Leaderboard

Back in 2011 I played about with my Scalefour Society lever frame to use servos to lock the levers. 2011 blog entry At the time I implemented the locking by connecting a PC and running JMRI, this used the 'logix' operation to monitor the state of each lever and then lock/unlock other levers appropriately. This worked OK but obviously required a PC to be connected to the layout. The locking was also based on my previous layout design rather than my current Stour Valley project. Revisited the project over the last few months I had several goals. 1) fix the one broken locking tongue on one of the levers. 2) make interlocking correct for current project 3) remove the reliability on a connected PC by using programmable boards from the Model Electronics Railway Group (MERG) The little tongue on the bottom of each lever makes the locking operate by passing through (or being locked by) the turning servo. On the first iteration of the frame I'd made these tongues rather small and one of them had broken off the bottom of the a lever. Rather than just replace the one broken one I decided to replace all 25 with a slightly large version. This meant lifting the frame 3mm further away from the servos and an additional packing layer was cut from 3mm perspex on the laser cutter. The new lever tongue is about twice the width of the previous version and the additional size means that the part is much stronger. It also needs locks better against the servos. The locking plan for Clare had been designed and thanks to input from Keith Norgrove we had a plan which only required simple 'AND' logic for the interlocking. By that I mean that all locking could be expressed in terms like 'lever 1 is unlocked if lever 2 is normal AND lever 3 is normal AND lever 4 is reversed'. This form of locking could then by programmed using the MERG CANCOND board which listens to CBUS Events and generated an event when a condition is met. That event can then change the state of a servo locking or unlocking the appropriate levers. It took a while to get the logic worked out but in the end I managed to sort it. Lots of head scratching and 'Its ON so I want to turn it OFF' mutterings and a large spreadsheet to keep tabs of the logic were required. I put up a little demo video on youtube. https://youtu.be/MbY-ROpETUs Since the video I had changed the labels on the levers to include their function and, in small but still vaguely readable text, the levers which are required to be pulled to release a given lever. Some of those lever handles are getting a bit rusty now, I think the signalman needs to start using a rag to pull them. David

A new distraction has been keeping me away from the modelling bench. There’s not much ‘Broad Gauge’ in this post except that it was triggered by spotting this entry in Annie's Virtual Pre-Grouping Layout & Workbench thread I’d never given much attention to train simulators before, although I have done quite a lot with the Microsoft Flight Simulator. Now, prompted by Annie’s posts, I felt that I should look more closely, so I followed her suggestion to try downloading Trainz-A New Era (T:ANE). It seems that I chose a good moment, since the software was on offer at 10 USD (around £8), which seemed very little for such a sophisticated product. I soon found myself thinking that it was a bit too sophisticated for me! The basic set included the entire East Coast Main Line (ECML), with a Deltic-headed train to drive along it. It worked and the scenery was remarkably detailed – much more so than is usual in FlightSim - but with a corresponding ‘hit’ on computer resources. The program needs a lot of memory and a powerful video card to run in a high level of detail! The ECML and Deltic diesels are not my usual modelling territory but I noticed there was a free download of the West Cornwall lines available from the Trainz store. This seemed much more my territory, although I also remembered that ‘free’ software often implies ‘can of worms’. I was a little puzzled when I first loaded it (which took a very long time) to find that the only ‘scenario’ offered was ‘Quick Drive – choose a train’. I found a list of trains and chose King George V located at Penzance. A nicely detailed scene appeared, including a red signal in front of my train that didn’t seem to be changeable! Ignoring it and driving forward started fairly well … until I found myself being diverted into a dead-end siding! Driving a ‘King’ So started a rather irritating learning curve. It appears that this ‘layout’ is populated by trains that are pre-set to run a pre-determined timetable. While a lot of the scenery looked good, there were some strange juxtapositions, such as Network Rail signage in what was supposed to be a 1930s scenario. Other odd things appeared too, like signals that showed a green light with a horizontal semaphore arm ... well, it was free!!! Anachronism at Penzance Station Part of my trouble was that I had jumped into a later version of some software that started in more basic form, several years ago. I began to find that a lot of the basic information I needed was only to be found by looking at earlier versions of the software and so I gradually learned how to place a train of my own and run it along the track. I think it will be a long time before I can try anything like back-dating the system to Broad Gauge days! Despite the frustrations, I have been admiring the diversity of the scenery, including this view of Truro Cathedral from the viaduct just outside the station: 1486 with Truro Cathedral Now it’s time to put all my modelling, both virtual and actual, on hold while I address family matters over the holiday season. In the new year, I shall hope to get back to making some progress on my ‘real’ Broad gauge modelling. With my best wishes to my readers for Christmas and the New Year. Mike

