Vanders Posted February 18, 2013 Author Share Posted February 18, 2013 I've been making steady progress over the past week or so. The cork trackbed is now cut and stuck down, and the Dapol uncoupling magnets have been glued into position. The track will be laid directly over them: the thinner sleeper base and code 40 rail of the FiNetrax trackwork will mean that the trip pins will still be close enough to the magnets to activate. I've also been spending a bit of time on some rolling stock. I want a decent rake of 12t pipe wagons, so I've currently got these on my workbench: The 2 on the right were some that I built earlier, and in all honesty they've gone together better than the 8 I'm currently working on. With a bit of filling & fettling I'm confident I can still get a set of decent looking wagons. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted March 3, 2013 Author Share Posted March 3, 2013 I'm happy to say that the first track is down. I decided to start of with the small cripple siding, which is the least important point, just to give me the chance to find any little gotchas and refine the process. Happily everything seems to have come together quite nicely. I have changed my method for connecting the tiebar to the points though, which I'll detail later. The plain track is the excellent fiNetrax. This has proven to be incredibly easy to put together; with a small "wedge" filed onto the end of the rail it just slides together, which is a testament to the work Wayne has put into it and the quality of the sleeper moulding! The fiNetrax and the pointwork match up well, I just had to place a single bit of thin card under the point to act as a shim to bring the rail upto the same height as the plain track. Oh and Wayne was also incredibly patient when my first cheque failed to arrive and then showed up after a week with insufficient postage.. Obvously I couldn't resist bodging together the electrics and giving it a try, but I'll save the pictures of the 03 and conflat A for later! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MattWallace Posted March 6, 2013 Share Posted March 6, 2013 OMG! Track down!? What's going on? So come on then, where's the video of it all working? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted March 6, 2013 Author Share Posted March 6, 2013 To be honest it isn't very exciting and the electrics are a complete bodge right now, so it'll be a little while before I have anything worth showing off. However I did start on the "Up" point last night, which is the facing point going into the yard, so once that's down I could lay the rest of the "main" line and wiz locos up and down! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted March 20, 2013 Author Share Posted March 20, 2013 It feels like I've been incredibly busy, but judging from the time since I last posted, not nearly busy enough! Over the past few weeks I've built and fitted the two turnouts that form the entrance to the yard. These are the only two turnouts on the second board, and the facing turnout on the running line is the only one on the running line, so I can crack on now with making up and laying the rest of the track there, and the headshunt. It'll make a change from building turnouts. In other news I've also been designing a small circuit board to hold a relay; these will be used to switch the frogs and switch isolating sections in and out. As these are double-layer boards and I need a bunch of them, the board design has been sent off to be professionally fabricated and I'm now waiting for them to be produced and delivered. I've always intended this layout to be a series of "firsts" and try to do things a little differently, and this is one of them! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted April 5, 2013 Author Share Posted April 5, 2013 Track laying has continued (more on which later). In the mean time, these just arrived: My relay PCBs! I'm so excited that if it weren't a Friday evening I'd be out soldering the components on them right now, but as it is I've already spent an hour and a half in the shed today and there's already a couple of pints of cider with my name on them Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted April 11, 2013 Author Share Posted April 11, 2013 Track laying has continued. Each section has droppers attached, so with a bit of temporary wiring this has increased the danger of playing trains exponentially! All of the plain sections of track I.e. anything that isn't a turnout or board joint, are the excellent fiNetrax. I've found that it's dead easy to put together even a full 500mm long section without a jig, and I've got the process down to no more than 20 minutes. This is a product that was long overdue in the N gauge market in my opinion, and I'd encourage anyone thinking about starting a new N gauge layout to give it a try. I've also put together the first five of my small relay PCB's As previously stated these will be used to switch the frog polarity. The relay is activated by a single wire, which just happens to be exactly the same mechanism that the MERG Servo4 