Harlequin

Here's a little package of suggestions regarding your BLT:

• Have more, but shorter storage lines because that's probably more flexible.
• Leave the lower storage points fan where it is and start the upper fan more towards the West, feeding into the shorter storage roads.
• That means there's a run of simple plain track in the NW corner, and that means you can angle the BLT more into the NW corner (as far as you can without cramping the fiddle yard operator's space.
• That means that the entrance to the room is more open and there's more room for the BLT operator.
• Then the BLT approach curve is more open and the BLT can be a bit longer.

Idea: The curves at the East end seem to be quite relaxed now and if there's no need to disguise them any more that would be a great place to drop the baseboard away and have the two lines cross a river valley on bridges or small viaducts of very different characters, say, one brick and one timber!

Related topic here:

So there is something good happening in the world!

38 minutes ago, David Pell said:

Reply received from Andrew Beard Peco, Technical Advice Bureau. Reply is as follows “The small Y turnout does not have any wires to be cut, as this is to the previous Electrofrog design. For DCC use all that would be required is insulated rail joiners on both frog rails. No alterations are required to the turnout”. 

 

Many thanks

Well, yes and no...

You don't have to make any changes to the turnout, but if you have been carrying out the "standard mods" to your other electrofrog turnouts, which your OP implied, then what I said above is the equivalent mod for this type of turnout. (I.e. make the closure rails permanently powered rather than relying on the contact of the blade on the stock rail and switch the frog using a more reliable external switch.)

(Note that because the moulded insulating parts are so close to the frog you could have the same problem with some wheelsets as has been found with the Unifrog turnouts but it's easy to fix with a bit of nail varnish painted inside the closure rails.)

They are electrofrog, as Andi says, it's just that some Peco Streamline turnouts have an older design than others. I think the Small Ys are an example of this (and there are physical reasons why these small turnouts need to be a bit different as Andi says).

If you cut both long link wires then you will isolate the frog from the closure rails and the closure rails from each other. Cut one of the link wires as far away from the frog as possible and that becomes the frog dropper wire.

Then solder new link wires to the underside of the closure rails. You can see there are openings in the moulding where the closure rails are visible and channels in the "sleeper" to route wires to the outside of the turnout but nothing to allow you connect them to the stock rails so either bit of carving will be needed or just route those wires through the baseboard as you would any normal power feed dropper.

The branch line joining the main line before the platforms seems to conflict with the idea of allowing trains to run on the main circuit while other operations are going on. (And would the Board of Trade allow a connection like that?)

Based on a true story: A through station on the single track main line might start off as a simple passing loop with a small goods yard. Then the branch line company build their line and engine shed near the station but not connected at first. After some negotiation a bay platform is built and the branch line comes in alongside the main passing loop, with a suitable junction to the main line. Another branch line joins the main line a few miles further down the track and since its services also terminate at the through station, it also gains a bay platform but this time on the other side. The main line company takes over the two branch lines and the original branch engine shed becomes the local shed for the main line. All the time traffic is growing, the importance of the branch lines wax and wane and the station facilities are tweaked and expanded to suit revised operating patterns but the underlying simple original passing loop is still the backbone of the plan.

46 minutes ago, Martin S-C said:

I prefer termini because of the greater amount of operations there - running locos around, taking locos off to shed and attaching new ones, turning locos - this then adds the freight moves associated with a loco shed. Goods all need to arrive and be broken down and depart. I realise some of this occurs with a through station as well, or even indeed all of it.

Hoist by your own Petard! 

Yes, exactly, you can do all of that at a through station, and then there are the extra through services to add more operations.

With a suitable back story you can terminate main line trains at the station even though it's not a terminus.

The blue high level BLT section is not so big that it couldn't be made demountable... That is to say, it could be permanent most of the time and you duck under it normally but when frequent access is needed to the storage end it could be carefully lifted off and stacked somewhere.

The crossovers against the platform faces might be troublesome for your 4-4-0s. If the main station were a through station, then you could imagine the left hand end of it being off-scene, like @KNP's Encombe, and you could then run some of the loops off-scene to the left, thus removing the crossovers from between the platforms. But that would mean more track crossing the controversial lifting flap so maybe a non-starter...

Can you explain why you prefer a terminus to a through station? I still don't really get it so I can't decide at the moment if the pseudo-terminus is the best solution or whether a proper through station could be made to do what you want.

(Wouldn't the miner's halt be on the colliery side of the track?)

