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GWMark

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  1. GWMark
    Well, the 72XX has taken a few small steps forward. Now we have the next problem, the motion bracket has been laminated from three thicknesses and now doesn't fit over the slide bars. I think I will ned to look at that when I am feeling more awake. But for now this is were I am. The cab roof and the slide bar are just laid in place, everything else is firmly attached.
     

     
     
    I really do like this loco and can see it getting ever closer to being finished, or at least to be ready to be painted.
  2. GWMark
    Well, I finally got around to doing some modelling tonight, so much for a long weekend of doing what I want. Following on from a few hours spent during the evenings, the 72XX is progressing slowly. The handrails have started to go on, on one side, I have added the rivet strip around the base of the tanks, the lips on the cab roof and soldered up the cylinders and added the drain cocks. It's also now a 2-8-2 rather than the 0-8-0 it has been up until now. The chimney has just been rested in place for effect in this picture, as has the cab roof.
     

     
     
    Whilst soldering on the handrails I seem to have lost some of the solder in the joint between the side and rear of the bunker, this had been nicely rounded, but I guess it is a job for filler now. Still a long way to go, but at least there is some progress.
     
    Mark
  3. GWMark

    GT3 and 72XX progress

    By GWMark,

    Well, for one reason or another I have not got a lot done recently or posted very much here on RM Web. I have, in the past 6 weeks made a little progress on a few projects however. My GT3 has got to the stage of painting, well primer at least, but will need some work still to sort out the blemishes the primer is showing up.
     

     
    I went on the Missenden Abbey weekend again this year and made some significant progress with my PDK 72XX kit.
     

     
    Hopefully I will get more time available to me now to complete some projects, for the past 12 months I have been making the trip up and down to Cornwall from Bucks about twice a month to visit my mother who was ill, however she has past away now so I will have some more time on my hands - once I've got some of the jobs around the house cleared from my wife's list.
     
    Mark
     
    I completely forgot about another project I started, it was meant to be something fairly quick to just keep up the momentum. However it was after I had got to this stage, shown below, that I realized I had twisted the footplate when I soldered the tank sides on.
     

     
    I think this one is destined to be dropped in a bowl of hot water and I'll start again. Still it was only one evenings work.
  4. GWMark
    Well, last night we had our last practice session for the operators before packing the layout up to take to the Watford Finescale exhibition on the weekend of the 20th of February. It gave us an opportunity to not just brush up the skills of the new and existing operators, but also to test all those maintenance issues we have attempt to resolve since our last trip to Wigan just before Christmas. It's amazing how quickly the time has gone by since the Wigan exhibition and how little we seem to have managed to do to the layout in that time. All the interruptions of Christmas and the bad weather seem to have really taken a toll on the progress we had hoped to make. Fortunately we didn't have too many issues to look at, mostly some stock failures to resolve and the odd sticky point motor. The main thing that has suffered is all those things on the wish list, still they will have to wait until we get back from Watford. Fortunately we then have some time before Peterborough and Warley later this year, of course, having said that the time will no doubt fly by in the same way it has since December.
  5. GWMark
    When someone asks me about hobbies, I always say I am a railway modeller, but actually, in casting around for anything to put in my blog I begin to wonder what I have done in the past few weeks that could be counted as "modelling railways". Apart from layout operating at Wycrail and Warley the closest I have got to anything that might be seen as a modelling task is painting some figures and turning a piece of plasticard into an uncoupling ramp, scoring planks and rivets and painting it. The rest of the time has involved soldering irons, wire and electronic components, is this really railway modelling? Worse still, given I am a software engineer by trade, I have even spent time writing and updating software related to layout operations - the proverbial "busmans holiday".
     
    So what have I been doing and why?
     
    Well, I made some optical sensors for a club layout to replace some reflective infra-red ones with ones that use ambient light instead. The reflective ones didn't work on all the stock and were unreliable, so the new ones measure the light level between the track and the light level beside the track. If the between the track level is lower then it decides the track is occupied and prevent the signal to enter the block, in this case the fiddle yard, from being pulled off.
     
    I've been trying to build an indexing turntable controller that uses magnetic field alignment to detect rotational angle - this is sill an ongoing project and very much work in progress - a long winded way of saying "It's not working.... yet!"
     
    I been looking at ways to solve a problem with the RFID readers I designed to allow them to work in close proximity to each other - this has also involved some software development - hence the busmans holiday comment.
     
    And finally I built an uncoupling ramp for tension lock couplers that rises slowly and silently using memory wire as opposed to the harsh, and loud, mechanism based on a solenoid that is commercially available. At least this task allowed me to decorate a slice of plastercard and get my paint brush out!
     
    So, can I say I am a railway modeller, or an electronics hobbyist?
     
    I know one thing, I can't wait to get back to a loco kit or building my challenge layout - ah, but maybe then I'll have to become a carpenter! Maybe this is just a multi-skilled hobby?
     
