Titanius Anglesmith

On 16/04/2023 at 12:27, Peterem said:

 

My pet peeve at exhibitions are stations that have platforms with no obvious passenger access, except presumably over the tracks. Given the frequency show layouts usually operate, a death sentence for any passenger unlucky enough to try. 

Wickham Bishops on the Great Eastern. Access to the platform from the station building was by crossing the goods siding

40 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

That fits; that works was opened in 1897. There was an estate for employees built, called Kynochtown. Between January 1915 and January 1916 the Midland sold Kynochs seven old carriages for use on their private lines at Kynochtown - presumably used to provide a shuttle service between the estate and the works. 

Kynochtown was walking distance from the works. The carriages were bought for the Corringham Light Railway service between Kynochtown and Corringham (where I grew up). The terraces nearest to Corringham station were built by Kynochs though. 
 

Kynochtown was eventually demolished (by then renamed Coryton) to make way for expansion of the Mobil refinery, which was built adjacent to the site of the Kynochs works. Apparently the Kynochtown / Coryton platform still exists but is not accessible to the public. 

On 05/04/2023 at 20:32, Wickham Green too said:

Presumably there was some explosives traffic for the cement industry around Grays ......... maybe the rest of the vans were needed for ordnance to that great blank space on the map beyond Shoeburyness ??!?

The LT&SR wagons were probably built for traffic from the Kynochs munitions factory near Shell Haven. 

1 hour ago, SZ said:

And there we have it, nothing much of use to the average modeller.

What’s an average modeller?  I found this discussion quite interesting, I must be above average. 
 

Slightly more seriously, I was contacted a few months back by a modeller who wanted my advice on how to programme an Arduino to receive and issue bell codes. So this must be relevant to someone. 
 

edit: multiple replies beat me to it

On 21/02/2023 at 10:35, Barclay said:

For anyone who fancies experimenting, these 12vDC motor controllers are quite effective. This one cost about £6 off ebay, though I had to buy a box, wire it up and fit a DPDT reversing switch. It uses Pulse Width Modulation, but you can adjust the frequency of this to get the best result. Very smooth, just needs a 12vDC input - back to H&M  again !

 

Just last weekend I wired up the same PWM controller to a new motor on SWMBO’s Unimat lathe. It never occurred to me to use one for model railway control. I’d be very interested to know how it performs compared to a traditional variable voltage controller. I’ve never been 100% satisfied with my Gaugemaster Combi as some of my locos don’t seem to agree with it. 

12 hours ago, RailWest said:

The purpose of a LoS was to limit wrong-direction movements, which by definition do not exist on a bi-directional single-line. (Ignore what you may see on some heritage lines :-) ) 

 

In Peter Kay’s The LT&SR series, there’s a photo, taken in 1959, clearly showing an LOS board on the bi-directional line between Grays and West Thurrock Junction….

3 hours ago, bigdaveadams1 said:

I live opposite to Sleights Station. The level crossing gave access to the Goods Yard. 

Just the goods yard, or was it a public road?

The layout is very similar to a station local to me, except that the level crossing was at the other end (where the bridge is here. And it was a public road)

3 hours ago, Clive Mortimore said:

I always get confused when people add a loco release to a Minories type layout.
…….

Fenchurch Street is another example where train in, loco t'other end and go. Running around trains takes away that busy suburban feeling. 

I don’t disagree with anything you just said, but the original layout at Fenchurch St had a release road between two of the platform roads, and after remodelling in the 20s (or 30s?) it still had a release crossover between the two middle roads :)

1 hour ago, Nick C said:

 

I wonder if there were examples of more than two arms being selected off a single lever - or even more confusing, selected arms off a push-pull lever...

Yes there were, eg 20’s lever at West Thurrock Junction 

https://signalbox.org/~SBdiagram.php?id= 1221

1 hour ago, Lacathedrale said:

My main umbrage was, and I think will always be, that to me as a born city lad - is that I expect a 'real' railway is always double track. Any time I see a single line it feels like a quaint anachronism.

