Dave Searle

Hi Ian, very impressed with Banbury, our team needs to catch up, then possibly run some through services? Cheers, Dave

Hi Ian, Many thanks for that information. I've found a place (Flexfireleds.com) offering 5m strips outputting 5,200 lumens (600 LEDs per strip), so two of those would work, However, they are £128 each. I agree that they will be much easier to support over the length we need. I'll do some more searching and see what our budget is for lighting. Cheers, Dave

Hi Ian, Thanks for your suggestion, I've been doing some estimates for the light output required. One a previous layout we had four 150W floodlights over a layout length of about about 3.25 meters. Each bulb was rated at 2100 lumens and gave a good, bright, lighting effect. Making some assumptions: - that the light was spread fairly evenly - we will be putting the lighting on this layout at about the same distance from the track level. I estimate that we need a lighting level of about 2.5 lumens/mm to get the same level of lighting (a total near 13,500 lumens for the 5.4 meters of visible layout). Looking at some figures from the Screwfix catalogue for some T4 and T5 fluorescent tube fittings, this could be nearly achieved with six 849mm 21W Sylvania T5 tubes (2,100 lumen each giving 12,600 in total) or six 747mm 30W T4 Halolite tubes (1,800 lumens each giving 10,800 in total). These would cost around £90-100. I am trying to work out what the light output actually is for the LED strips that your link pointed at - there is a figure of 505 lumens for 6.54W, but the strip is rated at 48W. so is that 3,700 lumens (0.74 lumens/mm)? I've seen some other 5m LED strips that give a lighting level of around 1.2 lumens/mm. Unfortunately these cost around £250 each and we would need 2 to get near the 2.5 lumens/mm level. So the jury is still out Cheers, Dave

We've been quiet for a while. Phil is is making progress on the electrics, but few of us realized the sheer volume of work going into it - the inter-baseboard connectors alone took 1000 soldered joints. A lot of the wiring we put in just to get the layout running for our show last April has either been stripped out and replaced or moved. For example, the inter-baseboard connectors are now under the scenic side of the layout rather than the fiddle yard. He has now finished the basic wiring: - the droppers from the rails to tag strips, - the 60 point motors to tag strips - most of the main control panel. There is still the linking together of the tag strips, the fiddle yard controls and the LEDs for the main control panel. I spent a day helping him over the Christmas break and we managed to do the droppers for the scenic side of one of the baseboards - here are before & after shots, above and below the board: The wires are added - blue (feed), black (common return) and green for switching the frogs: Then soldered up: Each of the 60 point motors needs to be connected to its tag strip: The main control panel is coming along, the switches are wired up. Still to do are the LEDs to indicate the point settings (black dots in the first picture, white in the second) and some switches for uncoupling electromagnets. The control panel is designed to be mounted on the centre baseboard above the tracks. It is hinged to allow it to be lifted up to access any stock below. It controls the scenic side of the layout - the fiddle yard is controlled from two dedicated controller at each end of the yard. There are 6 "zones": - Red and black for the up and down main lines, controlled by the fiddle yard operators - 4 zones for Hinksey yard itself (orange, purple, blue and green) which are switchable between any of the controllers: C & D for the scenic side & the 2 fiddle yard ones A & B. Phil is a very neat wirer: He reckons that the control panel alone has taken over 50 hours so far. Meanwhile, I've made a start on the site office trellising using Scalelink 2mm etches with 1mm square and 1mm x 0.5mm brass strip to create the framework. So some progress, albeit quite slowly. Cheers, Dave

Hi Bernard, it looks as if there is a 2mm mesh that might be suitable. Many thanks, Cheers, Dave