    Enough of my musing, it's back to work time for me, after a cup of coffee maybe.....
     
    Mark
  6. GWMark

    Absent but not idle

    By GWMark,

    I realised it had been a long time since I last did an update when Daniel asked me if I was planning to post about our recent weekend at Missenden Abbey. I decided that before doing that I really should do an update on the things that I have been up to between the spring Missenden Weekend and the Autumn weekend.
     
    At the spring weekend I took a break from my usual locomotive construction topic and spent the weekend with Ian Rathbone in the painting and lining room. This is not a subject I am good at and my expectations going into the weekend were, in retrospect way too high. I thought I would come out of the weekend being a master painter - not so of course. As Ian righty said it takes lots and lots of practice. So since that weekend I have done a little more painting, it can not be called perfect, but it is possibly passable. I plucked up the courage to paint a couple of the models I took with me, namely the Nucast GWR Steam Railmotor and the Mallard Duke.
     

     
    The rail motor still has a few issues, some of my masking was not accurate enough so I need to touch up the chocolate in places. But it has a base coat now, it needs window detailing, glazing, interior and of course the roof needs fixing. The roof is not joined exactly straight, so it sits up too high in the middle, I will adjust the joint to bring it level and then make it sit correctly. After that a quick spray with white primer and some black on the pane above the motor bogie should see it look a bit better. It is now fitted with DCC sound and manages to haul itself along reasonably well. It is never going to be a perfect model, the engineering of th white metal bogie is too crude for that. Plus it is a bit of a lump with the white metal body and roof.
     

     
    The Mallard Duke is a slightly better paint job, but there is some touch up needed on the splasher tops and the spring details. Once that is done I will matt the finish down a little and add the plates - when I can find where I have put them! This too will get DCC sound shortly and I am thinking it needs some brake gear - there was none in the kit, but I should not let that stop me. The backhead looks a little strange in the picture as it is laid in and not exactly straight. It will be fixed once I have painted the floorboards in the cab. I also managed to break off the brake standard on the tender - careless - so I need to reinstate that. I also need to add the buffer heads and front coupling hook. The current high gloss finish does show off the ripples in the tender flare where I did not do a perfect job, but hopefully the will be less obvious after some matt varnish to dull it down. The high gloss finish did allow the transfers to bed down nicely however - much better than my previous attempts.
     

     
    I even had another go with the bow pen. Using a Mallard 57ft rail motor body I tried my hand at panel lining. Not my most successful experiment, this will eventually be stripped off for another go at some point. I think I will do more painting however before I try to move on to lining.
     
    I have also started to paint my Black Hawthorn, but I will post that later when it is more advanced than it is now, and back in one piece.
     
    At least I have filled some of the gaps between spring and autumn, there are other things that I will post over the next few days before the update on the Missenden Autumn weekend.
  7. GWMark
    Now that Wycrail is over it is time to put right all those things we found to be a problem before the next outing to Wigan in just over two weeks time. We now have two more Wednesday evenings to do the testing and any fixes we need before it gets taken down again. We have already fixed a couple of wiring faults and I am now working on building some new optical sensors to replace the ones we have in the fiddle yards that interlock the signals controlling the exit from the scenic sections. We have been using some infra red sensors, that rely on reflection from the underside of vehicles, but these have proved to be unreliable, fien we some stock, but other items are invisible to them. The new design, which I have tested on the bench, uses two sensors (Light Dependant Resistors), one measures the light between the track and the other, placed beside the track, the ambient light. If the track is significantly darker than the ambient light level, then the assumption is that there is an item of stock over the sensor. Initial findings are that these work well in a number of different lighting conditions, but we shall have to see how well they perform in exhibition conditions.
     
    Following that, and time allowing, I want to replace the current tension lock uncoupler in the goods yard with one that is powered by memory wire. A small ramp will be raised up by the memory wire to raise the hook on the coupling - much like the solenoid operated ones you can buy, but slient and hopefully less obtrusive. We only use this for detaching pick up goods locos, the actual wagons are equipped with Spratt & Winkle couplings, these being another area that needs some work before Wigan if we are to avoid the "slip coach" impression from a number of items, particularly one of the guards vans.
     
    We are planning a few stock changes for Wigan, with at least one new loco introduced into the sequence, so my final job will be to update the PowerPoint displays we use for the RFID controlled public information system. This is a system in which passing trains control the display of slides in PowerPoint and give the, hopefully, watching public some information about the train and the movement it is about to make. Every fixed rake or loco has a small radio tag attached that transmits the identity of the train to readers under the baseboards, this information is passed to the information displays and the fiddle yard operators to aid them in "driving" the fiddle yards.
  8. GWMark
    For some time now I have been thinking about ways to make things other than the locomotives move on my layouts. Radio Control servos have become an accepted way to control the points and semaphore signals, but we could use them for more if we had a good way to integrate the proportional control of them into our control systems. So instead of just having something move between two positions we could make it move to any point we wanted.
     