12 minutes ago, Martin S-C said:

Had a bit of a stumble this morning when I realised that it is key to me that the main station is NOT on the continuous run. While the idea of a Grandborough Junction style station is appealing I would rather not have to have my shunting/marshalling operations at the main "source of interest" on the layout be interrupted every 3 mins by a train trundling through. I would like to be able to leave a train circulating the main run and be able to play shunty things with both freight and passenger at the terminus so I'm back to having the circuit avoid the main station entirely. I do not want a gradient so it needs to run behind or in front of the station. Behind makes more sense in terms of relationships between adjacent tracks but then I lose a big section of the continuous run behind scenery.

Thoughts?

No problem: Headshunts.

I think you have plenty of tracks to use as headshunts in the current version of the main station for the goods yard, the parcels and the engine shed areas but you might consider adding more depending on how you think the station would  be operated. You would only need to stop running on the main line when something needed to cross from the branch/engine shed side to the parcels/goods side. Maybe an acceptable compromise?

To separate the main and branch lines more you could possibly run the main line closest to the well, then the colliery, then the branch line outside that. That would be good in a few ways:

• The main and branch lines would be better separated and have very different paths, helping to better differentiate them.
• The colliery buildings would partially obscure the branch line. They could be quite close to the branch line because colliery development might have cut into the hillside and created retaining walls.
• It feels "right" for a colliery to be set on/in a hillside in my mind. (Is that true for your kind of colliery?)
• It helps the mainline cross under the branch at a less acute angle.

The difficulty with that idea is that the main line would then have a much tighter curve around the end into the main station - but there are probably ways to manage that.

There might be room in the bottom right corner for a private siding off the branch line, either inside or outside, to feed a small industry.

Here’s my lash up this year, GWR of course (sort of)...

Quick sketch of how a simple round-the-room circuit could work without losing the key elements:

Obviously you'd want to re-arrange the main station a bit. (It is unavoidably a through-station but terminal platforms could be justified, especially associated with the branch line.)

Arrows show where I've pushed things around to get more space.

There are Pros and Cons, of course! But hopefully it's food for thought...

1 hour ago, Chuffer Davies said:

Back in November (21st - Page 61) I mentioned my intention to design a replacement Nickel Silver chassis in order to convert the Dapol Mogul to EM for running on our Hungerford exhibition layout.  Since then I have been beavering away on the computer drawing up the required components in CAD and have just finished the initial design stage.  As previously mentioned my preferred approach to designing model railway rolling stock is, as far as is possible, to draw up the components on top of an official drawing that has previously been imported in CAD and scaled to 4mm/foot.  

 

The following image is a screen shot of part of my work pad in CAD illustrating some of the components that have been prepared in this manner.  

 

 

The next stage is to arrange them into frames in preparation for sending the CAD files off to the etching company for processing.  This is quite a laborious process and care must be taken to ensure that all the components are attached to the frames with small tabs.  Failure to do this will result in the components dropping away to the bottom of the acid bath never to be seen again.  The following is the result of this afternoon's endeavours.  

 

  

It'll take a few days to finish organising all the components in their frets but hopefully by the end of the week I will be ready to send the file off to the etchers.  

 

The more I have worked on this project the more impressed I have become with the quality of the model that Dapol have produced.  I have just removed the bottom of the boiler wrapper from the chassis casting so that I can re-attach it once I have packed the boiler with lead.  I was amazed to find that Dapol have gone to the trouble of recreating all the rivet detail around the seam where the boiler attaches to the back of the smokebox, even though this is virtually impossible to see when it is glued to the Dapol chassis block.

 

 

I'm guessing it will be a couple of months before I have the metal work in my hands.  Hopefully I will have managed to get sufficient of the design correct to be able to create a working chassis from the version 1 etches.  There is always the risk that a fold line is missing or on the wrong face of the metal, even if all the dimensions are correct, so the first test build is always a bit of a hit or miss affair.  

 

Here's hoping!

 

Regards,

Frank

Maybe this also is a diversion too far from the topic of the Dapol Mogul and would be better in a topic of it’s own?

I just had an idea about a possible arrangement for a high level terminus that would hide the storage loops but still leave them accessible with minimal tracks covering other tracks:

The downside is that you'd have to duck-under to perform manual fiddling but the BLT board would be higher making that a bit easier and some fiddling could be done where the main circuit emerges near the doorway.

Hi Martin,

If you bridge the entrance door then I suggest the bridge should not attempt to be scenic, should be just one level and only the main lines should journey over it. That makes life much simpler!

