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noiseboy72

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  1. noiseboy72
    It seems the carriage works have been busy, turning out both an A60 & an R Stock in a period of little more than 2 weeks.
     
    Neither are fully finished, so any passengers will have to stand in the windowless shells, but they are moving under their own power and have had first coats of paint.
     
    Being Harrow Model Shop / Radley models kits, they are seriously heavy and the spuds are sweating a bit...
  2. noiseboy72
    I wanted a small building to fill in some of the waste ground behind the low level station. I liked the idea of some sort of machine room for the station, so came up with the idea of a compressor room and transformer. London Underground points are mainly powered by compressed air. The big pipes running beside the track do not carry electricity as many people assume, but air for the points. Compressors and driers are situated at various sites around the network, often at junctions or close to stations.
     
    The building as many will recognise is a slightly altered Scalescenes free warehouse. I hid the raised platform area and simplified the roof a little. The concrete yard is the base for the model as supplied.
     
    The transformer was scratch built from card and copper wire. The oil tank is of an old Dapol class 04 shunter kit I had lying around. The whole thing was sprayed in a dull silver and will be weathered down a little once all is dry.
     
    The yard is also home to a switch room. This is an old demountable trailer from an EFE circus kit, sprayed in dull silver with a black roof. I think it works well with its various doors and panels.
     
     
    Other work recently has included laying more 3rd & 4th rail and painting and weathering it. This includes painting on the white ends and blobs of browny-white to represent the insulators. I find the Peco ones just too tall for fitting the 4th rail and really hard to weather in to the track.
     
    Next project (Tomorrow with any luck) is an embankment around the curve into the terminal station. None of this area has been photographed yet, but track is laid and painted, with most ballasting complete. The test build of the Scalescenes roof is also complete and might well remain as part of the final layout as the dodgy bits of my build will be hidden by a road bridge and high level station. I will try to get some pictures up tomorrow.
     
    I also need to decide what to do with the semicircular area between the depot and terminus. I originally planned another small town scene, but this is not really in keeping with the suburban feel of the layout. With the launch of the Metcalfe semi detached houses, my current thoughts are for 4 or 5 of these build around a crescent, possible with a small row of shops leading to the station. All very Metro Land !
  3. noiseboy72
    As my layout is set in the suburbs, lots of shops and houses are a must. I wanted a modern shopping parade, the sort of thing that was thrown up in the 60s and 70s with no thought to architecture, just practical design.
     
    I designed these on PowerPoint 2010. This is not a full blown illustrator type product, but allows some fairly powerful basic design to be carried out. If you would like to use the design, feel free. The link is here: http://www.mattjarvisassociates.co.uk/page5.html
     
    There are other downloads that you may find useful as well, including windows for various Street Level Designs kits and stained glass for the Metcalfe and Superquick Churches.
     
    I also built one of the Metcalfe 1930's Semis. A superb and easy to construct house that avoids the "heaviness" of some of their earlier kits.
  4. noiseboy72

    Card trains now !

    By noiseboy72,

    I could not afford to buy a sub-surface train, so considered my options.
     
    The Street Level Designs card kits give a reasonable rendition of the model, especially after a bit of work.
     
    This is the MK1 creation. The basic kit has had the windows cut out and replaced with plastic, the doors cut out and recessed and the whole shell thickened up with 3 layers of 450 GSM card.
     
    The chassis will either be a scratch built brass creation or for the time being, an old coach chassis and bogies. A spud bogie will be used to power the train, but it is really being built as a static model.
  5. noiseboy72

    More Scenery

    By noiseboy72,

    I spent a rare day off last week adding to the scenery around the layout. first stop was the Depot, with a gravel / dark cinder covering with lots of scrubby cover. Yard lights and shunt signals will follow.
     
    The areas around the yard approach and the terminus station have also been started, with the basic shape defined and the first layer of grass matt and scrub applied. This area will have a small town scene, with a parade of shops and a crescent of houses. The idea is to create a suburban terminus feel, with a lightly used station at the end of a line that winds it way past the end of the gardens.
     
    The station is based upon the Scalescenes large station kit, but built without the main building and as a subsurface design. Not disimaler to Swiss Cottage when first built. Tjhe platform will extend to the near side of the road bridge, giving the impression that the station is bigger than built.
     
    3rd &4th rail is slowly being added once the track bed is ballasted and weathered. I gave up using the Peco insulators as I felt that they were too visible. On all track shots I have seen, the insulators just melt into the general track, so thats what I have gone with.
  6. noiseboy72
    Has it really been a year ? Blimey !
     
    Things have moved on a bit. More stock has arrived. A Calder Valley 110 3 car DMU. These never made it out of T'Valley (Those Northern folk knew when they were on to a good thing!), but they would have been a fantastic suburban DMU as well. More powerful than most of its peers and according to those that drove it, fantastic brakes. This one has been DCC'd and has had the wheels adjusted to actually run through pointwork - they were nearly 3mm too narrow. I acquired this in mint condition. I don't think the trailer or un powered motor had ever been out their box.
     
    The station know has lighting (A birthday present) Its a bit course scale, but does add a certain something. A few people have also now made it onto the platform as well.
     
    Big news is the fitting of some signalling. This includes a fully automatic block signal at the end of platform 3 and a semi automatic, partially interlocked pair at the converging junction at the end of platforms 2 & 4.
     
    The automatic signal is very simple. An LDR (Light dependant resistor) is buried in the 4 foot and triggers a relay as the train plunges it into darkness. To hold the signal red, a capacitor charges up whenever the LDR is covered, the amount of charge and hence the red aspect, is proportional to the amount of time the train takes to pass over the sensor. Therefore, a longer or slower train will hold the signal red for longer! This is a modified Maplin kit, costing about £5
     
    The junction platform starters are slightly more complex and incorporate a 2nd LDR module to trigger them back to red. Using a pair of DPDT switches, a simple interlock means that only one signal can be set to green. This is accomplished using a DPDT relay wired to hold energised until power is removed. Some BT spec relays with built in diodes were acquired, making wiring up a cinch. Again, an LDR is buried in the track, and this will set both signals back to red. It is not possible to set both signals to clear, although the flat crossing is not protected as yet. Full interlocking will be somewhat more tricky, as one track does not need to be protected from the flat crossing as it joins after the junction
     
    The R49 stock is now fitted with new pick ups. The sprung wire versions were not a great success, excerting too much force on the wheelsets and slowing the train to a crawl. New pick ups have been fabricated out of some battery contacts from a mobile phone. These are gold plated and nicely springy and work very well.
     
    Various track sections have been tweaked, and the entrance to the yard has been relaid, as it was causing derailments with about half the stock. The issue was the curve was too tight, so it has been relaxed out a little.
     
    The control panel is built from MERG kits, with a DCC encoder linked to SPST switches to the diode matrix and wired to an LS150 and MERG decoder. The LS150 needed modifying to work with the MERG kits as it would stop the MERG decoder working reliably. The solution was a pair of 100nF capacitors in series with the input to de-couple it from the DCC points bus. The issue appears to be to do with the MERG encoder, as this is not a true floating output, but requires an earth reference. The input of the LS150 messes this up and the capacitors sorted the problem. The panel is laser printed onto plastic paper, to make it water proof and wipe clean. See the photos of my LH30 for just how grubby things can get!
     
    Next steps are to finish the platforms at the terminus. Walls are laid, so its only the top surfaces and landscaping to do. The station roof etc needs a but of fettling and the tramway is very temporary just now.
     
    2 more years should see it done!
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