Wallarium, an N scale Odyssey

[AndrueC]

Spot the difference :)

 

One thing that's been bugging me recently is the black plastic guard rails on Streamline turnouts. I realise that they shouldn't be bright but they just look wrong as they are. So I bought a silver paint pen and went to work.

 

Before:

 

After:

 

And part of the doorway intersection:

 

When it's dried I might go back and try and add a bit of rust effect but for now it looks like a big improvement to my eyes.

Edited May 2, 2023 by AndrueC

[Graham T]

Does look better, and I think some rust would help as you say.

 

[lilchris]

That is a good idea, I might pinch that. I have seen where the heavy plastic around the tie bar has been cut back too. obviously you can not do that if you fix Peco motors direct to the point, but I am using Cobalts. Chris H.

[AndrueC]

Not a lot going on over summer but last night I built one of my platform covers. There will eventually be eight of these (four on each platform) with a bridge in the middle.

 

 

 

In other news I now have my North Yard (visible through the windows here) fully accessible to the first loop. All turnouts are operating (some have had their frogs powered). So I can run any of the three trains currently parked there (Queen Elizabeth, Miss Behaviour and The Blue Horror).

Edited June 8, 2023 by AndrueC

[AndrueC]

What a tangled web we weave :)

 

I took delivery of some signal lights recently so have finally got around to installing one of them. It's not wired up yet but I think it looks quite good.

 

The light comes from The Model Railshop and is a good price I think. What I'm going to do is not prototypical but it'll look nice and will serve a purpose. Basically every turnout will have a signal on both divergent routes. They will indicate which route is live (so in the above image that light would be red if it was powered because the turnout is routing to the left track). So as well as looking nice they will tell the operator which way a turnout is set avoiding the need to wander over and peer at the blades.

 

They also do a ground signal that I think I can mount in a gantry for the Interchange.  The Interchange is going to have two gantries with three lights on each - two facing out, one facing back. Whilst on the subject of the Interchange I needed to finish it off because at present I can only run trains on the inner loops and I'd like to do some running on the outer loops:

 

It's a double slip and I reckoned that one controller (two outputs) could control each pair of turnouts. I still think that's possible but there is a gotcha that I decided to avoid. Basically for each diagonal pair the frogs have opposite polarities. The DCC Concepts turnouts only provide a single frog power out but there is a spare SPDT switch provided. So one option would have been to use this to power the opposite frog by feeding it track power with reversed polarity. But I also intend to use the SPDT to power the signal lights and I decided that I was just causing potential confusion.

 

So I chickened out and ordered another controller so that now each turnout is operated separately with the diagonal turnouts responding to the same address. It works but the wiring underneath is not especially tidy:

And it's not complete yet. The unconnected purple wires are frog feeders and I don't connect those until it proves necessary :)

Edited June 20, 2023 by AndrueC

[AndrueC]

No more stone walling!

 

For a long time now I've had a section of cliff around two of the slopes leading to/from Wilf's Junction. My intention was to make it look like the track beds had been carved out of the cliffs. To be honest I'd never been really happy with it. It looked too orange and the fissures between the rocks seemed to deep. It was okay but disappointing for what was supposed to be a major landscape feature.

 

Anyway this week's project was to finally install a stone wall along the top edge. I decided to use this because it looked good. It's also remarkably cheap. But then I realised there was a problem. My track sits on Gaugemaster underlay and because it's code 80 it meant the top of the rails was about level with the top of the stone wall which didn't look right. The only solution was to increase the height of the cliff edge. After a bit of trial and error I settled on using Sculptamould. This is plaster with shredded paper mixed in. I'd bought it a while back for making rocks with moulds and didn't like it. But for hand moulding plaster it's pretty good. Damn' good in fact. It looked okay and even 'rock like' when it was hardened. But then I painted it and quite frankly it's almost impossible to tell where the original rock ends and the extension starts.

 

Anyway with that in place it was time to install the wall. It was fairly easy - just put down glue then hold it in place against the landscape until the glue has set. I was quite impressed as I laid it. The next and final stage was to cover any gaps or joins with flock and put down some static grass along the edges and in a few select places along the cliff.

 

Then I stood back..and my jaw dropped. My somewhat odd looking 'thing' had become a rock face. It's even a rock face that stands up to close scrutiny. It's some of the best scenery I've done so far.