Following the Carillion autoballaster last week, and spurred on by seeing the sample Farish JJAs at Warley, David has been pressing on with the transfers on the first of the Network Rail HQAs: These N Gauge Society kits are making up into some superb models. From this batch we will end up with 5 Carillion, 10 ex-Railtrack and 10 Network Rail versions. 25 wagon sounds like quite a lot, but we will probably need at twice that number eventually. When I mentioned that to David - he muttered something about having to get on with building his own layout I've made a start on plans for the site office/mess room, estimating sizes from Google Earth, Bing and photographs. The main building is some 55' x 10' with a secondary one 20' x 8'. The smaller one looks like a ribbed container, so that may provide a starting point for the model. The larger one will need to be built up with larger sides, windows and doors. These are discretely tucked away behind a lattice fence about 130' long and about 9' high: I was thinking that plastic strip would be easiest for the lattice fence, but someone else suggested brass etches. Does anyone know of an existing range that has something suitable? Many thanks. Cheers, Dave

Thanks Chris, I am beginning to think that fluorescents are probably the way forward. After looking at the Lighting Pelmet thread (http://www.rmweb.co....g-pelmet-design), I now have a 30W Halolite T4 tube and this looks quite promising - we'll probably need about 6 of these. At the Tolworth show on Sunday, I had a good look at the lighting on the Crawley club's West Tilgate (which is a similar sized N gauge layout to Hinksey) to see what they had done. The pelmet controls where the light lands and splits into two part (which each then fold in half) for ease of transport and to protect the tubes. They have used standard sized tubes. This gives us some useful ideas. In other news, David is making progress on the Carillion autoballasters. The transfer is just held on with bluetac at the moment to see how it looks. And Phil came along with the plan for the control panel. So some quiet progress is being made. Cheers, Dave

Hi Oldddudders, Many thanks for that report of your experience. I had noticed that there are different output levels from different LED light strips, but it does sound as if we need more light than these would provide. We may need to look at wire track systems, as I'm not keen on having to support the weight of fluorescent tubes. Some more thinking needed. Cheers, Dave

A quiet few weeks. We had a working Saturday recently which gave Phil the chance to make progress with the wiring. Unfortunately for us, but fortunately for him, real life ("paid work") has taken precedence for the last few months so he hasn't been able to make as much progress as he would like with the mammoth task of wiring. He focused on getting the remaining point motors in place and wired up. In particular the scissor crossovers at each end of the fiddle yard. These proved to be tricky as the point motors needed to be offset from each other so that they would fit. This meant that the operating wire had to be joggled so that it was offset and came up under the right part of the tie bar. This can be just seen on the left hand point motor here. Then the crossover had to be wired up - quite a lot of wires and I'm not sure it's finished yet. Here is a view of most of the wiring for one of the end boards. The other end board will be almost a mirror image. This is what the top of the same board looks like Meanwhile I have been doing some experiments with ballast, using Chinchilla dust as this is both fine enough and cheap in bulk. I've been using Johnson's Klear diluted with water and a drop of washing up liquid and sprayed on as a fine mist. I've also tried adding some watercolour paint to see if I can get some different colours. It is quite a slow process, as even using a commercial ballast spreader leaves quite a lot of tamping into place and tidying up with a dry paint brush before fixing can take place. Following a visit to a club member's house to inspect his outside lighting, we are now looking into the possibility of a LED strip for lighting the layout. These have around 300 high intensity LEDs in a 5 metre length and would only need a lightweight support structure. Given that they need to be at least 3 feet above the layout we hope they will provide adequate illumination. We would love to hear from anyone who has used such lighting and whether it was effective, before we commit ourselves. Cheers, Dave

We have now got hold of some more 2" square aluminium tube for the support beams. These are cut into six 80" lengths to make up two 20' rails to support the boards. Two basic lengths: To join the beams together we have used some wooden "tongues" make from some 2" inch square oak that our tame carpenter had lying around in his workshop. These have been planed down to be a good sliding fit inside the aluminium tube and one end fixed to one tube with screws: We were then able to place the beams on the trestles. In the longer term we will need to create mounting points or brackets on the trestles to maintain consistency and allow clearance to tighten up the bolts that join the boards together. In the club room the floor is fairly level, but we will also need to introduce some means of ensuring that the beams are kept level before putting the baseboards on top, possibly by some screw adjusters or a set of shims. And place the baseboards on top: One great advantage is that the beams make aligning the board ends much easier as they just slide into place. We haven't added anything (yet) to prevent the boards moving along or across the beams as the weight of the boards seems to be enough to keep things in place. We will probably review this later. Finally a photo of my new toy (from Dapol). Cheers, Dave

