Mid-Cornwall Lines - 1950s Western Region in 00

[Oldddudders]

2 hours ago, Northroader said:

The catering was the best bit on a breakdown, a large pot filled with any sorts of soup plus some tinned new potatoes, but the key ingredient was some mulligatawny thrown in as well, and all warmed up.

In 1969 Southern ran a course for all its existing Controllers, in the new training school at Beckenham Junction. I distinctly recall general agreement that if crews were out on site following a derailment etc, then they would work virtually forever if you kept them well-fed and watered. An army marches on its stomach, we are told, and this is no different. 

[Northroader]

All very well, but if we were out anywhere where there was a chip shop nearby, I was expected to buy the whole mob fish and chips, as I was “management”. As they were all shift workers, they were all better paid than me, and I couldn’t book expenses for it.

Edited February 11, 2021 by Northroader

[St Enodoc]

11 hours ago, acg5324 said:

And Spam on the side.....

Sometimes there was!

[St Enodoc]

8 hours ago, Northroader said:

All very well, but if we were out anywhere where there was a chip shop nearby, I was expected to buy the whole mob fish and chips, as I was “management”. As they were all shift workers, they were all better paid than me, and I couldn’t book expenses for it.

Our crane drivers and breakdown supervisors all knew the best fish and chip shops across the whole area of course. You're right, I had to pay too but it was always understood that the cost would be reimbursed from petty cash afterwards.

 

Remember the days when you had to declare to the taxman your priv and free travel if your pay was above a certain rate? At one depot I managed, I was the only one of about 100 workers who didn't have to, because I didn't earn enough.

[St Enodoc]

Gong xi fa cai (other transliterations are available) to all my friends who are celebrating today the first day of the new Year of the Ox!

 

I realised that the discussion of double slips, distances to the buffer stops, and so on, was all getting a bit wordy - so here's a picture of the Polperran throat arrangement that might tell a couple of hundred, if not a thousand, words.

 

Polperran is a double-ended fiddle yard with five roads in a ladder to the right and five to the left. This gives me nine storage sidings plus a headshunt in only 260mm of width.

 

The approach from Treloggan Junction is at the top left of the double slip and the roads fan out to the left and right towards the front edge of the baseboard.

 

I've positioned the two double slips with the left-hand vees aligned, the 1 in 6 (already built) at the top and the SMP template for the 1 in 5 below. The marks to the right show the tips of the double slip blades. This is the crucial location, as to get in and out of the left-hand fan the end vehicle's wheels need to clear these. You can see that the 1 in 6 slip needs about 30mm more length than the 1 in 5 before this can happen. As I said earlier, this is not a showstopper because the current design assumes the use of Hornby-Dublo buffer stops at the end of each road. If I need to reclaim the 30mm I will just use the front of the Porthmellyn Road fascia, which will run across the end of the right-hand fan, to protect the ends of the roads.

 

The gap between the 1 in 6 double slip and the 1 in 5 point to its right is where the short curve will go. As you can see, there won't be much of it!

 

Of course, the geometry where the line from Treloggan Junction joins the double slip is different in each case as well. This will be taken care of by the "give" on the plain line between Polperran and Treloggan Junction.

Edited June 28, 2023 by St Enodoc
Images restored

[St Enodoc]

I took the new 94xx out of its box and all was present and correct, so ran it in on DC while I finished painting the Branch track. It was nice and smooth in both directions at half- and full speed. I then fitted the decoder, which was simple. So far so good.

 

However, I can't get it to run smoothly at lower speeds on the test track using the Sprog and DecoderPro. There is a sort of "surge" when it starts before it settles down to the set speed. I've played around with the speed settings and acceleration settings but to no avail. Tomorrow I'll try it on the layout using the NCE equipment but at the moment it's not looking good.

 

The decoder is an ESU LokPilot 5 micro DCC Next 18, catalogue number 59828. This is the same as the one in my new Dapol Mogul.

 

Has anyone seen anything similar or got any thoughts on what the problem might be?

[Clive Mortimore]

23 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Has anyone seen anything similar or got any thoughts on what the problem might be?

Oh it is so tempting to say it could be you are using the extra "C".

[Oldddudders]

59 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

I took the new 94xx out of its box and all was present and correct, so ran it in on DC while I finished painting the Branch track. It was nice and smooth in both directions at half- and full speed. I then fitted the decoder, which was simple. So far so good.