 

 

And an overview of the area:

Edited July 14, 2023 by AndrueC

[AndrueC]

Signalling my intent!

 

So right from the off I'll state that I'm not trying to be prototypical here. My layout is about building something that looks good, challenges me and keeps me interested. To that end I've always wanted signals on it but the placement and use is personal. My intention here is that they look good and serve a purpose - in this case they help the operator determine which way a turnout is set. Most turnouts will have signals on the frog end - two for each leaving rail. Most of them will point away from the frog and in essence indicate if it's safe for a train on that track to approach the frog.

 

Wilf's junction and the Doorway Interchange will have hand-built gantries but I'm leaving that for a real winter project.

 

It took me a while to find some good looking N Scale signal lights but I eventually found these:

https://www.modelitltd.co.uk/n-scale-c102x3323537

Nicely priced and they look good in situ:

 

The plug-it cabling system is also quite good although I've had to bodge it a bit to suit my purposes. What I particularly liked about this signals from that perspective is that they come with a resister already soldered in place.

 

I'm going to be controlling the signals from my DCC Concepts Cobalt-SS controllers since they have a spare SPDT switch. The signals are tri-wired (Common, Red, Green) so it's just a matter of connecting the common to the centre of the SPDT then red and green to each of the outputs.

 

Except that I want my signals to work in pairs (one for each track). So I have to connect the commons of both signals and connect the red/greens of different signals together. To do this I made use of Plug-it extension cables. Two wires go into the socket end and the plug end is removed and the wires tied together. You can get extension cables that don't have the plug on the end but sadly when I ordered there were only a few left.

 

Anyway after the above minor wiring you end up with three leads: Common, Left red+Right Green, Left green+Right red. So far so good. But the signals around my yard work in pairs because they are through sidings. So now the above wiring needs to be repeated for the signals at the other end. The two Common wires that result can be connected to the Common lighting bus. The four signal wires need to be connected together to form two signal wires following the same signal and colour pairing.

 

A wire from the Common bus is then connected to the centre of the SPDT switch. Then each of the two signal wires connected to the outputs. Some faff might be required here because it's possible to get the wires mixed up and have the signals not showing the correct colour(*). But as luck would have it my first attempt was correct:

 

 

(*)To say nothing of the usual faff involved in inserting wires into screw terminals.

[RobinofLoxley]

On 02/05/2023 at 11:29, AndrueC said:

Spot the difference :)

 

One thing that's been bugging me recently is the black plastic guard rails on Streamline turnouts. I realise that they shouldn't be bright but they just look wrong as they are. So I bought a silver paint pen and went to work.

 

Before:

 

After:

 

And part of the doorway intersection:

 

When it's dried I might go back and try and add a bit of rust effect but for now it looks like a big improvement to my eyes.

Had you posted this as a query I could have given you some pointers. I completely agree they need painting; I experimented off-layout, first i used Revell 94 gold which was a good match to my code 100 track quite a bit of which is old and its more 'yellow' than the newer stuff. It looked perfect on polished track but once the track had dulled a bit the gold looked a bit too bright. Adding some railmatch 294 silver to the gold was better. Eventually I will make a batch large enough to do every turnout but Im not ready to do that yet.

Edited August 5, 2023 by RobinofLoxley

[AndrueC]

Thanks for that, @RobinofLoxley. I only did a few of the rails so suggestions are still useful.

[RobinofLoxley]

14 hours ago, AndrueC said:

Thanks for that, @RobinofLoxley. I only did a few of the rails so suggestions are still useful.

You see the colour difference. I painted everything even the frogs. If I use a rubber on the track the colour is then the same.

[AndrueC]

It's summer so we should have shorts..but not that kind!

 

I'm not doing a right lot at the moment on the layout. I have completed the last of my platform canopies though and have installed some digital signage:

 

The signs are a simple construction. I printed out some very small images:

Then using a glue stick attached them to a tee shaped piece of thin card. Then glued that card to the horizontal strut. Seems to work well enough but at two signs per canopy and sixteen canopies in total it was a bit tedious.

 

So as a reward I decided to run the three trains I have on shed at the moment. So I switched on the layout and B E E E P! Oh for the love of... Hmmm. First time I've run it in a while and it's a warm humid day. Nah. Double check track is clear. Yup. Are any of the turnouts set wrongly. Nope. Ah but what about the three unfortunate frog connections where the isolation is questionable. All good.