Last night saw the completion of the curved ends to the backscene. These are made from pieces of hardboard forming a natural curve between the existing structural backscene and the wing pieces of the two end boards. There is a small square wooden upright fixed to the back of the front wing piece to provide a solid location for the front edge of the curve. Using this the hardboard was bent to the right shape and cut-outs added for the trains to escape. We needed to remove a bit of the cork to ensure the hardboard bedded in correctly. Finally then the curve edge was feathered to merge into the main backscene and fixed with small screws. There will be some filler added eventually to smooth this transition and some trees placed in front to distract the eye. This end will have a road bridge to partially disguise the train exit holes And the other end will have a footbridge as the scenic break. Cheers, Dave

We've been quietly working over the last few weeks filling in all the missing sleepers and adding extended sleepers needed for the cosmetic point motors and hand levers. I also started to add the orange pipes and concrete trunking needed to protect the cabling. I thought I had got the hang of where they went, until one of the club members, who is a retired signalling engineer, said that I'd need a few more than I had done. He volunteered to draw up some plans showing where the pipes and cabling would go. It is a much more complex subject than I had realised: cables are needed for signals, point motors, point heaters, track circuiting, TWS, distribution boxes, etc. He also helpfully explained the purpose of some of the "odd" boxes just visible in the undergrowth in photographs. Here is where we are currently: So we'll see what still needs to be added. We've started thinking about the curved corners to the backscene and tried out some hardboard to get a feel for how it would work: We've also been looking into trees - we'll need a lot for this layout to fill in about 20 feet of background to a depth of a couple of inches. So a mix of detailed ones and filler ones will be needed. Here are some ready made ones from the Model Tree Shop, which are quite nicely detailed and not too expensive: We will need some taller ones and a lot of bulk as well. Cheers, Dave

A quieter evening's work last night. Well it was, once Bill had finished grinding down the points of some screws with his Dremel. These were projecting through to the front of the back scene from the new mounting brackets on the back and in danger of causing injury. We have started adding the "missing" sleepers. We had left quite large gaps between the sleepering on pieces of track when adding the rail joiners. As we were under a time pressure originally to get the track laid and running we didn't have time to add the cosmetic sleepers as we laid the track. So now seemed as good a time as any to retro-fit them. As can be seen the gaps look quite obvious and call attention to themselves. With some careful work cutting and sliding the "filler" sleepers into place the visual feel of the track improves tremendously. Here you can see two new "wooden" sleepers (brown) and two "concrete" sleepers (light grey), in both cases one each side of the rail joint. We also added sleepers near the baseboard joints. Here they have to be fitted around the small woodscrews that are providing physical location and support to the ends of the rails. The lower joint has been modified, the top one awaits its sleepers. The screws themselves should eventually be hidden by the ballast. There are still quite a lot to do, and we also need to think about other items that need to be added before ballasting such as point motors on extended timbers and cabling passing under the rails. Does anyone have recommendations for cosmetic point motors in N gauge? We were so quiet this week that other club members wondered if we were "sleeping" Cheers, Dave

Thank you both for your kind comments. We used straight timber with very few knots from a good timber merchant (Champion Timber) which cost £45. The 20 brass hinges were from B&Q and cost £15. That gives £60 for four trestles, so £15 each, probably still cheaper than commercial equivalents and we could choose the size (in our case 36" high and 33" wide across the top bar). The fact that they fold makes storage easier. Cheers, Dave

