scale: Design something, build it. If amended on site, mark up and revise Approved for Construction Drawing to As Built status so what is on site matches the drawing/ diagram.

In theory I do that too.  It’s the data listings that are a bit out of date.

Paul.

[Fishplate]

On 11/04/2023 at 17:40, Fishplate said:

In other news, this weekend sees 4 year old Grandson No 1 (of 1) initiated into the world of Model Railway exhibitions.

 

That went well. He was so good. Were there for about 1 1/2 hours yesterday. He drove Thomas three times on the 'for kids' s ' layout and was allowed to press the horn on a DCC diesel. 

 

Grandad might have bought a circle of track, a little loco and some rolling stock for him, all older items with no fragile details so they have great play value.

 

Got back to our house and set that up. Within 10 minutes he had built a station and a bridge out of Duplo and was delivering bricks in the open wagon and stopping the coach in the station. 

 

All tidied away into a small box labelled "Jack's Trains" to play with when he visits Nana and Grandad. Plus he wants to go to another exhibition. Hopefully the start of his "beyond Brio" railway experience.

 

[Nevermakeit]

4 hours ago, Fishplate said:

 

That went well. He was so good. Were there for about 1 1/2 hours yesterday. He drove Thomas three times on the 'for kids' s ' layout and was allowed to press the horn on a DCC diesel. 

 

Grandad might have bought a circle of track, a little loco and some rolling stock for him, all older items with no fragile details so they have great play value.

 

Got back to our house and set that up. Within 10 minutes he had built a station and a bridge out of Duplo and was delivering bricks in the open wagon and stopping the coach in the station. 

 

All tidied away into a small box labelled "Jack's Trains" to play with when he visits Nana and Grandad. Plus he wants to go to another exhibition. Hopefully the start of his "beyond Brio" railway experience.

 

Clearly a young man of some discernment! 

[Fishplate]

2 hours ago, Nevermakeit said:

Clearly a young man of some discernment! 

 

His choices and reasons were:

 

a GWR 0-4-2T loco (it has a nice box)

an LNER teak coach (I like that one)

an SR Cattle wagon (because 'S' is the first letter of his sister's name)

a Private owner open wagon, Ellis & Everard (nice and bright red).

 

I guided him to a selection of brake vans (my reason : to look after the other trucks). He choose a BR one (his reason: I like that shape).

 

So only the LMS not represented (for no particular reason). 

 

Off to do a bit more wiring. . . .

 

[Fishplate]

Bit of time today to spend on the railway. Started putting together the point control for Dock Junction on Board 2. Dock Junction is the turnout on the lower level in the second picture.

 

Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but all point control is managed on my layout with fencing wire to the edge of the board. It is just the correct diameter for a short length to pop up into the hole in the Peco tiebars. The short length then goes into a single electrical connector that the long wire to the edge of the board goes through. That long wire continues through a block to hold the under board alignment, all as shown below. It is all stiff enough on the short lengths beneath my boards to work reliably.

 

A microswitch needs the wiring soldering on before being screwed to the board. This is the positioned so the short length of fencing wire up to the tiebar pushes the leg on the microswitch to switch the power on the live frog. 

 

There is some soldering of the wires to/ from the adjacent boards 3 & 7 on the lower tracks to solder on, as shown on the second picture. These are the sidings, the run-round loop and, on the high level, the track rising to the main lines from the goods yards. Everything to the dock on Board 1 and the high level continuous runs to Boards 3 and 7 were done at least four years ago.

 

 

 

 

[Fishplate]

Boards 1, 2 & 3 are the right way up! Some soldering to do from the under-baseboard connectors to the rails, but lots of progress has been made today.

 

The new railway room has approximately 150mm of extra space at the LH end of the dock. The plan is to use this space to create a basin for the Thames Barge that will keep it out of knocking zones.

 

The boards are on gliders so I can pull it forward and work on the rear sidings and cassette area.

 

 

[Fishplate]

All wires, bar two, have been soldered to the rails on boards 2 and 3. The two that haven't are on the section of track on the descent to the goods yard that was damaged when board 4 was lifted out past board 3 pre - house move. I'll be replacing that piece of track when board 4 goes up.

 

A little bit more electrical work to do on board 3, then I will start laying the two carriage sidings at the rear of boards 2 and 3 and looking at the 'scenic cassette ' section that covers boards 1 & 2.

[Fishplate]

The bit of electrical work to do on Board 3 was to add the point operating mechanism and a micro switch on to the point in the picture below. A relatively simple job that should have been straight forward. Long story short, the tie bar coincided with a cross brace, shown by the line across the underlay in the picture. I had drilled out the hole for the point mechanism through the cross brace several years ago before laying the point.

 

Connected up the point operating mechanism but the point was really stiff to operate. In fact, pushing the mechanism away from me caused the switch to move towards me. Fascinating, but wrong. The mechanism was rocking in the hole causing that contrary movement. Did various things to widen the hole from underneath the board, being careful not to go too high and hit the tie bar. All without success. Then I thought it was a problem with the over-centre spring on the point as it was so stiff. Perhaps I had dislodged the spring in some way whilst poking about underneath? Again, nothing obvious, but took it apart anyway having found a YouTube 'how-to' video.