 

So now I'm pondering how to go about diagnosing the short on a rather large layout. But hang on. I haven't changed anything and it was all fine before so it can't be track or wiring related. Now what was I doing most recently. Hmmm. Ah. I borrowed a coach from one of the trains to check the clearance of a signal. So I manually pull that train off and bingo! No short. I carefully put it back and still no short.

 

So then I spend half an hour running trains. Yay!

 

The moral of this story (as has been the case previously) is to always power the layout up when you're finished what you're doing. That way you can at least narrow down the possibilities. Here endeth the lesson :)

[AndrueC]

Working on something concrete.

 

I've been laying the hard standing for the North Yard so thought I'd do a bit of a step by step guide. As I've mentioned before it's made more difficult by me laying the track in a somewhat haphazard way. Consequently the 'concrete' between the tracks varies in width.

 

Step 1:

Using a graphite stick and a sheet of paper get an impression of the tracks. This is easy - just put some paper over the track then run the stick along. It's the same principal as used by people who do 'brass rubbing'.

 

Step 2:

Cut out the piece. When cutting try and stay on the outside of the tracks (bearing in mind that the above lines mark two rails). Put another way you want the filler to sit between the tracks so you need to cut something slightly thinner than the two lines indicate. Now put that paper onto some card and trace the outline of it in pencil. Cut it out again cutting on the inside of the marks.

 

Additional note for the inner sections: You need to leave space for the flange way I found that 1mm each side is sufficient for N scale but it might also be advisable to chamfer the inner surface at the ends to help guide the wheels.

 

Step 3:

Offer the piece to the track and adjust as needed. I sometimes have to cut out notches for droppers. If you solder on the underside of the track this won't be needed. The really important thing is that the card should sit on top of the chairs, as snugly against the outside of the rails as possible. The top of the surface should be as close as possible to the top of the rails. If the rail heads are proud of the surface it won't look right.

 

Step 4:

Painting. I've gone with Rustoleum Concrete Effect spray and a mix of Carbon Black and Old Rust weathering powders. In the image below some of the central sections of surface were done before Christmas so don't quite match but it looks okay. Bear in mind that I will have trains parked on top so the surface isn't normally as obvious. I've not glued the card down yet and the lower piece has shifted out of position which demonstrates how critical is it to get the card against the rail edge.

 

And finally an overview:

Edited September 8, 2023 by AndrueC

[AndrueC]

Because I can..

 

I helped represent my club at the recent TINGS exhibition and while there was able to find a red/white wave EMR HST Mk3 coach. The sidings on Wallarium are slightly longer than those Circularium and I've been wanting one of these to complete my HST for over a year.

 

So to celebrate here is my Class 43 HST, Miss Behaviour, having a quick trot through the scenery.

 

 

[AndrueC]

As the weather worsens I get time to do a bit on the layout. I've been gradually putting down static grass and bushes everywhere.

I've also laid most of the ballast at Wilf's Junction and confirmed that the frog juicer does what it should - I can run trains through the crossing quite happily.

You might notice that I've added some grass to the right of the junction. It's supposed to look a bit scrubby and I think it's worked well.

The biggest project so far has been building a mound for my castle ruins to sit on. I'd been wondering what do put there and realised that a ruined castle gives a good reason for building a tunnel instead of just blasting the whole hillside away. So I present the view of Bluff Corner on the left with the south entrance to Castle Tunnels on the right.

Away from my layout I took a couple of locos and my bullet wagons to the club for some exercise and to practice controlling the layout (it's DC) for the upcoming Gaydon exhibition. We've done some work on the old layout to spruce her up a bit so wanted to make sure everything ran.

 

The layout was mostly fine apart from one turnout on a yard that everything picks at the blade pivot but it did throw up a few quirks for me:

• My bullet wagons caught on some of the droppers and a couple of fiddle yard turnout solenoid extension levers.
• My Sonic GWR 56xx 0-6-2 refused to move. It's fine back on my DCC layout so maybe it's shipped with DC support disabled.
• My BR class 53 ran beautifully but think the DCC chip is in the wrong way round because it drives as if the nameplate is on the rear of the loco which seems wrong.
• My Pacer ran fine but the direction of travel was opposite to the lights - it always showed red lights to front and white to rear. When I got it back home it turned out that the decoder in the power unit was no longer able to move the loco - curiously it gave a high pitched buzz as if it was a DC loco on a DCC track. The decoder in the unpowered unit was fine so I swapped the decoders and it now runs fine (direction lights 'n all).