    It was with this idea in mind that I started playing around with ideas for how to get better control of servos. The obvious thing we all have is a speed control on our layouts to control the speed of our trains, so what if we could use that to control the position or speed of a servo. Given that I am a DCC person, the natural choice was a DCC decoder that instead of driving a motor could drive a servo. My first prototype was simply a decoder, based on an Arduino processor, that moved a single servo at the speed set by the throttle. This would allow me to position one servo to any point I wanted in its travel, setting a speed of zero would stop it. This was a good first step, but something like a crane would need more than one servo, it would be a pain, and a little expensive to have a decoder per servo. So the next step was to control multiple servos from one decoder. What I did was to write code for the decoder that would use a combination of a function and the throttle setting. Turn on function 0 and the first servo could be controlled by the throttle, turn on function 1 and you control the second servo. Turn on two functions together and you control two servos. Added to this I allowed the maximum travel to be defined, and the minimum time for that motion.
     
    So now I had a way, via DCC CV's to define the two endpoints of the movement of a servo, expressed in degrees, and a time in seconds that it should take to move between those points if the throttle was set to full speed. This gave me what I wanted to control something like a crane with 3 servos for the rotation of the crane, the angle of the jib and the winding of the chain. The prototype decoder was shown to my local MERG area group, who liked the idea so much we ended up doing a couple of tutorial evenings during which about 20 of the members built the electronics and learnt how to program the servos and DCC library for the Arduino.
     
    ​Following on from this the idea of extending the decoder to also control stepper motors was introduced. In fact the motion obtainable from stepper motors was much better and smoother than the servos. I introduced the idea of either having the stepper motor run continuously or confining it to a number of steps in each direction, so that it behaved more like a servo. Next came the addition of lights to the decoder, so that we could put warning lights on our cranes. Until I ended up with a DCC decoder that could drive 3 servos, one stepper motor and 4 lights (with various effects). If anybody is interested the code for what I did is available on GitHub.
     
    I have been working with one of the members of the local MERG group to automate an LGB cement mixer in G scale. He now has a cement mixer mounted on a wagon that drives up to you, with the mixer turning via a stepper motor, swings the delivery chute out towards you, using a servo. Turns on a warning light. It then reverses the direction of the mixer and dispenses Smarties down the delivery chute into the hands of the waiting admirers!
     
    I also took the Arduino DCC decoder idea a slightly different way and created a decoder that could play sound effects, essentially a primitive sound decoder. The effects were recorded sounds files placed on a microSD card that was then inserted in the Arduino system. A particular function key would trigger the playing of a particular sound file. These effects could be adjusted to match the speed setting of the throttle, and hence give a synchronised chuffing effect. Nowhere near as good as a commercial sound decoder, much more a toy, but the bits for it cost me less than £10. It was more for my amusement than anything else, but it was fun to try.
     
    This has been another diversion for me from building rolling stock, working on my layout or all those other projects I have started but not finished, but it has got me to learn a lot more about the DCC protocol, I now understand exactly what gets put on the rails and makes the locos move. Also I have something that is at least able to animate scenic items under the control of the same DCC handset that I drive the trains with. Plus I have enjoyed working on it, so does it matter that it has diverted me from other things - it's only a hobby after all!
     
    ​Maybe the thing that makes this an enduring hobby is that there are so many ways we can go, just because I am not good at painting a back scene or my weathering skills are a bit dodgy it does not mean I can not enjoy some other part of the hobby. Equally I like making locos, but if that's all I did I would probably get bored with it after a while. It makes you think, or at least it does me.
  9. GWMark
    This post is a bit of a cheat, since it is not my work I am showing. In my post yesterday I showed the stock I weathered, including Daniel's (my son) first loco build at the age of 11. Eight years later he is still going and here is his latest project, as promised.
     

     
    The loco is a High Level kit of a Hawthorn Leslie, he has been working on it over successive Missenden weekends under the tutorship of Tony Gee (t-b-g). It's now really at a stage of a few final tweaks before painting, a job I suspect I will be asked to undertake.
     

     
    When I look at the soldering work now and the the finish he is achieving it has come a long way from that first GEM kit. It helps of course to be working on a first class kit and to have advice from some really proficient loco builders (not me I hasten to add). He is a great proponent of resistance soldering, every time he goes back to university I have to check he is not sneaking off with my RSU! Importantly it runs as well as it looks, being a very smooth, slow running loco, helped of course by the excellent 108:1 gearbox.
     
    He has now moved on to build a chassis to go under a Taff Vale C Class. It's a resin body from Dean Sidings, but he has chosen to go down the route of taking a Comet chassis for a 14xx and turning it into a 4-4-2 instead of using the chopped up 14xx chassis from Hornby. Perhaps more on that as he progresses with it.
  10. GWMark

    More weathering

    By GWMark,

    I was rightly criticised on two counts by Daniel for my previous post, I didn't include any pictures of his stock and I also said all his stock was all ready to run. So by way of redress here are a couple more pictures from my weathering efforts on his stock.
     

