Changing Directions

In one of my earlier posts I mentioned that I scratchbuilt my point motors :

using a method shown to me by Allan G., whilst I have been reasonably pleased with the end result, they do have some shortcoming - the main one is that they are not adjustable in their movement - it's all or nothing, and they do not have any DCC functionality, sure I could get a DCC stationary/accessory decoder but that would not have fixed their other limitation of no flexibility in their movement range, and whilst in the main they function OK, there are a few which are noisy, and others which just do not move far enough, leaving a small gap between the point blade and the stock rail which can lead to some rolling stock derailing, so I have been toying with the idea of replacing them with something better for a while now.

I've always been impressed by the servo motor (from the RC hobby) point motors

9G servo mounted in a bracket and actuator fitted ready for under point deployment

they are a very small and compact unit , compare the size of the scratchbuilt unit to the servo based unit in the photo below :

but have thought them to be a bit dear, then whilst at one of the CCWN meeting held at Rowan place (Main South) I noticed that Rowan had some servo motors acting as point motors, when I asked Rowan how he found them he said that the original decoders he got where a bit 'chatty' and figured out close to $100 per four, to me $25 per point is a bit on the dear side, he then mentioned that he had just got a set of decoder/drivers from Tam Valley in the States and found these to be quite good, and reasonably priced (Rowan was using the 'Singlets' at the time).

 Upon investigating the costs I figured out that if I bought the Quad Pic boards and the servo motors in quantity it would figure out to about $10 per point, that includes DCC capability, compared to the $7-$8 it was costing me to scratch build the point motors (with no DCC capabilities) I figured that out to be a good deal, pretty well a no brainer.

A Pair of Quad Pic servo drivers/decoders, these control up to 4 individual servos (or more if paired as crossovers)

I found a good article in the 3rd Quarter, 2009 edition of the free Model Railroad Hobbist EZine http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com  which describes the Tam Valley decoders http://www.tamvalleydepot.com and how to connect the servos to the layout, whilst I did not follow their method to the letter(they recommend using double sided tape to fix the servos to the layout, I prefer to use screws as I think that gives a better fix), it certainly has some good ideas which I have used.

Seeing I had a requirement for more point motors I figured out that I would be better getting these rather than continuing along the scratch building path because they give me flexibility in their movement range, they have DCC inbuilt let alone that fact that it save me time in not having to scratch build any more point motors, I would still have to make the mounting brackets, but that is a fairly quick task which took all of about 2 hours to make sufficient brackets to mount 36 servos. I have made two types of mounting brackets, one is made from a 25mm Plastic angle (about $9.00 for a 2.4M length) which will be used where the point motor is not directly underneath the point as it has slightly more clearance than the other style of bracket :

the other is made from a 'U' shaped piece of plastic moulding  sold at Bunnings as a plastic floor covering cap for about $3 per 2.4M length, this will be used where the point motor is directly below the point,

 

the 'U' type bracket has a channel of about 13mm in width into which a servo fits quite nicely, an end on shot of both types of brackets is below:

You may have noticed that the actuating wire is 'threaded' through the plastic lever, this is quite easy to do as shown in the photo below:

So far I've replaced about a dozen point motors and am very happy with the result to date. As for the scratch built point motors I currently have on the workbench and those currectly in place in the layout that will be replaced with the servo motors, I will probably end up using these replaced point motors to drive the lower quadrant signals I have.

I hope Santa was kind to all (Looks like the Jolly Gent has put down for a set of Euruka BSV's for me:-) and that the New Year is a prosperous and good one.

Well that wraps this little session up, now back to fitting more point motors.

Maldon / Castlemaine

I really should have posted something about this back in August, but didn't really think about it until just recently whilst looking for some photos & came upon some I had taken recently. Mind you it really has nothing to so with the Mudgee line, then again neither has the BGM Vic J that I have to build.

Back in August a mate of mine and I went down to Melbourne for the Caulfield exhibition, the exhibition was worth flying down for & very enjoyable, also picked up one of the NSW BKX car transporter kits from Strath Hobbies (as recently review in AMRM), just have to find the time to put it together amongst all the other stuff I want to do - maybe another retirement project along with the J.


We had 2 days down there so visited the exhibition on the Saturday and then did some travelling on the Sunday, went to Puffing Billy in the morning & saw 2 trains depart, then hightailed it to Maldon to see the Maldon / Castlemaine (Victorian Goldfields Railway) steamer run, we made it too late to  catch the 'J' to Castlemaine but had a great time none the less exploring Maldon station & it's surrounds - especially it's selection of wagons :-.

Maldon township is great - like stepping back in time & has some great old time looking shops etc, unfortunately we did not have much time to explore the area, but we've slated it for a re-visit next time we head down that way.

