D869

Like the web site Pete. We've been thinking about having a more 'static' presence for St Ruth too. I guess that the ad on your old site was a manifestation of the 'no free lunch' syndrome. Web hosts cost money to run, so they need a business model that works otherwise they will go the same way as the late lamented fotopic site. So what's in it for them? Regards, Andy

Thanks Alan - it's good to know what the situation is, even if it isn't exactly what we would want it to be. I haven't used any 3D printed stuff as yet but no doubt I will do in the not too distant future... and I won't miss having to mark and drill vent holes. Regards, Andy

That's looking good David.

... which opens up the question of what to use instead. I don't think that the answer is easy for corridor coaches. It depends what you want to do with them. If you want to uncouple them a lot then you need an auto coupler but the DG is less than ideal because parts of it want to lift into the space occupied by the gangway. I have still used DGs on rake ends and full brakes but the gap between adjacent vehicles is too big (probably worse than with Rapidos). Other auto couplers are available. Within fixed rakes you have lots more options but if you want to propel rakes through crossovers then you need to take a bit more care regarding buffer locking, lateral friction between the gangways and coupling forces trying to 'steer' the bogies in undesirable ways. I am currently using couplings mounted to the bogie pivots with rare earth magnets to attach one coach to the next. These allow the bogies to 'steer' freely, give close coupling and easy setup and break down at shows but they are probably only marginally less obtrusive than Rapidos. Regards, Andy

I suspected that some of the Ultima LMS kits had an extruded roof but I could not find this in Alan's catalog as a separately available item. Maybe I missed it or maybe he is conserving his stocks to sell with complete kits. I agree that attaching things to Aluminium is going to be tricky. The plastic ones should present fewer issues in this area if they will take solvents. Good luck with the 3D printing.

That could mean two things. On the one hand there are kits that are no longer available... on the other, there are some that are just, well... not very good. By coincidence I emailed Mr Allen Worsley Works about suitable pre-formed roofs a couple of weeks back. Unfortunately he wasn't able to suggest many options. The things that I know of are... - MTK/Fleetline/BH Enterprises roof mouldings. Not sure on the quality of these. Certainly their recent floor and side mouldings are not as good as the old MTK/Fleetline ones. - Ultima list a 3D printed plastic 'SECR' roof moulding. Never seen one. - The 2mm Association Shop 3 lists two plastic roof sections - LMS and Mark 1 but the latter is out of stock. Again, I don't know anything more about them. - Ultima list a roof for the Siphon. Assuming it's the same as shipped in their Siphon kit then I think it's extruded metal. Regards, Andy

Loved the sea wall but the nostalgia for me was the destination - we used to spend 2 weeks every summer staying with my gran in Dartmouth, starting when Kingswear was still a BR station. My uncle still lives there so we popped in on him yesterday. Yes, the same edit seems to have happened to every video of the day on YouTube. We were expecting to see an emergency diesel lurking around but never saw any sign of one. A couple of years back we watched the Torbay Express at Starcross and it was immediately followed by a class 67. Not sure what the deal is now. If there was one there then we would have expected to see it hanging around Goodrington at the very least. In the morning at Temple Meads we also saw Tangmere before its departure to Weymouth and that had 47 245 hovering behind it. Not sure if it followed all the way but it certainly left straight afterwards.

Thought it was time for some first hand research regarding what's so great about the railways of the south west... We're in coach A Films are by other peeps... Wrong sea wall for St Ruth but just to show that other sea walls are available... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc5ox1tZ6sI Signal checks on the return journey at Goodrington, Newton Abbott and Exeter meant that Britannia was putting in some serious effort by the time we got to Cowley Bridge Junction... and me with my head out of the window. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qz9Yx9Pq5k

I don't think the prototype has done a good job of disguising that unsightly join in the backscene. Interesting take on the Mark 1 roof ribs debate too. Regards, Andy

Sure but they had a bigger bag of tricks than we have... gravity, chains, ropes, tractors, horses. Regards, Andy

Hi Chris, I'm curious about the kick-back siding behind the signal box. It looks a bit tricky to shunt. What's it used for? Regards, Andy

Nice work Julia. Reminds me of the article in Model Railway Constructor where they did the rodding in P4 for Bodmin General. I thought they were a bit mad at the time. Darned good series of articles though - taught me all about real (not Peco) point geometry, mechanical interlocking and so on. Fancy another job when you've finished that little lot? Our trackbed looks a bit bare compared to yours.

