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Helston Revisited


Andy Keane
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10 hours ago, Neal Ball said:


Yes…. But….

 

On adjacent lines, there might not be enough space to get their huge mech under the board!

Indeed - I have had to work hard to squeeze in the main signals which are all double Dapols. If their ground signals were that big it would be impossible. But I am off to the Missenden signal building course with Karl in November. Chatted to him at expoEM today and we think a tiny RC model aircraft servo will do the trick.

Andy

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1 hour ago, Andy Keane said:

Indeed - I have had to work hard to squeeze in the main signals which are all double Dapols. If their ground signals were that big it would be impossible. But I am off to the Missenden signal building course with Karl in November. Chatted to him at expoEM today and we think a tiny RC model aircraft servo will do the trick.

Andy


I look forward to seeing the results then. 

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Have inserted a couple of Kadee eletromagnets into the next board. I am told they may not be very helpful and sods law says they will be in slightly the wrong place but they have to go in before the track.

On the plus side their depth nicely matches my cork underlay.

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I await the test results with interest.  Then I’ll know whether to plan round using mine or start thinking outside the box!

Paul.

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10 hours ago, 5BarVT said:

I await the test results with interest.  Then I’ll know whether to plan round using mine or start thinking outside the box!

Paul.

I was chatting to Chris Hopper (of Missenden Modellers) who uses Kadees a lot and he thought they would be an issue and start dragging rolling stock with steel axles around if nearby. He uses the simple between the rails magnets and is happy with that. My view is if they are a problem I don't have to use them and could add the between the rails ones later on if needed. I may have to anyway if I find I need uncouplers in places I had not planned to. I will keep people posted on how I get on. Photo shows how they line up with the newly laid cork. I will probably glue some wooden strips into the gaps between the metal plates to stop ballast going down there and also to provide more surface for the track to be glued to.

Andy

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Edited by Andy Keane
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I am about to lay the bullhead track for the main station and am pondering on what to do about rail joins. Should I use the basic metal Peco ones (a bit ugly), their tiny bullhead ones (very fiddly) or just omit them all together and simply rely on the track being glued down to allign things. And where I want electrical breaks shall I bother with the clear plastic joiners that gaurantee the rails cannot touch or again just leave gaps. Any opinions much appreciated.

Andy

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I got a 55xx at expoEM for £30 as this class did run at Helston. It had a dicky gearbox but otherwise its a nice heavy kit built loco. I have repaired the gearbox and added an extra set of ground pickups while I was in there (I hate relying on the ground going via the axles). It now just needs new couplings, some paint touch-up, DCC conversion and sound. And perhaps a crew and a firebox back etc. Not sure about the bluetac but its not doing any harm!

Andy

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Edited by Andy Keane
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Have nearly finished laying the track - just the two end sidings to do. All the points down and most of the joints secure.

Raided my workshop for as many moveable heavy things as I could find.

I must say I have found the bullhead Peco track very floppy and tedious to get straight.

In the end I have done without rail joiners of any kind - I found the Peco bullhead fishplates too fiddly and did not want to use the old fashioned clips. If I get issues I will just solder rail ends together.

I have also to make the cuts to create the track isolation blocks so I can detect where things are. I think the main station platform run will get divided into probably five seperate blocks given the board joints and the need to detect positions around the uncoupler.

The lonely wagon is my test vehicle - a much battered bit of rolling stock that is getting weathered the hard way.

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Edited by Andy Keane
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Got a real camera out - its starting to look like a railway. And this shows the beginnings of the curvature at the far end as the track all bends down there which is not visible in the other shots.

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Edited by Andy Keane
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Finally finished laying the track! This is the gas works coal unloading siding with wagon area to the left and the carriage shed at the end of the main platform head shunt. The PVA is currently setting before I pull the track pins and trim the cork.

Originally the plan was for an overbridge at the end of the carriage siding instead and the line then running on to the Lizard, but they ran out of cash and put in the GWR's first bus service instead.

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Plodding on with my wiring. This beast is my cack-handed way of driving a pair of Kadee electro-magnetic uncouplers via DCC.

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So this is a spare DCC Concepts AD2fx unit where I am using the LED drivers on their board to drive two timer relays via a pair of opto-isolators and an Ardunio. This allows me to switch the heavy current on the magnets for a fixed length of time by changing the accessory bus setting. To make this work I am using spare capacity on my under board Ardunio to turn the change on the accessory bus to a pulse to fire the timer relay. Bonkers but it seems to work and by using a second hand AD2fx not too expensive. No doubt there are much better ways of doing this but my brief search of the web did not reveal any.

