Jump to content
 

Vistisen

RMweb Gold
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    1,001

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Blog Entries posted by Vistisen

  1. Vistisen
    Fase one of the project was building the Hatch station section together with a couple of fiddle yards at each end. I decided to build the layout on four baseboards so as to be portable. (during fase2 it might need to move around the room). I wanted to try an open frame section hence the track and road running down to the fiddle yard at the right hand end. This yard is about 10 cm lower than the rest of the layout, as I want to try making an incline. The plan can be seen here
     

    The boys started construction of the baseboards using 2" by1" framing and 9mm plywood for the top. MISTAKE Nr1 The boards are far too heavy and even the 2" deep frame is not enough to hide or protect the DCC point motors that are now mounted under the frames
     
    .
     
    The track plan was printed out full size on many sheets of A3 paper. I have used Tillig Elite track as I love the look of its points. The flexible track is VERY flexible and difficult to lay in a straight line it is also hard to keep the sleepers perpendicular to the rails, But I do not regret the choice.

     
    I was already concerned by the tendency of the baseboards to act as loudspeakers so I decided to use closed cell foam as the track bed, and bought a large pack designed to be used under solid wood flooring. To help hide it the green colour was painted earth brown before being glued with Copydex to the plywood. The chamfers to the foam were cut by a Stanley knife held at an angle
     

     
    After this track was glued in place with Copydex and test runs with hand pushed wagons started. This uncovered MISTAKE NR2. The fishplates for tillig track fit very tightly (which is good for electrical conductivity). But if you do not look out when joining track to points, you can by mistake push the rails that form the Vee in enough to muck up the clearance and wheels no longer run through the Vee. Until I realised what was happening I used to use a slitting disk to open up the Vee again, but now I know that the way to stop this happening is to use a pair of thin nosed pliers to hold the rails in place when sliding fishplates on to the points.
     
    With the track in place in the station section across the baseboard joins I then made MISTAKE Nr3. I never did get round to cutting the tracks where the crossed the baseboard joins So now those two base boards are permanently joined together! This ‘decision’ was reinforced by the wiring also going across the joins not to mention the scenery and buildings. Not so good now that I want to move the layout for fase two!
  2. Vistisen
    I have the attention span of a five-year-old, so at this point I started on several projects at the same time, scenery, scratch building the station, goods shed and platform, and ballasting the track, and the electrics for points and control panel. If I got bogged down in one of them, I just moved on to the next. This is a certain technique for not getting very much done at all. Luckily I have a good friend who lives in Copenhagen, every time he visits I get a fresh dose of enthusiasm, and the pace picks up for a bit.
     

     
    This post will focus on scenery. The station is built on a flat baseboard, in reality Hatch station is set in a cutting with steep banks on each side. But to make it a bit easier to see the station the cutting on my layout widens on the left hand side to create a natural viewing window. I cut formers from hardboard with a jigsaw, these are glued against small wood blocks, On the first section shown here, the hardboard formers are quite close together, on the later open frame sections I made MISTAKE number 4. The formers here are placed too far apart which means that the hillsides tend to sag between each ridge, not good! I then used a glue gun to create a lattice of cardboard strips cut from a cereal packet glued over these forms this is followed by three layers of impregnated plaster bandages placed over the top.
     

     
    This white plaster is painted brown, before using a blend of different static grasses to create the base greenery. I started off using a tea strainer type applicator, don’t bother doing this. Being too stingy to buy a Grassmaster, I ended up using a cheapo Chinese copy. It works but the results are a bit uneven, and it is difficult to be precise. As a finishing touch Woodland scenic’s moorland mixture and static grass tufts then add texture to the base layers to create the illusion of weeds.
     

     
    I have tried different forms for hedges, Jarvis hedges are a bit too solid for my liking Though they are what is still in use at the moment around roads. I have made some more ragged hedges by using lichen rolled into shaped sprayed with glued and rolled in a mixture of various Noch leaves. I have then used small pieces of seafoam as small bushes and trees in this hedgerow and I am quite pleased with the results.
     

  3. Vistisen

    Power and control

    By Vistisen,

    One thing I was pretty certain of when starting Hatch was that it was going to be DCC. I chose after much reading of reviews an NCE Powercab as a starter system that could be expanded later, possibly somewhere down the line in the future computer controlled. So I knew that I was going to use DCC to control points as well, but I was equally against having to remember accessory codes for all points. So I wanted to have the best of both worlds I had already chosen Tillig track which does not have sprung blades and is quite delicate. So solenoid points motors were out of the question. Tortoise was an obvious choice. But I came across DCC concepts point motors that seemed to have everything I wanted to control live fog points and panel lights, these combined with their dcc accessory units which allow for operation either by DCC or by push button switches offer maximum flexibility, even though as a down side it means you seem to have double as much wiring for both DCC and DC operation + live fogs and LEDs on a control panel. I seem to have worked it out 12 wires per point! My control panel is connected to the layout by 2 36 pin parallel printer cables. Wiring under the boards is a mess to be honest. It’s not complicated, there is just a lot of it!

