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Waton


eldavo
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Well I don't think I am going to get much more done before the deadline of the end of tomorrow. The prototype signal has been painted, planted and powered. This took a fair amount of time as I had to add additional elements to the umbilical cables as well as wire up in the control box and under the baseboard. One positive result is that the yellow aspect now seems to be working fine without any attention from me. A negative is that the green element seems to be unreliable and tends to go out as it heats up. Must be a poor solder joint to the LED itself. Grrr.

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The other two signal gantries have also been finished and given a blast of Halfords grey primer. This leaves one single post signal to construct. The Eastbound platform one has a similar gantry to the prototype. This was half complete already but I decided to rework the handrails with finer (0.03mm) wire. Here it is plonked with Bluetac waiting for its signal head.

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The Eastbound lines are controlled by two signal heads on a single gantry and this pretty much there and awaiting signal heads.

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I can't see myself building 3 signal heads tomorrow so these will probably have to stay as is for the time being and until I can summon up some more enthusiasm.

Cheers
Dave

Edited by eldavo
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Well today is the day. The 31st of October is the end of the 2010 challenge and so work has to be wrapped up. Waton is nowhere near complete but will be put forward for judging. I will put together a final presentation but other than that I will be taking a break from this project for a while until my energy and enthusiasm for it return. It's been fun building it but also hard work for the last 6 months so it's definitely time to look at other things.

I couldn't waste a day though so I've been tinkering with a few things. I had another experiment with using the surface mount LEDs and put together the basics of a 4 aspect signal head. It's wired up but there are oddities to sort out at some point. Here it is plonked on the Eastbound platform 2 gantry. Could do with being a smidge smaller I think though adding the cowls will change the appearance a lot.

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I added a flange lubricator on the Eastbound Derby line some time ago but the grease pipes from the pump to the lubricator thingies looked too big. These have been ripped out and thinner ones added. Each pipe is a single strand of copper stripped from a bit of old mains cable then chemically blackened with Gun Blue. They are held in place with PVA but I suspect they will be all too easily damaged during track cleaning.

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Point heater supply boxes have been added for each point. These look like small square toadstools and are made of a couple of bits of plasticard and a dab of grey acrylic.

I then embarked on a fairly pointless exercise, adding cabling. Again a single strand of copper for each. It seemed like a good idea at the time honest. You can just about see them in this close-up if you peer quite hard.

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If you back off they are barely visible.

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In other locations they really don't show up at all.

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I think this is a step too far for N gauge!

It's been fun and there is still a huge amount to do so I will add to this thread at some point in the future when I resume work.

Cheers
Dave

Edited by eldavo
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Just registered on RMWeb to congratulate you on this layout...

 

I'm starting my own N Gauge layout soon and sadly, it's never gonna be as good as Waton!

 

Well done, and best of luck in the competition, easily the best layout i've seen.

 

Ross

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Great stuff as ever Dave. I think the cabling is worthwhile even in 2mm - your track work is so good that it stands really close-up photography, and then the small details really shine.

 

It must be insanely fiddly in that scale though - I used nylon monofilament in 4mm and that was bad enough - trying to thread it into things and then stick it down was very bad for my sanity :)

 

Will

 

 

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Sorry I put the pics on Photobucket as that seems to be a generally viewable place. Not had anyone else have a problem accessing them so is there something particular causing the problem?

 

Cheers

Dave

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I keep banging on about this as it's a pain to me, but most ppl accessing RMweb from work have problems as many corporate systems block access to photo hosting sites (mean spirited I know!).

 

Andy Y has stated that he would prefer images intended for RMweb to be posted to the forum rather than via a 3rd party hosting company.

 

Don't worry, it was a light hearted comment really, I'll have a look tonight on my own Virgin Media account when I can do what I want :lol:

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Stunning work - just goes to show what can be achieved in N. Hopefully it will inspire a few more larger scale modellers to look again at something a bit smaller (or at least take a look at exhibitions - all to often I hear & see folk walking past a N gauge layout because "it's too small").

 

I'd be tempted to increase the value of the resistor you use for the LED signal lamps - they're a bit on the bright-side in my opinion...

 

Happy modelling,

 

Steven B.

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Since the challenge deadline Waton has been packed away while I tackled some other things. The biggest of those was getting a new workshop/office built in the garden. Yesterday the electrician finally connected up the power and the workshop is fully functional. I'm rather fortunate in that the new space is big enough to have both Cramdin and Waton up and runnable at the same time while still giving me storage and workbench space. So Waton was duly uncrated and balanced on some borrowed trestles.

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The next job is to sort out some kind of legs/support for the layout. Not quite sure what to do yet so still in planning mode. Amazingly the little trains still work and the trainspotters on the platform still seem to find a 158 interesting. Well some of them do anyway!

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I have some prep work to do on Cramdin for an outing to Southampton show in January but then I hope to crack on and do some more major work on Waton. Assuming I'm not distracted by other things of course.

Have a good Christmas all.

Cheers
Dave

Edited by eldavo
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Looks excellent just what the doctor ordered,

 

I'm planning a 20ft by 10ft build in my garden with 5ft of it partitioned off at one end for my respray work. The rest would be for workshop stuff and probably a resident layout of about 15ft x 3ft. I need to get the cash together though as these things aren't cheap even with my materials obtained through working in the buiding profession as I do, so would probably have to be a replacement for my loft project. Have to see.

 

Cheers

Cav

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So when's the exhibition opening at your place?wink.gif

Maybe not quite big enough for an exhibition but we do take selected visitors by appointment.

 

Well the wife said she wanted to take up photography so there was only one thing to do, buy her a camera for Christmas. Of course it had to be tested so I thought I would try and take some close up shots where my camera struggles to focus. Clearly the focus capabilities of the Nikon D3100 are far superior and the fact that it can close down to f32 certainly helps with the depth of field. The exposures on these are about 6 seconds and use the standard autofocus settings.

 

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Clearly I need to invest in a decent magnifier to improve my figure painting in this scale!

 

This sort of cruel close-up also shows up the odd track join problem that will need some attention.

 

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Definitely some scope for using manual focus and fancy focus stacked exposures with this bit of kit.

 

Cheers

Dave

Edited by eldavo
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