     
    The 4MT is a Bachmann model, Daniel has added the crew, lamps, detail parts and a real coal load. I made an attempt to weather it. This loco is due to haul a rack of coaching stock bunker first, so hence the ugly tension lock coupling is still on the front and the lamp is not visible as it is on the bunker.
     

     
    The 56XX is from a GEM kit with a Comet chassis. The actual loco was built by Daniel about 7 or 8 years ago now, it was his first attempt at soldering white metal kits and well maybe not the best example or up to his current standards it is not bad given the vintage of the kit and the fact the builder was 11 or 12 at the time. Up until now it has run on Hinton Parva at exhibitions unweathered, but now it will feature a somewhat patchy weathering job. If I am allowed to I think I will revisit this one and add some detail in different shades.
  11. GWMark
    I see it has been a while since I posted here, this doesn't mean I have done nothing, just not written about it. I even failed to do my post-Missenden entry that I normally do - more on those projects in another post.
     
    This week I have been doing some weathering, mostly of Daniel's RTR stock that will be appearing on Hinton Parva when it goes to Quainton for the May Bank Holiday Steam Gala. However I also thought I would have a go at my GT3 since it now has the transfers on the tender, from Cambridge Custom Transfers. So here it is with a first attempt at weathering it - looking at the picture I think I will add a few more touches to it. However I am thinking of changing the chassis for the HighLevel one when it comes out, so maybe some of it will wait until after that.
     

     
    My GT3 will also be on Hinton Parva when it goes to the Quainton event.
  12. GWMark
    The project I undertook as a quick diversion ended up, like all the rest of my projects, languishing in an unfinished state for quite some time. However, spurred on by the desire to take a couple of locos to the weather course at Pendon the other weekend I actually made a push to finish it off. All it needed was plates, transfers and some bits that had been painted separately to be attached.
     

     
    I also needed to do something about the bright brake gear I had added, it was still raw nickel silver, so that was chemically blackened at the same time, along with the coupling rods. As you can see it probably still needs a second application and the transfers have not sat down well on the paint finish. In the end I did not get around to weathering it, so I can still take some time to do the last few bits of finishing. It was painted with LifeColour acrylics, with the transfer applied straight to the paint finish. In retrospect I should probably have given it a high gloss finish for the transfers to adhere to and them sprayed it with Dullcote afterwards. Given that I think the transfer look too low, I may replace them and redo it, so maybe that will be my chance to get it right - transfers always end up looking wrong to me.
     
    It also now has a DCC decoder fitted, which coupled with the weight of the white metal loco, a good motor and gearbox arrangement and a reasonably square chassis, has resulted in a very nice, slow running loco.
     
    I have yet to decide on coupling arrangements, I have been playing with Dingham couplings for my shunting puzzle and may outfit this local for those. The other options are Sprat & Winkles or tension lock bars. I need to think about it as I now have stock with all three type of coupling - I can see some barrier wagons in the offing so that I can convert between the different couplings.
  13. GWMark
    I noticed it had been a very long time since I wrote anything here, March of last year. I didn't even do my customary write-up following the Missenden Abbey weekends last Autumn and this Spring. This does not mean nothing has been happening, just that I have written nothing about it.
     
    Both Daniel and i went to Missenden in October and then again this March, in fact the March weekend may be the last for a while with both of us going as Daniel is about to depart for University life - although there may be an outside chance he will come back for the Missenden weekends.
     

     
    My little Black Hawthorn is now nearing completion, the motor and gearbox are fitted, the coupling rods, piston rods, steam glands are all in place. Pickups have been added and the frames treated with metal blue. It runs nicely, very slow with little hint of rocking. The addition of the buffer beams has added some weight to it as well to help with pickup and traction. I even had it pushing a rake of 15 wagons, which is pretty good for something so small and fairly light.
     
    The brake gear is made and just needs fitting. I need to add pipe runs, safety valves, handrails and sandboxes. There is also a back head to be detailed and fitted. In all not far to go with this one now. The fuse wire you can see coming from the front of the cab is a pipe run that needs to be trimmed and attached still.
     
    As for Daniel's project, the Hawthorn Leslie, that is also taking shape. He too now has a running locomotives, although it is lacking piston rods, cylinders and some other vital parts.
     

     
    As always the close-up picture reveals something to be improved, Daniel is not pleased with the Sandbox and intends to remove and reposition it so that it sits down flatter. The smokebox front also needs a little bit of cleaning up after he discovered a misplaced overlays which he moved during the last Missenden session. In general he too is pleased with his progress and the way his model runs.
     
