Aldbourne

[2ManySpams]

Horses for courses for me too Dave - I use Anyrail to play with ideas (as it's quick ) and I'm still teaching myself to use Templot for the detailed plan. I've no doubt Templot is by far the most accurate but it still takes me ages to do basic stuff. Mind you Martin was incredibly generous with his time and did me a starter for 10 for Pencarrow in Templot. With his experience I'm sure it only took him a fraction of the time it would have taken me! So much to learn...

[chaz]

Thanks Mike. I was planning to use 1" or 25mm aluminium angle attached to c9mm ply battens. The ply would be grooved if necessary to give sufficient flange depth. The aluminium angle makes joining a couple of shorter cassettes easy and helps with the electrical issues too if I use use binder clips.

 

A couple of points about cassettes. Firstly I would advise against the use of aluminium as a "rail" surface. A friend of mine use ally angle and he said that the formation of aluminium oxide on the exposed surface was a constant headache. The oxide does not conduct and so must be polished off, but then reforms and needs to be polished off again and again......

Secondly I wouldn't make the cassettes four feet long - they will be unwieldy and heavy. I made the cassettes for Dock Green a maximum on 2' 6". These are long enough for four 4W wagons. For more stuff about my cassettes have a look at....

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/58132-dock-green/

 

posting #21 on the first page is where the stuff on cassettes starts. Hope that might be useful to you...

 

Chaz

[daifly]

Thanks for the warnings Chaz. I'm coming round to the idea of a traverser to avoid the several issues associated with cassettes in 7mm. Having said that, Aberbeeg, an S7 layout that was at Swindon Steam Festival last weekend, has aluminium angle cassettes as you've described that are close to 8 ft long! The cassettes were never lifted when loaded. They simply provided empty tracks for trains to run on to or depart from.

 

Still waiting for the baseboard kits to arrive. Off on hols at the end of next week so significant progress is unlikely until October.

 

Cheers

 

Dave

[chaz]

Aberbeeg, an S7 layout that was at Swindon Steam Festival last weekend, has aluminium angle cassettes as you've described that are close to 8 ft long! The cassettes were never lifted when loaded.

 

Well if the cassettes are never lifted then that's a different matter - there is obviously no problem making them longer, but you do then need enough room to move them about. And if you want to turn them round.....

You might have noted that my cassettes double as stock-boxes making life much easier when taking Dock Green to shows. (Although I'm glad they are not 8 ft long  )

[daifly]

While waiting for baseboard kits to arrive, I thought that I would assemble a Timbertracks Goods Shed kit that I was intending to use. It would help to give a sense of scale when I place some lengths of track and stock on the boards. There are a lot of bits.

 

Assembly has not been a happy experience. A dry run assembling with bits of masking tape found a fundamental error in the instructions, but more of this later.

 

 

I started to build the office as a sub-assembly and another problem surfaced.

 

 

The steps are made from 10 laminations of 3mm mdf. I assumed that I had assembled the side upside down and back to front as clearly the door is too low. Wrong! After an email to Brian Lewis on Tuesday, he responded promptly that the steps should have been cut from 2mm mdf. A replacement set, along with the step side wall laminations arrived on Thursday morning and that problem at least was solved.

 

 

More soon

 

Dave

 

[daifly]

Meanwhile, assembly of the main shed structure was being done at the same time. The fast-setting aliphatic glue is good to work with as it grabs well but allows a couple of minutes of adjustment time.

 

 

The shed and office walls (of 3mm mdf) are given depth by using overlays of 3mm mdf and, in some places, a thin ply overlay with lasered brickwork.

 

 

It was the application of the overlays for the main shed sides that caused most grief this evening. They are 6mm too short and the centring of the windows is simply dreadful.

 

 

If you can't read the numbers, from the left, the distance between window edge and overlay is 23.5mm, 16mm, 21.5mm, 18mm,19.5mm and 21mm.
This photo shows the significance of the under-length side overlay - a gap of 3mm at each end.

 

 

This must surely be a design error. I have emailed Brian with these and other photos to ask for his comments.

Dave

 

[daifly]

Further investigation this morning reveals that the instructions are correct and it is the dock decking that is overlength as well as the brick platform support and rear window wall strengthener. This had the effect of pushing out the end walls. It was the only way that it all fitted. How did I discover this? Well I tried placing the roof panels in place and they neatly dropped between the end walls onto the dock below!

 

I'll report back with Brian's response.

 

Ho hum.

Dave

 

[daifly]

Brian replied earlier today to my emails and, having checked his drawings, accepts that the decking etc have been cut 6mm overlong thereby distorting the whole build. He has offered to manufacture f.o.c. all of the replacement parts to enable me to start again with correctly-sized items.

 

I still need to resolve the off-centre window issue with him but that should not be a big problem.

 

The errors in manufacturing are unfortunate but I can't fault the speed of Brian's responses to my emails or the willingness to rectify the problems.

