US Style Track in S - Jameston & Leven River RR

JimG

Western Thunderer
I've been ploughing on over the last two weeks to try and get all the track finished. The first job was to make some adjustments to what had been already laid.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-94.jpg

At the car float end of the layout I had allowed a fairly generous distance between the tracks on the approach to the car float apron and the outer track was a bit too close to the edge of the baseboard for future scenic work.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-95.jpg

So up it came and a new track template was laid to much tighter clearances...

US-S-SwitchingLayout-96.jpg

...which was checked out with a couple of hopper cars to make sure that I hadn't overdone things. :)

US-S-SwitchingLayout-97.jpg

I also had to fill in an annoying gap in the loop road...

US-S-SwitchingLayout-98.jpg

...don't ask me why I hadn't left enough rail to overlap in this instance where I had done that for every other joint on the layout. :(

The other work that went on was to insert every spike that had been left out when building the track off the boards. I know I had a few to do but it turned out to be an awful lot more than I had remembered. :) I think I had only laid about a third of the spikes on the board with the diamond crossing. :(

US-S-SwitchingLayout-99.jpg

The last track bits to do were the short section, at the top, which I had to replace because of a big level difference due to too much glue under the end. I also continued the two tracks which will lead on to the pier. The rest of the track will be laid when I've built the pier structure.

The wee bits and pieces to the right are the parts for eight switch stands from Smoky Mountain Model Works in the US.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X100.jpg
The bodies of the switch stands are the grey plastic mouldings nearest camera and etched details are above with plastic coloured options top right. I ordered eight switch stands from Jim King, the proprietor, and in an email he said he would throw in a few spares in case I lost bits. I think I've got enough parts for twelve. :):) Here's a picture of what the switch stand will look like.

53A%20by%20John%20Hall.jpg

The switch stand is non operating but the indicator can be operated by a link from the switch tiebar so I'll build one at the moment and hook it up to one tiebar to check out how it works, then I'll leave fitting them permanently until I've progressed a bit further with the layout - they look very fragile and I've got the feeling they won't stand up to any rough handling.

The next work will be wiring the layout and fitting the Tortoise point motors and wiring up the crossing polarity switching. I'm going to use the switches in the Tortoise motors but I'll double them up to improve reliability.

Jim.
 
Last edited:

JimG

Western Thunderer
I'm now going under to get some wiring done. The layout will be DCC operated and will be treated as one electrical section. I decided to use 1.5mm twin and earth cable and strip it to supply the two conductors for the DCC bus and the copper earth wire for the droppers.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X101.jpg
The droppers were cut to 4 inches long to get through the top baseboard and the original baseboard top about two inches underneath. I used a long series drill to make the holes and poked the droppers through. This was much easier than I had thought since I envisaged spending ages trying to locate the lower, hidden holes.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X102.jpg
The droppers were connected with the 1.5mm wire with the brown for the rail to the front of the layout and the blue for the other rail. The droppers are folded round the wire to give a mechanical join then the joint has solder applied. It's not quite up to Richard's copper work on his Duchess' footplate. :) The difficulty working with these boards is that there was no provision made for wiring so a lot of drilling has to be done with a pin chuck, which is not all that easy. :(

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X103.jpg
The main wiring is nearing completion on the board with the bus running from between the white connector blocks at each end of the central spar and the droppers at each end coupled to the bus. The next work will be to make the inter-baseboard connections.

Part of the connections will be the plugs and sockets used. I am using the EDAC 5i6 series of connectors which are used in the professional audio industry. They come in 20, 38, 56 and 90 pin configurations. I mentioned them to Richard (Dikitriki) a few days ago and he didn't know about them so I thought I might give a bit of a description.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X104.jpg
I'm using the 20 pin variety. The plug (male) is on the right and the receptacle (female) is on the left. The pins are shown between and they are the same for both plug and receptacle. The pins join by being oriented at 90 degrees to each other and mating with the slot at their tips. The screw in the plug is used to assist plugging and unplugging. The steel pegs at each end of the receptacle locate in the hexagonal sockets at each end of the plug. The sockets have an internal slot and the pegs have a protrusion which locates in these slots. The plug and receptacle won't mate unless the protrusions and slots line up and there are six possible positions for each pair giving 36 permutations of positions to use in preventing wrong coupling. The advantage of this design is that the wires can be soldered (there is a crimped version of pin) out of the plugs and receptacles then when all the connections have been made, the pins can be inserted from the back until they lock in place. So wiring the plug can be much easier than trying to solder wires onto fixed pins.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X105.jpg

