Hericombe - 1970's Western Region

[BluenGreyAnorak]

Diesel Depot and Junction Point Motors – Part 1

 

By May 2023, it was time to return my attention to the layout, which basically meant installing point motors to compliment the recently completed depot and junction control panel. Having decided against installing further servo’s and having sold on the Tortoise motors that I originally planned to use, I decided to give some Cobalt motors a try.

 

The four point motors required for the junction were relatively straightforward. I initially pre-wired each to motor to a choc block to make connecting them under the baseboard easier (as shown below). However, when I came to connect them up, it was just as easy to do so directly to the motors via their built-in terminals.

 

 

 

Because these motors are on a fixed part of the layout, I built a dedicated loom that terminated in a D connector for plugging directly into the control panel.

 

The removable depot board was rather more complicated. At the time I designed all of the removeable boards, I was planning to use servo motors for point control, which are particularly low profile. However, the change to Cobalt meant that the framing for the boards wasn’t quite deep enough to conceal the motors. I resolved this by chiselling out approximately a third of the thickness of the ply top to recess each motor, and taping the wires to them flat across the top and down one side. This just about brought them within the depth of the board framing:

 

 

More of that later…

 

For the connection to the depot board (and all of the removable parts), I’ve used off-the-shelf parallel cables. Besides being easier than building and installing very long, complex looms, it also means that I can test modules with the control panel away form the layout by just substituting a different cable. Apart from swapping a couple of wires in the control panel to make the points correspond with the lever position, it all worked first time:

 

 

The noise you can hear is the point motors, which sound like a 4mm scale cement mixer. They work nicely though 😊

[BluenGreyAnorak]

Cleaning Shed

 

By October, I was in need of another distraction and decided to have a go at a structure. I chose something that I hoped would be relatively simple in the form of a Ratio GWR carriage shed, which I planned to adapt as a covered cleaning bay for my wagon works. This is a very basic and probably quite ancient kit, but with a bit of fettling goes together reasonably well.

 

 

The frame is straightforward, albeit without much in the way of locating lugs or pips. I used superglue to assemble, which seemed to work OK:

 

 

The side cladding panels were cut down to match the depth of the ends and all were painted with GWR Light Stone, with a very tentative attempt at weathering:

 

 

The frame was sprayed matt black from a rattle can. The roof was given a similar treatment in silver, inside and out, and then the outside was dry brushed with a rust colour to give the impression of, er, rust:

 

 

I made my life difficult by deciding to fit lights to this ‘never intended to be lit in a million years’ structure. The challenges were twofold: firstly, creating the lights and secondly, hiding the wiring. The first part was accomplished by carefully hollowing out the solid plastic moulded lights that come with the kit with a drill bit, and then drilling a small hole right through the top. Into each of six lamps was then threaded a tiny pre-wired surface mount LED, which was secured with a drop of glue.

 

The wiring was concealed from pairs of lamps across the roof trusses and down each of the three legs on one side with small, channel section styrene strips. It was painted in with the frame and all but disappeared. The results were better than I’d hoped for:

 

 

This is the shed in position on the layout, with the wiring routed underneath. The grey ‘wall’ to the left is the rear of the wagon repair yard control panel and I’ve now got half an idea to clad this with brickwork to make it look like an adjacent building:

 

 

The wiring for this thing was a nightmare. The wires on these pre-wired LED’s are so fine as to be almost impossible to work with and there was much swearing and gnashing of teeth in the process. It was all worth it in the end though as even without any scenery around it, when lit I think it looks wonderfully atmospheric:

 

Edited March 25 by BluenGreyAnorak

[BluenGreyAnorak]

I’m guessing the lack of comments is either because everybody is so in awe of my modelling prowess that they're speechless or it's really dull 😊  For the sake of my dignity I'm going to assume the former and press on with the next part. Bits of this tale have appeared sporadically in a couple of other threads but the whole sorry story is included here for completeness.