Following on from that, since the storage area will also be more or less non-scenic it makes sense to position that to one side or the other of the entrance bridge so that the remainder of the room can be unbroken scenic area. (It might be worth investigating having the storage to the right of the door so that the scenic panorama presented to the visitor on entrance spans the entire length of the room...?)

Then your main line, single or double, can circumnavigate the room in a meandering fashion, without exploring it's limits too far.

A through station on the mainline would be more efficient spatially than a terminus and would avoid both the need for a mainline junction feeding it and the need for the mainline to pass by the station artificially. It could include all the same elements of a terminus, allowing trains to run through at speed (period speed!) as well as allowing trains to terminate and reverse if required.

If the through station incorporated the branch line junction, exactly as you have it in your major station now, then there would be no need for any junctions in the countryside except for possibly the colliery, which could be off the main line, off the branch, or maybe terminating the branch.

You might think that this all sounds a bit anodyne but maybe the simpler bare bones would make it easier to flesh out the character and interest? (Your stations always seem to be naturally characterful to me, BTW.)

If the branch line remained outside the main line along its entire length then you wouldn't have any problem with the main line or storage loops being covered - but it would, on the face of it, be a bit boring again.

58 minutes ago, Martin S-C said:

6) There is only one duckunder to the branch terminus and I am happy with that one. As I mentioned before if the branch is operated by a push pull set or some kind of Col Stephenson railbus there is no need to even go there to operate it, just the one daily freight working to be shunted. The east loop's hole is for maintenance only so will not be used most of the time. The storage loops can largely be accessed/operated from the doorway if need be.

Trains will still be quite short so three can be stored on each passing loop in the storage area giving the line a capacity of 12 trains, 14 if one includes one more each at terminus and colliery. Control is digital so no need for section breaks in the storage loops. Trains that are short such as maybe a milk working or a small local passenger create more space as I can very nearly buffer up one train behind the next.

I am very reluctant indeed to use a lifting flap again.
 

With the duckunders remember that operating is not the only time you might (or might not) need to access the separated areas. There's also tracklaying, ballasting, track weathering, track cleaning, making scenery, fixing backscenes, planting buildings, etc., etc., etc...

Stacking trains in storage loops obviously affects operations (although, if you're prepared to see the trains you don't want at that moment, to do circuits of the scenic area to open the path for the train you do want, then maybe that's not such a big problem).

If the lifting section and possibly some of the support structure either side was made of ply or metal then the problems of wood shrinkage could be largely eliminated.

Hi Martin,

I can see the reason for all the talk of CJF, now, and to my eyes there are some typical CJF problems. (Sorry!)

• There’s almost no room for non-railway scenery.
• Unrelated tracks passing close to each other.
• Goods yards are cramped.
• Lots of Double junctions out in the open.
• Relatively sharp 90deg turns following each other in the right-hand dumbbell.
• Duckunders making access more difficult.
   

Also, I worry about the storage capacity and how it will work in practice because of the lack of crossovers. Edit: Maybe the reversing loops obviate the need for crossovers? Not sure.

I wonder if it would be possible to engineer a lifting section across the doorway that works reliably rather than abandoning the idea? After all, you know what the problems are now and you know that this is the first thing to get working before spending time on anything else.

If you could cross the doorway then the plan could be simpler while still having all the same elements, with more room to breathe and more chance of being able to do some of the things on your wishlist.

I hope this message doesn’t put you off. It’s offered constructively and obviously you may not see some of these things as "problems" at all!

Minories, as originally conceived, is portable and so you set it up wherever there is room for it...

(And then fold it up and take it away when the room needs to be used for something else.)

56 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Basically quite ok although the Advanced Starter isn't essential (and the bracket has one arm drawn the wrong way round - but you knew that anyway.   I doubt the release crossover would be worked by a GF - far simpler in those days to work it from the 'box as it would then be 100% mechanical.    The trap points are niwe  worrect

 

The Distant Signal could actually be sited at something like a scale distance from the Home Signal on this layout - about 8ft 6" in rear of the Home would be pretty reasonable for a low speed dead end branch like this. (officially it should be at around the 17ft mark but many distants at branch termini were much closer to the Home than 880yds).

 

PS. I won't go into the question of providing or not providing trap points for passenger bay lines - it was complicated and this bay is probably ok without one,

Great, thanks!

Adv starter: OK

Bracket: Oops - trying to get the drawing together too fast!

Loco release: OK

Trap/catch: I was using Andy's own terminology. OK "traps".

Distant: Great, OK.

Bay trap: Interesting, OK.

