kipford

For anyone looking to EM or P4 one of these ( like me) according to Nigel Burkins blog its looks like Hornby have pulled a flanker (or should that be a different word) and used non standard axle sizes . I await my NSE version and the discovery of what problems lie ahead with re-wheeling with interest Dave

Latest issue of Model Rail (arrived today) has a review of the blue version. Leave you to your own opinions but I am not canceling the order for my NSE version. Dave

Was in Kernow Models at lunchtime, they looked at the Hornby trade site for me and the due date is now 5th September at Hornby! Dave

The layout now has an official management approved home in Sons bedroom (he is away at uni anyway and he likes it in his bedroom) It can easily be removed to go to other places. Now the fiddle is complete I can finish the test running properly and also get the kaydees set up properly. To keep myself further amused on the side I bought the NCE usb adaptor and a copy of great bear, we now have multi unit shuttle services running in the back ground while I play with the yard, it also gives me an additional throttle. At present it is running on a spare PC under the layout but I am pondering whether to get a secondhand laptop or a note book to run it on. I could do with another portable computer as work keep further restricting what I can get to run on my work laptop - miserable gits. Apart from test running I now have to face up to the fact the next task is paint/spray the sleepers and rail then the dreaded ballasting. All for now further on the bright side its EXPO EM this weekend! Dave

Holiday over, Westfield still not fixed (Westfield cock up, and going to be the subject of a phone call tomorrow). However the fiddle yard is finished and running but not painted yet. I have also made sufficient cassettes to store all the stock. The fiddle yard board is a break with recent tradition for me and is simply a 75mm x 19mm softwood frame with a 6mm MDF top, simple and quick to make. Although some people will disagree with the use of MDF. I have used it before in another layout that did ten years of exhibition work without problem - secret was it was never ever stored outside of the house. At the back of the fiddle yard is a rack system for the cassettes, shamelessly ripped off from Leaford - I am sure Kevin will not mind. Cassettes, three types: Long for long EMU's, Short for Wagons and 2 car EMUs and loco for locos. They are made from 6mm MDF bases with 19swg (1.0mm) thick Aluminium (6082-T6) angles. The angles and joiners were to my own design. The angles with all holes pre-made were CNC laser cut and bent (I am lucky have access at work to some very expensive fabrication kit). Anway the following photos will describe it much better than my ramblings. Overall View of Fiddle yard with racks and cassettes Next two Loco cassette detail Loco and Short cassettes joined Cassette interface Finally as all the stock is now on cassettes a quick ground level shot of a lonely Arriva Wessex Class 158 from the west country. The next couple of days are hopefully going top be spent getting the WF on the road as I want to be able to combine a god thrash in it with EXPO EM. Regards Dave

Kevin thanks very much for a very comprehensive reply. Sorry for the delay in saying thanks I have been away on holiday! I have the NCE USB adaptor for my power cab, so connection to the computer is no problem. My own layout is slightly simpler than yours and initially I just intend to use what is effectively a single cassette in the fiddle yard feeding two platforms on the station with two EMU's working on a shuttle basis, while the operator shunts the yard. To keep the cost down I am initially going to try 'Big Bear' software which lets you record a move, fiddle yard to station say and then use it operate a sequence. No detectors needed - I hope. Regards Dave

Spent a fair amount of time proving the track and stock (fixing Bachmann 37 Centre axles). The layout now runs as we wanted to the uncouplers work and the work done with the full size track plan and stock shows the uncoupler magnets are in the correct position. At last we are getting somewhere! I have redesigned the fiddle yard and today will take delivery of the cassette metal work which I have managed to get laser cut and bent at work (I am not using extruded angle). fiddle yard board will start soon. In between playing I built a mock up of the station building, eventually there will be a full set of mockups on the layout which will then be replaced by the actual buildings as they are made. In addition I rebuilt the lighting gantry to make it easier to carry and reduce its overall size and weight, its fitted with 3 x 30w 3ft link lights from TLC. That will probably be all for two or three weeks as we are going on holiday next week, then when I come back I have to replace all the suspension bushes on my Westfield (see avatar) so I can get it through its MOT. A couple of Photos, First one shows station mock up in place. Second shows layout lit up by its new light rig. Dave

Kevin Great layout, been following this thread for ages. I have a question. You are using NCE (power or pro cab?)DCC and according to the Model Rail article RR & Co for the automation of the passenger services. I am using an NCE power cab and want to do something similar with my passenger services, are you using block detection in the control? A brief description of how you system is set up would be really appreciated if you have time. Regards Dave

