2017_07_01 Graeme came over to change the look of the place a little.
Pictures show the change....
Just measuring up and working out how to support the false fascia
Fixing supports in place
Got an edge that we had to smooth off to the right..
Test fitting fascia with additional supports
and adding to the bottom level as well
We carved away some of the bench work under spirit level to smooth out the false facia.
This will give us the chance to support the foam, and trim up the edges to lay scenery. At the finish we will glue and screw an aluminum true fascia over top to pretty up the effect.
Departure Homes from Honeysuckle to Alansvale (left) or Trentham (right arm)
Amazing detail on Tony's new signal building from base to finnials on top!
illuminated as well!
The Lop bracket received a few months back helps to arrive trains at Honesuckle other sides of points protected by new bracket
Don't remember if I showed this new signal? It departs down trains on the main out of Honeysuckle. It needed to be added to allow access to the Loco turntable.
Glad to see Tony returning to his signal building. However it is hardly a money making venture for him. The new bracket post took more than 12 hours to build (I suspect much more) And who could pay $60 an hour plus parts to build something so beautiful? (Just noticed the disk is hanging off (proceed) . It wont do that when a Tortoise motor is attached to it ;)
2017_06_22 Still cold, but a visit to Bunning's to get some wood and a visit from my signalling contractor is worth a mention?
After not having a heater for over a month after my air conditioner failed during power brown outs last January. Long story but I only switched it on again to heat house up when the cold weather set in, to find it had burned out the compressor. Took a month to convince Insurance Company it was a fused motor and eligible for compensation. So asit warms up from -0.02 C last night to 8.5 C at 11.00 am with aircon set at 20C Economy. I finally feel warm at 17.4 C, after a month of 11.0C days and 8.0 C nights sitting on an electric oil panel heater,
At the same time the shed was 4.0 C just slightly warmer than my fridge which was 2.0 C
Bunnings?
With Graeme's scenery project on the move , we decided to laminate 3mm
craft strips along edges to hold foam, plaster scenery in place.
Bunnings actually supplied 2400 x 1200 sheets cut down to 200mm widths
for me, enabling me to get it home in the wagon, and saving me the
trouble of cutting it all up here :D All for $30. A bargain.
12 pieces of 3mm craft wood sheets cut in 200mm strips. These will be used to form edges in particular the curved edges linking Honeysuckle to the trestle bridge and Albury yard to The Murray River bridge and on to the tunnel and around to House Creek on the lower level.
Just adding head shunt towards House Creek, to allow Graeme to add foam
The craft sheets will be laminated to cover edges of layout where foam ends.
The embankments glued in place and now to add foam ground level sheets and cover with towels. This in turn will be covered in the same paper plaster mix used on the other side at Bullarto wheat silos.
Then a combination of static grass weeds trees and other ground cover will finish it off.
Need to make a road. Going to try painting cork black (Graeme said)
And finally the next signal to arrive for Honeysuckle is this one. The bracket post controls movement of up trains from Honeysuckle platform and (left to right) direct route to Alanvale and Bowser Junction mainline access. And the other arm, trains heading to trestle bridge and Trentham
Cheers
Rod
In answer to Tim's email, where he asked if my radii were indeed as broad as I thought 😏 I think I have that covered. I use Fast Tracks specially cut radii tools. They were made for me at 44 inches and 46 inches. On the branch, I try to keep the radius at 36 inches where possible, using the green tool.
And so 44 " and 46" and 48" on the Helix. The 48" was laid using peco parallel track tools fixed to a block of wood, and later adjustable tools bought from Prose's in Turkey.
The "roarer" cars?
pin heights all adjusted (But something is hanging on left. A coupling hose. Must bend it away as it might be fouling coupler? Also right hand car has a coupling bar looking to be fouling??
The shortest radii will be the points and crossovers, all no.6 But seems ok here.
Entering No.6 crossover.
And departing same crossover.
clever design by Auscision and their Chinese engineers, don't you think? Pity our 1/87 scale passengers though!
I had an hour or two in the Train room today and tested the "roarer" cars some more. One of my readers sent me an email with suggestions how I might overcome the derailments.
First
thing I noticed was that all coupling pins were at two different heights,
however none actually hung below rail height. But I did adjust the
lowest ones to match the higher ones.
Alas train still derailed.. Hold
on! The same three vehicles kept derailing the rest were just fine.
Ok
so I ran a mixed train of freight vehicles with RP25/100 and RP25/88
wheels, short 50 footers and long 80 foot flats, some light some heavy.