I'm no expert so I'm taking a risk here but, nothing ventured nothing gained, so here goes:

I think the catch points are not correctly positioned. The bay wouldn't need one because it's a passenger line. The goods catch point needs to be in the run round loop because it's not passenger rated.

So here's my stab at it:

• It is still "over-signalled" - it has to be if it's not one engine in steam. However, I replaced the bracket by separate starters for main and bay to lighten the feel a bit.
• Might be better if the loco release spur was just worked by a ground frame?
• Not sure of the relationship of the fixed distant to the military siding.
• Advanced starter in rear of the military siding just because of distance, not signalling that siding in any way.
• I haven't drawn all the elements of a true signalling diagram.

Experts, do your stuff.

How about a sand furnace?

It would need to be alongside a track, near the engine shed.

Great to hear from you, Martin.

It sounds like you’re back on track.

45 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Can't see that happening unless it already a flickering LED.

 

I assumed it was a steady one that should be controlled by the firebox flicker function on the decoder

No, the firebox “flicker” is run by electronics on the loco and is just a regular cycle between the two LEDs. This is one of the model’s flaws. I guess it’s done that way so that it “flickers” under DC control too.

49 minutes ago, Gopher said:

The next exciting instalment on my faulty Mogul

 

After more comprehensive testing otherwise known as frigging about I have made a discovery.

 

The instructions state that function F1 operates the firebox flicker.  As mentioned by Harlequin and Neal - Function F0 needs to be operated.  I have discovered that when I turn on Function F0 as well as getting a periodic dim firebox glow, the loco also starts the celebrated twitching, even when the throttle is returned to zero.  If I turn off Function F0 the Loco behaves itself.  So it looks as if there is some kind of circuitry/decoder fault.  The Zimo sound decoder I hope to install operates the firebox flicker off a different function to coincide with coal shovelling sounds.  I am still reluctant to install a sound decoder, when clearly there is some kind of fault.

 

I am not sure whether the F0 conundrum accounts for the other behavioural problems the loco has i.e. when put in reverse carrying on running even when throttle is returned to zero.   The only way to stop the loco being to cut power to the track.  This was happening every time I ran the loco this morning (and before I discovered the power of Function 0).  I have not been able to replicate this in my running session this afternoon (although I did remove the PCB and chip to examine them under a magnifier - possibly re-inserting both cured this problem).  Also in my session this afternoon cutting power to the track stopped the loco from twitching (unlike yesterday when it seemed to have a life of its own).

 

I guess the bottom line is whilst I can live without a firebox flicker, I do not fully trust the loco not to possibly screw up another more expensive decoder.  Also having paid good dosh the thing should run to spec, and I should not have to compromise.                  

Ah, interesting...

Sounds like you have some crossover between the firebox light circuit and the motor circuit. Maybe there are some trapped wires somewhere with their insulation stripped away and making unwanted contact? Or bad soldering around the carrier board socket?

Wierd...

Does anything look odd on the decoder or the carrier board?

1 hour ago, Gopher said:

Right another conundrum.  I have been running the replacement loco which was DCC  fitted with a Dapol DCC decoder pre fitted.  It does some strange things.  It runs well and very smoothly, but then on occasions if you change direction, the loco stalls, stutters - jerks backwards and forwards slightly, and continues to do so ignoring any subsequent commands from the controller.  What is really odd  - is this still happens when I  kill the power to the track - the loco continues to twitch back and for.  I am not sure if there is an on board capacitor which causes this. 

 

The loco runs quite happily on DC, and most of the time on DCC, it just has these occasional twitches on DCC which is a tad concerning.  I have to say the number of occasions with the twitching became less the longer I ran it.  The firebox led is definitely not working or it must be very very dim, cannot even be seen in the dark.  I think I may have to return it for hopefully another replacement.  

 

Conclusion is that there is some issue with the DCC connections on the circuit board (says a non expert).  This appears to be the second Dapol mogul I have had with DCC problems.  

 

Any other DCC users had any issues ? (I might also have to post this on the DCC thread)  

 

On a more positive note - it runs very smoothly over all my track work.  I have a couple of dodgy bits - points and crossovers which I have to take slowly with some of my steam locos.  The Mogul flies through these without a murmur, and is very sure footed.  If I can get my DCC problems sorted I will be a happy bunny.                

This all sounds very odd and to work out what's going on you need to eliminate some of the variables. What decoder are you using now? If you put the same decider in another loco does that loco behave the same? If you put a different decoder in the Mogul does it behave badly? Etc., etc...

The firebox light is very dim even when it's working properly. Are you using F0 to turn it on?