Lancaster Green Ayre - The Barn Owls have returned.

[The Stationmaster]

Jamie,

 

It's great to see such wonderful progress with the layout.  Despite a few trials and tribulations the time spent on it this week has clearly been very worthwhile and it must be with very mixed feelings that you are approaching today's 'take down' session - take care with your back.

[Dava]

Hoping to be at Wakefield this year to see this layout, whatever its state of completeness. It is a wonderful project. Remember seeing the station building displayed 4-5 years ago.

 

Dava

[Mrkirtley800]

The videos really make the layout come to life.  We have been reading for so long about various bits being built.  Now we can see exactly how it all fits together.  Very nice indeed.

Derek

[jamie92208]

Thanks to everyone for your kind comments.   It's been an up and down sort of week and Thursday night was a definite low.  I really did wonder whether to pull the plug on this years show but yesterday made up for it.   This morning I cleared the last couple of snags in the fiddle yard and all the roads are now fully live though I still need to change a coupe of switches and install the fourth controller in the fiddle yard panel.  I had various visitors this morning and some delightful kids who have been a couple of times with their granddad.  Their faces when they saw two trains running and the long cattle train made everything worthwhile.    We got the layout down by about 3 and half of it crated.  Dave had to go then and I finished off and was home about 6 after setting the church out for the morning.  Most of the layout is now in the side room.

 

My plan is to take the 3 sets of east end boards down to the club so that we can continue with scenic work. Three west end sets will stay at church and I can put them up in the back room this coming week.  Now that I've got the main line running reliably and can shunt locos in the shed yard I want to get trains running up the Castle Branch and in and out of the shed.  Hopefully a few days should sort that.  Dave mentioned that he liked the methodical way we sorted the snags. Eg starting a train in one place and running till it stopped or came off, then sorting that snag before moving on.  It seems fairly logical but as the whole layout was put up it was difficult to do on my own due to the distances being long.   It was much easier to have someone driving on the panel while I sorted the snag which could be 20 feet away under a board.   However at least we can now put on a good show. 

 

The lighting rig is coming on.  We didn't put it up this time but I bought the remaining plastic guttering that will hold the lights and Paul Prentice, who works in Plastic fabrications has done a beautiful job of modifying 6 135degree bends to 150 degrees so that the lengths follow the track much better.

 

 

Now after a nice meal out with some friends I have prescribed myself a tincture of Scottish medicine to ease aching muscles from the inside.

 

 

Jamie

Edited August 26, 2015 by jamie92208

[jamie92208]

After a rather frantic work week the pace has slowed down but work has continued.   By Monday evening I'd taken 2 crates to the clubrooms and some other assorted carp.  These were out up in the back room at the clubhouse.  We had seem a potential problem with the height of the platform fence that backs onto the down platform but after a bit of measuring we found that the adjustable feet under one board were 10mm  too high so everything id OK now. 

 

I also took 5 crates through to the back room at church to set them up and sort out the Castle Branch/loco shed/Goods yard area.  I set up 3 of the crates next to each other and connected boards B3 and B2 together along with the three control panels.  Connectors were then plugged in and this afternoon I started testing relays etc.   I spent an hour sorting out the first point along the Branch and found a dry joint and a relay connection that had come adrift.  Everything seemed to work OK so I set the boards and actually managed to run a loco 4' up the Castle Branch.  Tomorrow I will hopefully make further progress.

 

Jamie

Edited August 27, 2015 by jamie92208

[jamie92208]

Another good day at the church.  I've got stuck into the complicated bit of trackwork that connects the main line to the Castle branch, Loco Shed and Goods yard.  There is a short length of track between two back to back points where locos and trains are exchanged and wait before going onto the main line.  That length, of about 18" is fed through a series of relays that allow each of the three panels to take control and a system of push buttons and LEDS's that control it all.  I've had trains running on all three sections before but have never managed to hand a loco over from the shed controller to the main line with everything working as it should.  

 

Anyway today I gradually worked my way along the track from section to section sorting snags as I went and finally managed to do a proper handover. I also ran a loco up the Castle Branch.  I'm now happy that the loco shed area will be working properly at Wakefield though I may not have chance to get the turntable energised.  I also did some other small jobs such as fitting a third controller to the main panel so that a spare operator can do shunting. 

