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Rammstein2609

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  1. Rammstein2609
    In my first post on the modular fiddle yard design I mentioned B8 turnouts had been chosen for the fiddle yard. There is very good reason for this which I can now show.
     
    For several weeks I have been working on a few designs for 2mm finescale flat bottom turnout construction fixtures. I started off with Templot to create the turnout drawing then imported this into Autocad as a DXF. This is where the fun began as I had to change some sleeper spacings in order to incorporate a 'hidden' moving sleeper to change the turnout. While this is nowhere near accurate, it suits me and removes the headache of soldering thin wire to the switch blades, feeding them under the baseboard surface and connecting to some sort of operating unit before it even connects to the motor to change it!
     

     
    The above is what I came up with. Some of you will notice it looks like a carbon copy of a Fast Tracks turnout fixture. This is no coincidence as after speaking to a few firms based in the UK I soon realised it would cost from £150 per fixture and all they would do is create a part from my drawing. The risk going down this route was my drawings may not be as accurate as I thought despite my best intentions. I then spoke to Tim Warris of Fast Tracks and he said there would be no problem converting my drawings into proper working fixtures but he would require a sample of rail to ensure the tolerances were perfect. This was sent off to Canada and two weeks later I had a package with my four turnout fixtures, a 'Frog Helper Tool', No8 and N010 frog/switch filing block and a 'Stockaid' tool to file away the foot of the flat bottom rail:
     



     
    While not cheap, I know these are exactly what I wanted and have been tweaked by the guy who produces these for a living to North American prototypes. These tools will likely last my whole modelling life and hopefully produce hundreds of turnouts.
     
    They are designed to work in exactly the same way as their American counterparts in that you have several key copper clad sleepers which slot into the machined pockets, the flat bottom rail slots into the grooves ensuring the 9.42mm gauge is maintained perfectly to allow you to solder the rail onto the copper clad sleepers. Once this has been completed you can proceed with removing the turnout from the fixture:
     

     
    The next stage involves a laser cut sleeper base which I have also designed from the same drawings as the fixtures. The few I have at the moment were samples created by Tim Horn and look fantastic but I have since edited the drawing to take the laser kerf into account. This sleeper base is glued to the bottom of the rails:
     

     
    This leaves you with a working turnout and all that is required is a few cuts with a jewellers saw to isolate the frog from everything else so it can be switched. The photo above looks really rough as it is a test turnout and I went a little crazy with my rotary tool while removing blobs of solder from the PCB sleepers. In future I will use a lot less solder and fill the isolation gaps in the PCB sleepers before painting to ensure all the sleepers blend in.
     

     
    This photo shows how much different the turnout is to an American one which is usually created with Tim's fixtures and looks miles better than the Peco Large radius code 55 turnout. The turnout I have built here is a B8 and will be the smallest turnout I will use on any layout. My other fixtures allow me to build C8, C10 and D10 turnouts too so I'm well covered for the future.
     

     
    The lighting isn't great but you can just see the subtle overhang of the class 57 on the curved road of the turnout. This is acceptable to me for a scenic section but I will likely use B8's exclusively in my fiddle yards.
     
    This turnout was a rush job but I reckon if I take my time and am careful with the solder I can build a whole turnout in around an hour. I have ran a few wagons and locos with 2mm finescale wheels through this test turnout and they are as smooth as silk. There isn't a bump over the frog and the travel over the switch blades is flawless - Something I never quite managed building by hand!
     
    I am currently waiting on an order of rail from the 2mm Association shop which should hopefully arrive tomorrow. If all goes well, I will be demoing these fixtures and tools on the DEMU/Scottish Modellers stand at Model Rail Scotland over the weekend. If you fancy a little look come and have a chat.
     
    Cheers
     
    Martin
     
    (NB: I have no connection with Fast Tracks other than a happy customer)
  2. Rammstein2609
    Following on from my last post showing an overview of my turnout construction fixtures, I have managed to get some working turnouts produced after many months of no modelling.
     
    Since trying the fixtures out for the first time, I discovered my soldering iron just wasn't up to the job and I wasn't getting the results I had hoped from the fixtures. I have since purchased a new temperature controlled soldering station and it has been fantastic. I also found most of the 2mm Association rail was coated in what I presume is oil so after trying out several different cleaning methods, the good old fibre glass pencil seems to do the trick. I now follow the process of ensuring the PCB sleepers are filed clean, the rail is brushed clean with the fibre glass pencil and I now use a different flux with my new soldering station and everything seems to work like a dream.
     
