Harlequin

Then I had a thought: What if the fiddle yard was not a set of loops but a set of terminal sidings perpendicular to the main layout, fed by a triangle. The triangle would allow reversing and if the fiddle yard sidings were in the form of a traverser I would save a lot of pointwork. This arrangement would be hugely flexible because any storage siding could accept any train from any direction and send it back out in any direction (after turning the loco and any guard's van). So here's the idea so far: (It's rotated 180 degrees from the floor plans above, sorry.) The traverser and it's feed triangle lines sit above where my test layout currently is. I've only sketched out the behind-the-scenes track and it is all Peco Streamline Code 75, with the exception of the 90° crossings where the branch crosses the main circuits (C11), which are Code 83. They might have to be hand made. There is a 2ft min radius in the off-scene areas. The double junction at A12 was very tricky to set out. There might be a better way (and it might involve hand-building again) but using Streamline it was important to keep the radius of the end curve as tight as possible so the long 12° crossing was out of the question. By widening the lines and using a Curved Right I was able to use the short 24° crossing. It looks ugly but it's not on view. The loops behind the backscene are really part of the fiddle yard. They perform multiple useful jobs including helping to reverse (turn) Down trains. I don't think it's possible to reverse Up trains without them appearing on scene. Even the branch line can connect to any traverser road so branch traffic can re-appear on scene on the branch, or travelling Up or Down the main line - complete freedom to imagine the network topology and the services running on it however you like. The baseboard outlines are just indicative at the moment. they need to be adjusted and divided up into more practical shapes and sizes. The scenic baseboards at the front carry the railway leaving room for pure scenery behind on lift-out modules. There's much more scenic depth behind the station than the original Hannet Purney. Room for part of the village and for some real background landscape. There are some niggles that need ironing out. For instance, to reverse (turn) a loco using the triangle requires that it runs on and off the traverser. It would be nicer if that could be done entirely on the fixed boards. The next step is to lay out the scenic area and I'm going to tighten up the double track spacing to a more correct 45mm and try to use more prototypical turnouts and crossings to OO-SF standards. Will Hannet Purney station will still fit? I have no idea!

If I made a layout that wasn't too wide it could lie along the south side and still leave space to move around while it was erected: So I could at least leave it in place while I didn't need to open the bifolds onto the Terrace too often - i.e. in Winter. OK, so I still have to duck under to get into the sunspace to water the plants but that's not so bad. But then, if the layout is so thin and almost against a wall, where would the fiddle yard go? And how could it still allow trains to be reversed like the original? (By the way, can you tell that I'm trying to convince myself that this is feasible...???)

Here's how the first Hannet Purney could have fitted into my living space. There were basically two possible orientations: Daft. Neither could realistically remain in place for more than a day at a time...

My design for a big OO layout depicting a small fictional junction station on the Berks & Hants, called "Hannet Purney", looked like this: It has a lot of good points: The generous scenic run where long mainline trains can stretch their legs - where you can watch a King or a Castle running at speed as God('s wonderful railway) intended. The branch line junction gives the possibility of many interesting operations. The station is basically quite simple - you imagine a peaceful place with bursts of activity. The ability to reverse locos, and possibly whole trains, off-scene without touching them. And last but not least, the slip coach launcher! However, it doesn't quite "do it" for me. The problems are: While it would physically fit in my living space it wouldn't be easy to live with - I'd have to duck under to get from one side to the other and it wouldn't be easy to see whole of the scenic area. The canal is missing! This is a familiar companion of the Berks & Hants along most if it's length - it's one of the reasons why I chose that line in the first place so it's a serious omission. The station has no clear relationship with any nearby settlement - that's implied and off-scene. The station spans the full width of the scenic area, with just a row of trees and the backscene to place it in the wider landscape. The trackwork in the scenic area is a bit clunky because of the use of standard Streamline parts. The fiddle yard is a bit inflexible and the extensive pointwork is troubling. The use of so many facing curved points might become a real nightmare. I've been pondering all this for a while, and in the last few days a new idea has started to come together really nicely. More to follow...

https://www.Dapol.co.uk/OO-Gauge-GWR-2-6-2-Large-Prairie-Update "Improved Firebox glow"... Translation: Firebox glow might work properly this time.

Assuming that you have wired the inner and outer circuits consistently - No problem at all. If you're using electrofrog turnouts you need to have insulating joiners in all the usual places, that's all. Nothing out of the ordinary.