 

Hopefully tomorrow, when I will have some help we'll get the board joint sorted that's somehow gone 2mm out of alignment despite patternmakers dowels and bolts.

 

All in all a very satisfying day.

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

Another day of work but mixed results.  Keith Robinson came over an jointly we sorted out the board joint that had shifted 2mm sideways despite bots and patternmakers dowels.   I continued with the electrical snagging and got a loco to run  to the top of the Castle Branch.  Fortunately the track at the top was covered in carp and PVA so the loco didn't take a nosedive off the end of the viaduct.  I hastily put a crate end on as a bump stop.  Then we carried on correcting minor track faults but when we tried to run trains in and out of the loco shed area two pieces of track that had worked well yesterday refused to play ball.  I'm going to have another day trying to sort them tomorrow. 

 

This evening I picked Tony up and he spent the evening installing fence posts along the sea wall.   I set off to lay some pavement along the road at the front near the cattle dock area.  I found that a 1" file made short work of the yellow insulation foam and was able to get the road to shape.  John then laid a strip of foam for the pavement and I did some more DAS waling.  John then moved on to painting the area between the platforms and the sea wall Dark brown ready for some static grass application.  I did some ballasting and laid more carp in the coal yard so all in all we had a good evening. More tomorrow

 

Jamie

[Dava]

There must be a load of carp coming out of that River Lune and finding its way onto the railway!

Is it coarse fishing or finescale?

Its all good.

 

Dava

Edited August 29, 2015 by Dava

[jamie92208]

Yes Dava, the layout seems to have an insatiable appetite for carp of various descriptions with a loco shed and extensive coal yard.  And we haven't even started on making the banks of the Lune look as if they are covered in mudbanks at low tide.

 

Anyway today I've had a good time with the layout.  The wayward pieces of tack were traced to a loose wire in a lead and I then started some serious test running in the loco servicing area.  The afternoon was made better by an old mate from work, who joined on the same day as me back in 1973,  calling in for a chat.  he's also a modeller and we put the world to rights for an hour or two while I sorted out a lead that I had forgotten about. 

 

The logic of the wiring was sorted out 4 years ago and it's nearly two years since we finished the wiring.  As a result in many cases I have no idea why I wired some areas in a particular way even though it's all documented.  I had found a 5 way lead that went between two boards but was only connected at one end.  I eventually sorted out what it's meant to do while Mel and I caught up.   This evening I went back for an hour and sorted out two damaged switches and ended up running a loco round the servicing route that takes it past the ash pit, water column and coaling stage and then back towards either the main line or the turntable and shed.  

 

The room was left tidy and ready for the Sunday School scholars to have a play after the service tomorrow.

 

My plan is to move the boards into the church on Tuesday for a couple of days and hopefully will be able to sort the goods yard out.  I need to put the Castle Branch Fiddle yard up to do this and haven't got space in the back room.   Then it's time to get it all back home before setting off for Telford on Friday.

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

Last night we had a good gathering at the clubrooms and a lot of surfacing got done in the last piece of the coal yard that needed it.  8mm foam is now laid and needs to have some sort of carp covering put on it.   Tony brought the cattle dock down and we had a trial fitting.  Dave and I then sanded foam and made a few mods to get a fit.   I then started adding more Hydrocal surface to one area while Dave used a file to produce dropped pavements at all the gateways into the coal yard.  Tony carried on with the fencing along the sea wall which is looking good.

 

This morning I was back at the chapel to move the boards that are there back into the main church.  This enables me to add the Castle Branch Fiddle Yard which makes fault finding a lot easier as the relays that control the goods yard/locoshed exit are all on that board.  Keith Finken came over and helped me and then we got stuck into fault finding.   After an hour when some minor things were sorted we were able to try and power up the goods yard.  So far I've never been able to get a loco to run from that controller.  Volts were chased from the controller and two loose wires were found and surprise surprise a loco started moving.  So for the first time ever I've had a loco under power in the goods yard.  I will be returning after lunch to make more progress and explore the four sidings.  A very good morning.

