2013 July 30

2013 July 30 Tuesday  damp and not so cold ;)

A66 in one of its many liveries heads up a test train to settle the track on the new temporary access track into the Coal sidings. Here it departs Wanganella.

Crossing the SG and entering the new line.

44 inch outside radius BG track with 2inch centres for SG track. So far so good. This rolling stock has not seen the light of day since about 1997 when I moved to Wodonga.

This is where I was working tonight soldering droppers and straightening track before nailing it all down.

On the Main heading towards Coal Siding Box and the curve up into Wodonga. Track further over is the BP oil siding.

n the photo notice the difference between Code 100 and code 75.  Reminded me that I should replace the upper deck supports which have been modified to work without the ugly stays that I had used before. Then I can plaster in the backdrop wall before I go much further. Even without the stays it is really firm, but it would wobble enough to derail a train if it was knocked hard.

Well I guess that has been a long job and I had to spend yesterday and most of today in town, so I was happy to get a few hours in after dinner tonight to get this far.
Tomorrow I should be able to start connecting up the power. Just counted
106 pairs to be connected to short circuit protection and into the bus, however it is all there, so it should not take so long.
Next job after that will be connecting up the point motors before moving around the corner into Wodonga.  That will be a long job, I guess.
Enough! what's on TV apart from commercials :(

Cheers
Rod

2013 July 28

2013 July 28  Clear and cold Saturday and Sunday

Another trick I have found is to solder droppers to every length of track and point (switch).. Thus the rail joiners only hold and or insulate the joins. No reliance at all on the fish plates carrying power. Although this slows things down, it should protect me from dead spots in the future. The soldered droppers are all connected to the rail close to one end between the fourth and fifth sleeper. This allows the flex track to bend without catching on the solder points.

clean the side of the rail and solder a small tab first then tin the wire and join it to the solder pad.

My standard wiring is black to the outside and red to inside on single lines. However here I have introduced other colours to differentiate between all the different tracks at this point.

Well I guess comparing this picture with a similar one taken of this location,last week shows this leopard is not changing his spots.
Although the permanent track was laid correctly, I fortunately thought a little more about the temporary diversion. In fact something had been worrying me about it for a few weeks. Last night I dreamed about it and understood what I was doing wrong after entering the studio after breakfast.
Because the temporary track was entering the Coal Siding from the Albury end, I needed to swap the sides that the BG and SG travelled. The SG normally travels on the right of the BG but on the diversion it must travel on the left, to align correctly with the track layout at Coal Siding. As the temporary diverge was using second hand Peco Code 100 recovered from an old Layout built in 1985 and pulled down in 95, and stored since. It was not too big a deal. To fix the problem. However it did take me all day to line everything up again.

The diamond had to be slightly relocated to allow the installation of a curved point that was also ex the old layout. First I shimmed up the guard rails and soldered droppers on to the outside rails installed links to the blades and cleaned it up before installing it. Also cut out some broken sleepers and replaced them. Should work fine and tested RP25 and 88 wheels and they were fine.

The curved point allowed the 2 inch centres to be maintained.


Anyway another day and a little bit closer to being connected to Coal Siding Yard.

Cheers
Rod Young

2013 July 24

2013 July 24 Wednesday Cold and sunny after a week of extreme

 cold weather and rain!

 Peco track straight out of the box!
Its a simple thing to lay track right?
Buy it, unpack it, place rail joiners on it and straighten it or curve it and lay it on a hard flat surface? ........  Yeah right :(

Rail Joiners are not going on this piece of track without a little preparation.

First thing to do is cut away the plastic on the first sleeper, and create a gap for the rail joiner. I find it easier to do this before laying it. Prepare both ends on straight track. On curved track, you need to remove the extra length on the inside rail, and remove extra sleepers before fixing the rail joiners.

I then solder a dropper on each side of the rail close to one end. On curved track it helps to curve it before doing this.

Then using the wonderful Trackright underlay, and straight edges and track gauges, I simply fix it in place with tacks. These can be removed if you want, after the ballast is dry gluing everything in place.

Spent a couple of days in the shed after returning from Adelaide where I had a pleasant time catching up with old friends.

So I might just post some pictures of Adelaide and a larger scale model railway...  tomorrow :)
Cheers
Rod

2013 July 14

2013 July 14  Sunday

well eh?  um?  The old man model railway "trolley" is in use and does it help!!   Wiring in the new track :)  I could do this all day long, I only have to wonder why I don't? :(

 

Here it is adjusted so that I can lay on my gut and straighten the SG track before fixing it in place.

Spent three days in the shed since returning from Queensland. This shows the three lengths of track installed and wired into the DCC main. What it does not show is the cleanup to enable the trolley to fit underneath. The drilling of 4 new holes to correct the adjustment of the red plastic base to clear the layout at this spot. and a few other things that had to be done before one length of track could be laid.

.
 

The girder bridge is a place mark till I figure out what to use here. I wanted to create a modern (well 60's concrete over bridge similar to Jacana, Still might if I cab figure out how to do it :)

Off to South Australia for the rest of week with Tony K
So not much more is going to happen here, I guess.
Don't ask me about my car :(   Its back at the dealer with leaking diesel smoking up the country side once again! . Thought that this is becoming a nightmare, but at least it did get me home from the Qld trip. Turns out the return line from the injector pump to the tank is made from plastic as well. It is the only part of the fuel system that was not replaced so far. Another charge to add to the Insurance Company bill :(  I am assured that nothing else is left to replace... but they did say that last time, I think.
Cheers
Rod Young

2013 July 8

2013 July 8  Monday
  Sun is out... no its not... yes it is...... :)
OK the trip behind me and after thinking a lot about the layout whilst away, this is what I did today. Tried to construct this part as open frame. However it became obvious that the temporary escape road was going to prevent that from happening.

This is a rough layout of how I think the track will go.   Obviously in the future the temporary points and track work will come out. I envisage replacing this with a town scene, possibly an Industrial area, so it should work out ok.

The near track is the BG (code 75) and this adjusts slightly to align with the SG (code100) loop. It appears that the temporary BG can cross using a small crossover, and to my eyes at least it looks OK and should not cause a lot of difficulties with signalling. The SG continues via points along the back wall to diverge into the temp escape. In the distance the SG loop starts and the third track is the cripple road as per 1962 VR practice.

BG parallels SG loop no.1 Road then No.2 Loop road and Cripple Road. Further over BG and SG temp escape roads.

The short Crossing works better here than the long one. Had no idea where I was going to use these. I got them in a job lot  ;)

SG diverges left and crosses the BG before dividing into loop. The BG divides further back forming the crossing and the escape. The straight leg continues forward and parallels the SG around into Wodonga Station.

The SG standard loop arrangement.

Happy to return home, I guess but happier that the enthusiasm has remained

Cheers
Rod Young