    I also sorted the artwork for the laser cut sleeper bases to account for the laser kerf. Tim Horn kindly produced two boxes worth from a 1200x1200mm sheet of 0.8mm ply and shipped them out within a few days. I now have over 190 sleeper bases in both left hand and right hand for sizes B8, C8, C10 and D10.
     

     
    I have now started to build the seven B8 turnouts I need for my new layout and the first three have been built at the rate of one per night. I reckon I can build a whole turnout in under two hours now! The photo below shows a completed turnout with freshly glued sleeper base at the top (isolation gaps still to be cut), a Peco large radius turnout in the middle and a freshly painted left hand B8 at the bottom with extra Easitrac sleepers added. It shows the reason why I moved to 2mm Finescale in the first place.
     

     
    Here are a few more shots shown beside a Farish Class 37 for comparison.
     



     
    I'm really pleased with the results so far and all my converted wagons and locos run through the turnouts silky smooth with no bumps at all.
     
    I'll be showing these off along with the fixtures and filing jigs at the 2mm Association AGM this Saturday 3rd October so if you're coming along please pop over for a chat.
     
    Thanks
     
    Martin
  3. Rammstein2609
    Here is the next stage in the modular fiddle yard design: Proof of Concept for the curved boards.
     
    I took my drawings from Autocad, printed them out and stuck them to a scrap piece of 6mm MDF. The plan here was to create a neat template to use a router to cut all the boards from. I used a multitude of power tools to create the first 'rough' template before cleaning it up with a sander. Once I was happy with this I screwed this piece to another bit of 6mm MDF and proceeded to use a router with a bearing guided cutting bit to create the actual template I would use to cut all boards from.
     

     
    Now that I had my finished template I could crack on with cutting a few test pieces. I used the template to cut the top by simply running the router around the outside of a spare bit of 12mm plywood with a guided bit. The bottom took a little longer as I had to cut the three access slots as well as the outer shape. This is the first time I've properly used a router and I was quite pleased with the results.
     

     
    Now I had to cut the four uprights to attach the top and bottom parts to. These were simply cut from an off cut of plywood I had from the first two components.
     

     
    I set about assembling the main structure with all the parts I had cut out of the 12mm ply. I started by marking the centre lines of the uprights on the top and bottom boards. This allowed me to align the uprights up one by one and glue and nail them with some brads. Once I had nailed all four uprights to the top board and turned it over and followed the same process for the bottom board. After I finished this it was apparent that just using the glue and brads created a very strong joint on each part which would likely hold up to transportation. I had always planned to used the nails to hold everything together while I drilled holes for screws and counter sinked them. This will ensure a very strong baseboard which should withstand knocks in the back of my van as well as a few accidental drops.
     


     
    All that is required now is to glue and nail some flexible plywood to either side of the baseboard to finish it off. The finished product is rigid enough for me to stand on it and light enough to carry with two fingers. I used 12mm ply for this construction which is all I had spare but now the concept has been proven I will be using 9mm furniture grade birch ply to give a strong construction and nice finish as well as shaving a little bit of weight off.
     
    During the process of cutting out the components with the templates, I couldn't resist placing four pieces together to see how it would look. I'm pleased to say it looks just like my drawing
     

     
    Now I know this concept will work I will finalise some details including having some dado's cut in the top and bottom boards to create a perfectly square and strong joint between the uprights. Hopefully I can build the four curved boards properly in the summer which will give me a nice round test track to run some locos on.
     
    Cheers
     
    Martin
  4. Rammstein2609
    Building turnouts in 2mm fine scale which operate smoothly has been a difficult task for me. The first few turnouts which I actually managed to finish looked a bit rubbish and rolling stock kept sticking in the crossing. This almost made me move back to N gauge track but then the 2mm Association released their comprehensive book on turnout construction and operation. After reading through the book several times I began to think of new ways to build the required turnouts for Rannoch. The turnouts on the scenic section will all be built in situ with plastic chairs and sleepers but all the turnouts in the fiddle yard will be copper clad construction for durability.
     
    My previous experiments in copper clad were OK and after a few adjustments allowed rolling stock to pass through smoothly. The problem with previous plans for Rannoch was that almost every turnout in the fiddle yard was unique. For the new plan I have tried to keep all turnouts to a handful of designs. I have managed to re use the same three turnout designs for the whole fiddle yard albeit some are a mirror image. My reasoning behind this was I thought if I could design a jig for each turnout design, I could build each turnout on the workbench then place on the layout when the baseboards are built. Below is the result of a few hours on AutoCad and laser cutting by a small company based in London.
     