But if you want to see the venerable Meacham layout it's on exhibition at the Gaydon Motor Museum over the weekend of October 28/9th. I will also be there on Saturday helping (or hindering, lol) the operation of the layout 🙂

Edited October 19, 2023 by AndrueC

[AndrueC]

So the golf course is closed today (lordy it's been getting wet and soft and it's only October 😢) so more time spent on t' railway. I dropped a bit more static grass around Wilf's Junction but I also went ferreting around in my scenery box. In the process I found some seats (I knew they were there) and some flower boxes (I'd forgotten about them). So I decided to add some furniture to my platforms.

 

I need to add some more stuff so will probably knock up some vending machines and maybe a clock or two. I also removed that errant ballast after taking the above photo, lol.

Edited October 20, 2023 by AndrueC

[AndrueC]

Getting the track back on track..

 

So I posted back in April that I wasn't happy with The Doorway Interchange. I also posted that fixing it would be one of my winter jobs. Well with the golf course shut (or at least recovering from the last day's rain) I decided now was the time to tackle it.

 

The task was essentially simple. I just wanted to tighten the overall radius so that there was more of a gap between the inner track and the interchange. But this was to be my first attempt at lifting track that had been laid using underlay and Copydex. It was more difficult lifting it than it had been for track on my previous layout. For that layout I'd just plonked the track on top of the baseboard and dribbled PVA along the sleepers followed by ballast. Lifting that was easy as you just had to spray wet water on it and wait ten minutes.

 

Lifting foam+Copydex is not so easy. It's not difficult but my idea of just sliding a pallet knife underneath and wiggling it a bit almost didn't work. If the foam had been completely glued down it would have been more of a struggle but as it happened it seemed I'd missed a bit when laying it so was able slide the pallet knife underneath that part of it and wiggle from there. Eventually the track came free albeit at the expense of a lot of the underlay. Luckily as I had previously acquired the last remaining Gaugemaster foam underlay in the country it wasn't a big deal. I just had to choose the right area to snip and join the track back up then I used a bit of the spare underlay to repair the damage. You'll be glad to know that I still have most of the five metre roll left. Waste not want not.

 

All in all it took about an hour and a half to move the track. It's not moved a huge distance but now I have enough space to build some proper scenery around the turnout motors. In the picture below you can see the motor cover near the top of the picture and the extra space to the right of it.

 

 

Looking at the underlay I'm reminded of a wise saying from Mr Eric Morcambe. "You can't see the join" 😁

Edited October 21, 2023 by AndrueC

[AndrueC]

Static grass ahoy (and the last of the army sand).

 

Just a short update. Once I had more space between the inner track and the interchange I was able to create some proper scenery. No more naff card painted orange. This is the result:

 

It needs a little more work around the turnout motor cover but it's a big improvement. I now have to decide what I'm going to put on that empty section of board. It's supposed to be a lift-out section (currently duck-under) so I could just remove it to reduce weight but that seems like a wasted opportunity.

 

Having completed the above track work I could also add in some scenery to the right of the above image. Wallarium tries to be consistent in its track laying. Grey ballast sat on a sand base. This was the last section of track to be made good.

 

 

It means that I have finally reached the point where I no longer have a need for army sand. This has been a running personal joke for a while. For some reason I over ordered it and several times while digging through my scenery for something else I'd find yet another container of army sand. Consequently whenever I needed some I'd joke to myself about being careful with it so as not to waste it. Naturally I've been left with quite a lot of army sand and no longer any use for it.

 

I can't believe it's not...army sand.

[AndrueC]

It's enough to make you weep..or climb up a pole :)

 

I've redone my willow using a technique I found on YouTube. The result (my third attempt using different techniques) finally meets my standards. I used this technique to make the branches.

 

As a diversion I've also installed some telegraph poles on the Western Cutting.

In case anyone's wondering they are a scale 15m apart.

[AndrueC]

The South Yard!