Rammstein The layout is in my sons bedroom as he spends most of the time at medical school in Brighton,so its his poster. My current modelling music is varying from Early Genesis through Pink Floyd (all periods) to Muse and the latest Slash album. PS Saw Rammstein at the NEC in 2005 during the RISE tour (it was a matter of try to find a reasonable beer near the NEC while son went to concert or actually go) it was pretty awesume especially the pyrotechics! Dave

Now its all operational. I am starting to check out the stock and generally run it to iron out the bugs. We have also put some mock ups of buildings etc in place to start to get a feel for what will and will not work (Station mock up is to the original design not the one in the latest post. Anyway here are some (not brilliant) photos of what I hope is the potential to come. The white scenery is chalk but will be 80-90% covered in greenery (as per prototype) which should lend some colour to what is predominantly an urban setting. PS how many people know what the 'Barry Building' is? There is a family reason for it being included! Station end of the layout looking a bit busy with class 170, the Arriva Wessex unit all the way from Wales and the Sandite unit waiting for a night run. Other end of the layout with yard and lines out to Brighton and Lewes (sorry about the drink). Brighton Corporation bus helps place the layout. Bit of indulgement and not on the schedule - scratch build road railer set based on the model rail article from around 2000. Finally control panel does function and who said a DCC layout was two wires and go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Dave

Blackrat For the windows, window frames, doors, door frames, Roof slates, canopy brackets etc the aim is to laser cut these in 'Romark' or the non tradenamed equivalent (its Polystyrene blended with ABS). The main shell at the moment will be foam board, we are looking to see if this can be laser cut as well. If not I will stick full size print of the requisite parts onto the foam board and use that as templates. The side panels etc for the Salmon were done the same way. As the main walls are rendered surfaces there is no need to laminate plasticard onto the foam board, it should! just require painting with white primer. The rest of the detials will be normal scratch build methods, Evergreen strip, brass tube etc. Basically the CAD will be used wherever possible. Crisisrail So do I, if I dont my son will probably never speak to me again! Building the scenery does not worry me too much, but getting it anywhere near Mr Nevard's standard which has to be the goal does! Regards

Colin Thanks. You learn something new all the time, the only track plan I have is the one from the Peter Harding booklet and even looking now its not obvious, the photos dont help either. Now that would be an interesting point to build! Dave

Wiring is now finished and I am clipping it all to the boards. This time I got it working with temporary fixings before final installation (saves a lot of wasted cable ties). In between this and at lunchtimes at work I have just about finished the CAD model of the station and have attached some screen shots below. Its based on the original Kemp Town Station adjusted to fit space available. Its quite distinctive and helps geographically place the layout. The plan at the moment is to build the shell from Foam Board, then get windows, valances, canopy supports etc laser cut. One of our club members has just bought a laser cutter and will be offering us a cutting service (for a fee obviously). The original plan was to use a small fiddle yard hidden in the tunnel, but it in practise to operate from the front and maximise the operating potential a more conventional fiddle yard is required, so the next project is to build that and get some cassettes made. This also allows me to move the tunnel mouth clear of the toe of the point leading to the yard, the Kemp Town branch was similar in it had a point directly at the exit of the tunnel, but not actually hidden in the tunnel mouth. I also wrote an operating schedule for it, which will take about 45 minutes to an hour to complete. Dave

Mark Sorry for the delay in replying I was unavoidably detained by another visit to A & E (got discharged 2.00 am this morning!)which proved to be a false alarm thank goodness . I have to be a bit politic hear as this comment concerns equipment manufactured by someone else. In essence yes it was a similar problem, but it was not busting TOU's, in fact they got another problem which I did not get! The party concerned has since borrowed one of my ESU units and he is pretty sure he knows why the ESU units are rock steady and his kit will be modified as a result. The situation was excaserbated by the use of cheap servos. If you fit a half decent large servo such as a Futaba 3003 or better a lot of the problems go away, BUT not completly and that was the rub. Any the whole point of the exercise is to use cheap servos and not have to pay tortoise prices! The ESU unit plus servos and few other parts works out less than £10 a turnout. I must re-iterate I would never go back to tortoise, lemarco, fulgarex style motors. Regards Dave