Gosh an epic posting. Like the new control box thingy. Beer and buying new trains are both essential parts of modelling but I'd recommend keeping them separate. Waiting to see what mix of liveries comes out of that Hatton's box when it's opened.

Yes, definitely. I think it is highly likely that some signals were more prone to bouncing than others. I also think that some of my model signals will likely be less able to stand up to the repetitive strain of simulated bouncing than others. I foresee some of the more complex signals having the servo controller speed set quite low to keep the stresses to a minimum.

I was thinking about this a bit more after posting. For anything other than a static diorama the track is going to get some wear and tear so you probably need to think about it in terms of occasional 'maintenance' rather than finishing the job once and never touching it again. For non inset track it is quite common to need to go round with the paintbrush now and again after some over-enthusiastic track cleaning or (ahem) adjustments, so maybe your equivalent is superglue and matt paint.

Chin up Pete. I agree with other posters that furry (and frayed) card can be rescued by persuading it to absorb something that sets solid. We've used superglue on buildings but can't vouch for it on ground surfaces. I guess in the old (pre superglue) days the advice would have been to use shellac so there are other options. I guess that the challenges will be to make sure it only goes where you want it and to restore a matt finish when you're done. Regards, Andy

Oh well, I didn't select anything - these are just the first 3 videos that I found that show a WR signal returning to danger. Admittedly they are all fairly recent so it is possible that there was a golden age of non-bouncy WR semaphores in the past. My gut feel is that there are some heavy lumps of metal involved. If you put the signal back to danger quickly enough then all of that kinetic energy has got to go somewhere when it reaches the end of its travel. I don't know exactly what stops the motion, but I'm guessing that it has a cushioning effect built in to avoid breakages, so bounce seems like a distinct possibility.

I suggest that we consult the real thing for the answer on this question. A couple of nice photos of a ground disc on that thread though. I'll let you have a disc etching and a servo once you have made good your escape from Cornwall.

Any plans for some 2 foot gauge track and a Lister to bring the peat from the works?

Thanks Don. To be honest the more real signalling plans I look at the more I realise that there were lots of very odd arrangements out there in the real world. I suspect that if we had invented the arrangement of carriage sidings and signals part way along the departure platform then nobody would have believed it (including us). Actually it is the genuine pre-1938 arrangement which was forced on the GWR by circumstances such as a restricted site and the previous broad gauge arrangement. The way that the goods yard sidings join a platform road is also pretty odd, but again is taken straight from the real thing. I'm pretty sure that this particular platform face would not have been used for loaded passenger trains though. I have had my reservations about the branch junction because it forces some 'wrong line' running for a short distance on the double track but in the end I decided that within the limits of a terminus station there are plenty of examples where this is inevitable. Finding the Barnstaple Junction arrangement (which isn't even a terminus) also helped.

Oops - didn't answer that one, did I? Yes, we're using MSE parts wherever they suit. For the signal in the photo that means just the arm the ladder. If we could use more off the shelf bits then we would do - not having to make finials would be quite nice but I don't know of anything else that is suitable.

Thanks Nick. I think we might already have the bouncy code but that's not my department... which makes a change because software is my day job. I believe that we also have the technology to reprogram the PIC but we weren't brave enough to try reprogramming our one and only controller yesterday - we had only just got it working. We definitely have lots of new things to try out over the next few weeks.

Thanks Pete. I'm not finding it too daunting - just taking it one signal at a time I find it quite satisfying. Each one individually is not too much work compared to say a coach kit so there is a real feeling of progress. I'm sure you'll manage your signals just fine although I'm guessing that you might not have a nice easy one to practice on? Tweaking and possibly modifying the MERG is definitely something we plan to play with but nothing to report as yet other than plugging in the vanilla SERVO4 and proving that it works.