 

The parts for my south yard arrived from York Models. It's not a very complicated structure (it is after all basically just a fancy dust cover). Unlike the North Yard cover this is intended to look modern - a steel and glass structure. It consists of multiple double arches with side panels. Here is the first unit constructed:

 

And here are three units in position over the yard itself:

 

A collection of units as the cover starts to take shape:

 

The main section of the yard, spray painted with aluminium colour:

 

A slight complication is that unlike the North Yard the South Yard has a ladder arrangement. It also has a mainline hugging the side of it. This means that the yard cover can't just be a single 'tube'. There has to be an angled section at one end. Eventually I will be constructing an office area and putting it on the flat roof. Below is the completed yard with the angled section at left:

 

Well it's not actually complete in that image. It still needs acetate sheets adding to make a roof and external beams in line with the arches but it's pretty much done.

 

To celebrate completion I've been stocking the yard with my remaining rolling stock. First to go in was Big Bertha and her Bullet Train. You can admire the yard cover as she drives past it a few times:

 

[AndrueC]

It's a wrap!

 

I wasn't entirely happy with the look of my new yard cover. It was missing some gussets but in addition the spray job just wasn't working. So I decided to give it a face lift while adding the gussets.

 

So I printed out three templates using the drawings I'd sent to York Modelmaking along with some gussets. Then I sprayed the reverse of the paper with the same aluminium paint I'd used for the structure itself. Everything I printed out was symmetrical so it didn't matter that it was printed on the reverse side for cutting everything out.

 

Cutting out the wall templates wasn't as tedious as I'd thought and they fit perfectly, glued on with a glue stick.

 

Cutting out the gussets was as tedious as I expected (24 corner gussets and eight centre gussets for the sides and three gussets for the visible end arch). I wanted a rivet effect on the gussets and the technique I settled on was to take jeweller's cross-headed screwdriver and use it to punch indents into the paper. This works well although to be honest I should've taken a bit more care to follow the rivet lines on the template in a few cases.

 

For the sides I used 80gsm paper. That's fine for the actual sides but I do feel that the gussets could have been better done with something thicker. Unfortunately the only thicker paper I had was 220gsm and neither of my printers could take that. But still - I think it's come out well enough:

 

For the visible end I decided that I didn't need to use a printed template and that meant I could use the thicker paper.

 

The thicker paper does help but I think I need to revisit the gusset shape/size on that end.

Edited November 22, 2023 by AndrueC

[n9]

On 01/05/2023 at 11:16, AndrueC said:

At some point I do want to make that lift-out section removable (currently it's a duck under) and an experiment has convinced me that foam alone is unlikely to hold the track in place if it's curved. On that subject the top line is going to be tricky. It's mounted on cork, then 50mm of polystyrene and one end of it is slightly curved. I've come up with a plan but it's going to be interesting. The plan is to drive long brad nails through the cork, through the polystyrene and into the baseboard in between the sleepers. I'm hoping that enough of these will keep the track aligned if/when it finally gets cut. In the image below you can see the problem curve and a brad nail along side.

Did you solve this? My pearl of wisdom is if that raised portion isn't strong enough to do what you need - i.e. hold that curve across a lift-out section - it really should be, and doing anything else is likely to result in something that won't work well or reliably. I'd consider replacing the edges of that foam with a batten (on both touching edges) so you have something to nail into, I guess the cork could still lay on top. Slightly less traumatic, although leaning towards bodge, would be to replace just the portion of he polystyrene that really needs the strength, with a generous block of wood. This might well be good enough though since it's a home layout.

 

On a smaller scale, that last idea is a little similar to how I've strengthened my foam underlay (resting on XPS) where I've needed to hold an apex (either for my first attempts at transitions or for joins on curves.):

 

 

So I glue in a bit of wood into which I can nail (I'm just using the Peco nails), and those nails can then hold sleepers in the right place. After ballasting, those nails could come out, or stay in where they're not visible.

 

(Overdid the Copydex there!  😃)

[AndrueC]

48 minutes ago, n9 said:

Did you solve this? My pearl of wisdom is if that raised portion isn't strong enough to do what you need - i.e. hold that curve across a lift-out section - it really should be, and doing anything else is likely to result in something that won't work well or reliably. I'd consider replacing the edges of that foam with a batten (on both touching edges) so you have something to nail into, I guess the cork could still lay on top. Slightly less traumatic, although leaning towards bodge, would be to replace just the portion of he polystyrene that really needs the strength, with a generous block of wood. This might well be good enough though since it's a home layout.

I'm still mulling it over. I soaked the underlay in water then dribbled some glue on it and it seems to have hardened nicely so that might be the answer. The curve isn't terribly tight so it's not like I'm fighting a massive spring - the underlay on its own seems to have enough strength such that I just end up with a slight kink.  I need to do more experiments really.