 

Without the centre spring mechanism, the mechanism was still rocking in the hole with a push away becoming a movement towards me. Dug out the really bright torch, shone it up from underneath and looked down. Nothing. Shone it down from above with the T piece of the over centre spring removed and saw a sliver of plywood poking across the hole from beneath the black underlay. A swift bit of scalpel work in the scalpel blade width gap revealed by removing the T piece took that sliver away.

 

Moved the mechanism away from me. The point went the same way. Moved the mechanism towards me. The point came the same way, but now no over-centre spring to lock the blades across. 

 

Re-assembled the over-centre spring (you can adjust the tension ~ who knew?). But the give in the underlay meant I couldnt tighten up the little tabs sufficiently to get the right tension, so ended up putting a track pin at the end to act as a stop. Everything worked perfectly. 

 

End result after two hours: One working point mechanism roughly 20cm long, but not electrically connected. Now a job for another day.

 

And a small pile of sawdust from the fruitless excavations in the cross brace.

 

Onwards 👍

 

 

 

   

[Fishplate]

Microswitch fitted to the errant switch, but not electrically tested yet. Its what long weekends are for :-) . Except other stuff is also happening . . . . 

[Fishplate]

Don't get anything for ages, then two items turn up in the post together. Firstly, these SR Level Crossing gates that will go on Board 7 protecting the single line as it enters the Reception Siding area. I had hoped to pick this up at the Doncaster show in February but sadly MSE weren't there this year.

 

 

Some photos taken some years ago when the layout was up and running. I've sketched the road alignment on, which goes beneath the main lines. The road access to the Goods Yard is also sketched on. So I just need to get what is in my head down on this board in in 3D in due course.

 

 

 

 

Hopefully you can see what I can see, which is iron railing fences, prototype examples below, around the end of the siding running up to the level crossing gates; on the opposite side of the road where the entrance to the Goods yard will be; and running past the crossing box up to the main line bridge abutment, with appropriate cattle guards on the track and a gate to the 'box. On the opposite corner to the Goods Yard entrance, a fenced footpath then disappears into a pedestrian arch below the main lines. 

 

 

 

[Fishplate]

The other item that turned up yesterday was this rather lovely SECR Guards Brake which I had on pre-order from Rails of Sheffield for some time.

 

 

 

 

 

[MrWolf]

I do like antiquated brake vans. Any idea why it has odd verandahs?

[5BarVT]

15 hours ago, MrWolf said:

I do like antiquated brake vans. Any idea why it has odd verandahs?

One for wet days, one for sunny?  :-)

Actually, I wouldn’t like to be out on the open end as it has no safety rail etc for rough rides, but you still need to get out there to change shades in the side lamps when the open end is trailing.

Paul.

[Fishplate]

22 hours ago, MrWolf said:

I do like antiquated brake vans. Any idea why it has odd verandahs?

 

Hi Rob @MrWolf Unfortunately the leaflet that came with it from Rapido Trains doesn't give any explanation on the reason for being built like this, other than they were 'similar to MR six wheel brakes'. It does note that the various batches of single ended brakes were subsequently rebuilt with covered verandahs at both ends. 

 

I've had a look in a couple of books and can't find any explanation. Something I find with wagon books is they quite often tell you the diagram the wagon/ van was built to, but very rarely tell you how it was used.

 

6 hours ago, 5BarVT said:

Actually, I wouldn’t like to be out on the open end as it has no safety rail etc for rough rides, but you still need to get out there to change shades in the side lamps when the open end is trailing.

 

Hi Paul @5BarVT Presumably the Company relied on the Guard using the grab rails on the main body of the van either side of the door? As there wasn't such an emphasis on H&S back in 1898 when these were introduced, no doubt there was a company rule about holding on to ensure the Company wasn't to blame if the guard fell off . . . . 

 

I must admit that the roof of that van is very, very white. I can see many people on here taking the shine off it. Not sure I'm that brave.

     

Edited May 28, 2023 by Fishplate
Missed a word out. .

[Fishplate]

On 14/05/2023 at 20:51, Fishplate said:

End result after two hours: One working point mechanism roughly 20cm long, but not electrically connected. Now a job for another day.

 

Well this point is giving me some more headaches. Moved the point and the Micro switch  operates. In one direction electrically, it works perfectly, with the crossing being correctly fed. In the other direction it shorted out.

 

So this evening I have been working through possible problems, including whether I had not broken the links under the turnout that you are supposed to, which meant lifting and reseating it. I had, so that is ruled out.

 

Somewhere I've got a wire crossed between return and feed, as putting current through the feed rail gives a reading on all the common return rails on that board. So I know what I am doing for my hobby time on BH Monday. Hohum. . . .