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garethevans1986

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Posts posted by garethevans1986

    BR Palbrick B diagram 1/024

    in Kitbuilding & Scratchbuilding

    Posted

    On 18/07/2018 at 20:35, macgeordie said:

     

    They are very interesting photos Gareth, thanks for sharing the links. I looked at doing the Freighliner adapter version, but it is out of period for me and also it is very different from the kit point of view as on the conversions, the floor is missing, so all you can see is the framework.

    From a kit point of view this effectively means starting a new set of drawings from scratch. Also most (but not all) of the conversions were from Palbrick C's, which have different brake gear and they also had 6 of the screw pushers for clamping the load. The one in the photo on the link above only has provision for 4 pushers so must be one of the Palbrick B's which were converted from the last batch of B's and as can be seen in the photo it has clasp brakes rather than the RCH Morton brakes which the earlier ones had, upon which the kit I have done is based.

     

    Ian

     

    I see what you mean :S

     

    Any compormises available like designing it with a floor in, builders can customise as they want then?

     

    Thanks

    Gareth

    Ffestiniog Slate Wagon Kits

    in Narrow Gauge Modelling

    Posted

    Hello,

     

    I'm new to narrow gauge, but not to modelling as I'm mostly building P4 models to run on Mostyn by Barrowmore.

     

    I'm looking for narrow gauge kits, ideally slate wagons of the Ffestiniog type in 0-16.5 to run on our other layout Johnstown Road.

     

    I've found Wrightlines have a Talyllyn slate wagon kit but not sure what else is out there.

     

    Thank you

    Gareth

    The London Festival of Railway Modelling, Ally Pally-24 to 25 March 2018

    in Exhibitions

    Posted

    A post from one of our members regarding the start/end times of the show:

     

     

    Some people may be interested in the timetable that gets a large layout like Mostyn to an exhibition like Alexandra Palace.

     

    Two to four weeks beforehand - Layout erected, formations re-arranged and tested to accommodate new stock, greenery refreshed, ballast and rail touch-ups where required, electrics and DCC checked, layout carefully vacuumed to remove dust etc., track given deep clean and turnout operation checked.

     

    Thursday before show - Layout dismantled, Hire 7T Truck collected and loaded

     

    Friday - Depart home 06.30, Depart Clubhouse 07.15, Truck arrives at venue 11.30, Truck offloaded at venue by 12.30. Layout erected and stock set out  plus some testing by 20.00 (there are 650 items of stock - most of which have 3-link couplings). Leave venue 20.00 and arrive hotel 20.20.

     

    Saturday - Hotel breakfast 07.00, leave hotel 07.40, arrive venue 08.00. Cleaning and testing until 09.30. 09.30 - 17.00 show open. Arrive Hotel 18.00.

     

    Sunday - Hotel breakfast 07.30, leave hotel 08.10, arrive venue 08.30. Cleaning and testing until 09.30. 09.30 - 16.30 show open. Dismantling and re-loading until 19.30. Depart London 19.30 with stop off at services for some fast food. Journey delayed by several sections of overnight single lane working on the M6.

     

    Monday - Truck arrives at clubrooms 00.45 (remember they are limited to 56mph), truck offloaded and club locked by 01.30. Arrive home and offload stock 02.00. 07.30 leave to return hire truck with job completed by 08.30.

     

    Gareth

    DCC Train Information System

    in DCC Discussion Topics (not questions)

    Posted

    Very interested! looks nice and a cool touch these days.

     

    On the IT side, can you make the browser window full screen? :P

     

    Thats something one of our fellas asked during the show - something we're going to look into. We used an Android TV box so may see if the TV has a browser on natively to do this.

    Well, I was impressed!

     

    It certainly adds another dimension to the operation of a layout. Over time, I think I've come to the conclusion that authentic operation of a layout iaw real railway principles and recognisable traffic flows is what makes a favourite layout for me.

     

    I count myself fortunate to be one of the operating team on this layout:

     

    http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/64065-leeds-city-the-midland-side-in-4mm/

     

    I'm starting, I think, to get the hang of it - but others are probably a better judge, eh John? (aka The Laird).

     

    Thanks Andy. We hoped it would and it did. It's a shame I cant go to Warley with Mostyn this year :(

    • Like 1

    DCC Train Information System

    in DCC Discussion Topics (not questions)

    Posted

    I've edited the original post and added the document showing how the system works and the solution architecture too.

     

    Interesting Gareth. Just wondering why would you want to store all this data? It's of little value once it's out of the DCC system, unless you have the ability to replay the exact sequence, timed to perfection with perfectly consistent rolling stock behaviour on the exact same layout for an attempt to automate things. In which case there are better programs to sequence through some sort of timetable :yes:

     

    Technically speaking, you're just reading the DCC output stream. Which is a fairly easy interface to make using a microcontroller, or even a serial port on its own. The rest of course is code. Which I can't ;)

     

    To be honest with you I dont know why we store data once it's over 30/60 minutes old, the other thing is the database we use (MongoDb) is very flexible and will handle lots of data so it's not really an issue. We have added a little extra and have time v speed step by loco graph so we can see how the locos were driven over time too. I've not looked at it yet but it'll be interesting to see.

     

    The one thing we're not interested in at all is automation, it just doesnt do it for us (as a group) or me either. Yes technically speaking all we are doing is reading off the DCC stream "off the wire", serialising it and then chucking it into a message queue. It's the electronics I cant do but the coding I can!

    DCC Train Information System

    in DCC Discussion Topics (not questions)

    Posted · Edited by garethevans1986

    So my background is IT, a software engineer / network engineer / devops / technical architect / solution architect of 10+ years and I've always been intrigued with the DCC system that our club layouts use and what could be picked up "off the wire".

     

    Using a NCE DCC Analyser (now unfortunately discontinued) with a Serial port on, I managed to be able to do just that, seeing the DCC Id, Speed Step and Direction of a loco moving was pretty cool.

     

    We started off storing this data in a database and querying the movement data, coupled (no pun intended) with a seperate database with train information in, we combine both datasets when we query the movement data to give the following output on a screen for the public to see.  See below.

     

    post-1929-0-26243700-1508242980_thumb.jpg

     

    We're able to "see" a loco appear on the TV around 5 seconds once it's Speed Step being greater than 1. We were able to handle, single direction and dual direction trains with separate data eg DMU on the Up and Down with different headcodes and train information.

     

    It's first outing was at the Great Electric Train Show at Gaydon as part of the Mostyn layout in early October this year, having been kept under wraps for a few weeks.

     

    It's first outing went well, we had a memory leak on the Saturday which was fixed pretty quickly and due to the amount of data it was storing (everything) we decided to ignore anything where the Speed Step was at 0 for the time being.

     

    Over a 2 day exhibition, we we're storing 70k+ movement records where 7k were where the Speed Step > 0.

     
    I have a document covering the entire system, which I can grab and publish here if anybody is interested. It's a work in progress but anybody interested in knowing how it's been built or anything, just get in touch.
     
    If you saw it working on Mostyn at the GETS, I'd love to know what you thought. We had plenty of people talk and ask questions about it over the weekend.
     
    Edit - Attached Solution architecture document.
     
    Thanks
    Gareth

    DCCTrainInfoSystem_v0.1.pdf

    • Like 2
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