     
    The idea behind these jigs is to glue them to a suitable flat piece of birch ply I have and cut them into individual jigs. This means they are small enough for the workbench and I can turn them around so I am always soldering at the front. Using ply as the material means it won't melt when the soldering iron is near. PCB sleepers will be cut and inserted into the slots. The rail locations are engraved into the surface to allow me to roughly locate them before soldering. I will install some pins to ensure alignment and straightness of the rails. Hopefully building all of the fiddle yard turnouts this way will ensure some sort of uniformity and means I won't have to build them in situ which could get messy.
     
    Something else which has been progressing in AutoCad is the drawing of the station building and signal box. Again, the idea for this will be to laser cut and engrave to produce a kit which should glue together to be painted.
     

     
    This drawing still has someway to go before I can send it off to the laser cutters but I already had an etch produced for all the windows and doors.
     




     
    I designed these around two years ago and had them produced around 18 months ago. I am really pleased with the way they turned out considering how fine they are. Some bits go down to 0.15mm! I've got a lot on at work between now and the end of April but hope to have the station building drawings finished and laser cut by May. I should be at the Perth model railway show in June with either a finished building or actually building it from a kit of laser cut parts.
     
    The designs for the baseboards are progressing well too with an estimated build date of around July-August.
     
    Thanks
     
    Martin
  5. Rammstein2609
    A few of you may remember I previously had a few blog entries featuring some CAD plans and baseboards for my attempt to model Rannoch in 2mm Finescale. That was almost two years ago and pretty much no progress has been made on the layout front. I have been slowly collecting and converting/detailing rolling stock in preparation for track laying which never happened. Most rolling stock items which I started to detail and convert haven't been finished yet so there isn't much to report on that front either. This slow progress has mostly been caused by a new job I started just under a year ago.
     
    Since building the baseboards to fit into the available space I had, something was nagging at the back of my mind about how I had to compromise parts of the layout. Over the past year I returned to the drawing board on numerous occasions to try and attempt to create more space on the scenic section. In the end I ended up scrapping the baseboards I had and decided to completely start again.
     

     
    This is how far I have progressed in the last few days of planning.
     
    I now have access to a large industrial unit thanks to a friend starting a new business. This means I am no longer limited in size but don't want anything too big for obvious reasons. The size I have decided on is just shy of 20x5ft.
     
    I started with a screenshot from Google Earth which I then roughly scaled and used as a background shape in Templot. After getting the scenic track work to a stage I was happy with my attention turned to the fiddle yard. As can be seen from the above screenshot, I have had to use curved turnouts to maximise the road lengths in the fiddle yard. The result is a scenic section which is roughly to scale in length and a fiddle yard which can easily cope with the trains I plan on running and still cope with any future additions to my rolling stock box.
     
    The biggest mistake I made with the original baseboards was everything was flat. I somehow thought I could build up the scenery but there is technically three different height levels required to model this West Highland landscape. I have a design in mind for the design and construction of the scenic sections which I will create a blog entry for once I have some images to show.
     
    Thanks
     
    Martin
  6. Rammstein2609
    I have a habit of playing around with ideas I have in Autocad. The result of recent tinkering is my third etch with various parts needed for several projects. Among those projects is to upgrade a rake of Graham Farish TTA's to run on my next 2fs layout.
     
    The plan is to replace the moulded plastic walkways and ladders with my own etches, fit my own custom W irons with cast suspension units and axle boxes. Tonight I have quickly folded up and positioned a walkway and ladders on a wagon to see how it looks compared to the Farish mouldings. Below are a few quick shots of how the wagon looks with my etches roughly in place.



    I need to change the artwork slightly to make them fit a bit better but I'm happy so far. My plan is to eventually make these parts into a kit for anyone who wants them.
     
    I will try and document any progress on this project here alongside my website for anyone interested. Another project currently on the drawing board is to convert a rake of Farish PCA wagons into the Alcan Alumina wagons. More on that later.
  7. Rammstein2609
    Hi all,
     
    I had planned on constantly updating this blog with the progress of my test layout in 2fs. After the last post I kind of lost interest as I have been working hard at planning my proper layout in Google Maps, Templot and Autocad. Rannoch in 2mm Finescale is born (kind of).
     
    During this time I have been slowly building up a collection of suitable stock by finding bargains at shows or on eBay. I thought I would post a few quick snaps taken today with my iPhone. The aim of these pics was to determine whether the track looked right on my test layout to improve on my techniques. I think the track looks good but the ballast obviously needs a quick spray with some dirt. What do you think? This is just a small selection of some of the rolling stock I have at the moment. These are all unmodified RTR apart from the GBRf66 and the BDA which have Microtrains knuckle couplers fitted.
     