    Hopefully I will finish mine soon, probably the next time I will go to Missenden I will start another project. We are not sure with Daniel, maybe once exams are over he will do some work on it over the summer holidays.
  14. GWMark
    The Missenden Modellers sprint weekend is over for another year, once again the weekend went really well, with both Daniel and I making significant progress on our projects. My High Level Black Hawthorn has seen some significant progress with the super structure, with a few steps back along the way. I used my newest toy, the RSU for some items, to great effect, but was a little cautious of some things, so used the standard iron and regretted the mess I made with it compared to the neat soldering I achieved with the RSU.
     

     
    I still need to put in lots of practice with the different ways of making use of the RSU. It proved a great way of adding the cylinder wrappers and the riveted end plates, both of which has been very neatly added.
     
    Daniel on the other hand corrected his issue with the misplaced frame spacer on the Friday evening and moved on to the footplate and cab. He made great use of the RSU to solder the overlays on his cab and the detail parts to his saddle tank.
     

     
    His saddle tank is not yet attached, it is merely laid in place on the footplate.
     
    Hopefully we will both get a chance to progress these models before the next Missenden outing, it would be embarrassing to go back again with no progress between weekends.
     
    As for my setback, I managed to touch the barrel of the soldering iron on to one of the white metal springs, which is now partially melted. I also noted that the cab has sprung out when soldering the rivet strips to it, so that will need to be redone to make the back and front parallel. Both should be fixable however. None of the problems we have had is a fault in the kit to be honest, it is things we have bought upon ourselves.
  15. GWMark
    Partly because of lack of time and partly because I have allowed myself to be sidetracked onto other things progress has been a little slow on GT3 since my little burst at Christmas. I did manage to repaint the grills, giving them a wash of aluminium and then dry brushing the green over the top in an attempt to make the discs behind the grill show up better. I think I have got the effect I want, but it does need toning down a little, by the whole thing will need that at the end.
     
    So grills and steps in place, it was time to try my hand at the lining, a new experience for me as everything else I have done to date has been unlined. I thought about using a pen, but in the end went for Fox transfers. The effect is not perfect but it will stand scrutiny from normal viewing distances.
     

     
    The camera is always a little harsh, and it is only when you take these closeups that you stop things. I have yet to do the lower line and the cab roof. The cab fit is not great and will need a little work, so I was leaving that until I had finished all the handling of that area. I need to paint the panels at the front in order to use the labels I got from Ian (macgeordie), as the letters themselves clear, I also need to tackle putting a white background on for the tender emblem - not something I am confident about.
     
    Mark
  16. GWMark

    Track Laid

    By GWMark,

    After a little bit of an enforced break due to work and other commitments, a few hours was found on Friday evening to lay the remainder of the track work on my little shunting puzzle. The steps in putting down the track were fairly conventional:
    The sleeper web was cut
    Dropper wire were soldered to the underside of the rails
    Holes drilled for the dropper wires to go through
    Masking tape laid along the edge of the foam underlay
    PVA glue (Unibond in this case) was painted onto the foam underlay
    Masking tape removed
    Dropper wires fed through the holes
    P4 Track company ABS fishplates added to the track
    The track put down into position and the sleepers adjusted to be reasonably evenly spaced and square
    Ballast sprinkled onto the wet glue surface
    Left for 5 minutes before tipping the board to remove the excess ballast

    Whilst I had the ballast out I also touched in a few areas from the first part of the track laying in which the ballast had not taken well.
     
    The next morning I brushed the ballast to remove any remaining loose ballast and took the board outside to get the shot below - I have removed the background clutter AKA the garden) to make it a bit clearer.
     

     
    I am reasonably pleased with the result, but there are a few things I would do differently next time.
    The addition of a simple jig for spacing the sleepers and getting them square would help greatly. Using this method you need to work reasonably quickly to keep the glue wet enough for the ballast to take, so the job of checking the sleeper spacing and alignment was a little rushed. Perhaps too rushed, I probably had more time than I thought, but you learn by these mistakes. As a result some of the spacing is a little out and one or two sleepers are not as square as I would have liked.
    I made the mistake of painting the glue on all the trackbed before laying any track, I could have done it one at a time to give myself more time and made the whole process less messy. I did manage to get glue on my hands when working on adjacent tracks, not very helpful to the whole process as I ended up with some glue on the rail tops that had to be removed before adding the ballast.
    The glue I used was not the best choice, in demos of this method I have always seen Febond used, but I was unable to find a supply so went with Unibond instead. This was not as easy to spread with a brush and did tend to "pull" a little, leaving areas or streaks with little glue coverage and hence little ballast stuck in these areas.
    The use of the very dark, almost black, foam was not a good idea. It meant that areas of thin ballast, or were the glue was not exactly to the edge, show through badly and will need touching up. A foam colour closer to the ballast colour would have been better.
    The ballast colour itself is a little light, I think an overall airbrush coat to tone it down is definitely in order.
    My cutting of the foam was not accurate enough, so my ballast shoulder is not as good as it could be and not as parallel to the track as I wanted. Some of the areas will be filled in, such as the wharf edge to the track and between the front two sidings, so it does not matter that much.