I had heard that the station itself was burnt down a few years ago & I wasn't really sure what to expect and was very pleasantly suprised to see it had been rebuilt to what I can only assume was it's former glory.

If you get a chance to visit it's well worthwhile a trip and only about an hour or so from Melbourne itself, I know I'll be visiting again and probably staying closer to there so to have more time to explore.

Well that's it for now.

Cheers Alex...

The Roundhouse

A little while ago I started making a roundhouse for one of my station on the lower part of the layout, of which the turntable was described in an earlier post, which is roughly based on what was at Orange - 5 stall saw tooth, the only photo I have is from the Byways series of books - hope the guys don't mind if I include a pic showing what I'm trying to achieve - well worth getting as they have a heap of great information.

Photo from the Byways collection

I made the base from 40 thou (1mm) styrene and some slaters brick siding for the low brick exterior, whilst I'm happy enough with the end result it was a real pain in the proverbial cutting in the pits - and they're still probably not accurate, but they'll do me.

You may notice some metalic pins at the bottom, they are countersunk M3 machine screw which are araldited into the roundhouse base which then go into corresponing holes in the baseboard, washers & nuts are then use to fix in place, hopefully this will keep everying aligned.

About a month or so after I started I attended the Epping/Thornleigh exhibition & saw that Antons/Uneek had released a new kit for a simliar roundhouse, if I had not started on my one I may have bought the kit plus an extra 2 stalls as it would probably have been a quicker option (see Ray P's Bylong blog for some good discussions on it), however as I had already started I simply kept going.

I photocopied & scaled the drawings in Byways as a guide & taped it to a piece of blue insulation foam, covered it in glad wrap so the glue would not stick to the plan & then used drawing pins to help in placing the timbers to make the roundhouse roof trusses & sides - a simple enough jig and worked good enough for the 27 odd roof frames & the 2 sides I had to make.

Foam jig and some of the trusses made assembled into the model

Most of the scale timbers are by Kapler which I bought from Gwydir's, unfortunately I ran out of the roof rafters timber (I used 2 * 3), so bought some from another shop which where marked by the manufacturer as 2 * 3, even worse when I placed them on the roof it became clear that they are actually smaller in size, not by much and hopefully not noticeable when I eventually clad the roof with corrugated iron.

Talking of which I bought a 'corrugated iron maker' from Brunel hobbies whilst down at the Caulfield exhibition, it's basically a 2 piece perspex jig in which  a piece of aluminium is placed in the larger piece & the corresponding piece of the jig is drawn against the aluminium to press in the corrugations:

- only hassel I have is that the aluminum supplied, whilst thicker than alfoil is still fairly thin and thus fragile and also ends up curling a bit, but it can be straightened up quite easily, I experimented with some foil from the seal in the top of Milo tins & I found it too thick for my liking,  my daughter thinks the foils she uses for hairdressing is possibly in between the two, so I'll experiment with that when she gets some next (though I'll probably have to buy it for her -ahh  the joys of being a Dad to an apprentice hair dresser - pitty I don't have much hair for her to practice on :-), I'll update on that little experiment as I get to it - I experimented with the seals on the Alpen Blend chocalate powder last night & found it pretty good - just gotta figure out where to get some from if the haridressing foil is not suitable.

At this stage the roof & supports are pretty well complete, the legs of the frame have a wire pin glued into then and this pin then inserts into a corresponding hole in the base of the roundhouse, hopefully this will make for reasonably accurate alignment :

I've also started on the side wall frames and hope to fit them in the next week or two.After that is the End glass & louvers treatment and then the smoke flues and finally clading of the building with corrugated iron. One thing I do want to do, similar to what Ray P has done for his roundhouse, is to include interior lighting, I have some station lampshades which I am thinking of using along with some SMD LEDs, and it's something I need to allow for before I go much further.

Well I guess it's not much to show for the length of time since the last update, but there it is. Hopefully the next update will be a bit sooner than this one was.

More Modelling

I had been doing a bit of 'modelling'  a few months ago rather than layout building - been having fun with that even though I had to call it quits for the last few months due to other commitments, hoping to get back to it after Christmas, some of the stuff I have been working on is described below.

Austrains 35 Class

Had a bit of fun with this one - fairly nice model but I wanted to do a bit of work on it along the lines of working marker lights & cab light, I asked QSI via the QSI Yahoo groups if I could access the unused functions on their standard small steam decoder as used in the 35 & they advised I contact QSI Solutions, between Gerry Pruss of QSI & QSI Solutions we managed to get the marker lights to work. For the tender I used a 3mm Golden White LED and glued .5mm fibre optics into the LED - I then drilled out the tender marker lights and fed the fibres thru these. The front lights where a bit more difficult, I ended up using nano LEDS I purchased from NGineering in the States, I had to run some wires from the tender to the loco, at this stage it they are still a rough connection, I have bought some micro connectors made by TCS from MRC in Blacktown and they will be used to connect the loco & tender together, eventually.

