2013 Aug 2

2013 Aug 2  Nice day but at 2.00 the skies opened up once again, a "light" monsoon developing as this is happening every day??

Well now that both tracks have reached the "coal hole" its time to match up this end of the yard with the bits Graeme and I did a month or so ago. I need to be careful here and make sure the tracks meet exactly to be visually pleasing at least.

Just a little bit of a laugh.  I have twice this many clamps and I am a real fan of the little one handed clamps. I did buy a new pack today because I could not find any not being used.These Irwin clamps are the Bee's Knees ;) 4 for $30 at Bunnings. I am now only buying the good quality ones, because the cheap ones cannot take heavy use, tightening them up can easily break the plastic shafts used to make the trigger pivot. Not a hard job to fix, because I simply drill out the casing where the broken shaft was and replace the shaft with a bolt and a nylock nut. However it is a waste of time when a pack of 4 Irwins cost about the same per unit as a cheap one. When I returned from Bunnings I was searching for something else, and found the missing clamps :D and here is a clamp tree just to say "You cannot have too many clamps when you are building a model railroad :D

Two days on and the SG yard at Coal siding is nearly installed.
The track closest the wall is BG and the next one is the SG main. The next one forms the No2 Road of the crossing loop.
Then two more store roads and I should have three but just could not fit it all in.  The closest rail, which is yet to be laid will be the Bogie Exchange road. I will lay this in code 100 and change to code 75 inside the BE shed. The track inside the shed will be insulated and dead to DCC. This way the Unimog that will shunt the shed will need to use a match truck to shunt vehicles from the SG side and the BG pilot will do the BG side. In the 70's a BG pilot was at the Coal Hole all day. Usually F206 or F216 and I have a Trainbuilder one for the job.

So now I have all the SG work done on top of the board. Next job is to clear the clamps and also remove all the stuff stored under the middle modules and use the old mans wiring bench to fit the point motors and also connect up the wiring and install the Hex juicers and circuit breakers.

Cheers
Rod

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

2013 June 24

2013 June 24  Monday a cold one

Well what a rotten few weeks I have had :( Added to the last month or more it has been just one disaster after another. Starting with my lovely Rover. I had to ride through flood water heading for Esperence in December 2011.  The air bag suspension started to fail because the pump was unable to keep the supply up.  RACV or equivalent in WA got me going and told me to buy a new compressor. This one was water damaged. It seems that local Ford Dealer is also the Land Rover dealer and when it was recalled several years earlier they had replaced the compressor with another Ford built one which very quickly failed and was replaced again. I wish they had left the genuine Land Rover in place. The compressor would have still be sealed and I guarantee it woud be still working. So I ordered a new pump, from Kiama 4x4 and when I arrived in Adelaide took car in to have pump replaced. According to dealer their was nothing wrong with it and he merely sealed up the compressor and it ran ok till last week when it failed on the way to Bendigo. Add that to the contaminated fuel in the last 12 months and I have been experiencing a disaster.
My poor old car is now fixed.  The Rover failed because of rotten service and because a gutless United Fuel Manager sold bio diesel and I have been told my mix was 50% or more. Considering the tank had 30 litres in it when I refilled that equates to pure bio diesel.   Nothing wrong with the vehicle, its just the lousy morals of the people you have to deal with today  :(
Ok in a few hours I am starting my trip to the Gold Coast to see my Mum and Dad on their 90th Bday (Celebrating both on Friday)

Just an update!

The new base is now finished linking the helix with the temporary track to the Coal Siding.
The permanent connection to Wodonga will be constructed after the temporary track is laid and tested ok.
 Now I can make it  ready for track. First the SG crosses the Wanganella station yards and heads North, slowly dropping 8cm to the BG level which rises 4cm to reduce the grade.

The BG track and the SG track arrive at the same level and proceed around to Wodonga Station. Here I am laying out the temporary diverge just prior to the new SG loop A BG and SG track will continue to lower until it can pass under the Wanganella to Wodonga track and enter the Coal siding thus creating a return loop (temporary)

typically I found that I had not allowed sufficient room for the SG loop. I need to provide more roadbed in order to lay the loop. The BG closest to the front edge needs to move over 2 inches to create room for a third track (bugger)
Here the temporary bg track crosses over the SG before the loop points
And the SG will get a temporary point on the lower edge of this picture branching to the right and heading towards the lower level and the coal siding.
And so now, its all waiting for my return :)

New Additions

New shed waiting for weathering. Was going to leave that name but it will become Wodonga Motor recyclers.

Start of Wanganella Shopping Centre.

Another shed

I also picked up a nice ZP and TP but I blurred the picture

Cheers
Rod

2013 June 16

2013 June 16 sunny Sunday

Opened the door and walked to this wall. On Friday and Saturday I sorted out where the track was going, trimmed the ply and cut the supports. Not only did I have to keep the boards close to the string line, I needed to use the small level to maintain side to side level, and I could have put some camber on the curves, however I decided not to. And then today I was able to tie it all down. Let the pictures tell the story!

Actually the pictures is telling lies :)  As the back track drops at 1.5% the near track is rising at 1.5%  The 3% difference is what the picture shows ;)

At this end I finished up removing all existing track and ply base. I also decided to remove all the risers which were only nailed in position. I had put a temporary yard in, to hold trains in the  early days. I did not remember iot was not screwed and glued.  All good now!

Adjusting the risers and correcting the line.

All fixed and in great condition. I actually allowed the track to move into the space between the pillars. Wou;d have liked to have taken it in further, however my minimum 36" curves would not allow it, and still leave enough room for the Wangaratta platform.

Same place just adjusted the view

Ok here the SG arrives at the same level as the BG (See the gradient looks a lot better in this shot)
The wider baseboard is needed because the SG Loop starts here and as well the temporary escape will start to drop towards the back and the loop will maintain this height and run down the front of the board before crossing over the temp escape and entering Wodonga Station

The escape fixed into position.

Well at this stage I ran out of steam. I can lay track down here when I return from my trip to Queensland.  Not sure how long I am going for at this stage. Depends on how well my repaired Rover runs, how much fuel I need and the weather, I guess. Would like to get to Townsville, but that is going to be expensive and I have Austrains G Class, Auscisions Walkers and the GM's to pay for as well as the Caulfield Exhibition :)

Anyway might get a few more days in, after returning from Bendigo on Wednesday.
Cheers
Rod