Here's a pin inserted in the receptacle to show its orientation across the receptacle face. The pin in the plug is orientated along the plug face.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X106.jpg
The one other tool that you should have is the pin extraction tool which is pushed down the hole of a pin where it depresses the small, sprung lock flap and the plunger can then push the pin out. As usual these specialist tools cost and arm and a leg. I found a price of £47 on the CPC web site and they are one of the less expensive ones. :( I remember mine costing about £35 twenty years ago. :( If you don't have a tool, you can get away with using something like a jeweller's screwdriver but it does tend to mess the pin up and maybe cause problems if you re-use it.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X107.jpg
I found that other essental tools are a small vice and a wooden spring clothes peg - to hold the pin when soldering the wire to it - as shown here.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X108.jpg
The pins with the wires soldered to them are then pushed into the plug from behind until they lock in the holes. The sleeving round the soldered joints is just from habit. When fully populating a plug you want to avoid any risk of stray strands of wire or wisps of solder causing shorts. Also, when placing pins in a plug they should be placed symmetrically around the centre screw so that the force of mating or parting is spread evenly to avoid the plug tipping and seizing. This might require fitting dummy pins just to ensure that this is so.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X109.jpg
The cap is then fitted to the plug. The clamp section can be orientated to exit to the side, as shown here, or to the top.

If truth be known, this was my third attempt. :) Getting the knack of getting the wire ends the correct length took a bit of digging back into the memory banks and working with 1mm flexible cable didn't help matters since it is quite stiff. But I got there in the end. :)

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X110.jpg
And finally the side is on the plug cover and everything is finished. :)

The flexible cable I am using is five core 1mm flex from Screwfix. I don't need the fifth core but the four core 1mm cable is quite a bit more expensive.

The next bit will be fitting the receptacle to the other baseboard.

The costs (from CPC) for the above are £7.34 for the plug, £4.74 for the receptacle and £9.54 for the cover which is just under £22 for the three and these were the cheapest prices I could find on a longish Internet search. The other important items are the pins and these are 25p each but you have to purchase them in packs of 100 for £25

Jim.
 

JimG

Western Thunderer
The discussion elsewhere on Tortoise motors has prompted me to update this thread. I was determined to get the track, wiring and point motor installation finished before I carted the layout back upstairs to its place of rest on my bedroom wall. So it has been hanging about at the end of my lounge for the past few months while I fought my way through the Tortoise installation.

I wanted to situate all the Tortoise motors in the channel at the back of the baseboards so I had to do a bit of hacking and adding to achieve this.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X111.jpg
One of the lugs was cut off the ends of the motors and a piece of alloy angle was fitted to provide a mount on the layout. the angle is held by 2 8BA screws and there was enough room inside the motor to clear the nuts. Of course I've probably blown the guarantee by opening all the motors but I suspect that if I wasn't going to use them on this layout, they would have continued to lie unused in the loft under a previous layout. :)

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X112.jpg
Three of the motors installed on the board with the diamond crossing. I'm using the Tortoise switches to set the crossing polarities so the DCC feed is supplied from the length of twin and earth behind them. The two small circuit boards are single frog "juicers" since I reckoned that was probably the easiest way to wire the diamonds crossings. I did spend some time doodling with relays, switches, etc., and gave in gracefully to the juicers. :)

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X113.jpg
..and a shot in the bedroom with the layout in its position and showing seven of the eight the Tortoise motors on the two central baseboards. I haven't been able to do any proper run testing of the layout since the wheel standards of my locomotives are a bit wider than the Code 110 wheels the self guarding frogs were designed for. Things do run in a fashion but it's a pretty rough ride over the crossings. :) So the loco wheels have to find their way to the lathe pretty soon. :)

Jim.
 

