tigerburnie

Slow progress at the moment, but things are moving along, north end is now stuck and wired, but not all loops across the rail joiners are completed. Feeds at both ends from the controller is showing full voltage across the whole area, with out the switched feeds connected(waiting for miniature switches to be delivered). So the belt and braces switched feed to each track is at present not required, however taking on board what people advise regarding corrosion/deterioration over time, it's comforting to know I have a cunning plan in place to sort of future proof it a bit. Had a quick test running an A3 with coaches attached in all directions and after a couple of re-fits, no de-railments which is a bonus.

Nothing is fixed down yet, still adding connections, too hot to work up there today. Still a bit of jig sawing to do as well, so most if not all this track may be removed and final fitted. Maybe the blurry one would be better rotated through 90 degrees.

A rather blurry overview of the station track work, a lot of soldering and drilling to do, I am adding additional links now, that can be connected up later if required should the connectivity deteriorate over time. The large gaps will be dealt with after the soldering of the links is completed, so as not to melt the sleepers.

Track connections and feed are via soldered wire to the peco connectors, these may be soldered to the rails as I have left room so as not to melt the sleepers

Made a start on wiring the station and building the work station for the controller, this slides in and out to give easy access and can disappear when not required(reducing the dust too I hope). The idea is to keep up and down lines on separate feeds(the way I've done it including the 0 volts as well) there will be 6 feeds from each terminal strip to feed the sections of track, connected with wire loops and switched positive lines so that all the lines are not live at the same time(hence not using a bus line).

Hi Andy, yes that is correct insulfrog points and the loops will at times have locos on them as per the prototype, so rather than just rely on the points for power supply, each line will have a switched common supply. The up line will all be fed from a terminal block fed from one side of the controlled supply and the down line on the other controlled supply(gaugemaster). This is just for the station area only, the main oval track will be insulated and fed by a seperate controlled bus line from another controller. In effect the whole idea of the switched feeds is to overcome any faulty joins between the pieces of track. Tonight I have soldered wires to the bottom of rail joiners, drilled holes in the baseboard and started to run these short cables(2 feet maximum) to terminal blocks which will be switched on the live side, so in effect if I open the points the line will be live, the direct feed to the rail joiners is a belt and braces to give a better supply. Does this make sense?

Whilst waiting for some components to continue the track laying I thought I best get some practice building as it must be 50 years since I last did any modelling at this scale, so I've built a Metcalfe PO233 signal box. Ideal starting point before trying to scratch build the station building later, not too bad, but glue in places it really should not be, need a tube with a finer nozzle. I'm surprised you can't get a more controllable application, like maybe a syringe.

On the up side the down fast would have a single feed with the live via an on/off switch, ditto for the other "loops. This is only for the station area, the main twin track loop will be made from metre long sections with a feed to each from a bus wire.

I'm perhaps not explaining this very well, as I'm not running DCC, I cannot have all the rails fed "live" as I would have locos moving that I don't want moving. My plan was to have sections fed via a switch to isolate the areas, which I was planning to connect via wire loops to remove any reliance on the rail connectors, thus removing heat problems or poor continuity problems. Each section is to have one feed to each rail group(these are in between points at each end) with the live feed going through a switch. I have most of the components to start this work, I will take some images so you can see what I'm doing and comment if you think I am making any mistakes.

Thanks Cliff,it's not droppers, but loops from one rail to another effectively by passing the joiner with regards to power supply, I'll try and get some photos.

I've started soldering joining loops across the rail joiners to create "blocks", have to say I am struggling to do this without melting the parts of the sleepers that hold the rail, it's only localised, but this is making having close sleeper spacings difficult.

You will also need a few hundred sea gulls too lol.

Nice set of images, think I'll be pinching a few ideas from this layout.

Thanks Apollo, useful advice and those photos look perfect, I have Colin Walkers book Mainline Lament, but he concentrated more on the trains and less on the station area.

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I used to make up quite a lot of "prototypes" when working in industry for test rigs and found that working in phases and adding in small changes, you could quickly revert if something goes base upwards. When changing programs on plc's we had a test edit facility, pity we can't have that in hard wire(in fact that's just given me an idea).

Lots of good sound advice, thanks all, I am now thinking of looping each track join to remove any connector problems from either overheating or ingress of rust/ adhesive from ballasting etc. The main loops will be straight forward from a bus wire, the station will initially be fed from each end, but taking on board the comments about relying on points blades/springs for continuity, then switched feeds are likely for each passing loop. This will hopefully help with the wear and tear that I had not thought about at all.

Interesting views and I am looking at them all, but as a former maintenance electrician(higher voltages most of the time), I'm sure I can come up with a cunning plan. The thing I did not think about was the joiners and their flimsy material they are made from, looking at the main loop from either end of the station, a supply link to each metre length is straight forward. The station is going to be a forest of switches and wires, unless I wire in a small PLC and knock up a program to run the whole thing by computer..............................

I will use the good old trial and test it formulae and see how it goes, at present the station is my priority, I am several weeks away from completing the entire loop, early testing yesterday with the new 9f shows that at present a power feed at either end of the station on each of the main lines as per my sketch, seems to be working well. I have not yet looked at the parcels/turntable area, this may have a separate controller and feed of it's own. Now in discussion with a supplier of mouldings for the parapets/arches for the viaduct for the station and approaches, seems my sizes are different to his mould, but the samples are excellent and will certainly give the station a fine finish.

I am about to run bus wires for the circuit and find, whilst I understand the desire to run as many extra feeds, I cannot with out switching each feed. If all lines are live I will have locos moving against points and causing derailments. On a busy weekend, there will be locos on pretty much all of the lines, passenger trains at the station, with through freight on the passing loops. I shall initially feed each end of the platform and see how this goes, I have done some initial trials with an A3 and a Britannia to ensure all the track and points are ok at the north end, awaiting delivery of more track and points as I have run out. I will also now be adding additional " passing loops" out side the station area, this to keep at least one main line open at all times in each direction.

Couple of shots with a small pocket camera with the flash not functioning, I will get my proper camera on the job when there's more to look at. The track is just placed, if the rain continues I will have a bit more time on Thursday to start fixing in place. The plan is to use surface mounted point motors at the north end and I will have the control position at the south end and initially operate the points manually(purely for cost saving for now). Once the complete oval is built and the rolling stock is at a better level, then I will return and automate the rest of the points and signalling last. I've just bought a 9f so the pocket money is spent for this week, just need about forty 16 ton mineral wagons to go behind it now. I should add that the track will be fitted properly with the large gaps in the sleepers sorted before fixing, this is very much a first fix.

6 more turnouts arrived today, so the north end of the station area is loosely assembled and the cork stuck down, couple of things before I fix the track down(after first running a couple of locos up and down to make sure it works as I wish it to), a few have mentioned on other threads about soldering the rails together to improve power supply continuity, but do we not need to have gaps and the rails being allowed to move for expansion and contraction? Would I be better to use small wire loops?(I am using metre long flexible for most of the track, some will have to be trimmed to fit)

Thanks for the replies, I have room to use larger curves with flexi track, but as I have some 2nd radius I could use them in the areas out of view on the continuous loop area on the inner track and use flexi on the outer.

Could I ask what is considered to be the tightest radius you would recommend for main line working, in particular with Hornby 2-10-0 9f's running? Thanks