Whilst mucking around with the lights I also ended up detailing the model a bit more - I ran the lubricating lines from the compressor up the boiler to the cab, also from the generator to the cab, a whistle cord to the cab etc, I also modified the tender slightly to be more in keeping with what I am after. Anyways I've included a few photos showing what I have done - will hopefully get round to painting the model soon.

Walthers turntable

Mate of mine was buying a Walthers built up Turntable from the State's and asked if I wanted one, he thought it could be made into a reasonable representative of the NSWGR 75' turntable. So once the models arrived I modified my one to be more NSW like - though not perfect it's good enough for me. What I ended up doing was re-planking the deck, making a more NSW like turntable shed - actually made 3 of them as 3 of us ended up buying one turntable each, making & installing a set of airtanks under the deck - still to go is the centre arch. Like I said I'm pretty happy the way the model has ended up - some piks follow.

Ohh well, that's it for now.

Cheers Alex.,.

Layout Happenings

Well I've spent the last few months going from one project to another to another, getting some things finished & others not so finished. I'll try to cover some of what I've been upto in this post.

The Layout

I've finally gapped & insulated all the points at the frog, I used a razor saw to re-gap the gaps at the frogs and then used 10thou styrene glued into the gap to help insulate- I'm hopeful it will make a difference & help to alleviate any shorts that may have occurred due to rail expansion, as part of this bit of work I've also wired up the majority of the layout & run a limited test as wiring progressed - so far so good, I'm hoping to test the layout from go to whoa shortly. I still need to make more point motors and attach them to the layout, but I must admit if I had not made so many of them I would be using the servo motor point motors I saw in action on Rowan's Main South layout - very impressed by them, only because I have most of the components already for the remaining point motors that I won't be going down that path, though I might use the servo motors to activate some semaphore signals. I also need to clean and then wipe a graphite pencil onto the track/rail - find it makes for really good pickup quality between track & wheel.

Most of the Main line points now have point motors installed but they need to be adjusted for hopefully good performance.

I ended up using a Powerline Victorian T class to check the track - in general most things went well but there are a few things that need to be fine tuned.

We got a new fridge a little while ago & not wanting to waste the luverley packing material I ended up cutting the the carboard packing into strips of about 100 - 150 mm (4 - 6") and used them as a fascia board template ( not my idea I read it somewhere) - I'll eventually run the scenery (when I get started on it) up to the cardboard and the cut the carboard to use as a template when cutting the real fascia board. Talking about scenery I was at the modelling the Railways of NSW at Loftus and Bob Stack of the SCR was demonstrating some of his scenery techniques and I was particularly taken by the way he sceniced his embankment - basically used some white beadfoam broken into small pieces (about 12 mm - 1/2") dipped into a thick plaster mix (Bob said it had to be thick so as to not end up being too smooth) squashed into the chicken wire and sceniced from there - I was really taken with the end result - have a look at the photos below to get an idea of what I'm talking about - as where I am thinking of using it I aleady have a scenery base of blue insulating foam down I'll have to experiment

Eureka 38

I picked up my 2 non DCC 38's from Eureka a while ago ( I wanted to have working marker lights & so thought it better to get non DCC units & then install a DCC sound decoder that could handle the extra functions required to have working marker lights rather than putting in a second function only decoder) and started to modify non streamed lined 3813 to have DCC, working marker lights, cab light & running lights,the tender water filler hatch light and a new coal load - interesting bit of modelling & am looking forward to doing the same to the black streamlined 38, I also reversed the middle of the compressor to be 'more correct' - not sure if that is really worth the effort - especially as it's not that noticeable when the model is running. Anyways 3813 now had red/white marker lights front & back using DCC Concepts dual colour Red/White LEDs & fibre optics to the modelled marker lights, a SMT LED as the cab light and also a 3mm golden white LED running lights shining down onto the running gear and a fibre optic run from them to be used as step lights,I also cut out the steps in the side of the 38 cab to allow the lights to shine thru. After I had finished the mods it was time to weather the model to help to dull off the shiny wheels, after I had finished I showed it to a mate of mine who used to drive the things & another who used to do the maintenance on them & they both said that the wheels should have been a sort of oily browny black colour rather than the dusty dirt colour I had done - so it'll be back to the paint shop to correct that. Talking about weathering the model a problem that I had was that I had lightly masked off the footplate when weathering the driving wheels so as to not get the footplate too dirty, unfortunately when I removed the blue painter's tape I had used some of the cream lining came off with the tape, I tried to fix this up with a bow pen but it's not turned out as well as I had hoped - ohh well such is life. Anyways some piks follow.