 

Cowan Sheldon 6.5t Crane

 

This next little project was not so much a distraction as something that drove me to it. At the beginning of 2023 I read something about upgrading the old Triang/Hornby Cowans Sheldon hand crane, which sounded like it could be fun. Some research on here revealed the source of the upgraded parts to be Jon Hall of this parish, and both a crane and kit were consequently acquired:

 

 

 

The first steps were easy enough – the crane was dismantled into its’ component parts:

 

 

And all of the etched pulleys in the kit were made up using a simple jig:

 

 

At this point, it started to get more complicated. To mimic the Exmouth Junction crane that the detailing kit represents, I decided to extend the rear upper framework to receive the larger counterweight and filled in the lower sides:

 

 

I cut away all of the internal 'Hornby' cross pieces and fabricated new, more prototypical cross-beams and cable drums. I also cut away a good amount of the base and made new side steps complete with a representation of the supporting beams. None of it is glued together yet here in this cruel close-up:

 

 

The head of the jib was opened out and drilled to receive the pulleys from the detailing kit and the chassis has had decent coupling hooks added (Wizard Models), the jack brackets removed from the upper decks and tiny holes drilled to receive handwheels for the axle jacks. All of the major parts were given a coat of primer in readiness for painting before assembly:

 

 

It had all gone reasonably well to this point and I was feeling quite pleased with myself. Unfortunately, that wasn’t to last. I painted the component parts with an acrylic blue/grey but it came out as a very matt finish and I decided that I'd chosen the wrong colour anyway. I then tried stripping with a cleaning product called 'Totally Awesome' (yes, really) that was demonstrated by the chap on the YouTube channel called Everard Junction. It didn't work as well as his demo but I persevered and then re-painted with enamel but the finish was awful, so something had gone wrong somewhere. I then tried stripping again, this time with a product called 'Clean Slate', but that resulted in the mess shown below:

 

 

In hindsight, which is always a wonderful thing, I think I used the wrong stripping product for the wrong paint type. Anyway, I chalked it up to experience and started again. I bought another crane and performed the surgery to the plastic parts all over again, although I did at least manage to salvage and re-use the fabricated parts:

 

 

With that complete, I could finally get some primer on it and try a dry fit of all of the major parts:

 

 

All of this meant mean that if I factor in the paints, strippers and the purchase of another crane, it was likely be the most expensive conversion in all of Christendom, but I’d also invested a significant amount of time so there was no backing out now!

 

Yet again, I went through the process of painting (with enamel, this time) and was finally able to assemble the thing. This is now very much a static model as the body is glued to the chassis.

 

New spoked metal wheels were added, which as the chassis is diecast, involved filing out the original wheel bearing points and gluing in brass top hat bearings.

 

Whilst I’ve made representations of the two cable drums within the body, I haven’t attempted the gears of the winding mechanism. Most of it is barely visible, to be honest, so I’ve settled for painting the inside matt black. I also re-purposed a conflat wagon as a runner, with ‘stirrups’ on the load bed for securing the hook to, which mimics a prototype shown in pictures on Jon’s excellent website:

 

ADS2008 cowans sheldon handcrane (metropolitanrailway.co.uk)

 

The counterbalance weight is just posed in these pictures, whilst I faffed around with the rigging:

 

 

 

The rigging was, to not put too fine a point on it, a bloomin’ nightmare. The first challenge was working out exactly how it was routed around the ten pulleys and two drums that make up the mechanism. After much squinting at various pictures of these cranes both on Jon’s website and Paul Barlett’s, I came up with the following diagram, which seems to work:

 

 

It’s still slightly fudged where the jib lifting cable returns to the main body but it’s largely hidden and so ‘good enough’ in this instance.

 

Having decided where they were supposed to go, actually installing the cables was one of the most frustrating modelling tasks I’ve undertaken. I chose to use a multi-strand fishing line to represent the cable as it looks pretty good but coaxing it into position and then making it stay there was challenging in the extreme. This was at least partly because I struggled to find a glue that would reliably secure it. I ended up using superglue but it took an age to go off and so required much patience and perseverance!

 

So, the current state of play, as of November 2023, is that the crane is essentially finished, requiring only transfers (acquired from CCT) and the addition of very delicate jack handwheels to finally complete it. Having got to this point, after nine months on and off, I’d sort of had enough of it though and put it to one side in favour of something else. It’s currently sitting on a shelf above my workbench, daring me to make the final push to complete it:

 

 

 

As a little addendum to this escapade, I recently discovered the excellent modelling of Matt (Enfys_Rainbow) and one of his subjects was this very crane. He though, has gone the extra mile and tackled the jib, which is really too narrow on the model. This has inspired me to have another go and so yet another crane and another of Jon’s kits has been squirreled away for a future project.