On the LHS for the direction of movement being signalled. Remember to leave clearance for the rolling stock (that is, offset a bit further from the track). Look at your Coalbrookedale signalling diagrams on the first page.

A representative set of ripples would be good enough. I'm sure they are all broadly similar because of the positions of the structure inside and most modellers wouldn't be able to tell one tender (for instance) from another by looking at the ripple "fingerprint". I'm sure that a mesh derived from the point cloud could be stitched into the CAD model. And that would translate to the tooling if the tooling were created by CNC from the CAD model... No?

Here's a thought: RTR models and engineering drawing of locos always represent flat sheets of metal as perfectly flat, er that is to say, planar. But in the real world they never are. Look at any of the photos above - the sides of the tenders have subtle bulges and ripples that show up most when the paintwork is shiny and angle of photo acute. So how about reproducing that in the model? The scans will have picked it up, won't they?

There are so many variables with steam sounds! First and foremost is the frequency response of the speaker(s) but even if we modellers try to improve that it won't make much difference if the sound projects don't include all the frequencies of realistic sounds. I have a suspicion that the samples are compressed to fit in the memory space of the decoder and thus lose some quality. Then there are all the variables of the real world when recording real locos, particularly distance and how hard the loco is working, i.e. the position of the reverser. In the Nunney Castle video, the first two clips I'd guess it's about half open, the third clip three-quarters maybe(?) and the final clip fully open because she's climbing and having to work hard. There is definitely a lot of room for improvement in steam sounds! (I nudged the dynamic boys at Accurascale about it in the new Manor thread.) P.S. Your Railcar No.17 sounds very much like mine on video. Again, for some reason the sound doesn't come across on video quite as it sounds in the room...

Hi Neal, I put my Lode Star with YouChoos Castle sound project together at the weekend and I have uploaded a video here: The video isn't really as good as I'd like it to be and the sound is a bit weak - even using a fancy mic. It seems to be very difficult to capture loco sounds. I feel there is more to learn here! How does it compare to your YouChoos Castle?

I have cobbled together a video of sorts... I'm not sure it really does the sound justice but, anyway, there it is.

Accurascale products have been all too modern for my preferred time period so far and in fact this is too really but I can stretch a point for this exciting new model. The three speakers are interesting: Does that mean Tweeter, Mid-range and Woofer with crossovers? Seriously, it would be great if you could apply your dynamic new approach to doing something to improve DCC Sound from steam locos. Both the sound reproduction and how they respond to the controls. (I hope she'll have VERY spitty valves, BTW!) Good Luck! I'm looking forward to watching the project develop.

You'd get more (correct) answers if you moved this to the "Permanent Way, Signalling and Infrastructure" forum. Edit: Thanks Andy!