Another evenings work on the Manor chassis and it is finally complete and ready for painting. The first job was adding soldering up the brake shoes and installing them onto the chassis frames. With that complete, the wheels could be removed (marking the right hand side (looking towards the chimney) with black pen so that they could be returned to the same positions. A slight error was soldering the cylinder assembly into position, as it makes removing the lead driver rather difficult. I have had some problems with the (Gibson) bogie wheels rusting from coming into contact with flux, in future must remember to remove the bogie when doing further soldering to the chassis! With the wheels off the chassis, balance weights were fitted (this is my first Comet kit of the new style which include the balance weights). Once dry the wheels were painted with a mix of grey black, black and coach window mahogany to get a dirty track colour.) The chassis now needs to be cleaned, primed and then painted in the same dirty black before reassembly. At which point I really must get on and finish the backhead, glazing and handrails to complete the loco. The latter being a job I really hate doing, getting the curve right for the front… Given that I had a lot of paint left over, I decided to put it to good use on a bit of weathering. Beenham Grange was the loco of choice, this was an experiment in improving Hornby’s GWR green earlier in the year (unfortunatly a bad reaction with the varnish which spoiled the finish.) This had previously been sorted out with a lot of effort with a fiberglass pen getting rid of the crackled finish. Weathering was a fairly basic approach, covering about a square inch with a watered down mix of the grey/red/black mix before wiping most of it away. This was repeated several times to build up the dirt, before repainting the black areas with a thicker mix. More grey was added to the boiler /firebox top & roof, while the smokebox was picked out in grey black. I ran out of paint before finishing the tender only having enough to do the sides, so the black bits still need more work…

Better late than never, I get on with finishing the Churchill Build: Completed turret dry fitted to the hull, trailer assembled (wheels not glued) and some minor filling: With the tracks masked up, it was time to get on the under coats The tank and trailer were then sprayed Dark Green, while various other detailing parts where painted. Once everything was dry the Churchill re-assembled and the parts glued into place carefully. Once everything had dried thoroughly the Decals where added (all 5 of them) She was then returned to the paintshop for initial weathering.. I then attacked her with weathering powders, before declaring her finished. Oh and not one, but two cameo's.. Which one am I currently building? Till next time TTFN James

It's been a busy weekend, but sadly it's all over but thanks to a day off today, various parts of the project have been able to be completed. Bringing myself one step closer to finishing this project to enable me to crack on with the Layout. To make this a simple piece, this weekend, I was able to pick up my roofs for the Quints from Isinglass Models at the Peterborough Model Railway Show on top of that I was able to get my hands on some 3/32" Nickle Rod. This rod is only just too big for for the bogies but this varies as I found out as all 6 bogies took to the rod differently , 2 of the 6 bogies did not require filing down to get the rod through, however all the coach connectors required fining out to get the the rod through. Since the photo below was taken all the rods has been cut down to a shorter length so it appears more hidden up when running. The example of that work is on the right. Another job to get the coaches ready for testing I needed to fit removable NEM couplings, fortunately I have 2 spare from 2 Hornby J15's so I removed the coupling and glued the pocket onto the underside of the two bogies by Sunday Morning the glue had dried and I was able to place the coupling back into the the pocket so testing could begin. The next job was to test them, so I went to my club layout on Sunday, and straight of the bat, the coaches ran fine without any derailments, I took a few video's and have put them onto my You Tube Channel, showing them running on the club layout, Marriott's County at the Whitwell & Reepham Railway. Since these videos were taken, a few more pieces have been completed. The next few job's carried out today was mainly the fitting of the roof vents, with that the roofs are obviously printed in Resin, but leave a small amount of film and distinct lines on the roof tops which must be removed. Just a bit of sanding down with some sand paper resolved this. Following this and turning the roof over there's a clearly marked spine on the underside of the roof, which gives aid to the modeler when looking for the center point, using the the drawings provided as a guide I was able to get markings for the where the vents are supposed to go, using a permanent marker I marked along the spine to guide me so where the drill needed to create the wholes on the roof. After doing this I test fitted the vents only to find that I needed to use the drill on the other side of the roof so the vents would fit through the hole. After a few hours work I finished all 5 roofs and got them into white primer. I will look to get the underside of the roofs hand painted into white by this weekend. So currently this completes all the structural work for the coaches, the next phase of the project includes fitting the door locks, handles, under frame gear and finally the stage which is white undercoat before painting. So I shall leave you with this photo, and bid you a good evening Thanks Tom

Made a start on the roof, thought I would first try using the parts in the kit, if this fails I will move on to tile or slate plasticard sheets The station forcourt elevation roof will be quite tricky to form with all the gables and roof lengths Also made a start on the painting, base coat of mid stone on the walls, sand around the doors, windows and corners, tomorrow will start picking out stones in differing shades