Wolfstatt OBB

[PaulRhB]

58 minutes ago, duff man said:

Not thinking straight.  I ment 3D printed logs not laser cut.

Having built these up from logs I can verify that’s a good idea! 😆

 

https://www.goodwoodscenics.co.uk/small-diameter-logs

[duff man]

4 hours ago, PaulRhB said:

Having built these up from logs I can verify that’s a good idea! 😆

 

https://www.goodwoodscenics.co.uk/small-diameter-logs

Paul, it's laborious to contemplate but having looked at yours it would be a lot of painting  to make the 3D printed logs look convincing real wood is hard to fake.  The jury is out.

[PaulRhB]

2 minutes ago, duff man said:

Paul, it's laborious to contemplate but having looked at yours it would be a lot of painting  to make the 3D printed logs look convincing real wood is hard to fake.  The jury is out.

These from Goodwood are a ‘woody’ stem of something not sure what exactly. 
I have seen it done with 3mm dowels coated in a textured bark then cut too. 

[Taigatrommel]

I find dead marjoram stalks can make for convincing logs in TT and H0, sometimes it even grows nice and straight!

[swisspeat]

Of course Craig I presume you have bought some of those superb Gigawood wagons.

 

these are effectively double wagons! I have one of them so far and was considering running it empty on this occasion. I have made lots of timber loads in the past for European and UK wagons. I did use a foam core on one load that meant I only needed half as made twigs and it cut the job by half in time.

 

looking forward to seeing your log train in service….

 

kind regards

 

peter

 

 

[PaulRhB]

Here’s the photo of someone’s module at a Freemo US meet. I’m sure he said they were done with dowels painted with tree bark mix from Greenscene or similar, then cut and a few scraped to reveal the inner wood. 
 

 

[duff man]

10 hours ago, PaulRhB said:

Here’s the photo of someone’s module at a Freemo US meet. I’m sure he said they were done with dowels painted with tree bark mix from Greenscene or similar, then cut and a few scraped to reveal the inner wood. 
 

 

They do look good, I'll investigate further. This is going to be one of those jobs done over a period of time. Summer evenings on the patio with a beer springs to mind.

[duff man]

A little more progress over the last few days. The OHLE power frame masts and cross wire's have been almost completed.

[duff man]

A couple more jobs have seen progress in the last couple of weeks, the first is the installation of a altitude marker on the station building and the second is our innofreight woodchip containers now have sawdust loads added, this rake is still well short of it's full lenth but is seen running on the layout as a trip working for the time being.

[MichaelE]

Fantastic work and a wonderful layout. I really enjoyed the video.

 

What background is that and do you know the part number? I would like to order that as an addition to my layout.

[duff man]

7 minutes ago, MichaelE said:

Fantastic work and a wonderful layout. I really enjoyed the video.

 

What background is that and do you know the part number? I would like to order that as an addition to my layout.

Many thanks for your kind words.

 

The backscene was made for the layout by a Austrian gentleman by the name of Andreas Dietrich. Many emails passed between us as I furnished him with sizes and photo's of the layout, he then set about creating the back scene from his stock photo's made to fit the layout exactly. I was given his details from a Austrian modeller after I made a similar enquiry to him as yours above. 

I googled his name and sent a email which received a positive response. Wolfstatts was produced a few years back and I can't find his email at the moment, please get back if you can't find him and I'll have a good look.

 

Craig  

[PaulRhB]

On 20/03/2024 at 21:16, duff man said:

Paul, it's laborious to contemplate but having looked at yours it would be a lot of painting  to make the 3D printed logs look convincing real wood is hard to fake.  The jury is out.

Going back to this one, could you 3D print the logs then sand the surface to provide a key and coat it in the bark product. Then paint the ends ‘fresh sawn’ colour and then put on a dark brown wash over that and wipe off to reveal the sawn colour again?

 

Greenscene bark

https://www.green-scenes.co.uk/store/product/gs402-flexi-bark-tub-flexible-paste

 

A friend also recommended this stuff for bark but I’ve not tried it yet. I assume it would need painting too like the one above. 

Edited April 1 by PaulRhB

[duff man]

52 minutes ago, PaulRhB said:

Going back to this one, could you 3D print the logs then sand the surface to provide a key and coat it in the bark product. Then paint the ends ‘fresh sawn’ colour and then put on a dark brown wash over that and wipe off to reveal the sawn colour again?

 

Greenscene bark

https://www.green-scenes.co.uk/store/product/gs402-flexi-bark-tub-flexible-paste

 

A friend also recommended this stuff for bark but I’ve not tried it yet. I assume it would need painting too like the one above. 