Photo of 3813 showing the front marker lights (white but they can be red), the running lights over the valve gear, the step cutouts in the cab and the cab light shining on the tender front plate, the tender water hatch light can just be made out just behind the coal load in the tender.

Red marker lights, cab light, cab step light & tender water hatch lights all lit up

pik looking down in to the modified tender - new (lowered) coal plate and driver's lunch box - easier to see the mod in an unpainted state.

Similar photo to the previous but this time the model is finished - weathered & coaled - I think the effort was worth it

Heat Wave

Last summer ('08/09) we had a few days where the mercury went over 40c, this caused the rail to buckle in the Mudgee area cause I apparently did not leave enough of a gap for rail expansion. When I got around to doing something about this the rail had contracted back to 'normal' and I thought I'd wait for another hot one to come along so I could then mark what tracks gave me problems. Guess what - no more hot days came until this summer - so what happened - nothing - I did nothing on the layout to any great degree until earlier this summer when we had a few more hot one's just before Christmas, this time I marked which tracks had buckled, took them apart and cut about 1mm of the end of the tracks in question - I had to make about 4 cuts in the Mudgee area, some more in the lower portion of the layout - Mudgee is now running OK & I'm progressing on the others. I've included a couple of photos of the track after it was taken apart but before I cut it back - you can see the track overlaps the point rails by about .5mm, hopefully the bit I have cut off the ends will have solved this problem - time will tell.

I also had a short devlop in the same area. I think that was something to do with the gaps in the points (which I cut with a razor saw) closing up and thus shorting out. I've re-cut the gaps and glued a piece of 10thou styrene in the gaps and then trimmed the styrene back to be level with the rails. Hopefully that will be it - the trains certainly seem to run OK with no shorts in this area now.

I'm hoping for another hot day or too just to see how it all hangs together. Ahh the joys of building a layout in an attic - and yes the roof space is insulated as are the walls.

Was just about ready to post this when well - we had a few more hot ones - was 40' a little while ago followed by a 38 day - no sign of any more buckling in the Mudgee area so I'm hoping all will be OK for the future - Now to finish the other areas that have experienced track buckling.

That's it for now...

long time between drinks

Well it's been a long time between drinks & I'm getting thirsty.


The layout itself has not progressed too much - too many other things to do around the house & other modelling projects.


So what has been achieved so far.


The layout now has a Walthers 90' turntable :

it's in place but not yet hooked up - but I'm about to pull it out so I can detail it to be more NSW like in appearance - I'll start by painting the pit walls white and the base more a concrete colour rather than the radial weathering the pit comes with. I'm basing this on Orange and will need to scratch up the coal stage & sand house - the barracks are too big for the space I have available but I'll figure something out. You might also notice the end of an inspection pit on the left hand side of the photo - a better photo is as below:

This is a Peco inspection/ash pit which I have modified the floor by placing 2 * 40thou pieces of styrene over the existing floor, the top piece is slightly narrower then the bottom piece and glued to it, when the glue dried I then filed the sides of the top piece to merge with the bottom piece to give a rounded off finish to the sides, I then glued this to the existing Peco floor. I hope the photo explains it a whole lot better then I have (well I have only used 80 odd words & they say a picture is worth a 1,000 words).

I've also cut the slots/gaps for the inpection pits in the roundhouse roads - used a circular saw to do that with - was a bit of fun - not very tidy bit they should be ok - thankfully they will be mainly hidden in the confines of the roundhouse - whenever that is built.

How lucky can one be - I had to go to Galong for work last November & took advantage of being down there & went to the Wagga Wagga Exhibition, from there I came home via Orange & guess what - the sand shed is still there - unfortunately my Camera's battery had died before I got there but my Phone had a good enough camera to take a few photos with - unfortunately I did not have a tape so could not take any measurements but I think I can guesstimate the sizes, ( I think the planks are about 8" wide & the vertical supports appear to be about 6" square) unless someone has the measurements that they could email me with :-)

The Mudgee portion now has all it's point motors installed in the main & goods area, the loco area will probably use the wire in tube method to actuate the points - quite like it after seeing it in operation on Rowan (Main South Line) & his dad Sam (Buff Point) layouts - probably a bit cheaper & easier to set up than the point motors.



The lower main line station ( a mix of Wallerawang and Wyong) has abut 80% of it's main line points motorised and I've almost finished making the next batch of point motors to power the remaining points in this station as well as the points in the other main line station, all things being equal this should be done by March / April, not sure what year though.


Well that's it for now.