A working Saturday and a club night saw the construction of four trestles to support the layout. Starting from some lengths of 25x50mm (nominal) timber (and a few of 25mmx75mm) from our local timber merchant and a chop saw, we soon had a kit of parts: First we assembled the smaller leg frame: Then we built the larger leg frame around it (using £1 coins as spacers to give the legs clearance from on each other): Finally the hinges were added to the two top cross bars, and the folding hinged link added to the lower cross bars (this holds the legs the correct distance apart): This gave us a completed trestle: We then repeated the process to create all four trestles. We now need to source some aluminium bars to place on top of the trestles, some brackets to hold them in place and adjusters to ensure they are level. The bars will be 20 feet long to support the whole length of the layout, but split into 3 pieces. The trestles will go at the outer ends and under the two joints). Unfortunately our previous source of aluminium bar has now dried up, so we are having to look elsewhere. Cheers, Dave

Hi Ben, The aluminium will have some cork added as a foundation for the scenic work, our tests show that we can glue it successfully to the aluminium. This will give a starting surface slightly lower that the main boards which will give room for minor height variations in the scenery. One of our members works for a coach builder and has the skills to cut and join the aluminium to create the angled ends. He did say there was a large file involved Cheers, Dave

Last night we added most of the mounting points on the reverse of the backscene so the front extension boards can be stored. In theory we could have put one on each of the 5 baseboards, but it is planned to put the main control panel on the central board, so some doubling up was called for. The clearance between the stacked pairs should allow enough room for some low level scenery. We also looked at one possibility for the lighting: a lightweight 620mm, 20W fluorescent tube (usually used above kitchen worktops). Although this would give good lighting if mounted less than 2ft above the layout, we felt that it wouldn't work when mounted 3-4ft above and up to 1ft in front of the layout. We may still use a couple of these in the fiddle yard where they could be mounted on the new mounting points. So back to looking at alternatives which need to be light and bright. Various club members have offered some suggestions - possibly T4 size tubes and lightweight fitting, so we will continue to investigate. Any recommendations would be welcome. Cheers, Dave

Whilst the wiring is continuing, we are working on some other parts. Flight case wheels We originally put eight 6" wheels on the flight case to give it a smooth ride over the uneven slope we need to push it up every club night. Unfortunately the wheels were more fragile than we had hoped, and the hard plastic centres of several of them shattered when hitting bigger bumps at an angle. So we decided to replace them with four more robust ones. The original wheels: Fixing the first new wheel: Finished: Front scenic boards After much discussion about the add-on front scenic boards, we decided that they should be 2-3" deep and demountable on the front of the existing boards. The idea is that these add a little depth to the front of the scenic area and keep the front tracks further away from the front edge of the layout. Since the main boards are already a close fit in the flight case, these new boards needed to be demountable and stored on the fiddle yard side of the backscene. These boards will also have their gaps staggered compared to the main board joints to reduce their visibility. After an abortive attempt at making ply boards 44" x 2" x 2" we decided to use some square aluminium box section. These are then mounted on the front of the main baseboards by small brackets: so by the end of the evening we had done three: The skirt hiding the legs will be velcroed to the front of these, the tops will have scenery on them and the gaps with be filled will some foam to allow for movement and to help hide the joints. So we are still making progress, but at a gentle pace. Cheers, Dave

Hi Jo, I shall look forward to that, they look very good. Many thanks, Cheers, Dave

Very nice weathering there - it certainly looks the part. I'm intrigued by the autoballaster, more info on that would be interesting - in particular where did you get the "carillion" transfers for it? Cheers, Dave