 

It may become next Winter's project. By then I will have run enough trains to feel more sanguine about potentially putting my layout out of action for a while. One way of looking at it though - this is supposed to be a retirement project so if I have to rebuild one corner of it then that's just more enjoyable 'hobby work'. If I did go that route I'd probably replace that section of track with code 55 and at the least the turnouts could be soldered less obtrusively.

 

48 minutes ago, n9 said:

On a smaller scale, that last idea is a little similar to how I've strengthened my foam underlay (resting on XPS) where I've needed to hold an apex (either for my first attempts at transitions or for joins on curves.):

 

 

So I glue in a bit of wood into which I can nail (I'm just using the Peco nails), and those nails can then hold sleepers in the right place. After ballasting, those nails could come out, or stay in where they're not visible.

 

(Overdid the Copydex there!  😃)

 

Looks a better solution than my current one.

 

One thing I'd like to have as part of the lift out is a set of spring loaded connectors. Currently I'm using chocblock plugs but for a lift-out it'd be really nice to be able to just drop it in place and have connections made just by gravity. I've not yet seen anything that would fit the bill in that respect.

[AndrueC]

Today's mood: Frazzled.

 

My brother came down to see me (and Warley) on Friday so of course I demonstrated my layout to him. I got three trains running continuously and then I suggested we could try and get the fourth loop in play. This required me to operate the scissor crossing aka Doorway Interchange. Sadly this didn't go so well. The motors moved the turnouts but that introduced a short. I was a bit puzzled because of the four turnouts only one has power to its frog and I remember sorting that out a couple of months ago. Anyway I wasn't going to muck about so we just ignored it and watched the three trains trundling round. Thankfully they all did so with aplomb.

 

Then I decided to demonstrate my newly behaving class 08. For some reason I decided to run it on the loop we hadn't been using. That turned out to be a fateful decision because the track was a little dirty and the first dirty stretch my 08 found was inside Castle Tunnel. Still - at least it gave me the opportunity to demonstrate that it's possible to take the top off to gain access.

 

Back to today. I decided to tackle Doorway Interchange. I made the equally fateful decision that while I was sitting on the floor underneath the baseboard I might as well connect up all the frogs. Le Sigh.

 

I spent the first hour trying to work out which output of the controller was correct for each frog. This is made confusing by two things. Firstly in a scissors crossing the two connected turnouts have opposite phase/polarity. I've addressed this (mentioned in a previous post) by having each turnout on its own controller albeit each pair responds to the same DCC address. But for the life of me I just couldn't get it to make sense. I'd work it out then connect the wires and..it'd be wrong!

 

This is where the second thing comes into play.

 

The controllers have a slider (marked CW/CCW) that basically reverses the direction of the motor. I suppose it exists for when two controllers are sharing the same address but you want one motor to pull when the other pushes and vice versa. For some reason I'd flipped these switches even though it wasn't necessary - my paired motors can both operate in the same direction as they are mounted on the opposite sides of the track.

 

Now fair enough you might think that that just complicated controlling them, meaning I'd jut have to tell them to push when I'd expect them to be pulling. But it has another effect, one barely acknowledged by DCC Concepts (I've think I've seen a couple of off-hand comments on their forum). On earlier units if the slider is in the CCW position (which reverses the direction) the controller won't always remember its position after a power cycle. It turns out that the controllers I bought (likely sometime within the last three years) for the Doorway Interchange are early units. And that was why I spent the first hour this morning F-ing and blinding under my baseboard.

 

Is that why I'm frazzled? Only partly.

 

Once I'd sorted that out by flipping the controllers back to CW and moved onto the next pair of turnouts. Now one of these has a construction issue. Somehow I'd managed to fail to insert the main rail into the insulating joiner. I'd spotted it last year and made sure it was safe but now when I come to power up the frog it insists that it has a permanent connection to the main rail. So I got out the razor saw and re-did the gap. Then I got out my Xuron cutters and made the gap bigger. Still the frog claimed to be permanently powered. So then I began to assess the turnout to see what would be involved in lifting it. But frankly I didn't want to. It was a lot of work and it only affected that fourth loop. So I sighed and just spent a couple of minutes studying the turnout with a Maglight.

 

And then something caught my eye.