 

However, I can't get it to run smoothly at lower speeds on the test track using the Sprog and DecoderPro. There is a sort of "surge" when it starts before it settles down to the set speed. I've played around with the speed settings and acceleration settings but to no avail. Tomorrow I'll try it on the layout using the NCE equipment but at the moment it's not looking good.

 

The decoder is an ESU LokPilot 5 micro DCC Next 18, catalogue number 59828. This is the same as the one in my new Dapol Mogul.

 

Has anyone seen anything similar or got any thoughts on what the problem might be?

Back EMF effect? And do I recall that ESU decoders have a sort of auto-adjust feature, where you stick the loco on a nice long straight use POM and set a certain CV to a particular value, and it sets off, adjusts and then comes to a stand? Sure I was directed to do this with one a few years back. 

[bgman]

This might help :

 

 

LokSound V4.0 decoders offer a feature for automatic calibration of the motor. In most cases this procedure leads to excellent load compensation characteristics. However, due to the infinite number of possible combinations of motors and gear boxes a good result cannot be guaranteed, but it is certainly worth a try.

Proceed as follows:

Set the vehicle onto a piece of straight and preferably level track. The track must be at least 2/3M long as to allow the locomotive to run at full speed for about two seconds. This movement takes place automatically during calibration. Provide buffer stops or something similar to prevent the locomotive from running off the track!

Write the value 0 into CV 54 (either on the programming track or with POM).

Call up the locomotive on your throttle and make sure that F1 is switched OFF and the throttle is

set to speed step 0.

Set the direction of travel and re-check.

Pressing F1 will cause the locomotive to start running at full speed automatically. During this

time about 2.0 seconds you will not be able to control this locomotive!

The locomotive will automatically stop and the identified load compensation parameters will be

saved in CVs 51, 52, 53, 54 and 55.

Retest the locomotive.

 

G

[Nick C]

13 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Gong xi fa cai (other transliterations are available) to all my friends who are celebrating today the first day of the new Year of the Ox!

 

I realised that the discussion of double slips, distances to the buffer stops, and so on, was all getting a bit wordy - so here's a picture of the Polperran throat arrangement that might tell a couple of hundred, if not a thousand, words.

 

Polperran is a double-ended fiddle yard with five roads in a ladder to the right and five to the left. This gives me nine storage sidings plus a headshunt in only 260mm of width.

 

The approach from Treloggan Junction is at the top left of the double slip and the roads fan out to the left and right towards the front edge of the baseboard.

 

I've positioned the two double slips with the left-hand vees aligned, the 1 in 6 (already built) at the top and the SMP template for the 1 in 5 below. The marks to the right show the tips of the double slip blades. This is the crucial location, as to get in and out of the left-hand fan the end vehicle's wheels need to clear these. You can see that the 1 in 6 slip needs about 30mm more length than the 1 in 5 before this can happen. As I said earlier, this is not a showstopper because the current design assumes the use of Hornby-Dublo buffer stops at the end of each road. If I need to reclaim the 30mm I will just use the front of the Porthmellyn Road fascia, which will run across the end of the right-hand fan, to protect the ends of the roads.

 

The gap between the 1 in 6 double slip and the 1 in 5 point to its right is where the short curve will go. As you can see, there won't be much of it!

 

Of course, the geometry where the line from Treloggan Junction joins the double slip is different in each case as well. This will be taken care of by the "give" on the plain line between Polperran and Treloggan Junction.

Do you need to have access from all the roads on the right to the left-hand fan? If you only need one as a headshunt, you don't need a double-slip there - if the headshunt is one of the roads nearer the bottom of the image, you could use a barry slip instead, in which case you might be able to play with the overlaps a bit to get it to fit in?

 

Are all the sidings the same length, or are the ones towards the bottom of the image shorter than the ones at the top? I can't make out that bit in the plan a few pages back!

 

[thegreenhowards]

8 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

I took the new 94xx out of its box and all was present and correct, so ran it in on DC while I finished painting the Branch track. It was nice and smooth in both directions at half- and full speed. I then fitted the decoder, which was simple. So far so good.

 

However, I can't get it to run smoothly at lower speeds on the test track using the Sprog and DecoderPro. There is a sort of "surge" when it starts before it settles down to the set speed. I've played around with the speed settings and acceleration settings but to no avail. Tomorrow I'll try it on the layout using the NCE equipment but at the moment it's not looking good.