 

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

Evening all from a rather damp and now dark village.   I've just got back from the chapel after three visits today in between other chores.   However as mentioned above there has been much success.  The test loco has now ventured where none has gone before and travelled all the four goods sidings apart from the bit that I didn't put up.  I found a short circuit through ungapped  copperclad, 3 point motors that had not been wired to their respective frogs for switching purposes and a pair of blue wires transposed that fed the frogs on the wrong points on the next board.  So it's been a good day.  I even finished by running a loco right up the Castle Branch and into the fiddle yard (Apart from the gap for the missing viaduct that I hadn't installed)  I've still to fathom how I wired the feeds some 4 years ago but I suppose that there must be some logic to it.  I hope that a nights sleep will provide inspiration.  The good thing is that the loco has got to every part of the layout under control from one controller or another, though sometimes not the one that I thought was controlling it.

 

Jamie

[lmsforever]

Congratulations on the progress you are making this layout is  a real labour of love and every update something new appears I look forward to your updates and one of these  days will hopefully see the layout again.

[supersonic]

Just to put the record straight Jamie.  I used a very sharp blade to produce the pavement drops; I gave myself a good ignore about the Health and Safety aspects of using a naked blade.  This, of course, I could do as I am probably one of the last of the generations who were required to demostrate a sound knowledge of common sense; in other words I am still in full retention of all my digits.

 

The blade was much easier to manipulate than a lengthy, and may I say with my engineers hat on, still handleless file which was tried , with some difficulty, with the tang away from my flesh and rejected.

Edited September 2, 2015 by supersonic

[jamie92208]

Evening again after another day of bits of work on the layout. I've just got back in and can report that my trusty test loco, 736, has now traversed every track on the layout whilst under control from a panel. I got the Castle Branch sorted this afternoon and ran the loco all the way up into the fiddle yard. I even managed to drive it up and down with both controllers (Not at the same time though) and can take over from one to the other.

 

After that I bolted the three shed boards onto the main line ones. After fettling the two tracks that cross the baseboard joint I started running the loco onto the coaling stage track and the royal coach siding. I discovered that a lead was missing so fitted that and finally sorted out missing dropper and a cross wired relay. At that point 736 set off down the siding but was stopped by the fence whilst I was under the boards.

 

All in all it's been a great three weeks at the church with the whole layout test run and track fettling done on most of it. Tomorrow the layout will be taken down and brought home and the church left tidy as the normal activities are about to restart after summer break.

 

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

Just a quick post to say that I've uploaded another short video to YouTube.  This shows 736 coming off shed and then going up the Castle Branch after reversing in the station.

 

 

Not the best as I only had my phone with me and somehow managed to delete the part where it shunts in the loco yard to get onto the exit track.

 

Jamie

[roundhouse]

Jamie

Looking forward to seeing it in action. Am I right in thinking that you will be at Warley this year again?

[jamie92208]

Jamie

Looking forward to seeing it in action. Am I right in thinking that you will be at Warley this year again?

Dave Tanner and I will be there with a couple of boards demonstrating, specifically talking about the trials and potential pitfalls of building an exhibition layout.  Not sure if anything will be able to run but we should have the station board with the canopies and one other.

 

Jamie

[roundhouse]

Jamie

 

OK. Is it your own show that it will be fully set up?

 

I will be at Warley with 'Santa Barbara'. One of my other layouts, 'Appledore' will also be ther but its being exhibited by one of our normal crew with his stock.

[jamie92208]

Jamie

 

OK. Is it your own show that it will be fully set up?

 

I will be at Warley with 'Santa Barbara'. One of my other layouts, 'Appledore' will also be ther but its being exhibited by one of our normal crew with his stock.

 

Yes it's at Wakefield as a complete layout the following weekend.   Hope to get time for a chat at Warley though we don't get much time off when demonstrating.

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

Got back last night with the Yard Office built by Il Dotterre.  It looks great and there's a picture on page 4073 post 101815 of Early Risers.   I also got home to find that a load of LED strip lights had been delivered.   I chatted to Phil of Hobby Holidays at Telford and he had them lighting up his stand.  On his advice i bought the white and the warm white which used togeher give a good level of light and a daylight effect.   I plugged them in on the table and they look good.  I've now got to do a test stretch on one of the upturned lengths of gutterring that I'm using and also devise a simple 12v plug to join units together. 

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

Afternoon all from a now rather bright village where it actually got sunny this afternoon.  Thus outbreak of warmth and dryness gave me a chance to sort out a problem with the crating of the layout.

 

The crating system was designed so that the 26 boards plus the cassette rack make up into 13 crates 11 of which are the standard 5'length plus ends and two trapezoid shaped ones for the end boards.  This left B5 which is only 750mm long an orphan and a problem.   Most of the crates are designed so that they accommodate one board with overhead and one without which can't have anything permanently fixed more than 2" high.