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16 hours ago, Andy Keane said:

Plodding on with my wiring. This beast is my cack-handed way of driving a pair of Kadee electro-magnetic uncouplers via DCC.

20220614_151531.thumb.jpg.a20d154d31b2260fe1e14a354351b7af.jpg

So this is a spare DCC Concepts AD2fx unit where I am using the LED drivers on their board to drive two timer relays via a pair of opto-isolators and an Ardunio. This allows me to switch the heavy current on the magnets for a fixed length of time by changing the accessory bus setting. To make this work I am using spare capacity on my under board Ardunio to turn the change on the accessory bus to a pulse to fire the timer relay. Bonkers but it seems to work and by using a second hand AD2fx not too expensive. No doubt there are much better ways of doing this but my brief search of the web did not reveal any.

Interesting work Andy, it's interesting to see how different people approach a similar problem.

 

I've designed a circuit/ PCB that created a 30s pulse for the electromagnet from a 12V momentary push-switch. That might work off a solenoid decoder and cut out the arduino?

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2 hours ago, DRoe96 said:

Interesting work Andy, it's interesting to see how different people approach a similar problem.

 

I've designed a circuit/ PCB that created a 30s pulse for the electromagnet from a 12V momentary push-switch. That might work off a solenoid decoder and cut out the arduino?

Yes I suspect a custom circuit is the correct solution but given each of my base-boards has an ardunio on it anyway, it was a small matter to add some code to do this. The advantage of the timer relays is they have a small potentiometer on them which I can simply adjust with a screwdriver to control the on-time for each decoupler. I find even 30 seconds makes them quite warm even though Kadee say they are good for two minutes. I think they are a real fire hazard if not treated with due care. I would be interested to see your circuit diagram though.

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The latest addition to my small fleet of locos for Helston. Not strictly in period or region but I loved watching these things as a kid when we played in a park just north of Hitchin station in the late 1960's.

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Its a really impressive build, full of detail and very heavy. Just deciding where to hold it to pick it up is a challenge.

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49 minutes ago, Andy Keane said:

I loved watching these things as a kid when we played in a park just north of Hitchin station in the late 1960's.

So did I, King Edward Bridge Gateshead early 70’s.

Paul.

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1 hour ago, Andy Keane said:

The latest addition to my small fleet of locos for Helston. Not strictly in period or region but I loved watching these things as a kid when we played in a park just north of Hitchin station in the late 1960's.

20220713_113001.thumb.jpg.d5dd66e7c76627d4241a56b17f536243.jpg

20220713_113025.thumb.jpg.3e796c999feaded4037e9a64836c976f.jpg

Its a really impressive build, full of detail and very heavy. Just deciding where to hold it to pick it up is a challenge.

 

Should have got 55016 in blue as it got as far as Exeter

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4 hours ago, MJI said:

 

Should have got 55016 in blue as it got as far as Exeter

Not sure why but I have never been in love with shades of blue.

Much more importantly my dad got my brother and I a Hornby Doublo three rail Deltic in green back then and we raced it around a loop for hours pulling everything we had that would move so this is one huge reminiscence for me. I will video it in motion in due course and send it to big brother to surprise him!

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54 minutes ago, Andy Keane said:

Not sure why but I have never been in love with shade of blue.

Much more importantly my dad got my brother and I a Hornby Doublo three rail Deltic in green back then and we raced it around a loop for hours pulling everything we had that would move so this is one huge reminiscence for me. I will video it in motion in due course and send it to big brother to surprise him!

 

I quite like rail blue.

 

Maroon though is a bit boring, I like two colour stock such as brown cream. crimson cream, blue grey.

 

 

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Encouraged by the rest of you I have had an afternoon pottering with my little fleet of locos. I have added crews to several, a few lamps, re-lettered and renumberred the 14xx to 4806 and also re-lettered the tender on the Dukedog (I have sent of for plates to renumber it as well back to the 32xx series and will see if I can also fit a name plate). The 44xx also neds coal and I am not sure about some of the plastic coal in the others. The brass valve cover on 4806 rather stands out and I wonder if I should paint it green?  In all quite pleased but my painting of figures is still very haphazzard.

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Edited by Andy Keane
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