I'm inclined to agree.  I know of course that there were many single-track BLTs (and practical and thematic reasons for modelling one), but I get the impression that some modellers think that all termini were either Ashburton or Paddington, with no variation in between.  I certainly feel that double-track termini are under-represented, though I acknowledge again that single track layouts have their advantages.

6 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

I'd like to use a kickback goods yard with a Minories type terminus so am rather keen to find some real examples of this but am finding them to be far rarer than I'd expected.  

Southend had a kickback goods yard

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=17&lat=51.53752&lon=0.71039&layers=170&b=1

Although after 1884 it became a through station, many services still terminated there. The signalling allowed for arrivals and reversals at all platforms except for the up-through. So a Minories with kickback yard seems perfectly justifiable to me. 

31 minutes ago, Regularity said:

I am not “offended” by 00 gauge at all.

I wasn’t suggesting that you was, sorry if I gave that impression. 

27 minutes ago, Regularity said:

And yes, to those who think that it is difficult to tell the difference, that’s not the case for anyone who has closely studied prototype track.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  I've walked more miles of track than I care to think about, but I'm not offended by OO gauge.

16 minutes ago, Lacathedrale said:

@Pacific231G - I understand that goods yards are typically set-back into using a trailing connection on a through station, but at a terminus they're always facing, either directly or through a separate goods lead, right?

No.  Many (even most?) double track termini had conventionally laid out goods yards accessed by a trailing point.  Bromley North for example, or Windsor & Eton.  

The original Southend station had the goods yard on the arrivals side, and shunting was via the departure line blocking both roads (not an unusual arrangement).  When it was remodelled in 1894 there were goods sidings on both sides of the line, again both shunted from the departure line blocking both roads.  When the station was remodelled again in 1915 the goods yard was wholly on the arrivals side, accessed only from a kickback very similar to your recent plan.

Uxbridge Vine St had one of the goods connections via a facing point on the arrivals line, but the interlocking would only allow reversing moves across it from the departures line.

11 hours ago, Lacathedrale said:

So, I have dusted off the riff on Minories from the last page and I think it would work a treat as a large market town around somewhere in Sussex:

 

"Lindfield" in 2' x 12'

I like that a lot 👍

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

It couldn't possibly be GWR practice if the "staiths" themselves were not usual GWR practice! Besides, this circles back to the key point that unloading the coal wagons wasn't the railway company's responsibility but the coal merchant's.

The coal pens at Uxbridge Vine St (GWR!) backed up to the siding, but it looks like there was enough space to swing the door fully open, so it wouldn't be propped up by the back of the pen.

https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EPW041117

12 hours ago, 47137 said:

This would fit with the setting of the layout, which features E H Bentall of Heybridge, agricultural engineers and one of Britain's earliest car builders.

Do you have a layout thread? My wife is from Heybridge and her father was an apprentice at Bentalls

Upminster in 1934, with what looks to me like coal bins that back up to the siding, opposite the goods shed 

https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EPW043925

Bromley North, 1929. Coal bins backed up to a siding, but opposite another siding

https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EPW028346

Uxbridge Vine St, 1933. Coal bins backed up to the siding

https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EPW041117

1 hour ago, AndyID said:

 

The gap at the insulated joiner must be about two millimeters. It's highly unlikely something metallic made contact across that gap but if it did where did it go?

I’ve been on track circuit failures on the real thing where metallic dust has bridged across 12mm of insulated T-piece. It doesn’t take much. If the rails have ever been cleaned with a track rubber or other abrasive, that can drop  dust / filings into the joint. 
 

I took it as a given that if a reed switch was being used then the links on the bottom of the points would have been cut, and the switch rails bonded directly to the stock rails. You’re right of course, they may not have been. 