After a few Monday evenings taken up by a post-exhibition review and some Bank Holidays, we've got back to work at a much more relaxed pace. So, point motors are being fitted, most of the scenic side ones have been done and the fiddle yards ones are next. Phil is continuing with the wiring. Meanwhile, we are looking at some other areas: Support system At present the board are supported on 6 trestles which are borrowed from the club's test track, which leads to a conflict if both want to run at the same time. This was not a problem at the exhibition or while we are working on the wiring, but I would like to get our own support system. Some ideas: Use the trestle & beam idea described in the book on St Merryn. This uses a trestle at each end of the layout and two long (16ft) jointed aluminium girders to support the baseboards (with a further adjustable support halfway to ensure the beams don't droop). Create more of our existing style trestles. Create free-standing "table frames" for single boards or pairs of boards. Possibly with simple braced pairs of legs connected by clip-on braces. Ideally the support system would allow the easy mounting of a lighting gantry and easy assembly. I'm not keen on our current method of putting the first board on two trestles and then balancing the next one on a single trestle whilst trying to bolt them together. Lighting This needs to be carefully thought out: Minimum visual and physical intrusion Even lighting where it is required Easy assembly and storage Again the St Merryn book has a useful idea: a single span made of 3 lightweight vertically stiff sections with suitably strengthened and angled joints to prevent sagging over the length. I would like to avoid intermediate supports getting in the way behind the layout if possible. Clip-on front scenic boards These would be a few inches deep and designed to prevent diving locos and provide an interesting scenic foreground. They would only need to extend the length of the visible scenic side (about 18 ft) so could be made as 5 boards about 44 inches long. This would mean that they would partially obscure the real base board joints and they could be attached to clips on the reverse of the backscene for storage. As the scenery at this part of Hinksey is mainly bushes and small trees, they could provide a useful foreground, with some larger trees placed to hide anything that shouldn't be seen. So some thinking to be done. Any thoughts would be welcome. Cheers, Dave

Hi Edwin, I've just checked and yes you are absolutely right, it was a Farish 66. Some of the stock seems to run very smoothly, but other items do seem to hit bits of low lying trackwork, hence the intention to inspect very carefully what is happening as the stock goes over points. I missed out some further points: add a lip to the baseboard edge to prevent stock diving to the floor (both at the front and in the fiddle yard). check couplings on mainline rakes to avoid droop & subsequent loss of connection. change some couplings for shorter ones to improve the close-coupled appearance (the HST in particular would benefit from this). Cheers, Dave

Thanks Bernard - that is quite a compliment. Well the dust has settled and we've survived our first outing. Generally the layout & stock behaved remarkably well, given the rush to get things to a working state. We managed to cope with manually switching the points at opposite ends of the fiddle yard loops - a code soon emerged to get the guy at the other end to set the incoming points for the correct road, to save walking down there. An odd electrical gremlin appeared in the last hour on Sunday, but we were able to cope with that. Only one "disaster" - on the first time round a loco on the outer track found a bit where the inner rail was raised and turned over and (being right at the front of the layout) dived onto the floor. Crash! - it separated into 5 parts: body, chassis, 2 motor bogies and a broken buffer. I picked up 4 parts (couldn't find the buffer) and reassembled it. Amazingly it still worked The raised rail was soon encouraged by a large file to stay flat. We've put together a list of things to do in the short term: Finish off the wiring of the fiddle yard & main line - get the point motors wired up and working. Put some better expansion gaps in - at one point, as the temperature rose in the hall, the outer main line developed a very interesting sinuous kink as the rail could only expand sideways. Everything stayed on but this needs to be fixed. Check the Back to Back on all the stock and check rail gaps - there were a number of wobbles going over some point work. Check for any raised soldered joints or point motor clips that might foul parts of passing stock. Build our own set of legs that are height adjustable - the trestles we were using did not give a consistent height Replace the Peco point motors (& associated switches) with Seep ones with integral switches - this is really a personal preference, having tried to wire one of these up (in a hurry last Thursday) and found that they really need a lot of careful adjustment. Phil, the wiring guy, also prefers the Seep ones, so was "suggesting" them. So a short rest and then back to work, albeit at a more relaxed pace than the last 41/2 months. Cheers, Dave