[GWR57xx]

It’s certainly a vast improvement over the original, and is now a very presentable model.

A worthy nominee for the Percy V Rance award for dogged determination in the face of adversity.

Surely worth completing now you’ve got so close?

Go on, you know you want to!

[stivesnick]

7 hours ago, BluenGreyAnorak said:

I’m guessing the lack of comments is either because everybody is so in awe of my modelling prowess that they're speechless or it's really dull

 

I find that topics on RMweb tend to fall into two categories. The first with loads of reponses, often from friends, the other with few comments. Don't worry about it. The crane modification looks great.

 

Nick  

[BluenGreyAnorak]

Heh, heh, thanks Nick.

[BluenGreyAnorak]

4 hours ago, GWR57xx said:

It’s certainly a vast improvement over the original, and is now a very presentable model.

A worthy nominee for the Percy V Rance award for dogged determination in the face of adversity.

Surely worth completing now you’ve got so close?

Go on, you know you want to!

Thanks, and you're probably right. All efforts are on wiring a control panel at the moment but perhaps I'll bring it up the priority list when that's complete 😬

[RobAllen]

2 hours ago, stivesnick said:

I find that topics on RMweb tend to fall into two categories. The first with loads of reponses, often from friends, the other with few comments. Don't worry about it. The crane modification looks great.

 

I find that I only comment if I can want to add to the conversation with a suitable comment, answer, or question. I will react to the post to signify that I like/agree/support/etc the post as a way of signalling to the poster that I read their post and appreciated it.

[37114]

Very jealous of your setup, look forward to seeing this develop.

[Grampus]

Thanks for sharing the details of your crane build, warts and all. I think you should be really pleased with it; it looks very good indeed. I, too, have the crane and the conversion kit stashed away (somewhere) against the unlikely eventuality that I will get a round tuit at some point! I was particularly impressed with your clever idea for a jig to help with assembly of the pulley wheels: so simple - I had been wondering for a while how to do that. In fairness, soldering is not my weapon of choice. 🙂  A question if I may, please? How did you manage to avoid soldering the pulleys to the metal elements of the jig whilst you were working? Any issues?

 

Best wishes,

 

Paul 

[BluenGreyAnorak]

Thanks for the kind words. With regards the pulleys, I'll confess I cheated and used superglue 🙂

[drduncan]

Well executed. I’ll be watching progress with interest. 
Duncan

[BluenGreyAnorak]

Loriot and Traxcavator

 

One final distraction before returning my attention to the layout was the wonderful little Loriot wagon from Rapido. Despite arriving in July, it was November before I looked at it seriously and thought that it desperately needed a load to carry. Inspired by some pictures and details both here on RMWeb and on Paul Barlett’s photo site, I decided that a Traxcavator would be ideal.

 

The best option seemed to be the white metal kit from Woodland Scenics, which isn’t cheap and, as I subsequently discovered, isn’t particularly brilliant either.

 

 

I'd never built a white metal kit before and making the parts fit together properly was a real chore, requiring liberal application of filler to hide some of the gaps:

 

 

I modified it slightly with wire operating levers to replace the clunky ones that came with the kit, plus some wire loops for use in chaining it down, and eventually got it to a state that I could paint it. Because of the complex shapes, I painted the lifting arms and bucket separately and it’s only posed in this picture:

 

 

After much faffing around, I got the whole thing painted and assembled. I spent quite some time carefully picking out the details of the tracks and was feeling quite pleased with myself:

 

 

For inspiration on how to mount it on the Loriot, I turned to a series of Paul Barlett’s pictures showing similar machines on similar wagons. This is one particular picture that was used for reference, but there are others showing how the Trax is chained down, too:

 

 

I weathered the wagon, mainly dry brushing rust and gunmetal colours on worn edges, and constructed a tool box similar to that shown above from plasticard and plastic angle. I then set about securing the Trax. This comprised some ‘timber’ baulks, made from lengths of coffee stirrers glued together to get the right thickness, and some chains. The latter are a combination of etched brass hooks and sterling silver chains blackened with Liver of Sulphur. Very fiddly.