This train circulated with out problem
I followed it with the "roarer"
cars which derailed at about 15 locations.
So
I started to check the track.
Yes they were derailing at the same
place. Like I said 7 vehicles ok, 3 would derail, but not (all) at the
same place.
Started
adjusting track. Used packers, adjusted curves and in two cases
replaced insulated joiners which were not holding track together
perfectly. The joiners were soft creating out of alignment issues in
height and line. New insulators fixed this problem. Still working on
repairs for other spots.
The track seems to be ok for most vehicles. The Aurora is finding the faults though.
Pictures(to follow as I left camera in shed) will show the radius tools I use as well as the gaps for
diaphragm and buffer plates. They like the 44" and 46" radii but also
navigate the #6 crossovers without derailing. Not a good look but
congratulations Auscision for building cars that close couple and still
navigate through crossovers!!
Unfortunately not greates pictures but they show Graeme's progress. Going to look pretty nice, I think. Must teach myself how to make rock castings!?
On the wiring front?
Well I can run trains around 90% of the track laid.
A couple of
dead sections and the BG between coal siding and Wodonga is shorting.
Just need the weather to warm a little so I can get stuck into it.
Ran a couple of goods trains around, one with N492 on front, and was happy with the way things worked. Then I tried to run Auscision X32 and 8 Aurora cars and it failed miserably. Seems to derail every 6 feet or so. No idea why, wheels are in gauge, free rolling, able to twist easily side to side and couplings not binding and carriages almost touching on 44 inch radius curves, but definitely not. Couplers reminds me to check the under pins. Maybe they are fouling the brake hoses and detailing on the cars? Anyone else trying to run them on short shank couplings?
2017_05_30 Hard to believe its been two weeks since I was here :(
Ok have been sick, and was slow to climb out of it. Usually I take a while ,these days to get the spark firing properly.
The Club Exhibition a few weeks back filled in one weekend and a trip to Melbourne to see friends and family helped fill in the last one.
The few times I actually did get into the train room was filled with rewiring and checking out a few purchases from the Exhibition.
Their is a thread on RailPage about the biggest layouts in Australia. Although having the biggest is of no interest to me, but based on what others were writing I decided to roughly work out how much track I have laid, and how much more is to come.
For those who do not visit RailPage you might be interested in this
"Hobsons Bay North is an offshoot of my Club Layout that once was housed
near the Docklands in Melbourne.Its in a 15m x 8m specialty built room,
runs around the walls on two levels and via a central island, also
double stacked.
At present I have 400 meters of track with Albury yard and helix yet to lay.
I have a three track helix with outer radius of 1.17m and circumference
of 7.35m and 5 tiers high to maintain a light grade. If my calculator is
being operated correctly, that should have used 110.25 m of track?
The rest of the layout consists of SG track (simulated with code100) and BG track (simulated with code 75)
A second helix,, being only double track (SG) is being built now to
access the Northern end of Albury and simulate trains to and from Junee.
That will be near 60m long
The existing track, yards and branch line on both levels roughly calculates out at 300m.
Adding in the future Helix and Albury yard is frightening me, but
calculated at albury being 600mm by 12m and main line and sidings
roughly filling the board 8 tracks across? another 96m?
The helix 60m and the BG branch station on top 20m
I am going to have over 500m and possibly almost 600m of track
My idea was to form a Club up here near Wodonga, but unfortunately I
over estimated the numbers of people that might be interested, having
very few show any interest despite advertising my intentions. My layout
requires at least 4 to operate and could comfortably accommodate 20
people Aisles are huge and from my experiences with Hobsons Bay in
Melbourne, I was able to learn from our mistakes down there,
particularly the wide aisles
My long delayed layout is overwhelming me, and but for the help of good friends, it would be near hopeless. I guess
Cheers
Rod"
2017_05_15 Cant believe it, if I did not have sound fitted to my locos, it would be really quiet in here!
And so one more fault found and fixed at Bullarto, and trains are now running all the way to Trentham through there and to the silos via the junction at Bowser.
Still not really well, so spent the cooler parts of today rugged up inside.
Graeme did come over Saturday as did Al. So I should have added more pictures of the mountain. I will add them next time, I get out there.
Cheers
Rod
2017_05_11 Working for loco maintenance and signals branch this Al's Day
I wrote an email to a mate and thought it was probably a good blog entry for today.
My friend Al and I worked the whole day on one DCC territory that had somehow developed a short.