     
    None of this is a disaster, it can be tidied up in places and the subject is meant to be a little goods wharf, so I am not looking for mainline track laying standard anyway. This is in part a test piece for different things I wanted to try out, so I can't expect perfection first time around. This method of track laying does give quick results, and with a few changes and a little more care I think I can do a much better job next time. I think for the next project I will certainly use this method again, it saves a lot of tedious ballasting, but does require more preparation first, to cut all the sleeper webs and getting the underlay correct.
     
    I now have a layout with track laid, ballasted, dropper wires in place and uncoupling electromagnets buried in the trackbed, so the next step is some wiring up and getting trains moving. It is then that I will be able to really tell how well the experiment with hand-built points has really worked. Sadly work and other commitments will mean this will probably not happen now until next weekend.
  17. GWMark
    Following on from the progress on Sunday, I now had a baseboard with the foam underlay glued down, a cess painted in textured 'Light earth" and a ballast shoulder rather crudely cut into the foam - not the best cutting job in the world, but then this is not a mainline layout so I wouldn't expect a perfect ballast shoulder. This mornings job was to attach the electro-magnets for the Dingham uncouplers, these are the ones supplied by Dingham and have a coil with an M5 bolt through the middle. I worked out my positions and drilled a 4.5mm hole through the foam and the 4mm ply. I then screwed them in from the underside, marked the bolt and removed them again to cut the bolt to length.
     
    I worked out I had a requirement for 4 uncoupling points given the way that I intend to run the layout, but that a fifth might be useful if it was used in a slightly different way.

    The photo shows the underside of the board with the five magnets installed and also shows the light construction method I used. The magnets are just held in place by the screw thread they cut into the ply and the foam, when the PVA is put down for the track and ballast this will also help hold them in position, so hopefully I will not need any other kind of fixing. The arrow points the the hole for the servo motor to control the point that caused me such an issue with positioning yesterday - there is just about room to fit a servo as it stands now.
     
    Having placed the magnets I went on to prepare the track, cutting the web on the SMP track, and soldering the various dropper wires to the underside of the rail. Each section of plain track had two droppers, and the points three each - the vees and switch blades had already been bonded. The track sections were placed on the board and holes drilled for each of the dropper wires.
     
    I had decided to not lay all the track in one go, I was concerned the PVA I had would set too quickly given all the work to do to feed the dropper wires in, align the sleepers and pour the ballast. So I settled for the point work, that defines the datum for the rest of the track, and the short feeder section and headshunt.
     
    Having prepared everything, and fitted P4 Track company ABS fishplates to the track ends, I put masking tape along the cess and proceeded to paint PVA onto the foam trackbed. Then I placed the various track sections, feeding the dropper wires into the holes I had made, aligned the sleepers and then proceeded to cover the lot with ballast. To be honest I could have done with at least 3 more hands to get all this done whilst trying not to get everything covered in PVA. It was made worse by the slightly fragile points section with six overly long dropper wires that needed to be feed through.
     
    It was slightly alarming to see it all covered in ballast, but this is the way Norman Soloman shows in his demo and on the Right Track DVD's, so who am I to argue. After a few minutes, probably not long enough, but I was getting a little twitchy that my point work was buried under all this ballast and may end up seized solid with PVA - I upended the board onto newspaper. The idea being to catch and reuse the surplus ballast. The result was not too bad, some ballast was stuck in the switch blades, vees and between the running and check rails, but it was loose rather than stuck with PVA. The picture below show a section of the board covered in ballast and a similar section immediately after the surplus had been poured off.
     

     
    I resisted the temptation to do more cleaning up as the PVA was still wet and the track was able to move about on the foam. So in order to prevent myself fiddling I went off and ironed some shirts instead!
     
    After about an hour and a half I came back to it and brush it all down, clearing the ballast from the various nooks and crannies and removing the loose stuff. It still has a dusty appearance, and the ballast colour is a little but on the light side, but it can be weathered down.
     

     
    My finish is not as good as Norman's, but then it is my first time trying this method. It is a little patchy in places, down to not having enough PVA I think. Also I used Unibond as I could not find the variety that Norman had recommended (Febond). I had not done a great job with the masking tape in places either, but next time I will take a little more care. I probably could have done the entire layout in one go, it only took about 30 minutes to lay and ballast what I did, once the preparation had been done, so to do the other 3 sections of track would have been fairly quick. T be perfectly honest I suspect the extra preparation time to cut allthe sleep webs and do the droppers also contributed to my original decision - I was impatient to see some track laid.
     