 

The whole lot was then weathered in line with the reference pictures, which again is something that's new to me and slightly nerve-wracking on a brand new wagon! I managed to obliterate most of the detail I'd carefully painted earlier but I am, however, delighted with the way the whole thing has come out:

 

 

 

There’s one other minor detail that only came to light when put on the layout – it was binding on relatively generous 3ft radius curves. There was nothing obviously wrong so, for lack of anything better to try, I changed the wheels for some Bachmann ones. Much to my surprise this completely cured the problem, suggesting that there’s some issue with the geometry of the Rapido ones. They’ve been re-purposed on a shorter wagon and seem to be fine in that application, though.

[BluenGreyAnorak]

And here's a little teaser of what I'm currently working on:

 

[Grampus]

23 hours ago, BluenGreyAnorak said:

Thanks for the kind words. With regards the pulleys, I'll confess I cheated and used superglue 🙂

Brilliant! 🤣 Sadly, that had simply not occurred to me - all the funnier, given how rarely I pick up a soldering iron in anger! Certainly appears to have done the trick for you.

 

Cheers, 

 

Paul 

[BluenGreyAnorak]

Station Point Motors

 

We’re nearly up to date! Over the course of a couple of weeks at the end of January and beginning of February this year, I installed all of the point motors to the three boards that form the station. Having learnt from my experience with the Cobalt motors on the depot board, another change of tack was required and this time I went with MTB point motors, chosen for their exceptionally low profile.

 

These point motors are brilliant: small, compact, very easy to wire and very quiet in operation. They come in a variety of flavours and I chose the MP10 model, which is specifically designed to match the footprint of Tortoise motors. I didn’t need that particular feature but instead chose them as being the cheapest that incorporated two switches:

 

 

Installing the point motors was actually the easiest part of the whole operation. The range of adjustment and attention to detail for doing so makes it a breeze. I spent much more time preparing the way, which included making the wiring looms and making the brackets to support them. It was all worth it in the end though, as it made for a satisfyingly neat installation.

 

Board A – Station Throat

 

 

 

Board B – Middle

 

 

Board C – Buffer Stops

 

 

My entire layout is wired on the principle of having the DCC bus along the rear edges and the control wiring on the fronts. However, because of the restricted access available to plug in each board from underneath, I've had to compromise on that slightly, particularly on the middle board. I think there's still enough separation to avoid any interference, though.

 

The control wiring looms terminate in 25 way 'D' connectors, supported on purpose-made brackets on the edge of each board. These will be linked to matching connectors on the control panel with off the shelf parallel cables.

 

Because of the large number of 'tees' off the main loom, I decided to support the control wiring on lengths of aluminium angle, drilled to accept cable ties at appropriate spacings. This saved a lot of faffing around with individual cable tie mounts, the need for which was reduced to the cross board runs only. There will eventually be a second loom to serve signals and uncouplers, which will follow the same route, and I've allowed for a second 'D' connector on the brackets made for that purpose.

 

Having these boards removable from the main layout was an absolute game changer in terms of ease of access. If I were to ever build another layout on this scale, it would most definitely be modular.

[5BarVT]

Like your wiring philosophy - mainly because it’s the same as mine!  Clean at the front, dirty at the back and try and keep them separate as much as possible.  Like you, I have one set of boards where (due to the supports) it’s not quite so easy, but it happens to be close to the control box so the ‘clean’ wiring will be separated along rather than across the board.

Paul.

[BluenGreyAnorak]

Heh, heh, never heard it referred to as clean and dirty before, but I like it 🙂

[BluenGreyAnorak]

Diesel Depot Point Motors – Part 2

 

Earlier in the thread I showed how I’d fitted Cobalt point motors to the board that forms my diesel depot, and the compromises that involved. So, having discovered the wonderful MTB point motors, I decided to retrofit them to this board.

 

Because I’d had to slightly butcher the base board to allow the Cobalts to fit, I needed to do something about the holes left when they were removed. This was fairly easily solved by gluing some thin ply patches over them. With that little challenge overcome, fitting the new motors was again quite straightforward. The only slight gotcha was that it’s all quite congested, which could have been eased by choosing different locations for some of the droppers. Not insurmountable though and it all worked out in the end.