JimG

Western Thunderer
The last bit of wiring required for the layout - a DCC cutout.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X123.jpg

This has been a nice two to three hour job to build up and it worked first time. :) This cutout will work down to 1.5 amps so will suit my NCE PowerCab. I've never been really happy with the short circuit handling of my PowerCab. Mine was quite an early one in the UK and the wall wart supplied was a replacement for the NCE one which didn't have CE approval at the time. But the PowerCab's short circuit protection depended on the overload cutout in the power supply and my replacement power supply didn't play ball nicely and I had a few problems - including melting an N scale power bogie. :( So I was determined to get a better cutout and the MERG kit fits the bill. And it has an adjustable delay so that I can adjust it to work with frog juicers and the like.

I'll get this fitted in the layout in the next day or two. I installed a plug-in point for it so fitting will be a matter of minutes. Then I can get the GP9 working and see if I've got everything right on the layout. I'm keen to see if the frog juicers work as well as they should. :)

Jim.
 

JimG

Western Thunderer
It's been a while since I wrote about the layout but it is all working after sorting out a few small problems - mainly down to track joints which I hadn't soldered. Some were quite hard ones to detect since everything looked OK going round with the meter, but gave problems when the loco ran over them. I then found out that it was the weight of the loco depressing the rail slightly at a joint which was causing an open circuit. It took a while to twig that and it was happening in three areas.

So I've had a bit of running shunting a few wagons around and welcoming having a working layout again. :)

But I was "volunteered" :) to exhibit the layout at the end of next year and I then had to look at getting some scenery and structures installed to make it look presentable. So I got the laser cutter working again after having a fight with the Cut2D software - mainly my problem in not noting some major background changes in an upgrade and getting peculiar results as a consequence. However, it's now working very well and a start was made on some low relief buildings for the backscene.

I had been looking for a source of inspiration for small American industrial buildings. Too often the examples I find are pretty large buildings which would completely over-power my relatively small layout. But a member of the US and Canadian forum on RMWEB came up with a suggestion which he pointed to on Streetview and that gave me plenty of ideas. Here's one of the interesting areas that attracted me...

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X127.jpg

The satellite shot from Google is here

Google Maps

Its the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad Musuem and the picture above is pretty well in the centre of the satellite view.

...and here's my first attempt out of the laser cutter, stood on its intended position on the layout.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X130.jpg

I've taken the general design features of the doors and windows and done a bit of messing around match my requirements.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X124.jpg

I've added buttresses to the ground floor to get a bit more relief on the building...

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X125.jpg

...but I've changed the door from a hinged variety to a sliding door. There will be a loading platform between the building and the siding and a hinged door would have been impractical on a prototype with such a restricted area on the platform.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X126.jpg

The other things I tried to copy was the brick bond and I've gone some way towards that but gave in gracefully to achieving full compliance when the prototype was examined closely. :)

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X128.jpg

I'm not sure what you could call this bond - American Bucolic. :):):)

It has all been done using 1.5mm MDF since that is pretty well spot on for the depth of a brick in S scale. The door was cut from 2mm MDF and I will add a card or thin plywood overlay to the framing to get a bit more relief on the door.

This has been an interesting exercise and it's the first building I have attempted using the laser cutter. There are a few small niggly problems and I might have another go to clear them up, as well as trying to make better use of material. I've been tending to cut out parts individually and I'm slowly accumulating a pile of bits of MDF with cutout holes on the bottom left edge. :) I want to investigate better use of the MDF by planning the cutting on a whole sheet. I get my sheets of MDF in 500mm x 250mm size and I can use them on my A4 Emblaser with the oversize sheet poking out of the side. It just means working out how to use the whole sheet. I won't be actually cutting a whole sheet's worth at one setting. With all the brick etching it would take many hours and I prefer to do CNC work in smaller bites these days.