 

The decoder is an ESU LokPilot 5 micro DCC Next 18, catalogue number 59828. This is the same as the one in my new Dapol Mogul.

 

Has anyone seen anything similar or got any thoughts on what the problem might be?

Have you done the often recommended things like removing the interference capacitor and turning DC off?

[Barry O]

the system noted by @bgman should do the trick!

 

baz

[St Enodoc]

10 hours ago, Clive Mortimore said:

Oh it is so tempting to say it could be you are using the extra "C".

I'm so pleased that you resisted.

[St Enodoc]

10 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

Back EMF effect? And do I recall that ESU decoders have a sort of auto-adjust feature, where you stick the loco on a nice long straight use POM and set a certain CV to a particular value, and it sets off, adjusts and then comes to a stand? Sure I was directed to do this with one a few years back. 

 

9 hours ago, bgman said:

This might help :

 

 

LokSound V4.0 decoders offer a feature for automatic calibration of the motor. In most cases this procedure leads to excellent load compensation characteristics. However, due to the infinite number of possible combinations of motors and gear boxes a good result cannot be guaranteed, but it is certainly worth a try.

Proceed as follows:

Set the vehicle onto a piece of straight and preferably level track. The track must be at least 2/3M long as to allow the locomotive to run at full speed for about two seconds. This movement takes place automatically during calibration. Provide buffer stops or something similar to prevent the locomotive from running off the track!

Write the value 0 into CV 54 (either on the programming track or with POM).

Call up the locomotive on your throttle and make sure that F1 is switched OFF and the throttle is

set to speed step 0.

Set the direction of travel and re-check.

Pressing F1 will cause the locomotive to start running at full speed automatically. During this

time about 2.0 seconds you will not be able to control this locomotive!

The locomotive will automatically stop and the identified load compensation parameters will be

saved in CVs 51, 52, 53, 54 and 55.

Retest the locomotive.

 

G

Ah, that rings a faint bell. I'll have a go on the rolling road. Thanks.

[St Enodoc]

5 hours ago, Nick C said:

Do you need to have access from all the roads on the right to the left-hand fan? If you only need one as a headshunt, you don't need a double-slip there - if the headshunt is one of the roads nearer the bottom of the image, you could use a barry slip instead, in which case you might be able to play with the overlaps a bit to get it to fit in?

 

Are all the sidings the same length, or are the ones towards the bottom of the image shorter than the ones at the top? I can't make out that bit in the plan a few pages back!

 

Nick, you didn't see it on the plan because it's not there yet, just a jumble of faint lines to try out possibilities! It's a bit hard to explain in words but I'll try. The single line arrives at the double slip, which is a space-saving device. Five roads fan out at each end, the longest being the furthest from the baseboard edge and the shortest the closest. All the left-hand roads are longer than the right-hand roads because of the geometry of the single line. The headshunt is the nearest road on the right that passes through the most points, so that I get the four longer roads for storage. I'll try to do a sketch of all that later.

 

I hadn't thought about a Barry slip. I'll do a sketch of that as well and post both.

 

Thanks.

[St Enodoc]

3 hours ago, thegreenhowards said:

Have you done the often recommended things like removing the interference capacitor and turning DC off?

Andy, there don't seem to be any capacitors. I've read elsewhere that they might be integral with the blanking plate. Yes, I've disabled DC as I always do!

[Barry O]

21 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

I hadn't thought about a Barry slip. I'll do a sketch of that as well and post both.

 

what's that got to do with me.. My aversion to building pointwork is well known in the Leeds MRS

 

Baz

[St Enodoc]

15 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

Back EMF effect? And do I recall that ESU decoders have a sort of auto-adjust feature, where you stick the loco on a nice long straight use POM and set a certain CV to a particular value, and it sets off, adjusts and then comes to a stand? Sure I was directed to do this with one a few years back. 

 

15 hours ago, bgman said:

This might help :

 

 

LokSound V4.0 decoders offer a feature for automatic calibration of the motor. In most cases this procedure leads to excellent load compensation characteristics. However, due to the infinite number of possible combinations of motors and gear boxes a good result cannot be guaranteed, but it is certainly worth a try.

Proceed as follows:

Set the vehicle onto a piece of straight and preferably level track. The track must be at least 2/3M long as to allow the locomotive to run at full speed for about two seconds. This movement takes place automatically during calibration. Provide buffer stops or something similar to prevent the locomotive from running off the track!