controller uses. The upshot is that I'll be able to control the server and switch the frog polarity with a single wire and a simple on/off switch on the control panel. This also means that if I use a double-pole switch, I can switch a pair of LEDs and have route indication on the control panel without having to run any additional wiring. I've also been busy purchasing locos and rolling stock: a Dapol Hymek, a Farish 37/0 with buffer beam cowls, a Dapol 121 (actually two: a blue dummy unit and an NSE powered unit. One body swap and an eBay sale coming up...), yet more Presflos, and a couple of Mk I coaches for the occasional loco hauled special. Oh and a Dapol 22 and some Grampus wagons on pre-order! On the kit front I'm not happy with the way the bodies for the 12t pipe wagons have come out. I'm still mulling my options here; scratch building new bodies may be an option. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MattWallace Posted April 12, 2013 Share Posted April 12, 2013 Track down? I'm impressed! So come on then, where's the video of the trains moving?... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted April 13, 2013 Author Share Posted April 13, 2013 So come on then, where's the video of the trains moving?... Not until I've got it all down, the track fettled and some more wiring in! All the frogs are currently unpowered, which leaves some pretty large dead spots. Even the 37 struggles between the two facing points that form the entrance to the yard, because the dead spot is almost long enough to cover the entire wheelbase. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ess1uk Posted May 11, 2013 Share Posted May 11, 2013 Looking good Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted May 12, 2013 Author Share Posted May 12, 2013 Thanks. The rest of track is down now, although there's still plenty of finishing and fettling to be done. I haven't been feeling very well the past week, but I'll upload some new pictures once I have a bit more energy. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted May 19, 2013 Author Share Posted May 19, 2013 Progress has been slow over the past two weeks due to illness, but the trackwork is now pretty much complete, bar potentially having to lift & re-lay the two "stub" sidings to get them levelled out, and the short section on the mainline that will lead to the fiddle yard. I've also got a slight issue with the small point that I've lifted & re-laid once already, where one of the point blades has risen up. If I can't tension it back down again from underneath the board I'll have to lift, repair and re-lay that one for the second time. The least important turnout on the board is proving to be the most awkward! Most of the droppers are wired to temporary feeds, which is good enough to run rolling stock over the entire layout, so now I have to spend some time fettling and fixing any issues, and making sure it all works. Oh and I have to build the fiddle yard! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted May 22, 2013 Author Share Posted May 22, 2013 So I can't fully test the track and fix any running issues until the frogs are live and the servos for the turnouts work; it's pretty difficult to tell if poor running over a section is caused by a problem with the trackwork or something like the point blades shifting slightly as the stock passes over it. So, that means making a start on the wiring. A lot of people will say "I don't like wiring.", "I don't understand wiring." or "I don't understand wiring but someone else who does did it all for me." which are all perfectly valid. I'm odd; I like wiring. So much so that I've been planning the wiring in my head for a while now, and I've even designed and had manufactured various custom circuit boards that I'll be using. So I figure I'll document the wiring. It's much a part of the layout as the trackwork or scenery! This is what I'm starting with All of the droppers from each section of track and the turnouts have been terminated in terminal blocks which are hot glued to the underside, and the temporary wiring on the left hand board has all been removed. The wiring on the right hand board is slightly less temporary but still needs tidying up. I've positioned out the circuit boards that will be added, although there are a few missing. I'll be using 12V DC control, with servos controlling the points via. a MERG Servo4 controller, one on each board. Each board will also have it's own independent fixed12V DC power bus that will run all of the other electronics, each driven from a their own dedicated 16-18V AC supply. I'll post some more as I go along. If there's anything anyone wants to know about specifically let me know and I'll try to remember to capture it as I go! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted June 2, 2013 Author Share Posted June 2, 2013 More progress today. All of the PCBs are now attached to the underside of each board. The method is straight out of the previous MERG journal; nylon hex standoffs have been glued into small pieces of lightweight wood (strip pine, in this instance), the PCB is then screwed to the standoffs and then the wood is glued to the bottom of the foam with the good old solvent free grab adhesive. I've also made up the inter-board cable, and made a start on the control panel: At this point it's little more than a box with some connectors in it, so it technically isn't a control panel as it doesn't control anything yet! It does mean I can get the AC power and DC output from the controller onto the boards, so I can now start wiring them in and bring up the 12V DC power bus on each board. Last, but by no means least, I've also been putting together the wiring manual, which had to be done prior to doing things like building the 25-way cables. Planing everything and writing it all down in one place should make the actual process of stringing individual wires around much easier! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted June 25, 2013 Author Share Posted June 25, 2013 It's been slow going the past month, mostly due to work commitments, but most of the under-board wiring is at least completed now. I've still got quite some way to go though, as the control panel isn't finished and testing tonight has revealed a rather fundamental error: at some point in the last six months I've got it into my head that the Servo4 board required a +12V DC input ("active high") but they actually require a 0V pull down from +5V ("active low"). That means all the inputs to the relays that are connected to them are currently pulled high to +5V, too. That should be fixable with a small inverter but...whoops! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ess1uk Posted June 26, 2013 Share Posted June 26, 2013 that's a very nice neat wiring job there Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted June 29, 2013 Author Share Posted June 29, 2013 that's a very nice neat wiring job there Thanks. Mostly just a case of working methodically! There's still a little bit of tidying up to do, as I've run out of stick on cable hooks. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted July 8, 2013 Author Share Posted July 8, 2013 Now that the layout is back up on it's legs, and with enough of the wiring in place to allow me to run locos over the pointwork with the frogs live, I've spent the past week or so prodding, poking & packing the track to try to fix any running issues. It's not as bad as I had first feared, and I've achieved at least "acceptable" running at this point. There are two remaining major issues: some frog noses are quite high so I have an extra-fine soldering iron tip on the way so I can get down and re-flow the solder, and the point blades are not always tight up against the stock rails, which will be resolved once I have the servos in place. With those two solved I'm hoping I can achieve something closer to "great" running: fingers crossed. With all the test running I've got some stock on the rails and it's almost beginning to look like a real layout now! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted July 11, 2013 Author Share Posted July 11, 2013 Some more progress last night. The extra fine (0.5mm!) soldering iron tip arrived, so with that and some Carrs Solder Paint I rectified a few of the turnouts where the frogs were sitting proud. That in turn revealed a slightly tight K-crossing on one, where wheels were striking the frog, so I gave it a quick prod with the iron while I was there, too. With that out of the way I'd now describe running as "good". There's still one spot left to sort out (that damn stub siding again!), and the track needs a good clean, but I can now propel a rake of Farish Presflo around without issues, which is not bad at all given how light the Presflos are. The next new problem is that the Dapol "Easi Shunt" couplings aren't: although the couplings open quite easily with the stock stopped over the magnets, the delayed action simply doesn't work. No matter what I do, the couplings don't move to the correct position and will always re-couple once the stock is off the magnet. This may be because I placed the magnets below the track, and even with the thin sleepers of the fiNetrax and code 40 rail, the magnet is still too far away from the trip pin to have enough force. This isn't a total disaster, but I may need to build a test piece and experiment with some magnets to find out the best solution. Before I do that though, I have a small pile of 90mm wide strips of 6mm ply and 8m of aluminium angle waiting for me to build a fiddle yard. Looks like I'm all set for the weekend, then! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MattWallace Posted July 11, 2013 Share Posted July 11, 2013 ok, wrong gauge and all the rest of it, but I've found that with the OO/HO Kadees you need to put the magnets between the sleepers not underneath them in order to get some semblance of operation. You also seem to need at least three rows of the small magnets I'm using based on other posts on here which may explain why mine aren't working too well either... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted July 12, 2013 Author Share Posted July 12, 2013 Half of Hattons arrived today, so I couldn't resist a bit more playing with trains! 