    I will need to do a little patching of the section I have already done, but hopefully I can have it wired up and run some trains when I next get a chance to spend some time on it. Unfortunately that is likely to be a couple of weeks way now.
  18. GWMark

    Track Surveying

    By GWMark,

    Progress with the layout can not exactly be described as fast, the last week can be summarised as full of distraction. It started well, I airbrushed the sleepers and sides of the track, both the points I have built and some lengths of SMP flexitrack. The paint I used was Lifecolour acrylic Matt Sleeper Grime, perhaps a little two dark, but at least it gave a nice finish, and took off the plastic shine. I even went as far as to paint the points of the check rails in a sleeper grime colour in an attempt to make then look slightly rusty and dirty where the wheels never go over them.
     
    Having completed this, rather than start the task that was really needed, track laying, I got sidetracked into building the power supply. This itself hit a brick wall when I found I didn't have enough spade connectors to make up the leads needed to connect the power inlet socket, transformer and cutouts. It didn't seem worth a trip to my nearest car accessory shop just to buy a few connectors, at least a 10 mile trip for me. So down from the loft game the baseboard and the process of working out where to place the track started.
     

     
    Despite the vast amount of planning, ok maybe I exaggerate, that went into the baseboard; the placement of the points turned out to be a problem. The baseboard has two girders running that run from front to back, the spacing of these was just less than the distance between the tie bars of the two outer points. On top of this one of the diagonal members was also in the way. Much shuffling back and forth was needed before the tie bars lined up and space was allowed for the point motors. In my case the point motors are SG90 servos. My aim is to have the servos as close as possible to vertically below the tie bars themselves.
     
    With the positioning of the points settled on, the remaining track pieces were cut to length and the whole lot laid down on the board and drawn around. I then cut C&L foam underlay to match and then glued it down with Unibond PVA. I'm writing this whilst I wait for the Unibond to dry and allow me to continue to prepare for the track laying.
     

     
    My intention is to use Norman Soloman's method of track laying, so I need to cut and prepare the holes for the wires to activate the points, make the holes for the dropper wires, having first attached them to the track sections. I also need to drill the holes for the uncoupling magnets and fir them before laying the track and ballast. I also need to cut the web on the SMP track to allow the ballast to flow onto the wet glue beneath the track. My next task to tackle will be to paint the cess before laying the ballast on top, I intended to use some grey textured paint for this[EDIT - bad memory, it turns out it was Green Scenes Light Earth. Still it did the job.]. I may also paint the foam, since the C&L stuff is almost black and will show badly of any ballast comes adrift. [EDIT: Painting the foam turned out to be a hopeless task - the paint just soaks in - it would take many tinlets of Humbrol to do the entire trackbase]
     
    Lots of tasks still to do before the track is attached to the baseboard and wring and running of trains can commence. Sadly after this weekend I have a work trip, this combined with some other commitments will probably mean a couple of weeks of no progress on the layout.
  19. GWMark

    Ladder Completion

    By GWMark,

    After a long break, caused in part by my need to get replacement switch blades, a trip to California and then having to get replacements for the replacements, I finally got back to the pointwork I am building for the layout. Not a great deal was left to do, but of course it took longer than I thought to get the final pair of switchblades in, the check rails and finish adding all the chairs.
     
    However, finally I have the track components in place and added the tie bars. I had decided to go with the C&L ones, but I may live to regret this. They seem a little flimsy, and unlike the first one I built, they had no loops pre-bent in them. They do not seem very sturdy, being essentially two brass wires with a rubber tube connecting them. A couple of them are already starting to allow the wires to move in the tube - I wonder if these will stand up to a great deal of use.
     

     
    As you can see from the photo I was even foolish enough to remove one of the points from the template. It seems to have survived well enough, with just a couple of sleepers needing a touch of superglue gel to stop them falling off - ones that have just slide chairs and so are more vulnerable. The other two have been built as a single unit and will stay on the template for now, at least I can align the points now that they are not on the building boards and check everything.
     
    I now need to add the wiring, but first i want to put the points on the layout to get the positioning sorted without having all the dropper wires get in the way. Hopefully this can be done during the week, first I have to get the baseboard down from the loft so I can check for clearance of the cross members etc. With this done it should be possible to get around to track laying this weekend and then the project will really start to come together.
     
    One thing I will ned to work out pretty soon is how to connect the tie bars to the point motors, in this case I am planning on using SG90 servos for the job. The tie bars seem a little bit difficult to attach to, so I was planing to solder a plate between a pair of the wires and then have a wire come up from under the baseboard into this plate. Probably I have not explained this well, but if anybody has any experience with this sort of setup I would welcome some pointers. If all else fails I will replace the C&L tiebars with copper clad ones.
     
    Sadly another work trip is about to interrupt work on the layout, so I have a two week window to make some progress before another enforced break.
  20. GWMark

    Track building

    By GWMark,

    With the baseboards all but finished attention turned to the track. One of the goals I had in starting this project was to try my hand at building points and making use of them on a layout. I had previously built a B6 point, but this was a little long to use on such a compact layout, so I decided to go for A4 points for this little project.
     
