A diary following the construction of my first ‘proper’ model railway - a layout set somewhere in southern England in the 1980s. The layout will also feature a computer controlled DCC installation.
I must apologise for the lack of updates recently. This has been for a number of reasons.
Firstly it’s been the busy season in my day job. I help run a plant nursery, which means working up to 60 hours per week during the spring bedding season. That’s left me very little modelling time, and even less blogging time, especially when I seem to find my free time so tired that I end up napping.
Second, I spent a long time waiting for a delivery of Lenz modules for the inner loop from MG Sharp. These arrived early in June and have been redesigned internally, though the external connection and programming is still the same. Hopefully the redesigned units will be cheaper to manufacture, and hence become cheaper (or should I say less expensive) for us end users.
And finally, I’ve really been putting off fitting point motors. These didn’t matter with the outer loop, I could manually switch the points and use the point blades for current switching. But for the inner loop, or at least for the electrofrog single and double slips the frog polarity needs switchng, either manually or (preferably) by a switch attached to the point motor.
So, what has happened to the layout?
Track laying on the inner loop is complete, apart from a little finishing off in the fiddle yard. The photo above shows the western end of the station. The two left hand tracks are the main lines, the third track will become the branch line, rising up as it rounds the bend. On the extreme right you can just make out where a headshunt for the carraige sidings (or goods yard, I still haven’t decided) will be connected.
The second photo shows the much simpler east end of the station. The tunnel mouth shows the approximate position where the real tunnel will start with the upper station being above the tunnel.
Without the Lenz LB101 feedback modules I wans’t able to wire up the inner loop, but I did make a start at fitting point motors. Each point motor will have one of the Peco double microswitch units attached. The first switch will control frog polarity switching, the second being used by the computer DCC system to sense for which direction the points are set. I started with the single slip at the east end of the station. Being a slip the frog switching of each motor needs to be interconnected to correctly switch each end, which makes for two motors plus switches attached by a mass of untidy wiring.
The bit I’ve really been putting off is attaching the motors to the points and the underside of the baseboard. I feel I need to be above board to check the motor is positioned correctly to switch the point as well as being underneath to screw in the motor. I need to pluck up courage to take the plunge and see if this is really going to be as difficult as I’m imagining it will be.
On an unrelated note, I’ve received a shipment of new locos, including a few kettles. When I got back into the modelling scene I wanted to use DCC, so I looked on the internet for DCC fitting guides for N gauge. But I found practically nothing. One of my inspirations for starting this site was to get put some proper DCC fittting instructions up and, judging by the popularity of the two I’ve already done, this is very much needed. So the new locos will be for creating these guides, at least for the current batch of Farish items.
If I remember correctly I mentioned about a month ago that I was sending off some orders for track for stage two of the layout.
The bulk of the order went to ehattons, but they don’t sell concrete sleepered track or electrofrog single slips, both of which I need, so I ordered them from Southampton Model Centre.
The ehattons order was delivered within the week, despite there being a small problem with the credit card.
But four weeks on the items from Southampton Model Centre have yet to arrive, and even more annoyingly the emails I’ve sent to them have remained unanswered. So today I picked up the phone and called them. They told me the delivery from Peco had only just arrived and would be packaged up today and delivered tomorrow.
Which is interesting, since I quite often find when I phone up a company that they are in the middle of packing my order, the items for which have only just been delivered. So, is this curious psychic phenomenon unique to me or do others also experience it?
I’m just sorry that my psychic powers somehow made me forget to ask why my email enquiries had gone unanswered.
So, hopefully I can get on with some tracklaying this weekend. And if I need more items that ehattons can’t supply I’ll be surfing the ‘net to find a different supplier to try…
The class 33/1 conversion is now complete. Well, more or less.
The conversion kit is very simple, if a little fiddly. It consists of two replacement ends for the Farish 33, an etch with pipe details and some replacement headcodes.
All you do is: remove the old ends and extract the glazing; drill holes in the new ends for the pipes; paint the ends and an extra glazing bar in the windows (which is missing from the Farish original); attach the pipework (the fiddly bit); paint the pipes; and (if you want) change the headcodes.
It was my first experience of painting a model and turned out much better than I’d expected. I even managed to paint the handrails silver without getting paint everywhere.
But now for the downs I mentioned in the title.
The model I’m converting is painted in NSE livery, and I want to convert it to banger blue. I had some paint stripper from Expotools and tests inside the shell showed it appeared to be safe on the plastic. Applying it to the outside of the shell stripped the paint fairly well, but when I used some Cif cleaner and started scrubbing the paint off with an old toothbrush the brush started digging into the surface of the plastic. Ouch.
I assume the stripper had softened the plastic enough for the toothbrush to gouge into it, but not done enough damage to show up in my test.