Paul, thanks for the input. I'll keep you updated on this. I'm waiting for the next 5 pairs to arrive once I have them I will get on and start experimenting.

[duff man]

Hi all

 

Lewis and I are delighted to announce Wolfstatt will be attending the National festival of railway modelling  at the NEC November 23/24 2024 our official invite arrived yesterday.

 

This now makes for a busy autumn for Wolfstatt  with the Great British train show (Gaydon) only three weeks before and then out again next February to Glasgow.

 

Craig.

 

 

[duff man]

Earlier in the thread I mentioned we were looking at changing the control system from Prodigy/Pi to the Z21 however we have since changed our view on the matter and gone for the Prodigy/Gaugemaster Wi-Fi module. Our primary logic has always been keep it simple so it follows that having had a good look at the Z21 we came to the conclusion that the Z21 is without a doubt a very capable system but far to capable for Wolfstatt. The Prodigy/ Wi-Fi whilst somewhat lower speck is more than capable of delivering what is required for Wolfstatt. The Wi-Fi module arrived yesterday and I have spent several hours getting to know it today. My hart sank when I couldn't get the Wi-Fi to connect initially last night however returning to things this morning it connected straight away and hasn't wavered all day. We plan on a running day in June for the system to be put through it's paces and hopefully draw a line under this element of Wolfstatt's development. 

[PaulRhB]

31 minutes ago, duff man said:

. My heart sank when I couldn't get the Wi-Fi to connect initially last night however returning to things this morning it connected straight away and hasn't wavered all day. We plan on a running day in June for the system to be put through its paces and hopefully draw a line under this element of Wolfstatt's development. 

Just a note of caution with wifi and big shows at venues like the NEC. Some of our throttles got swamped in 2019 by the hundreds of wifi networks at the venue. These ranged from a massively powerful signal from one group, NER Autocar, to literally hundreds of personal hotspots plus the motorbike show next door. While the phones and tablets connected to the Z21 I use weren’t affected the Maus throttles were because they are much lower powered than your smartphone or tablet. 
Until last month the NEC was the only place that caused an issue but at the Calne show we suddenly lost the throttles again Saturday only one went down but the same happened to all three two hours after opening on Sunday. When the experts looked they found the majority of wifi networks, the centre and hotspots, all on the same channel as us. As they understand that sort of thing he had checked this as a possible cause Saturday and seen there was a wider spread. 

 

A couple of mates looked into it and several issues were found. 

The throttles automatically cut off and reconnected every two hours and once they’d lost signal they couldn’t re-acquire it in the haze of interference. They set the router auto reconnect to 24hrs so it never tries it as it resets every time you switch it on for a new day. (You’ll need a tame network expert to do that).
 

The throttles sold with a system generally conform to toy regs so are less powerful and this may be why they couldn’t connect again while the phones could. 
 

The software on the throttles was out of date and there was a patch to address the issue. I had updated the base station via the app and didn’t realise I could only update handsets via a pc so hadn’t actually done the handsets. 
 

The supplied routers are cheap and basic so more easily swamped. We now have a commercial backup router that is much more powerful, we’ve named it ‘Armageddon’.

 

 

So have a backup 😁 We have 20ft long wired backup throttles in case the wifi fails, My Sud Harz is 40ish ft long overall (34x11ft).

Hope that avoids the 20 mins of chaos we got while we figured it out, and fortunately were able to buy extension leads at the show, five years ago 😉

Edited May 14 by PaulRhB

[duff man]

29 minutes ago, PaulRhB said:

Just a note of caution with wifi and big shows at venues like the NEC. Some of our throttles got swamped in 2019 by the hundreds of wifi networks at the venue. These ranged from a massively powerful signal from one group, NER Autocar, to literally hundreds of personal hotspots plus the motorbike show next door. While the phones and tablets connected to the Z21 I use weren’t affected the Maus throttles were because they are much lower powered than your smartphone or tablet. 
Until last month the NEC was the only place that caused an issue but at the Calne show we suddenly lost the throttles again Saturday only one went down but the same happened to all three two hours after opening on Sunday. When the experts looked they found the majority of wifi networks, the centre and hotspots, all on the same channel as us. As they understand that sort of thing he had checked this as a possible cause Saturday and seen there was a wider spread. 

 

A couple of mates looked into it and several issues were found. 

The throttles automatically cut off and reconnected every two hours and once they’d lost signal they couldn’t re-acquire it in the haze of interference. They set the router auto reconnect to 24hrs so it never tries it as it resets every time you switch it on for a new day. (You’ll need a tame network expert to do that).
 

The throttles sold with a system generally conform to toy regs so are less powerful and this may be why they couldn’t connect again while the phones could. 
 