 

A small reflection near the frog dropper.

 

I took a closer look and realised that there was a loose strand of wire that hadn't been soldered to the frog. Instead it had managed to creep out and was touching the fixed rail. Not a problem in normal use when those turnouts were set to straight through but caused a short when the turnouts were set to cross..and also resulting in me getting cross.

 

Anyway with that resolved I'm pleased to say that..I can nearly demonstrate the Doorway Interchange. Unfortunately the controllers didn't have a connection to the track bus. I happened to find a spare red dropper I could connect but there's no spare black and frankly my tank was too empty at that point. I just didn't fancy spending another five minutes under the baseboard fitting a suitcase connector.

 

I'll post the example video later(TM). In the meantime I'm just going to sit quietly in my lounge and contemplate life.

 

🙂

Edited November 27, 2023 by AndrueC

[n9]

On 22/11/2023 at 12:57, AndrueC said:

One thing I'd like to have as part of the lift out is a set of spring loaded connectors. Currently I'm using chocblock plugs but for a lift-out it'd be really nice to be able to just drop it in place and have connections made just by gravity. I've not yet seen anything that would fit the bill in that respect.

 

Have you tried Googling "spring loaded connector"? 🙂 You'll get this kind of stuff coming back, although I don't know how robust they are:

 

https://www.uweelectronic.de/en/prueftechnologie-kontakttechnologie/federkontaktleisten.html

 

In terms of volts and amps, they seem suitable. Pogo pin connectors also seem to be related.

 

If it's not too many connections, a slightly wilder idea might be vertically embedding one or more of the chunky 6.35 mm audio jacks.

 

I also have this notion that springy copper strips also exist for this purpose, but I don't know what they're called. Still, making one I imagine is doable.

 

(For some reason, I keep replying to your older posts. I'll catch up one day!)

Edited November 27, 2023 by n9

[AndrueC]

Well in effort to keep you behind my posts I'm making a new one 😁

 

I was helped to recover from my slight depression by the arrival of the postman. Amongst other things he dropped off some Dapol Spine Wagons. These were to replace 'Robbie'(*). The wagons were proving to be a little too sensitive and prone to decoupling. Ordinarily I'd just fit Hunt couplers but that's a lot of wagons so would be expensive but also they don't have NEM pockets. The couplers are held in place by a very small spring and I really didn't fancy messing with that.

 

So I assembled the wagons, put them on the track and..then the problems started. The first few were fairly minor. The South Yard needed its hardstanding fettling and a few sections of track cleaning. Mildly annoying but not unexpected given that the hardstanding was only recently laid. So I sorted that out and continued running the train.

 

One of the wagons does not like the slight kink at a track join on one of my inclined curves. This is also the place where the coal wagons tended to decouple (as well as some turnouts). So I decided to investigate. At first I thought it was the kink causing the problem but when I looked closer I could see that the bogey jumped the rails just before the kink on what is perfectly decent and well laid track. So then I got my test bogey out and pushed it back and forth. It turns out that as well as the kink the next section of track after the join has a steeper incline and even has a bit of unintentional super elevation.

 

So what I think is happening is that the lead bogey tilts the spine and the rear bogey just doesn't have enough vertical play (there's practically none) and the wagon ends up 'cocking a leg'. Something similar might be happening with the coal wagons.

 

So what to do?

 

I intend to run four trains on that loop and I know that three of them (Silver Bullets and Cargowagons) are absolutely fine. My brother and I ran the Cargowagons for fifteen minutes without incident and I've done the same with the bullets previously. So relaying the track (which would be a serious pain in the bum) is not needed.

 

Interestingly it's only one bogey on one wagon that has this problem so I'm going to try and fix it. One thing I've noticed is that that wagon is very slightly warped. It's barely noticeable but that might be exacerbating the problem. In addition there is very little vertical movement in any of the bogeys so I might try and rectify that. The bogeys attach through a crude system of a peg extruded from the bottom of the chassis and you remove the bogey by squeezing the peg. I'll take a closer look tomorrow and see if I can shave either the bottom of the chassis or the top of the bogey to provide more vertical movement. I think doing that would reduce the 'leg cocking' and allow the wheel flanges to remain in contact with the rails.

 

And yes, those spring loaded connectors do seem like they would do the job, so thanks for that!

 

(*)My coal train. 😉

Edited December 1, 2023 by AndrueC