Cheers

Dave

[daifly]

Replacement parts have now arrived so I have an almost complete kit to build again. The original office just needs to be completed with roof, door etc. Things will stagnate for the next couple of weeks as Mrs DF and I head off for a holiday to celebrate our Ruby Wedding Anniversary.

[daifly]

The baseboard kits were ordered from Model Railway Solutions in Poole. Delivery was arranged to occur after we returned from holiday and they duly arrived by courier in mid-October.

I had splashed out on the full package – birch ply with legs and baseboard tops. The precision of MRS’s cutting and the ease of assembly made it worth every penny. All screws, bolts etc. are included. As I mentioned in post #1, there are three baseboards. A 5’ x 3’ ‘king’ board with two sets of legs on to which a centre 6’ x 3’ and another 5’ x 3’ board are attached. Each of these last two boards has a single set of legs. I chose these large boards as it minimised the cost and number of joins. The layout is not intended to be portable but is required to be dismantleable.

Construction was very quick and easy and the king board was quickly completed.

This shows the 6’ board under construction:

The leg braces were not fitted at this stage but the board was still very sturdy without. One problem encountered during the fitting of the leg was the requirement to drill a 10mm hole for the bolt holding the top of the leg.

Clearly, my typical drill fitted with a 10mm bit was not going to work! This photo shows the inverted U-shaped piece of ply which is glued and screwed to the inside of the sideframe for the top of the leg to slot in to. The leg had a pre-drilled hole to ‘help’! The drilling problem was resolved by marking through the leg bolt-hole and then drilling a very small pilot hole from the inside using a 1/16” drill bit. As this drill bit is much shorter, I could get the drill into position OK. This hole was then opened up from the outside using the 10mm drill bit. This resulted in some tearing of the ply surface as the drill exited the timber but this is hidden inside by the leg. Having learned that lesson, I clamped a sacrificial piece of softwood on the inside of the ply for all of the other holes that I drilled and the issue was resolved.

The leg braces seemed to be too short. I would have expected a 45deg angle to be formed when fitted.

This photo also shows that the leg was fastened by an M10 nut and the brace by a M10 wingnut. The construction guide photos provided show wingnuts in use so I bought a few from B&Q. I emailed MRS with some constructive criticism regarding the drilling issue above. I also suggested that the length of the braces should be increased and wingnuts provided. I got a very prompt reply thanking me for my feedback which they rarely get from customers. A couple of days later a package of wingnuts and longer braces arrived – excellent customer service!

The leg braces were fitted by drilling as described above to ensure that any raggedness was hidden from view but the sacrificial softwood did the trick and all of the holes were very neat.

The three boards completed and bolted together with M10 bolts in the garage:

And in their new home:

The reason for the 36” height is now apparent, I hope! These boards are, as I expected, VERY heavy, but they are sturdy and 16’ x 3’ looks HUGE!

The fun part now starts of plonking pieces of C&L track and mocked up buildings to form a considered opinion of my proposed plan.

Cheers

Dave

 

 

[switcher 1]

Yes, not the 'lightweight' that is intimated of plywood construction!

 

Also, I found it difficult to put together as I had very little room to work in, just enough to get my feet either side of the board.

 

I also had to make mine up 'on' the plywood top, as it would not sit square on my carpet; the only place available of suitable area size.

 

So, fellow modellers, you still need quite a bit of room to assemble these baseboard kits!

 

(Personnally; I will look at other materials & methods next time I need a baseboard.)

[daifly]

Yes, not the 'lightweight' that is intimated of plywood construction!

 

Also, I found it difficult to put together as I had very little room to work in, just enough to get my feet either side of the board.

 

I also had to make mine up 'on' the plywood top, as it would not sit square on my carpet; the only place available of suitable area size.

 

So, fellow modellers, you still need quite a bit of room to assemble these baseboard kits!

 

(Personally; I will look at other materials & methods next time I need a baseboard.)

The side and end frames are 12mm ply, the inner framework is 6mm ply, the tops are 9mm ply and the legs are 12mm ply. It's hardly surprising that they are so heavy but they are sturdy and stable - the primary requirement for any baseboard.

 

I'm lucky enough to have a large double garage to work in but I sympathise with your predicament. I too used the baseboard top as a workbench. I used three identical saw horses to support it to give me a flat surface on which to build.

 

I would have no hesitation in using these kits again but would definitely go for smaller boards and a cheaper ply if portability was needed.

[2ManySpams]

Any progress to report? Which plan did you end up going for in the end? Traverser or cassettes?

[daifly]

Actually, neither. The long interval since the last update has been a period of contemplation and since I intend to handbuild all of the trackwork, most of the stock and all of the scenics, I have made the decision to continue in Scaleseven.

I have also put the track planning on hold temporarily as Mrs DF is going through one of her periodic house-moving phases. Almost certainly, and as usual, nothing will come of it but it would be folly to spend a lot of effort on planning when a house move might present a different size and shape of site for a layout.

Meanwhile, I'm doing battle with my first S7 loco build. Pics to follow in due course.

 

Cheers, Dave