godderz

Photos always appear in landscape. Anyway you can rotate to portray?

A kind of ‘sleeper grime ‘.

Had a go at spraying the track. This is for my own mojo and experience for the future... I’ve come to enjoy this so much I’m going to do my own after this!

I have an airbrush not used for over a decade, and used a dark earth acrylic that hadn’t dried up. I see there are paints directed a model railways, ‘sleeper grime’etc. I’ll have to find some for the next one!

Wow. That’s good advice I hadn’t at all thought of. It does occasionally short!! I had no idea why, so I’ll have a good look.

Is it a short or no contact?

The wheels may be lifting at the frog and the whole side of the loco rises and loses contact. There may be bits of stuff (ballast, usually) in the frog.

For shorts, the wheels may be wide and touch two rails in the pointy bit of the frog. That usually ends up having to be painted with nail polish or similar (clear, not crimson).

Yes. It does exactly what you’ve said, cuts out as it reaches the frog then picks up again just after.

Thanks Noob, I’ll give it a try. Interesting subject matter bye! I’ve subscribed to your videos. It’ll be interesting to follow and maybe I can learn something from you? Thanks mate

I’ve just done a test run and found some issues with the points. It cuts out while passing each point. I’ve cleaned the rails with a track rubber but no luck. This is since I’ve done the ballast. Any advice??

Trying out a few mock ups of buildings and scenery as I’m driving blind a bit here, to be honest. I drew it out on the plan, but I’ve never really done this so we’ll see what happens!

Nearly finished the ballasting. Will try out some scenery soon.

I was unsure of ballasting and scenery so I decided to do a maquette so I could make my mistakes on the maquette rather than on the proper circuit.

I used the brown ballast as I had bought a few colours to try out. I think I prefer it as it is seems to look like the ballasting near us. The kids prefered the grey ballast and I thought perhaps it might look less artificial if I spray the track afterwards.

I had two greys so mixed them together.

Things seem to be running ok although sometimes the train derails near one of the points and shorts everything out. I will have to tweak the run in I guess.

I managed to lay all the track on cork bedding but admit I did find laying the flexi track quite difficult at first. I've never really laid track properly, apart from joining it all together on the kitchen table when I was a kid, much to the annoyance of my mum.

I found spacing the sleepers correctly on the flexi track quite vexing, and sometimes the ends would come out of the sleepers. I eventually got the hang of it.

I bought some point motors as this really interest me. I like the idea of being able to control it without touching the circuit and I think the kids will particularly like this.

I wasn't sure how to mount them, or, I didn't really have the confidence. So, after some research on this site I elected to mount them straight under the track but cutting a rectangular hole. I found it simpler to join the pin to the track, but it was only when I came to ballast that I was flummoxed! Some old 'Chance' cards from Monopoly seemed good to block the hole but I found it difficult to ballast over them properly without pink showing through.

...ok!..."reply with attachments might be a clue!

So this makes it all worthwhile. After no work on the thing due to that horrible thing of needing to work to earn money, the small people leant on me to get things moving.

Well, it's been sometime since I posted as life has it's way of taking over sometimes....so much so that I've forgotten how to upload photos here?

can anyone help?

Ok

I’ve found out that this is point rodding. I guess the conduit protects it as it goes underneath the track?

Bit of a newbie but loving this hobby as I delve deeper and deeper.

I've seen on some circuits ORANGE/ RED conduit under points, I guess for electrical supply.

Can anyone enlighten me on what to use to model it?

Thanks

Looks interesting! Good luck and I'm looking forward to seeing it's progress. 

How old is your son?

 

If your Hornby track is old enough, modern stock may not like it.

I've two, 5 and 10, with a 7 year old daughter who likes the circuit too.

I've had a good look at the points and you may have a 'point' (no pun intended!). The frogs on the old points have a much larger gap between it and the guide rail which may explain why a 1980 class 37 is ok but the 'Thomas' tank engine doesn't like it.

Can anyone tell me if you can edit your topic? I.e. can I change the name once I come up with a suitable title for the circuit? And can I add some tags?

A lot of the track is really old, Namely Hornby and Lima. I've noticed that the turnout included in the Thomas set is much better than my old Hornby turnouts so I'm going to replace them. After doing a test it seems trains derail more easily on the old points and also have a different mechanism for changing. As I'm using point motors it might make things easier. Bought some flexi track too although I'm going have to find out how it'll lay by trial and error.

I've made a church using the Metcalfe kit and have some of my old Hornby buildings i had in my uncle's loft. I think I'll end up changing them as they don't look very realistic. However, I must remember that essentially this is for the kids so card models could easily get broken as opposed to plastic models. We'll see.

ok, so here's a photo with the sketching i've done. I copied the symbols from a really old Peco guide book a client lent me, so hope they all make sense.

Ok.

As I said, it hasn't got any of the animation of the landscape and buildings but I'll scan that later.

In Anyrail, if you go to the File tab and then select "Export" you can export/save it as a JPG or PDF and then upload it here.

Thanks!

Oh. I can't upload the AnyRail file. Will try another method of illustrating it.