    Lastly, I have created a new blog style website to document Rannoch from the start of the design process straight through to exhibiting it. Have a look at www.rannoch2fs.co.uk if you have a spare few minutes and see what you think.
     
    Now for the pics (I particularly like the last one)








  8. Rammstein2609
    Hi all,
     
    Since I completed my 2011 challenge entry I have been planning a new layout which can be put into a small enough package which can fit into the boot of my car. This is currently a 2010 Vauxhall Astra Sport 3dr, so the boot isn't massive.
     
    I wanted to build the baseboards out of decent lightweight materials. I had decided on birch ply but all the local suppliers had to specially order it for me and it was a tad too expensive. I found a website which sold 10 A2 sized sheets of laser cut grade 4mm birch ply at a reasonable price, so ordered a pack.
     
    Now that I had the maximum size of the material to be used I designed the baseboards and cuts on Autocad. I managed to fit 3 scenic boards and a fiddle yard onto the 10 sheets. The trackplan was then designed in Templot to fit the baseboard size.
     
    I'll add a track plan and more info in the next entry. For the moment, here is a quick video of the first loco to run on one of the scenic boards:
     
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24MIrVGnHDc
     
    Cheers
     
    Martin
  9. Rammstein2609
    Well, it's been another year since my last entry and still no progress due to yet more time spent improving my designs. My job has also meant I don't have much time to do any physical modelling so I spend a lot of time on my computer thinking of more ideas to add to the layout. The main part I wasn't entirely happy with was the fiddle yard. I think I had seriously over complicated it for myself then the realisation came that I couldn't re-use the fiddle yard for any other layouts as it was tailored to suit Rannoch.
     
    I've spent a lot of time in Autocad trying out different ideas but think I may have finally cracked it! I looked around the web at different fiddle yard designs and found a handful of 'Modular' fiddle yards. These were designed to be able to be used as either roundy roundy layouts, a section at each end of a layout or used on one side only. The other idea was you could use it on a 12ft scenic section layout one week then use it on a much longer layout the next just by adding an extra module or two. This got me thinking and this is what I've come up with.
     
    I decided that all turnouts would be straight to make it a lot easier to build them on the workbench then transfer them over to the baseboards. I then decided that all the turnouts should be B8's for reasons which will be explained in a week or two . I could then limit all the turnouts to a single 1200mm baseboard at either end of the fiddle yard:
     
     

     
    The benefit of this is all the point motor wiring is confined to a single board and not spread out all over the fiddle yard. As there will be a mirror image of this board on the other end of the fiddle yard you can use both of them or one or the other in a multitude of setups to suit a particular layout. A few 1200mm sections which are made up of straight track could then be bolted in between these if you have a roundy roundy layout:
     

     
    Now that the fiddle yard design was finalised I had to figure out a way to get the trains from it onto the scenic part of a layout. I like the idea of having an operating well in the middle of the layout for at least two people so the use of four curved boards to complete the circuit seemed ideal. I chose a decent minimum radius for these and worked from there to get enough space to run two tracks around the centre line. This would ensure good running of longer models and enough room for two operators to be comfortable in the available space.
     

     
    The benefit of the boards being built in such a way is that they complete the circuit for the fiddle yard and layout but can all be connected together to create a twin track test track. I've left enough room either side of the tracks though in case I want to lay some N gauge track to allow running in of new models before re-wheeling.
     
    Now the eagle eyed among you may have noticed that I have designed the curved boards with two tracks but the plan for Rannoch is to be single track. I've got some ideas for different layouts which may arrive years down the line and these will require two running lines all the way around the layout so I have kept the fiddle yard as modular as possible to accommodate these when they eventually get built. I have had to design two curved crossovers in two of the curved boards to allow the use of all tracks on the fiddle yard if it is coupled to a single track layout:
     

     
    Once I had settled on the modular design I turned my mind to construction methods. A method I have used several times over the past few years for curved boards was to create what looks like a monocoque frame. The solid top is connected to four uprights at the ends and then 30degrees from the board radius centre line at either end. The whole thing is then connected to a bottom which has three cutouts to allow access to wiring and point motors as well as reducing weight significantly while maintaining structural integrity.
     

     
    Next up will be part 2 where I build one of the curved boards as a proof of concept.
     
    Cheers
     
    Martin
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