The software on the throttles was out of date and there was a patch to address the issue. I had updated the base station via the app and didn’t realise I could only update handsets via a pc so hadn’t actually done the handsets. 
 

The supplied routers are cheap and basic so more easily swamped. We now have a commercial backup router that is much more powerful, we’ve named it ‘Armageddon’.

 

 

So have a backup 😁 We have 20ft long wired backup throttles in case the wifi fails, My Sud Harz is 40ish ft long overall (34x11ft).

Hope that avoids the 20 mins of chaos we got while we figured it out, and fortunately were able to buy extension leads at the show, five years ago 😉

Paul many thanks for your notes highlighting a issue we are aware of and indeed experienced ourselves. We already have to hand hard wired handsets as back up which I fully expect we shall need in the future. Given the amount of Z21's on the exhibition circuit was one of the reasons we chose against it. Even Pete Waterman couldn't overcome problems with Z21. Wi-Fi control dose bring freedom which we do embrace however Wolfstatt can be operated with traditional handsets if needed.

[PaulRhB]

2 hours ago, duff man said:

Given the amount of Z21's on the exhibition circuit was one of the reasons we chose against it.

Apparently the number of Z21’s aren’t an issue because of the low power they won’t interfere with each other as they conform to toy regs. At past NEC shows those with pc based wifi has similar issues while we didn’t but the number of personal networks has vastly increased and that appears to be a problem for all systems as the channels are now so crowded. The handshake they were forced into every couple of hours made them more vulnerable to the ‘fog’ though. 
 

Glad to hear you’re already sorted, the first time it happened to us it was really frustrating while we figured out why it suddenly went down after years of very reliable operation. At Calne we were able to instantly switch to the alternatives so it wasn’t noticeable to the public. It so happened Alan was there on his time off operating so out came his laptop for proper investigation. So within a week I also had the Armageddon option 😁

 

 

[Neils WRX]

My back up system….

 

 

Had the same problem at one exhibition in Paisley which was inside a shopping centre which obviously had a lot of WiFi traffic.

 

Hope to see the layout at some point,

 

Thanks,

 

Neil

[PaulRhB]

54 minutes ago, Neils WRX said:

My back up system….

Wolfstatt is a tad longer than that cord 🤣

Edited May 14 by PaulRhB

[duff man]

10 hours ago, Neils WRX said:

My back up system….

 

 

Had the same problem at one exhibition in Paisley which was inside a shopping centre which obviously had a lot of WiFi traffic.

 

Hope to see the layout at some point,

 

Thanks,

 

Neil

Neil

 

Wolfstatt is in the line up for Glasgow next February, if you make it come and say hi.

 

Craig

[Neils WRX]

11 hours ago, PaulRhB said:

Wolfstatt is a tad longer than that cord 🤣

It is a springy one!!! Lol..

[Vecchio]

Using the Z21 on Donnersbachkogel and having been at a number of shows I was brave enough last time to leave the heavy Lenz backup system at home. And thanks god, no issues happened. More annoying were some colleagues having their phones in their pockets and press random buttons by doing so. We had 2 trains starting to move out of the fiddle yard because of that.

 

The Waterman problems (minimum those he had at Milton Keynes last year) were rather booster related than wifi related. On top of that they had a lot of stock from traders, some of them had axles in the wrong way round (probably happened after weathering) which led to some short circuits. 

 

As you can read between the lines I am a fan of Z21 (also z21), I will go with my second layout, Frimingham, for the first time on show on the 8th of June. And of course a z21 will also be used there. 

 

[duff man]

On 16/05/2024 at 12:50, Vecchio said:

Using the Z21 on Donnersbachkogel and having been at a number of shows I was brave enough last time to leave the heavy Lenz backup system at home. And thanks god, no issues happened. More annoying were some colleagues having their phones in their pockets and press random buttons by doing so. We had 2 trains starting to move out of the fiddle yard because of that.

 

The Waterman problems (minimum those he had at Milton Keynes last year) were rather booster related than wifi related. On top of that they had a lot of stock from traders, some of them had axles in the wrong way round (probably happened after weathering) which led to some short circuits. 

 

As you can read between the lines I am a fan of Z21 (also z21), I will go with my second layout, Frimingham, for the first time on show on the 8th of June. And of course a z21 will also be used there. 

 

Gerhard, Z21 is a excellent system and your right to have full faith in it. The issue to me seems to be what's going on around it with other systems nearby and for that reason Wolfstatt will always have  hard wired handsets at the ready. The primary system will always be Wi-Fi/smart phone.

[Neils WRX]

Agree with Z21 being an excellent system. I’m the same the wired handset is only if things go wrong!!