13 hours ago, DCB said:

The switch on the frog to the right was not switching so there was opposite polarity each side of the joiner

It’s an insulated joiner. Its only purpose in life (apart from mechanically joining the rails, obviously) is to separate opposite polarities. If it never had opposite polarities across it, there would be no need for it to be insulated. 
 

>>edit- unless it’s the non-insulated joiner on the other rail that you’re talking about? <<
 

I think @Michael Hodgson has it right, a short with a small cross section developed at the insulated joint (perhaps due to rail expansion), and the heat from that short melted the joiner. The Reed switch, being the only current path to the frog, would have to carry that fault current and that’s probably what ruined the switch, not the other way round. 

I can give one a try, but from what @AndyID has said it’s the current pulled on the supply lines that’s the issue, rather than the control method

3 hours ago, Stubby47 said:

Have you tried digital servos instead of the cheaper analogue ones?

 

I've not tried these myself, but apparently they don't twitch on initial power up.

Thank you for the suggestion, but I don’t have a issue with servos twitching on power up. What I do have a problem with, is the servos sometimes scrambling my internet router when they move, or when they power up (without moving or twitching). 

Time for an update....

Despite my initial optimism I never fully got rid of this problem.  As it's sporadic it's hard to pinpoint what steps are actually making a difference.  

While I was doing some other mods, I took the opportunity to rearrange the feed arrangements and connect all the servos to a dedicated busbar, itself fed fed directly from the +5v PSU via a twisted pair.  The +5/ground legs to individual servos have mostly been shortened where possible and twisted together.

Quite often the glitch occurs when I power the whole lot up.  I've realised that in the "void setup" part of the code told all the servos to go to the correct positions immediately.  I don't know if this is causing a problem as all the servos are usually in their correct positions to start with, so don't need to move.  I will try removing that bit of code (commenting it out) to see if it does make a difference. 

Another idea I'm toying with is driving the servo busbar via a transistor so that it can be turned on and off via the arduino only when required.  The idea being it will remove the separate problem of servo twitch whenever certain locos go past, but obviously it may exacerbate any potential problem caused by the servo power-up surge.

On 04/06/2021 at 22:58, AndyID said:

I think what is happening is a large current pulse runs around the loop formed by the 5V and 0V connections to the servo when the Arduino makes the servo's motor rotate. (They do suck a lot of current.) The RF energy transmitted is proportional to the area of the loop formed by the cable.  Doubling the length of the cable effectively doubles the transmitted energy - worse if there is a lot of distance between 5V and 0V.

 

One way to reduce that is to use a twisted pair for power and ground between the Arduino and the servo. Another option is to try to take the edge off the current pulse by fitting a high frequency ceramic capacitor between power and ground as close as possible to the servo - ideally right at the servo itself although that will mean altering its cable.

 

The capacitor might be something like 10nF. You could experiment with different capacitors. The idea is to prevent a sudden demand for current running round the loop by initially sourcing the demand from a capacitor. It's the rate of change of current in the loop that's the problem so anything you can do to reduce the rate of change should help.

 

To find out if this is correct you could experiment by substituting three AA batteries for the power feed right at the servo rather than taking power from the Arduino supply. Unfortunately that might mean hacking up some cables too.

I haven't tried the capacitor yet, or the 3x AA batteries.  I thought I had some in the bits & bobs box but apparently not.  

On 05/06/2021 at 19:03, Nigelcliffe said:

 

If you want to check your internal wiring is "up to standard", then check the connection speeds you get at the router in its current position,  then try it in the master socket (faceplate removed from front of socket, to reveal master socket) and get the speeds again. 
If not very different, house wiring is fine.  If significantly different, decide if its worth solving the power socket issue, or investigating the house wiring: may be as simple as extensions wired with random two wires from the bundle of colours, rather than a specific twisted pair.  

This is something else that I still need to try....

These are all excellent, food for thought! Thank you!

Thank you all for the excellent examples so far!