The Great Bear

After a period of hibernation, back to shed. After quite a bit of tidying my first project is to get the branch line going again, it having fallen into disrepair and overgrown with rubbish dumped on it, somewhere flat to put stuff. The branch needs to be converted to DCC, done and I want to get signalling working. Due to damage to some of the ratio signals, lack of patience and skill and to keep wiring simple the branch has been converted to One Engine In Steam operation, the signal box reduced to ground frame and signalling rationalised. Here's the modified signal box diagram. I've gone for DCC concepts Cobalt-S levers. I've painted them based on this. Hopefully it's right?! Thanks for looking, Jon

Great pictures of a fantastic layout. Love the pictures of the Hall. And I do like that creamery.

Great photos, Robin. I particularly like the second one of the prairie, I can't put my finger on it but this one looks especially realistic. Look forward to seeing more, Jon

360kph is max speed at opening from what I have read, alignment and structures provide for 400kph where possible.

That is already happening to a small extent for some...

As you should be...

Whether in these straightened times support for a scheme that will cost so much will continue I am not sure. An unfavourable outcome in the judicial review might be a convenient excuse to pull the plug.

Depending on if/when it gets shelved, civil engineers will take years designing it, re-designing it and then (possibly) building it. (I'm a civil engineer.)

Interesting to see these and the comments on how they go together. How did the bogies go, I think I'd read somewhere that's the weakpoint of these kits?

Lovely photos as always, with a nice bit of operational detail (the addition of a barrier wagon). Makes me want to go an have a running session with my BLT but I need to do a lot of tidying first.

Wonderful.

Great stuff, first photo in particular is superb - will look forward to seeing more.

Looks good, Jules. Is this practise for a signal box (or ground frame) at the station?

Good.

Been having a **** week so page 1087 of the latest (Dec) Railway Modeller cheered me up a bit. I'd better stopping playing with trying to DCCify old locos and get on with the rest of the layout so I can run the Milk trains like Matt (Karhedron) has described!

Would Tracklay as Ben Alder and I use be an option for the plain track - easy to use, saves time, end result looks neat to me, at least. Details on Ben's layout thread http://www.rmweb.co....far-north-line/ As you're a perfectionist I suspect there's a catch... Also, maybe I've mistunderstood problem but would a folding combi ladder thing help with access to the track over the stairs? Hope you can keep up the current rate of progress, Jon

Quite a bit of my modelling time has been spent trying to convert locos to DCC. DCC ready ones aren't a problem apart from the Bachmann Hall which still doesn't run as sweetly as I'd like. I am pretty pleased that given my complete absence of electical skill I managed to hardwire decoder for this old dog I found on ebay: The DCC installation - a large (2A peak) DCC concepts decoder with Stay Alive in tender, fitting new pickups to the open motor and some tender pickups to my surprise worked. There's a few issues: the current draw of this is such that it's pushing the capacity of my Powercab setup, at least the way I've divided up the buses. As a temporary fix I've bought some larger (18W) rather than the stock (12W) bulbs for the CP6 I'm using for fault detection. The bulbs still light a wee bit when this locos in motion. More work is needed on the layout power, possibly upgrade to the smart booster and proper overload protection but for now this low cost fix will suffice. The loco needs some cosmetic work and renumbering to a Banbury loco and really could do with a larger tender and different insignia for the period and area I'm modelling. Despite the stay alive it stalls a bit too easily and more pickups and possibly stronger stay alive are also on the to-do list. I had to remove some plasticine in the front of the boiler to get the loco to balance properley and it could also do with a bit more ballast on the loco over the driving wheels as it slips a bit at times, though achieving this looks difficult. I. A nice project for the future, but for now something a wee bit different to plod around. I have a penchant for these smaller tender locos. Again, thanks for looking Jon

Thanks for posting pictures of your friend's model of Epsom. A great model and of interest to me as I used to work there and commute by train.

Interesting! Gives me some ideas - making/modifiying RTR with sides is on my list and a single colour would be easier for a 1st painting attempt.

Thanks for the suggestions on fixing derailment problems. The points are Code 75 Peco medium or curved radius and the plain track in the fiddleyard is Peco code 75. I've solved a couple of problems by a bit of modification to the track: Before I did this everything derailed here This one's appeared to fix problem with some coaches derailing as mentioned above. The wagons, I've checked the back to backs with a DCC concepts 14.5mm gauge. The wagons were either new Bachmann ones or older Bachmann/Replica ones bought from ebay which I'd re-wheeled. Using the gauge eased the wheels out slightly from their default setting. I've weeded out some duff ones, by trial and error, taking out ones which derailed and replacing with others. Not very scientific. The older wagons were the problem and in due course remedial works will follow. At the moment if I run a 20 wagon train at a scale 20mph it seems to work ok. Trains going round and round is still a novelty but at the moment freight trains are offering more "bang for buck", a 100 second lap or so rather than 25 seconds for an express. Thanks for looking and new comments and likes in the last few days. Jon

Thanks, Alan. I agree about seeing long trains, it would be even more enjoyable if they didn't derail so often, especially the freight trains when going over the curved pointwork on the approach to the staging yard! (The same happens with coaches with the short wheelbase bogies, the 3rd coach in a train consistently derails on the outer two tracks, it looks as though it's the pulling force through the coupling thats doing it rather than the wheels lifting off by themselves.)

Thanks, Gary. My progress has been slower than I'd hoped. At the moment I'm being distracted by the novelty of trains going around the room and have been acquiring locos and stock and convert locos to DCC - anything that isn't plug and play is a challenge for me. I need to get back to the modelling (and save some pennies)!

Finally, I have some trains running around the "shed", albeit far from smoothly. Quite a bit of tidying to do!!! Should stop running trains and get on with that. I am very good at losing the body retaining screws on locos and the jumpers for the Switch 8's, down to my last one, hopefully i'll find them. Still some track to lay and some problems to fix, derailments at the diamond crossover at the fiddleyard exit. Once I've tidied, there's the track to paint, not looking forward to that. Thanks for looking, Jon

As someone modelling late GWR, I wish they were releasing the modified Hall in GWR livery; maybe that will follow? The list by 6959's I find interesting. On my layout Halls should be main motive power, so a possibility might be to aquire several original Bachmann Halls and substitute different tenders. With quite a lot of post war grime any differences in shades of green might not be so obvious?

Wonderful. The two shots looking from the station end down the layout are my favourites I think, plus the last one of the lovely station building.