We
started by removing every dropper from the DCC bus and then connecting
just one black return to bus and found any red wire added caused a short
to return.
As
every point was fitted droppers but wired with insulated two middle
rails (electro frogs live with own dropper via a juicer) I decided to
insulate all four rails on the frog end? Of course a fools errand and as
expected that did not work.
Al
had me putting sound in his G Class, and he sat on a stool, with the
short lighting up a car tail lamp, and started at the other end and
reconnected every dropper for me. I told him that as the short
persisted, with every thing disconnected, and no path was left for the
rails to be the problem, to take particular notice of where the red and
black wires were soldered. Perhaps I had bundled two incompatible reds
together, or had a red dropper from a black rail?? I have done this
before.
We
worked from 10.00 am to 5.00pm and Al called me over to show me one
complicated section. The Apex Junction, which had given me so much grief
a few months back. He went on and completed the rest of the wiring. I
found about 5 bundles of red wires. two wire bundles soldered together
were easily traced to the same rail or a pair of rails in the same
section. No short possible.
But
one bundle had 5 red wires. I cut the spade joiner off and re bundled
them in pairs and connected them to the same rail district. Al tells me
that the taillight had gone out and we had power back on the section all
13.7 volts of it!
I touched the final wire to the bus and indeed the short appeared.
So
I traced it back and found it was actually a SG wire feed which should
have been short free. However I had allowed the SG main line to come
past the end of the district about 3 feet, and in fact I was crossing
into the next district! Damn!! I moved the insulators in track ending
that line at the edge of district and added the 3 feet back into the
(shorting district) connected the wire and the short was indeed gone.
Thank God I decided to use connectors to link wires to the bus. :D
I
have 10 NCE circuit breakers on layout, creating districts. As well I
have 4 Command stations (3 wired as slaves) giving me 14 districts.
This
is the first time I have made this error though. The Digitrax stations
are finally silent. I can turn them on and off without hundreds of
warning chimes and the tick tick tick sound has finally been put to
silence (I knew this was a warning that two command stations were
incorrectly wired together) So the wonderful sound of silence!
2017_05_05 Graeme sculpts his foam some more and I continue to search for the bad wiring 💣
The shape is glued in place
Now the rock molds need to be cut into walls.
I like the Woodland Scenics plaster side walls, together with the tunnel mouth and interior which are Graeme's own design and build.
Just need to cut away some foam to inset rock molds.
Paint the walls ?
rolled top coat over the undercoat and it blended in perfectly.
Painted same as other walls Looks pretty good to me.
Wiring is still giving me problems. The fault is obviously a bad connection and I spent a few hours going through the wiring under Kilmore East and along the wall to the silo siding.
Just before I gave up, I tested the wiring once more by plugging in a feed and got the short, however I noticed that the point motors could be heard for a second operating.
I then noticed when I started checking the point motor connections, I could stop the short by wriggling the wires. I cut the power feeds to the tortoise switch that feed the frog as the point operates, because the red and black wires were transposed and because the wires were bundled together with like track feeds, I do believe it may be a simple wrong wire on the tortoise This was exasperated by the loose connection I found when I moved the wires with my hand in close proximity and caused the short to stop shorting and start up again. I will find out tomorrow if I am right. This point motor had no shrink tubing on the terminals, so I will go round the layout ensuring all terminals are so protected.. Fingers crossed? Hope this brings an end to this wiring fiasco :(
Cheers
Rod
Never much liked Elvis, but as I got older, my taste matured🚂 HaHa!
Where were we?
The undercoat is on the walls and the topcoat should blend it all in. The infinity corners, I read somewhere, help with the illusion.
Whilst Graems started the mountain, I scrounged all the foam, I could find.
Now we have some material..
Graeme forms the foundation
Trimming it all with his "hot wire cutter"
Who says "Mountains takes millennia! Just a few hours and it takes form.
I thought hot wires save the mess! Actually they are a gift to all modellers, and the mess is bulky and easily picked up. Much better than the dust caused by cutting it with a saw
I bought some rock moulds, so we are going to thin this out a bit to insert some castings here.
A view from the Murray side. This aspect of the layout is more "freelance" than the rest. Of course all caused by compressing such a huge area into such a "small" room. 🔨
View from the other side.
Next episode will see Graeme adjusting the shapes, and gluing it all together. Then I will cover it with cloth and it should be ready for plaster and ground cover.
But for me its back to replacing temporary wiring. About half the layout is operating properly, and I have a feeling the contamination between territories is not far from being solved, and maybe even today :)
Cheers
Rod