08 parked up for the night with a short set of empties, while the Hymek waits for the yard shunter to release it from the civil engineers train it's just arrived with. The bubble car is ticking over at the (invisible) platform before it sets back on its slow journey back to Bristol. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fat Controller Posted July 12, 2013 Share Posted July 12, 2013 I've been making steady progress over the past week or so. The cork trackbed is now cut and stuck down, and the Dapol uncoupling magnets have been glued into position. The track will be laid directly over them: the thinner sleeper base and code 40 rail of the FiNetrax trackwork will mean that the trip pins will still be close enough to the magnets to activate. cork.jpg I've also been spending a bit of time on some rolling stock. I want a decent rake of 12t pipe wagons, so I've currently got these on my workbench: pipe_wagons_1.jpg The 2 on the right were some that I built earlier, and in all honesty they've gone together better than the 8 I'm currently working on. With a bit of filling & fettling I'm confident I can still get a set of decent looking wagons. I don't know if it's my ageing eyes, but some of those pipe wagons (most notably those to the right) look wider than the rest? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted July 12, 2013 Author Share Posted July 12, 2013 I don't know if it's my ageing eyes, but some of those pipe wagons (most notably those to the right) look wider than the rest? Those two are finished with underframes and had wheels in, so they're higher up than the rest and so probably look a little wider due to the difference in angle. As it happens I'm utterly unhappy with how that large batch of 12t wagons came out: things usually look a lot better when I come back to them after a little while but when I looked at them again a few days ago they still looked terrible. On the bright side I still have all the bits for the 12ft underframes, so I'm considered scratch building or casting my own bodies and using those with the Parkside under frames. 'course by the time I've done that Farish will probably have released an excellent RtR version! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanders Posted July 22, 2013 Author Share Posted July 22, 2013 With it too hot for woodwork and too nice for more wiring, I fancied a change of pace recently and decided to make up some buffer stops. As Laurence Hill is supposed to be an ex-Midland station, I thought it'd be nice to have some Midland Railway buffer stops, mixed in with a few newer LMS/BR pattern stops. Now that's where things became difficult: although there are lots of very high quality buffer stop kits and etches in 4mm & 7mm scales, there is no one, and I mean no one, who makes anything in N. The closest I could find were the 2mm Society etches, which would have required me to join the 2mm Society and I understand they're fiendishly difficult to put together. So it was scratch build or nothing. I finally tracked down a set of drawings with a scale, and although the drawing isn't excellent quality it at least gave me something I could get dimensions from. The next problem was how to bend the rail: luckily I came across a post my missy of this parish, which was exactly what I needed. So a purchase of a piercing saw, blades and some 0.5mm brass later... The three large pieces were sweated together (with a blow torch: that's a lot of brass to heat!), with the small triangle left free. Then it's simply a case of annealing a length of code 40 rail, and then pushing the rail into the tool with the small triangular part: the rail becomes pliable enough that you can do this by hand. The tool, combined with another jig to help put the joggle into the upright pieces, and another jig to hold them while they were soldered together, and another jig to hold the sandwich of pieces together... Note that the annealing process has left the curved bits of rail badly oxidized: this doesn't come off even with a heavy scrub with a fibre glass pencil, so soldering them to anything has proved to be "fun"! The first one took me somewhere in the region of 10 hours to build, but that included the time to figure out how to build them and then build the tools and jigs to actually build the parts, so really it was time well spent. Thankfully the second one only took an hour to build, and here it is in all its extra-cruel extra-close up glory: I think the time and effort was well worth it! Just two more of these and then a pair of LMS/BR pattern stops to build. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Gwinnett Posted July 22, 2013 Share Posted July 22, 2013 Very nicely done, although if I may make one tiny suggestion, a third rail underneath the two in the beam would cement the MR look for me? But that is not intended to take anything away from the craftsmanship on show, just an observation. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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