Here's my recipe for installing a big speaker in a Hornby GWR Star class loco to try to get a really strong sound from it. I used an MX645 decoder because it has 3Watt audio output (at 4Ohms) and onboard stay alive circuitry. In the end I didn't use any stay alive because of space restrictions and with 12 pickup wheels the loco doesn't really need it. I wanted to install an enclosed speaker with a relatively big diaphragm and I settled on what some suppliers call a "MegaBass" and others call a "Box" speaker, which is 30 by 28 by 15mm. I removed the mounting lugs and cut off some material from the top to reduce it to it's smallest, simplest box form. My technique in all steam sound installations is to give the sound a clear path out, not to be bounced around inside the plastic box before emerging through whatever holes there are in the chassis. To achieve this the speaker will face upwards and it will be hidden by a speaker grille made of coal... My loco is the 2020 version of Lode Star which is accompanied by a 3500 gallon Churchward tender, not the biggest tender, so fitting the speaker and decoder required a lot of milling and chopping: (Yes, a brand new loco and I'm immediately taking it apart and carving it up. You've got to have faith to do this!) The weight has been removed and its mounting posts have been milled down to base plate level. The circular speaker mounting has also been milled away, the inside faces of the fixing screw pockets have been removed so that the decoder will fit between them, and some of the base plate has been milled away so that the decoder can sit lower with the wires feeding directly into the central slot. A lot of the tender's coal space had to be removed because, even with the base plate drastically flattened, the speaker just stands proud of the coal space floor. It will be hidden by the new coal load. The 8pin circuit board has been removed and all the wires routed to the front of the tender through the central slot. The unwanted decoder wires have been shortened but not removed completely so that I can still strip back and solder to them in future if needed. The speaker is positioned as far back as possible so that the coal load will have room to slope realistically towards the engine (we hope!). After a few test fittings of the decoder, speaker, chassis and body I knew that it would all fit without any of the components being stressed so the next job was connecting up the wiring. I had previously noted which of the tender's wires were the pickups and which the motor feeds so wiring up was straightforward: Red pickups soldered to red decoder wire, wrapped in heat shrink and tucked down to the right of the socket that connects tender to loco. Similarly blacks to the left of the socket. Orange decoder to red motor wire, Grey decoder to black motor wire. Purple decoder wires to the speaker. All insulated and then curled gently to fit in the the tender body. At this stage I tried the tender on the layout, to check that it worked before I went any further. When I played the whistle the tender actually jumped sideways, so I knew I was on the right track to get strong sound! The speaker adds some reasonable weight to the tender but I glued in some lead to fully replace the mass I had removed and to give the tender enough heft to stop it jumping when loud sounds are played: Next, the coal load, which forms the speaker grille. A small piece of stainless steel insect mesh was cut and formed to shape: Chunky real coal was glued to the mesh using Copydex: The method is to dab Copydex onto the mesh and then pour coal over it, press down and leave to set before shaking off the loose pieces. It takes a few goes to cover the mesh and usually the last step is to fill individual holes with individual bits of coal. When you hold the finished coal load up to the light you can see that there are many, many gaps for the sound to pass through. However, when it is installed in the tender those gaps are almost invisible. A speaker grille made of coal: Finally, here is Lode Star back on the tracks with her new sound installation and detail parts added: During the work I knocked off the tender handrails so they had to be refitted and carefully glued back in place but I managed to do that OK. She sounds great, within the limitations of the sound project - very loud and the sounds are very clear. (I'm striving for clarity more than volume!) There is a bit of distortion on some very loud noises and I think that's the mesh or the coal vibrating against the tender body. Some tweaking and some more Copydex to stabilise the coal around the edges should solve that. I will post some videos if I can capture something that does the loco and the sounds justice.

Poor Kevin must be wondering what he has to do to satisfy you, John!

As it happens, I'm currently working on a MX645R YouChoos Castle sound installation in Lode Star so we can compare Castle with Star as well! (I've cut more out of Lode Star's tender than I've ever done before to get the speaker I want in... )

Hi Neal, FYI: I found with both my Railcars (No. 12 and No.17) with MX644Ds that the sound volume gradually lowered after they had been left running for a while until it was almost silent. I believe this is due to the decoder getting too hot because it's sealed in that little space and is adjusting itself to prevent complete burnout. I ended up cutting a big hole in the floor of the parcels railcar to give it some ventilation and that seems to have fixed it. That's not so easy in the passenger railcar though because it's more visible. I also found that no matter how good a speaker I installed the sound is always rather muffled just because it has no good way out of the body shell. I haven't solved this one yet.

The document that started off this flurry of speculation is dated 09/2020. It’s not new info and it predates the Mogul release. So I don’t think it really tells us anything new about the Dapol Prairie, whether Dapol are going ahead as planned or any possible changes to the model.

True, the engineering for angled joints would need to be a bit more precise, and especially where the track curves towards the joint on either side, but even for straight perpendicular joints you need to ensure sub millimetre accuracy for reliable running so an angled joint isn't that much more difficult (if the angle is not too extreme). There are two problems with ensuring straight bits either side of lifting section joints: 1. It opens out the radius where the track needs to curve in the corner of a room, as in this case. Where space is tight that could seriously affect the design. 2. Straight sections in the midst of curves look weird in scenic runs, as in this case. (Although it would be better to have lifting sections be non-scenic where possible.) That's why I'm worried about unqualified advice not to do it at all.

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If the board alignment is repeatably accurate and the rails are securely fixed either side of the joint it really shouldn’t be a problem. What were the problems you had?

If the main station is raised and if we assume that the sequence of turnouts into the parcels hub is level (I think that's the only sensible option - and there's no room to change gradient between them) then you don't have very much length in which to change levels. The parcels hub might be a pain to shunt because both run round loops require the use of the main line and that means suspending main line running. How does the layout fit in the garage? Which sides are bounded by walls and is the lifting flap against an outward opening door?

Streamline curved turnout angles are 8° and 20° giving a net divergence of 12° at 2in separation - the Streamline standard.

That space in the reversing loop might need to be left open for someone to get in to access much of the left hand side of the layout (whether they have a small or large waist ). It sort of depends how the layout is fitted into the garage, i.e. where the walls are. David's loco release crossover is a definite improvement but could be closer to the buffer stops.