Write the value 0 into CV 54 (either on the programming track or with POM).

Call up the locomotive on your throttle and make sure that F1 is switched OFF and the throttle is

set to speed step 0.

Set the direction of travel and re-check.

Pressing F1 will cause the locomotive to start running at full speed automatically. During this

time about 2.0 seconds you will not be able to control this locomotive!

The locomotive will automatically stop and the identified load compensation parameters will be

saved in CVs 51, 52, 53, 54 and 55.

Retest the locomotive.

 

G

 

Good news. Turning off the back EMF has solved the problem. I won't bother with the auto calibration now.

 

Thanks for the suggestions.

[St Enodoc]

I did a few odds and ends this afternoon, starting with reassembling the 94xx and putting it back in its box. I can spend some evening time doing the couplings, smokebox numberplate, crew, coal and lamps before its cabside numberplates arrive.

 

Next I cleaned the paint off all the rail tops between Porthmellyn Road and St Enodoc, ready for ballasting.

 

The last job in the railway room was to attach the four relay modules for the remaining Porthmellyn Road signals to a baseboard frame member so that they're close to the signals concerned and also easy to reach for wiring up. No photo, as I reckon you've seen enough of this sort of thing over the past few months.

 

Back indoors I sketched out the Polperran track layout. It's not to scale but the overall proportions are about right.

 

The single line comes into the double slip at the top and the two fans lead off it, with the headshunt being the shortest road at the bottom right. The other roads will hold trains of various lengths, ranging from the Atlantic Coast Express Pentowan portion (WC + 3 Mk1s) to the GRCW single power unit that will share the Pentowan - Chacewater working with 1419 and its trailer. If I decide to use a Barry slip, then the horizontal track through the double slip will disappear.

 

Talking of which, I had a look at how this might work by superimposing two A5 LH points, which are about 30" radius. The distance between the vees won't be much less than for the 1 in 6 double slip, due to the need to fit the blades and tiebars in, but because the whole thing will be at an angle of 1 in 5 and so won't need the curves to regain the alignment, the whole assembly should save 10 - 15 mm (I haven't done a precise check yet).

 

Given that the Barry slip will be fairly simple to build, at the moment I'm inclining towards that course of action - thanks @Nick C.

Edited June 28, 2023 by St Enodoc
Images restored

[acg5324]

Pardon my ignorance but what’s a Barry slip, isn’t it a Cricket position?

[St Enodoc]

39 minutes ago, acg5324 said:

Pardon my ignorance but what’s a Barry slip, isn’t it a Cricket position?

 

[Chamby]

19 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

I hadn't thought about a Barry slip. I'll do a sketch of that as well and post both.

 

19 hours ago, Barry O said:

what's that got to do with me.. My aversion to building pointwork is well known in the Leeds MRS

 

8 hours ago, acg5324 said:

Pardon my ignorance but what’s a Barry slip, isn’t it a Cricket position?

 

I thought the 'slip' reference was to a Petticoat.  Couldn't for the life of me work out why St E. wanted to sketch that...  

[St Enodoc]

5 hours ago, Chamby said:

 

 

 

I thought the 'slip' reference was to a Petticoat.  Couldn't for the life of me work out why St E. wanted to sketch that...  

You would only need to do that if your locos had opening smokebox doors.

[St Enodoc]

This Barry slip lark is more complex than I expected.

 

I decided to make up a template using two C&L A5 LH templates cut in half down the centre line, so that I could slide them along to try different positions for the vees and blades.

 

First, I set them out as what one might call a "perfect" slip, where the centre lines of the diverging routes coincide. This won't work in practice though, as the blade tips are far too close to the vees and there's no room for them to move either.

 

For the second attempt, I moved the vees two timber spaces further apart. This gave plenty of room for the blades to move but, as you can see, there is quite a big offset on the centre lines. This would result in the centre lines of roads 1 and 6  (see yesterday's diagram) being misaligned by about 4mm.

 

For the third attempt, I moved the vees back closer together by one timber space. This reduced the misalignment to less than 2mm, which is within my working tolerance. However, there's again barely enough room for the blades to move and the whole area is rather congested - I think it would be tricky getting the wing rails and closure rails supported and fitting in the isolation gaps for the vees too.