I’ll have to obtain another body and have a go with either acetone (nail varnish remover) or isoropyl acohol, both of which seem to be recommended for paint stripping on Farish models.
The problem left me feeling pretty down at first, but one of the best ways to learn is by making mistakes. I just hope for better things on the next try.
And the nice paint job on the new ends left me eager to make a start painting some wagon kits I made up last year. I’ll post some pictures later, but the results so far are looking rather good.
I decided the software writing was taking too much time away from the time I should be writing software to sell, so I’ve put that on hold for a few weeks.
But being bored with only having a simple oval, I’ve ordered the track for the next stage. This will be the second loop on the twin track main line. I’ve also ordered that track for the single track branch line, since this only needs two sets of points and a few lengths of flexi-track, and it wouldn’t be economic to place a separate order.
I grew up near the Waterloo to Weymouth line and have a soft spot for 4-REPs, 4-TCs and class 33/1s. I ordered a TPM class 33/1 conversion kit last year but was put off about having to paint it before assembly. In fact I’ve been put off painting anything by my complete lack of artistic ability. But I’ve decided it’s time to bite the bullet.
So I’ve started the kit by painting the ends of the conversion kit with Railmatch warning panel yellow. It’s taken three coats so far and the original resin still isn’t completely obscured, which is a little disappointing, but apart from that they’re looking good now. The next step is to add the etches for the jumper cables and to strip and repaint the body from my NSE liveried donor.
A useful tip on Steve Jones‘ site is to install the DCC components on a drop board. This is a plank of wood attached between (in my case) the baseboard legs. The DCC modules are attached to the board which can be disconnected and removed as a whole when any work on it is necessary.
So I’ve wired up the first board to control the left hand (western) end of the layout - or at least the trackwork laid so far. I attached the dropper wires for a section of track, switched on the controller, popped a loco on the track and started my first loco moving.
Or not. Nothing happened. Ten minutes with a test meter left me looking at the wiring of the dropper board. Had I missed out a connection to the K wire from the command centre? A swift look at the manuals on the PC showed I had. (Why are the manuals supplied with the Lenz modules all in German? At least they have English versions on the website, an essential download).
So the missing wires where added and everything switched on again. Short circuit. Switching off and poking around with the test meter again showed that all the wiring was correct. It had to be something shorting on the track itself. There weren’t any tools or bits of bare wire left across the track. The dropper wires where all connected the right way around.
Then I switched one of the points. No short circuit. A quick drawing on a piece of paper showed why.
Now I knew that when you where wiring points you had to put an insulating joiner for each of the frog rails for a cross over, but I didn’t realise this also applied to passing loops. When the points at each end are set the same way (i.e. both for the same route) there’s no problem, but when the points are set for differing routes - BAM! Short circuit. If I’d have bothered to read the instructions with the points I’d have known this but I’m a man so, of course, I don’t do things like that.
Actually if I’d read the instructions I’d have also made lots of unnecessary breaks. They tell you that the outer rails of a passing loop also need to be broken, though for the life of me I can’t see why - at least for DCC. For DC they may indeed need that if you are using more than one controller, say one at each end of the loop, and you need to stop the controllers shorting each other out. But for a single controller setup it definitely feels like overkill.
But that’s enough digression. I’ve added the extra insulating joiners, connected a few more block sections and I can now run trains, at least on that end of the layout.
And now on to the other end of the layout. Or I will when I get more wire. In my mind ten metres of wire was a huge amount for such tiny trains. But it’s not hard to realise that that doesn’t go far when you’re running wires to and fro along an eight foot long board. So I’ll try again, this time with a hundred metre reel.
My supplies of track arrived late last week, so much of the last few days has been spent busily laying track.
It’s interesting to note that almost every article you read about layouts tells you how to ballast the track but none of them ever describe the process of laying the track. Okay, so there’s articles about constructing your own track, but nothing on the everyday process of laying flexible track. It leaves you feeling that laying a couple of points and a few lengths of flexi-track is so easy it’s not worth mentioning.
At first sight it is an easy job. Put a couple of points down, cut a length of track to length and join them together, and pin the lot down.Then just carry on around the board until it’s all done. Easy.
Until you start doing it for real. There’s holes for point motors to be made and dropper wires to attach (for power feeds) and route through the baseboard. And then there’s bits of flexi-track that need to be joined on a curve in such a way that some of your stock can go over the join without derailing.
Okay, I’m not saying any of this is an impossible task - it’s not once you’ve got the basic rules and a bit of practice - but why do those ‘in the know’ not give us ‘newbies’ some pointers?
But that’s enough whining for one day. When I’ve picked up enough skills to describe how to do it without misleading you too much I’ll put an article up on here with some of my methods. Until then I’m off to run some trains - even if it does mean pushing them by hand because I’ve yet to attach any dropper wires.