    With only 3 point to build it didn't seem too daunting a prospect, so Thursday evening saw me embark on point building. The first, a right hand point was built on a board on its own. This went well and was complete (excepting the soldering tasks) by mid morning on Friday. It was built pretty much following the C&L instructions and using the Norman Solomon video (from the Right Track series). The only addition is the P4 Track Company fishplates to join the switch blades to the wing rails. These are very nice ABS representations of the real thing and have the advantage of giving you an easy alignment for the switch blades at one end, whilst still giving electrical isolation for the switch blades.
     
    Then came the next point in the ladder, and a thought about sleeper alignment. Given that the sleepers on the first point are all parallel, I decided it would be good to keep the sleepers parallel on the entire ladder. Having checked a few photographs of the prototype this did seem to be done at times.
     

     
    In order to get the sleepers to look right the second and third points are being built as a single unit. A pair of C&L templates have been attached to a single board, and the timbering added, with one of the points laid out with the timbers at an angle. The build them continued as normal, up until the end of Friday, when the final set of switch blades was required.
     

     
    This is where things faltered, I believe there is something wrong with the milling of the blades (I have posted a picture on a thread elsewhere on the forum for some advice). So progress has stopped for now until I can resolve this. Besides the missing switch blades on one of the points, the check rails are missing as are some of the chairs. These are no slide chairs in place, and the crossing vee needs some cosmetic half chairs added to it.
  21. GWMark

    Duke at the Abbey

    By GWMark,

    This weekend marked the 30th anniversary of the Missenden Abbey Railway Modellers weekends, I have only been going for a fraction of that time, and my son Daniel even less, but off we trotted on Friday afternoon for the now familiar routine of a weekend of uninterrupted modelling at Missenden.
     
    This time my Mallard Duke made a second appearance, all started well until I realised that the motor and gearbox choice I had made was not going to fit within the confines of the firebox and boiler. So I wasn't able to proceed with fixing the firebox, boiler and smokebox to the footplate and cab that I had prepared at the event in October. Despite the intervening time, I actually managed to do the sum total of no work to my Duke between these two weekends - I had been either finishing my 72xx or distracted by other things. This is the advantages of the Missenden weekend, as well as having plenty of help and advice on hand, you just do not have the same distractions as working at home on a project.
     
    I satisfied myself with building a number of components that can be added to the model once the motor and gearbox have been replaced with a new one, probably High Level, the will push the motor forwards and clear the cab interior.
     

     
    I was particularly pleased to have formed the firebox and the complex curve on the smokebox. The boiler overlay on the boiler tube was soldered into place courtesy of Bob Alderman's blow torch, another tool I need to get myself.
     
    A number of overlays have been added to the footplate valances and the front bogies was made up of 21 pieces, with some very small overlays that took ages to get lines up, and in the end are covered by the spring hangers!
     
    Daniel and a good weekend working on the running of his GEM Prince of Wales and building the complete tender and tender chassis over the course of the weekend. I think he particularly enjoyed hacking out vast amounts of white metal in order to get the tender chassis to fit onto the body. A technique he picked up from our tutor for the weekend, Tim Shackleton. It is amazing that both the body and the chassis are from the same manufacturer, yet if you try to attach the body to the chassis the ride height is about 1cm too high.
     
    It may not seem like much to show for Friday evening, all day Saturday and Sunday morning, but it was actually a fair few modelling hours, and above all lots of time in the company of fellow modellers swapping tips, views and general comments. Over the 3 years I have been going to these events I have picked up a fair number of tips, met some great people and had an enjoyable time, hopefully they will continue for many years to come.
     
    Now the question is, will any work get done to the Duke before the next Missenden weekend in October?
  22. GWMark
    Following a trip to see the excellent McKinley Railway, and a conversation about the RFID projects I had done before I have started another project - just what I need, one more thing to add to the list.
     
    What I am looking at is something that can read the train id and feed it back to the computer that is running the layout, however there is more to this than just reading the RFID data. The RFID readers I have used can not be placed close together, they interfere with each other.
     
    So I need a solution to this problem, and also I need to add extra information about direction. The idea is to add pair of optical readers either side of the RFID, the one that triggers first can be used to determine the direction of motion of the train, this then switches on the RFID reader - it is normally off to prevent interference.
     
    This reads the train ID, then the second optical will trigger.
     
    At this point we know what train we have, what direction it is moving in and how long it took to move between two fixed points.
     
    Add a second tag to the opposite end of the loco, and we can tell if the loco is running tender first or boiler first.
     
    Further to that add a tag to the first and last vehicle of each rake, and you can tell which rake the loco is pulling and if the rake is complete or has been separated. Just about everything you might desire to know about a train on the layout.
     
    Location, direction, loco id, loco orientation, speed, train id and the train is complete
     
    The problem then is to send all this data back to the operator/computer.
     
    This one could take a while to sort out....
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