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SimonMW

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  1. SimonMW

    Track-laying progress

    By SimonMW,

    Big day yesterday, nice to have the time off work. Amazing how time consuming it is though, especially when you are putting droppers on every piece of track... I Installed 2 x sets of points (both of which have had the ugly Peco mechanisms cleaned out and new sleepers soldered in), a diamond, track to the future turntable, and the catch point behind the diamond (also tidied up); and setup the wiring and DCC Concepts Cobalt Digital IP motors driving them.
     
    Middle of the day:
     

     
    End of the day:
     

     
    The tracks either side of the baseboard join in the middle are soldered to stainless steel screw heads at the correct height, which holds height and position perfectly. No close-up pictures there yet - I'll need to do some camouflage to make them look a little less obvious.
     
    The points / catch point either side of the diamond are controlled via the same DCC address as a pair, and drive the diamond's frogs' polarity. All working a treat, very happy.
     
    Underneath, Cobalt Digital IPs in place and working beautifully:
     

  2. SimonMW
    Well a conversation with my wife led to agreement that the railway will move rooms. That led to me deciding to build the second baseboard, which led to me thinking about how the new room would affect design, which led to some design changes. Then I decided if I was going to be in a new room, but only for a couple of years that we will be living in this house, I really need to make the whole thing properly portable. So the new baseboard was built, legs added to the whole thing, and bolted to the old one.
     
    First up, the new baseboard in the new room, albeit not the final location yet. Pool table to go first...
     

     
    And secondly the new design...
     

     
    Purple will be hidden / fiddle yard. On the right will become goods, not yet designed. The two main boards are now built, time to get into track-laying again.
  3. SimonMW
    My Metcalfe stone station is approaching completion. After building the shell I decided that I wanted to fit it and light it, so that's been the last couple of months.

    So it went from this:


     
    ...to this:
     

     
    The lighting is Gaugemaster external lamps (GM854 Barley Twist Gas Lamp GWR Stone value pack), and internally DCC Concepts LEDs (proto white colour 3mm LEDs). The internal LEDs have 1kohm resistors in series, the externals are straight through, no resistors needed on the low voltage supply I am using (in fact the externals would not even 'start' with a 1kohm resistor, I assume it was dropping the voltage below start V for the LEDs). End result I am very happy with, I don't think it's too bright though. I need to refit the roof and seal some light gaps and the station can be properly installed.
     

     

  4. SimonMW

    Slow progress, new blog!

    By SimonMW,

    I've been slowly plugging away at this for about 4 or 5 years and making VERY slow progress - kids, work, life, etc., all seem to get in the way!
     
    Hoping for a little more feedback and motivation posting here, as another forum has been very quiet in recent months.
     
    My layout is a fictional (i.e. I'll run what I want ) but GWR 1930s vintage mainly. As we are moving house in a couple of years, it's been built as a portable board, with track design to extend significantly on, and eventually over 4 or 5m in length. First board is about 1.3m long, and is the terminus.
     

     
    The left hand shows the main platform, which has had a run-around, since extended (towards the camera) into a second platform.
     
    More recently, with a Metcalf station in progress:
     

     
    The station is in the works at the moment, having DCC Concepts LEDs installed. That's the next priority...
     
    I've since painted the fence GWR light stone, having seen some pictures of GWR lines with painted fencing... it's not bad, but a little more orange than shows in this photo:
     

  5. SimonMW

    Making the trains move

    By SimonMW,

    As a bit of a computer nerd, I've combined my hobby with some IT
     
    I run a SPROG 3, connected to a Raspberry Pi. The Pi has a Petrockblog PowerBlock to manage on/off switching, and a small 7" touch screen) although most of the time the Pi lives sight unseen under the board. The layout is powered by pushing a simple on/off (SPST) latching switch, which powers up the Pi. After a couple of minutes the Pi is booted, and JMRI is running, auto-booting its web server. Running Digitrains app on my Android phone, I can then make the trains go.
     
    At the end of the session, turn the switch off, and the PowerBlock sends a graceful shutdown command to the Pi, which powers off.
     
    A pair of Cobalt Digital motors drive the crossover pair of points, coded to the same address - also controllable from Digitrains.
  6. SimonMW
    There has been quite a bit of discussion on the Oxford Rail Dean Goods on fora across the interwebs (understatement of the day), but I have bitten the bullet... and ordered 3 :
    Locomotion / NRM 2516 Oxford Rail 2309 (lined green) Oxford Rail 2475 (plain green)

    It will be interesting to compare them all - particularly 2309 which has been the subject of much criticism.
    The NRM Dean Goods 2516 arrived on Wednesday, and here are some pictures. It's a lovely box, although a bit overkill!
    The box:





    The info and instructions:





    The loco:











    Accessories:



    The handrails look wrong in silver; and the tender desperately needs some real coal... but all in all it looks nice. The relatively gloss paintwork is different, but looks OK.
     
    I've not yet popped the tender top, which is where it says the DCC decoder goes, not sure how much room is in there - would be good to drop DCC sound in it. It's rather an expensive hobby at times
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