     
    My Anyrail software was used to produce a control panel track plan. I found a print shop that would print on to white Perspex. Ii looked lovely and I then mucked it up by screwing hinges to the bottom edge. What was I thinking?!
     

     
    Next time I will also use bezel mounted LEDs rather than just trying to glue normal 3mm leds in 3mm holes. I got my one of my boys to do all the soldering and then switched it all on, changed the first point and everything overloaded because of a short! Just one place on the entire layout I had forgotten to put an insulator on the inner rail of a vee of a point, and that was the point I tried first. I ended up just slitting the rail.
     

     
    Next time I’ll use power districts and separate power supplies to the point motors. Now that it all works, it is great, and I love the fact that you can also see the LEDS change when using the DCC accessory address to change points. But 90% of the time it is quicker to push buttons. Another thing I will do I the future is attach point motors to the sticking out side of the tie bar rather than between the rails. I have now destroyed two tie bars when cleaning track either the track rubber or cloth snags on the wire sticking up between the rails, and the tillig points do have a very delicate tie bar.
     

     
    This one is in a fiddle yard hence the green trackbed. I will look into the possibility of reinforcing then with a thin slither of metal glued to the underside of the tirebare.
    I have not mentioned rolling stock, I have tied to keep things reasonably true to what would have been running on the line in the late 50’s, early 60’s So I have A Bachmann 45XX and 8750, and a collet goods, a Dapol 14xx and for some reason lost in the past a Bachmann class 40 which I suspect is not totally prototypical, although it is still more relevant than the Rapido APT-e which is on order. (I might drop that one) When I get enough time I do want to have a go at weathering stock, but have never tried it yet.
    Things to do on Hatch are signals ( Dapol?) point rodding and build the signal box. But I am feeling the urge to push on with phase2. Which brings this blog up to date. Next time I’ll reveal my plans for the next major development,
  4. Vistisen

    ...and then again...

    By Vistisen,

    Hmm. Since I wrote my last post, there has been exciting news in the world of OO gauge. The sleeping giant from Devon has announced ‘proper’ OO gauge track, possibly with points, and both Joseph Pestell and DCC concepts seem to be about to produce some points as well. This plus that I saw my friend’s newest hand built points again, and I weakened. He is even tempting me by doing the offering to do the Templot work for me!
    So having made up my mind, I am going to claim the prerogative normally used by my better half and unmake it again. It was a good decision, so it should be taken several times. I now have decided that I have not decided and need to wait and see what happens over the next few months.
     
    I will not waste my time though. I do need to build that signal box for Hatch. I will do this first, this means that by about 2019 I’ll be finished with that and ready to do something else.
  5. Vistisen

    Ready steady go!

    By Vistisen,

    There are now two large pieces of plywood (9mm and 5 mm) and about 5 m2 of extruded foam blocking the landing upstairs. I have bought a saw blade appropriate, and after much mucking about I Templot AND Anyrail produced a plan for some baseboards that manage to avoid putting edges under any points.

    My teenage son has discovered the brand new bench saw and is champing at the bit to get building baseboards, so the only thing left to do is to clear some space,

    Oh dear. I will have to attack that tomorrow. Meanwhile here is an aerial shot of Hatch station which was the pilot project and the only bit of the original model that will survive.

  6. Vistisen
    In my last post you have noticed that I was a bit despondent after discovering that what I thought were operational points only worked as long as you did not use any locomotives on them.
    I decided to take a break and tackle something else. I had already plans to paint the ghastly orange coloured walls. But to be honest painting them was not enough. As the rest of our upstairs was renovated a few years back. We decided to do the same thing in the hobby room. So it has gone from looking like this,

     
    to looking like this.

     
    I am really please with the result, mind you getting rid of the mess helps, well when I say getting rid of, the truth is that an the moment the upstairs corridor looks like this.
     

    The missus is away at the moment but she is returning in a few days, so I’m a bit busy.
  7. Vistisen

    Back to where we were

    By Vistisen,

    I feel I have reached a mile stone. I had to rip all the wiring out of the existing baseboards because it looked like this.

    As there is now going to be a low-level storage yard. There was a clear need to improve the wiring. I have now finished rewiring the Hatch and it now looks like this.

    There is a four pin XLR connecter socket and cable between each base board.

    I built a test control panel that consists of a four-pin socket, A four pin plug and a 9-volt dc supply to the track to test polarity of all insulated sections of the electrofrog points and a NCE power cab on the separate DCC accessory bus to test all the DCC point motors, and it all works with colour coded wires, and a 5-amp train bus system. And it all works!