 

The station board (B4) with the canopies has go to the point where the finials on the canopies nearly touch it's pair (A4) so Dave and I came up with a solution that solves both problems.

 

I had a spare set of crate ends because I couldn't count when I was making them so we are going to put B4 in a crate on it's own with some sort of cover in place of A4.  We might even make a display board that will go at the East end of the layout. to act as a cover. However I was going to make an extension frame that could be bolted to B5 to bring it up to the standard 5' and then mate it to A4 using the spare crate ends.

 

Anyway with the outbreak of sunshine I got the tools out of the garage and then went hunting through my woodpile in the garage and found various bits that would do the job.   An hour of rough and ready carpentry later This was the result.

 

 

Until I went hunting I wasn't sure what I would find but by putting a top cover on it, it became stronger and will make a useful home for various smaller buildings that have to be removed.  I'll have to make some sort of hinged cover for it.

One lovely building that I only picked up yesterday fits rather well.

I may need to put some foam inserts in to restrain the buildings

It looks rather nice

So many thanks to Flavio.

 

Jamie

Edited July 24, 2022 by jamie92208

[lmsforever]

Like that storage system looks as though it will protect everything in transit also good to see an Ellis Briggs haven't seen one for a long time.

[jamie92208]

Like that storage system looks as though it will protect everything in transit also good to see an Ellis Briggs haven't seen one for a long time.

Thanks for that.  There will be another board on top of that one but inverted in due course.

 

As to the bike I got my first Ellis Briggs as my 21st present from my parents but that one got written off in a caravan crash in France so I had that one built but am still riding the original Brookes B17 saddle that's now 42 years old and I've never had a saddle sore.

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

A sunny morning and domestic duties completed allowed me to do some work on the lighting rig.  This is made of inverted UPVC gutter in 5' lengths.   One of the many problems that I have is that on the span that crosses the end of Greyhound bridge is 10'.  I don't wish to have to transport a 10' length of guttering and the standard joints are not strong enough to support the centre of the span.  Keith Robinson suggested reinforcing the joint with a length of copper pipe held on by plastic wall brackets. 

 

These were duly bought and this morning the assembly was made.

That's the full length

Here's the new joiner.

with one of the brackets.

The combined joint is very strong and easily supports itself when held at one end.

The next item on the agenda was the actual lights.   The Long Preston lighting rig, which is being much extended, used 2' thin fluorescent tubes.  These were OK but vulnerable to damage and sometimes rotated out of contact.

At Telford I saw the use of LED strips on the Hobby Holidays stand and have used the same system here.  Two strips of LEDS's are used, warm white and white the combination of which gives almost a daylight effect.

I bought a couple of 5m length as a test and now fitted them into the length of gutter that I'd just made.  Each end will be fed from a different power supply.   Here they are glued down using the self adhesive backing strip.

All I need to do now is to wire the second strip into the connectors in parallel.

Jamie

 

Edited July 24, 2022 by jamie92208

[jamie92208]

Due to the abseence of the boss (She's gone to France for a few days) more progress has been made.  The dining room is a very temporary workshop and much work has been done on the remaining OHLE gantries.   All but one are now soldered up after a quick trip to the clubroom to do some measuring up this afternoon.  I collected Tony on the way as he's not had a good couple of weeks and hasn't been out for a while.  His occupational therapy is folding up fence posts and then soldering two pins into the base of each.  I took him a small backscene support that has the last piece of fence on it for him to work on.  Anyway we went to the clubroom and located the place where the last gantry needs to be fitted and drilled holes out for it while Tony sorted some fence parts.  Then it was back home and some time was spent at the chapel fitting the last cross gantries between the platform awnings.  I then glued the remaining awning support girders into place.   The only major work I still need to do on the gantries is to fit the gutters and then paint the girders,

 

Back home this evening I've soldered up gantries 10 and 9a and made   a start on No 9. 9a and 9 are extra ones that I've had tout in due to curves that weren't on the prototype.  They have  to span the two main lines and the bay platform road so I've used a variety of spare parts from etches for other gantries and made what I feel the Midland would have done of they had built these gantries.  Now the soldering irons are cooling down.

 

I'll try and get some pictures tomorrow so that it makes more sense.

 

Jamie