Another long time since I posted anything about the layout. I not been slacking its more of a case of either work on the layout or take pikkies and write about it on RMweb, so I took the former route. It's moved from its original home in the shed into my Sons bedroom (he is at Uni most of the time), so it is nice to have been able to work on it in the warm and more important get it into a dry atmosphere. The salmon wagon is not yet painted (weather has just been too awful to spray in), so I concentrated on getting the wiring and more important the point control finished so we could really get the grips with testing the layout. My aim was to complete point control for Christmas, so we couold start to fully debug the track and stock over the Christmas break, I achieved it. Unfortunately there was a BUT, HUMUNGUS servo buzz and HUMUNGUS glitching of the servos, sufficient to break the TOU's due to over travel. The Servo buzz, you could dial out, but it would then reappear on the same settings, something was stopping the servos reaching a null point. Glitching. Without any DCC or DC powered the servos would glitch sporadically. Add in a loco on DCC, and with 553 chipped Limas all hell broke loose. (By the way we were powering each servo from its own individual power supply, before anyone asks) After long discussions with my friend who put the boards together, it was decided to try an ESU Switch Pilot Servo. This device controls 4 servos and can be used with analogue switching (mimic panel) and DCC operation at the same time (very useful for use with RR&Co or Great Bear at a future date). ESU Switch Pilot Servo These units are only £25 and I bought one to try. It was jury rigged on the layout using the cheapest servos I could find. The unit is dead simple to set up the end stops and a bonus was the ability to slow down or speed up the servo travel. I then subjected it to every spiky Lima loco I could muster. Result NO servo buzz, NO glitching what so ever, RESULT! An order was quickly despatched to DCC supplies for another 2 units and the last 5 weeks has been spent rewiring the point motors and control panel. I finished it Friday night and as per the test it is rock steady no servo buzz no glitching. I would recommend this unit to anyone and my friend is now going to use them on his son’s new layout. Actually it not been all wiring my son Matt and I build foam board mock ups or some of the major structures and I will paste some photos soon, but will have to wait a bit because the bedroom is a mess at the moment. We have just had half the house rewired and the bedroom is full of stuff from the loft (I ache all over today because I have spent the last two days renewing the loft insulation and starting on the job of properly boarding it). Oh yes it has its first layout invite, its going as a layout under construction to the South Hants Model Railway Club's (SHMRC) new November show (28th). This year SHMRC have two shows. One in three weeks time (12th March) and the November show. We have taken over the EMGS Expo EM south date at the exhibition venue and from 2012 onwards will hold our annual show in late November. Dave

I normally find (midweek, I call in on my way to our factory in Redruth) I can park in the road just about directly outside of the shop. Dave

Peter Great layout by the way Dont worry about the thumb wheel I found it quite intuitive when I first got mine. I also find for running trains out of stations etc the incremental buttons with feedback are ok as well.

Melly Yes Cambrian Salmon. To be absolutely correct though it should not have the Y25 bogies, but the supposition is that they have been changed! Dave

A long time since I last posted anything about the layout. Two reasons, first I have been getting on with building the layout and second an unexpected trip to A & E resulted in 5 days in hospital and 6 weeks off work! The last post shows the original point motor design, I went through a number of iterations after this. The photo below shows the final set up, my aim was to use as much of the servo as practical to enable a very fine adjustment of the blade throws. The set up as designed actually proved too fine and I was running out of servo throw. This was solved by linking the servo directly to the through base board crank. Only down side is I built all 12 point motors to the early standard while I was off sick (but hey-ho it was theraputic). Once I got the point motor set up finalised it was time to build a control panel. The panel has the control for the points and uncoupler magnets, the DCC inputs and outputs through the panel purely for convenience. As I said in my last post the servo control mechanism for the points has been designed by one of my club mates Ian Buckie (and I cannot thank him enough for his efforts). Point control centres around a servo controller available from here: Servo Controller Servos from here: Servos 6 controllers are mounted on a specially designed pcb, which means I have two boards. The following photos show the concept and pictures of the control panel. If anyone is interested in more detail let me know. In between control panels and point motors the stock has been looked at as well. A spur of the moment decision saw the purchase of a couple of Salmon kits from Cambrian. The intention was to build one rail carrier and one with track panels. Anyway looking for detail photos I came across this photo of a modified Salmon. http://gallery6801.fotopic.net/p8328600.html Being a sucker for quirky stock, I though that it looked a lot more interesting than the standard rail carrier. So with plasticard to hand I came up with this, which is I think not a bad interpretation. Its not finished yet and I will put some more pictures up when it is. Dave

Anyone heard any news of when the production units are arriving? SWSBO is buying the one I ordered as a birthday present (birthday gone now) and keeps asking If I know when it is going to be available, are we likely to see it before Xmas? Dave

Due to a rather unexpected trip to A & E and now recouperation at home I am working through my collection. However fave at the moment is the new 'Slash' album (cannot remember the name and its in my player in the workshop). A great selection of styles and guest singers and of course the guitar playing is stunning. Dave

Use Black Beetle wheels. I did my 33 using these, full conversion to EM in less then an hour. Dave