Our next planned outing should be TINGS near Leamington Spa in early September although the show web site is curiously shy about our presence and that of another 2FS layout of this parish which I'm told will be in attendance. There are still a few more buildings needed and some of these may appear before September but I think it's time to make a start on another aspect (get it?) of the infrastructure - the signals. St Ruth needs a lot of signals so there is zero chance that they will be finished any time soon but they certainly won't get finished until we start on them. The first thing we need is a plan. This has been work in progress for a long time - the original plan was created before the control panel and then drawn using a PCB design tool. The printout became the template for the control panel. Our understanding of the way we will operate St Ruth has now moved on so there have been some changes such as adding full running signals to allow departures via the east crossover. I re-drew the control panel overlay using some free software called 'Dia'. The new plan is rather closer to the conventions used by the drawing office at Reading but it wasn't possible to get it exactly right because of limitations of the tool. Here is a PDF of the new plan. It is oddly shaped in places because it needs to fit over the existing switches on the control panel. struthsigplan.pdf We've tried to avoid inventing our own arrangements and have tried to find precedents from the prototype as much as possible. It's probably best described as a hybrid of the pre and post 1938 plans for Penzance with the addition of the branch line and goods loop. The signals for the east crossover are based on the postwar arrangement at Newquay which also gives us an excuse for a GWR backing signal. The trickiest part was the branch because there doesn't seem to be a perfect precedent for a single line junction joining a double track line within the limits of a terminus station. The closest I've found is the arrangement of the spur from Barnstaple North into Barnstaple Junction but it's not a perfect match and is only partly GWR. I am sure that signalling lawyers could pick hols in the plan but we've done our best to stick to the rules and get it right. Looking at the plan again I am thinking of some further minor changes - arm 62 might become a disc because it only covers shunt moves unless the branch points fail again and 65 should probably be lower than 15. The three doll bracket might also gain a slotted distant arm for the next box to the east. So far we have one signal which is mostly finished. This is the starting signal from the arrivals platform (number 68) and is one of the very few single arm signals on the plan. It has the extra advantages of lacking a rule 55 diamond and having its balance weights hidden below platform level. The intention is to operate all of the signals using servos as described in MRJ 201. This signal has been fitted with a servo on a test rig and seems to work OK. The signal also has a working lamp. This consists of a tiny white LED to which some enamelled wire is soldered. This is contained inside a short length of heat shrink sleeving in which two holes are drilled for the lens and backlight. A short length of 1mm styrene rod is pushed into the top and the whole thing painted black. It is pretty close to the shape of a GW signal lamp but perhaps a little 'chunky'. The power feed for the lamp comes via a resistor under the baseboard and then up the ladder as described in the 2mm handbook. The lamp man's platform is some thin double sided PCB with one side used for structural solder joints and the other side used for the lamp power feed. There is still some more 'development' work to do. We haven't yet finalised our servo controller approach. I used a 555 timer circuit (see photo) to get the thing working initially and we tried out a MERG SERVO4 unit yesterday. There will be some more head scratching about powering the LEDs on multi-arm signals because the easy thing to do would be to wire them in parallel but I'm told that having LEDs in parallel sharing a single resistor is a bad idea. I'm sure that using the first few signals at a real exhibition will also reveal some more problems for us to think about. The jury is still out on the colour for the post. I tried metalcote 'steel' but this was too dark so the signal was repainted in light grey which looks less wrong. I now have some metalcote 'aluminium' which I will try on the next signal. Here are some pics of the signal on its test rig and temporarily fitted to the platform at St Ruth. The clear signal was a bit of a cheat because the photo was taken before the servo was fitted. The servo is now in place, albeit with no controller or wiring yet. Now I'm working on the second signal. This one is rather more complex and provides lots of new challenges for me to think about, but more about that another day.

Good to see Catcott Burtle here again. Can't have too much S&D I feel. Thanks