 

Finally I eased things out by half a timber space. I can do this because the timber spacing doesn't really matter in the fiddle yard. Here we have a fair compromise on the blade-to-vee distance and also enough room for the blades to move. I liked this enough to finish drawing it up, with the tiebars in green and the timbers in yellow (I don't fit all the timbers to fiddle yard points, to save on copperclad and on time).

 

However...

 

There's still a misalignment of about 3mm and after I'd finished the template I started to wonder what was the point (!) of building a brand new piece of trackwork that was just as compromised as the 1 in 6 double slip, which is ready to use. There isn't even a big saving on overall length, with the vees on the Barry slip being only about 10mm closer together than those on the double slip.

 

So, while the Barry slip is still a possibility, I'm coming back to the idea of using the existing double slip, keeping roads 1 and 6 properly aligned and having the slight curve to connect the 1 in 6 double slip to the 1 in 5 points in the ladder - which is where we came in.

 

I'll leave the final decision until I can set it all out at full size on the layout.

 

This was an interesting exercise but I spent longer on it than I'd intended. Once I eventually got out to the railway room I started ballasting the branch track. I started at the Porthmellyn Road end, since being right-handed it's easier to work from left to right. I got about 200mm further than 41B points before I ran out of time, which is about a quarter of the way round. One, or possibly two, more weekends should see it done.

 

 

 

Edited June 28, 2023 by St Enodoc
Images restored

[Keith Addenbrooke]

1 hour ago, St Enodoc said:

This Barry slip lark is more complex than I expected.

 

I decided to make up a template using two C&L A5 LH templates cut in half down the centre line, so that I could slide them along to try different positions for the vees and blades.

 

First, I set them out as what one might call a "perfect" slip, where the centre lines of the diverging routes coincide. This won't work in practice though, as the blade tips are far too close to the vees and there's no room for them to move either.

 

For the second attempt, I moved the vees two timber spaces further apart. This gave plenty of room for the blades to move but, as you can see, there is quite a big offset on the centre lines. This would result in the centre lines of roads 1 and 6  (see yesterday's diagram) being misaligned by about 4mm.

 

For the third attempt, I moved the vees back closer together by one timber space. This reduced the misalignment to less than 2mm, which is within my working tolerance. However, there's again barely enough room for the blades to move and the whole area is rather congested - I think it would be tricky getting the wing rails and closure rails supported and fitting in the isolation gaps for the vees too.

 

Finally I eased things out by half a timber space. I can do this because the timber spacing doesn't really matter in the fiddle yard. Here we have a fair compromise on the blade-to-vee distance and also enough room for the blades to move. I liked this enough to finish drawing it up, with the tiebars in green and the timbers in yellow (I don't fit all the timbers to fiddle yard points, to save on copperclad and on time).

 

However...

 

There's still a misalignment of about 3mm and after I'd finished the template I started to wonder what was the point (!) of building a brand new piece of trackwork that was just as compromised as the 1 in 6 double slip, which is ready to use. There isn't even a big saving on overall length, with the vees on the Barry slip being only about 10mm closer together than those on the double slip.

 

So, while the Barry slip is still a possibility, I'm coming back to the idea of using the existing double slip, keeping roads 1 and 6 properly aligned and having the slight curve to connect the 1 in 6 double slip to the 1 in 5 points in the ladder - which is where we came in.

 

I'll leave the final decision until I can set it all out at full size on the layout.

 

This was an interesting exercise but I spent longer on it than I'd intended. Once I eventually got out to the railway room I started ballasting the branch track. I started at the Porthmellyn Road end, since being right-handed it's easier to work from left to right. I got about 200mm further than 41B points before I ran out of time, which is about a quarter of the way round. One, or possibly two, more weekends should see it done.

I’ll be fascinated to see how this turns out (no pun intended) if you go for the Barry slip.  I’m not a track builder, so I’m interested to see: my guess is that planning it is made more complex by the absence of the second (diagonal) straight line, but might making it then prove to be easier (fewer parts to line up precisely)?

 

I can see from the track diagram why you don’t need to full double slip - the key thing will be to remember / train visiting operators that Track 6 is not the headshunt for Tracks 1 to 5!   I like the way you’ve designed the fiddle yard though: the headshunt (track 10) may be described as the shortest, but the ‘effective’ length of the headshunt is from the buffers on track 10 round to the slip point, making it more useful, while keeping the longer tracks 6 to 9 for storage.  Very clever.