    I have treated my self to a DCCconcepts 5amp DCC booster and a matching 5-amp power supply. The first pack arrived today. The whole thing oozes quality. The packaging has a flap that is help in place by a small magnet. I felt like I should put on a pair of kid gloves before daring to touch it. Whilst swooning over DCC Concepts products I feel a special affection for their wire strippers that can remove the insulation in the middle of a piece of wire.

    These are by far the best wire stripers I have used.
  8. Vistisen

    Control panel part one

    By Vistisen,

    One of my mistakes with the original control panel was that It looked awful from the front and had wiring where you expected to see two dogs end up chewing the same wire accompanied by accordion music on the back. This time I wanted to do things better. I used AnyRail to make a mimic diagram which I then printed and laminated.

    Then I watched DCC Concepts’ youtube videos on how to build a mimic diagram. And I started again! This time I fired up my old InDesign DTP program, imported the black and white drawings and tarted them up a bit. The end result looks like this:

    Not that anyone else will notice. The borders are CWR green for the Hatch section and SR green for Chard Junction. The fonts are Egyptian serif and Gill Sans. I know that I am actually modelling the whole thing in the late 50’s. But Rule 1!
    These two diagrams along with one for the fiddle yards will be fitted to 3mm MDF plates that fit into this framework.

    I am waiting for some small magnets to arrive that will be used to hold the MDF plates in place. So that whilst fixed, the plates can easily be removed for repairs. The whole thing will be self-contained with three 12 volt sockets on the back to power the Cobalt alpha panels inside, and a RJ12 socket that contains all the bus wiring. I am planning to fit a back panel with a thermostatically controlled fan to provide cooling if necessary. Due to a wild arm movement involving a paint filled roller I have just decided the baseboard edges will be the same shade of green!
  9. Vistisen
    I have written quite a lot about the trial and tribulations of building my control panel. But I think I have finally arrived at a version that both looks good and seems to work as it should. It ended being built in three sections. The bottom green panel is for a fiddle yard that I have not yet started making as I am waiting to see what clever options arrive for setting routes via the cobalt alpha system. I know something is on the way. but not yet whether it is something I can work out how to use. Being as Winnie the Pooh put it ‘a bear of very little brain’, this is not certain.
    Being very logical I started Using DCC accessory codes 0001 at one end of the layout and then numbered each point or crossover as I reached it with the next number. The first build of the control panel had a had all the circuit boards mounted to the bottom of the control panel or on supports fitted to the bottom. This coupled with the numbering of the points geographically resulted in a lot of wires crossing between circuit boards. I have already written about the need to avoid constant reconnecting the wires and the switches as this gave me problems with loose connections. And made it hard to get at the thing to do maintenance as all the wires had one end fixed to the front panel, and the other attached to a circuit board in the case.
     
    I then had a Harry Beck moment. (google it if you do not recognise the reference) The numbers allocated to the points do not have to be logical. They should just be connected to the nearest available socket on the circuit-boards. I had a rethink and ended up mounting the alpha encoder control unit to one side of a strip of plywood and the two corresponding digital switch panels to the other with short loops of three core ribbon cable connecting then around one edge of the plywood. This Strip is then mounted by supports to the back for each of the control panels two front sections with all the points on each section connected the nearest switch like this:
     

     
    This means that each section of the panel can be removed as a self-contained unit. This greatly reduces the amount of strain put on the fragile connections. I have mounted a Power socket on the section closest to the back panel. So there are three cables that go out of the control box, a12volt power cable and the RJ11 signal cable from the first alpha encoder, and a cable to a remote display of called accessory codes. Between the two-sections there are just two cables (the power and the extension signal cable for connection two encoders) these are both made as plug and socket connections. So that to remove a section of the panel for maintenance requires unplugging just two connections.
     

     
    Having reassembled the whole thing like this I was quite nervous about connecting it all up to what is built so far of the layout. But I did so yesterday and lo and behold, points started changing. Not the right point of course as I need to reassign the codes to the new non-geographical number order. But even so I am really very pleased with the results.
     

     
    The next thing to tackle of the electrical stuff is to build a back panel for the control panel where the necessary sockets are put in place to make it even simpler to unplug the whole control panel. I also plan to build a similar box to hold all the power supplies and control units for Chard Junction so that I end up with a power box sits between the layout and the control panel. The back panel of this box will have power connecter sockets, two 4 pin XLR sockets to the layout, and 3 (maybe 4 sockets) to the control panel: the RJ11, the 12volt power and one or two display repeaters. It seems to be that the display repeater socket on an Alpha encoder only shows address operations for the encoder that it is connected to even though you can daisy chain several encoders. Either that or I have problems with the second decoder I have not discovered yet!
    The power box will have sloping front like the control on this front will be inputs for my NCC handset(s), and. and a visual display show the accessory decoders operations and an amp-meter showing power consumption. If I get carried away It will also have temperature-controlled fans and a display showing temperature inside the box.
×
×
  • Create New...