 

 

The wiring was essentially a straight swap from the Cobalts, which was nice 😊

[RikkiGTR]

After your comments earlier on my thread, I followed the trail back here and had a good read through the thread. Fascinating layout with some amazing electrickery, will be following keenly. 

[BluenGreyAnorak]

Ha ha, thanks 🙂

[Phill Dyson (onslaught832)]

Following with great interest, could I ask where  you acquired the Warship plate from?😎

[BluenGreyAnorak]

Thanks, Phil. The Warship plate came from a guy who'd hand-made a variety of them, bought on the platform at Minehead about 15 years ago. This was long before laser cut timber became such a common thing.

[BluenGreyAnorak]

Coaches in Fixed Formations

 

As I mentioned at the start of the thread, my interest in railways really lies in their operation and that means having trains to run. My endeavours to build cassettes and sort and catalogue my stock has allowed me to assemble a good number of representative passenger trains as fixed rakes. These aren’t specific real world trains but I hope will be plausible enough to run a schedule with some variety.

 

The practical limit for trains on the layout is a loco plus six coaches, although I’ve stretched this a bit for my Motorrail train, which is four coaches and three flats. Generally though, each train is stored in two 900mm cassettes for easy assembly in the fiddle yard.

 

 

For the intermediate couplings of each three coach set I’ve used Bachmann’s fake air pipes, whilst those between each cassette half are magnetic from West Hill Wagon Works. The outer ends of each rake retain their original tension locks. All of this makes for rather nice close coupling and so I’ve fitted concertina paper corridor connectors between vehicles, which really improves the look of a rake as it passes. Here’s a quick video of my Sleeper train, to give the idea:

 

 

There’s much more to do on the coaches. I’ve recently acquired some Accurascale Mk2b’s to add into the mix and am working on a little project to add interior lighting to all of my Bachmann stock, hopefully as a standardised kit of parts.

 

[BluenGreyAnorak]

Station Control Panel

 

 As I'm all caught up with the story so far, I'm now modelling in 'real time', which is obviously a lot slower 🙄 I've spent the last couple of months working on the control panel for my station most of which, it feels, has been spent creating wiring charts.

 

My approach to this task has evolved over time and now essentially comprises an Excel spreadsheet for each type of component (levers, LED’s, connectors, etc) with a semi-diagrammatical representation of what each wire connects to. For example, the wiring to the point levers is recorded as follows:

 

 

And that to the LED’s on the mimic panel:

 

 

These sorts of charts enable me to easily count the number of connections required and assemble the panel ‘by the numbers’. They also make fault finding pretty straightforward.

 

This panel is one of two that make up the main control position with that for the junction. The carcass of the panel was built quite some time ago and follows the same design as the earlier ones:

 

 

Between the two panels is space for a controller and what will eventually be a small slave panel for the fiddle yard. This should, with the fiddle yard pre-stocked with appropriate trains, allow me to run the entire layout as an end to end with the station from one control position.

 

Assembly of the panel itself is a work in progress. So far, I’ve installed all of the LED’s, the 0v and 12v internal bus complete with voltage regulator and today I’ve terminated all of the lever wiring on its’ tag strip. The wiring to the levers is a bit of a challenge as each comes with its own 9 wire harness, of which most aren’t used. I didn’t really want to cut all of the surplus ones off in case I want to change the configuration in the future, so I’ve settled for tying them up. This does, however, mean that there are a lot of surplus wires to deal with. My solution to this is to introduce a false floor in the panel, with all of the surplus wires hidden below. This is what it looks like without the false floor, with multiple connections to the 0v and 12v buses and the surplus wires tied up:

 

 

Here’s the same area with the false floor in place, which creates the space to make the control wiring connections:

 

 

Overall, it currently looks like this:

 

 

The next job is to install the three looms that control the points on each of the three station boards respectively. I’ve already made these looms up, terminating in 25 way D connectors, so it’s just a case of bolting them in, routing the cables and soldering all of the connections. How hard can it be?

Edited April 14 by BluenGreyAnorak