Jim.
 
Last edited:

adrian

Flying Squad
That's some nice work - where do you source the 1.5mm MDF from?

I've been tending to cut out parts individually and I'm slowly accumulating a pile of bits of MDF with cutout holes on the bottom left edge. :)
We'll have to swap - I have pile of sheets with holes on the top right hand edge. :)) :))

I could never work out the origin accurately in the bottom left hand corner so my method now is to setup Cut2D with the origin in the top right hand corner and all the vectors below and to the left. Then when I send it to the cutter I set the alignment which puts the laser in the top left, I then set it to cut from here. That way the laser head doesn't end up traversing the entire bed of the cutter. I tend to use lengths of steel bar to hold the material flat which would get in the way. Just for brownie points I've been cutting out a few bookmarks for Christmas presents - this shows the origin in the top right hand corner.

Screen Shot 2017-12-08 at 16.26.41.png
 

JimG

Western Thunderer
That's some nice work - where do you source the 1.5mm MDF from?

I get mine from Maple Street

Maple Street Dolls Houses and Miniatures

...below their stop press header. Their service is good although there could be a few day's delay if they are out of stock and they re-stock on Mondays. I think their prices are good compared to some other suppliers. Also, the size of their sheets - 500mm x 250mm - suits the Emblaser 1 since I can cut from whole sheets with the extra length poking out through the sides of the machine.

We'll have to swap - I have pile of sheets with holes on the top right hand edge. :)) :))

I could never work out the origin accurately in the bottom left hand corner so my method now is to setup Cut2D with the origin in the top right hand corner and all the vectors below and to the left. Then when I send it to the cutter I set the alignment which puts the laser in the top left, I then set it to cut from here. That way the laser head doesn't end up traversing the entire bed of the cutter. I tend to use lengths of steel bar to hold the material flat which would get in the way. Just for brownie points I've been cutting out a few bookmarks for Christmas presents - this shows the origin in the top right hand corner.

I'm just so used to working from (0,0) datum with the CNC mill where you can set the working (0,0) wherever you like. I'm still getting used to a fixed working (0,0) :). I have a lot more work to do on how best to use the machine and I will experiment with altering the working (0,0) but I suspect there could be problems if the controller thinks that (0,0) is somewhere else. :) Otherwise I will work on full sheets located at (0,0) and do all the placement in CAD within the A4 limits of the machine. Working out how I use the rest of a 500mm x 250mm sheet is the next consideration. :)

Jim.
 

David Taylor

Western Thunderer
That track is beautiful. Even yard track from a bit of a distance looks pretty neat, so I wouldn't worry about not getting the telephoto lens wobble effect.

Brilliant, as always. You clearly don't know the word 'bodge'.
 

JimG

Western Thunderer
It was time to put the newly acquired disc sander to use. But first I had to make a small attachment to make sanding to length easier.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X131.jpg
US-S-SwitchingLayout-X132.jpg

It's a small piece of alloy strip which is clamped to the table with a 4mm socket screw into a tapped hole on the sander's table. By setting the strip so that its outer end is the required distance from the disc face, I can sand several pieces to the same length just by pushing the end of the stock in with my steel rule until the rule hits the alloy strip. The slot lets me adjust for various lengths and the offset of the slot lets me swing the strip round to present to a different part of the sanding disk. I find it easier to handle the small cross sections I am work with using the alloy strip rather than the guide supplied with the machine.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X133.jpg
And here's the result of the first operation with the main posts for the jetty cut and machined from 6mm x 6mm lime. The sanding discs really cut these small sections quite quickly and I had to junk one or two at the start when I was unknowingly a bit heavy handed. :)

I printed out the CAD drawing of a frame and built up the frame on that.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X134.jpg
A strip of double sided tape was used to hold the four verticals in position...

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X135.jpg
...then the horizontal members and angle braces were added using PVA glue and left under weights for a short while to set.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X136.jpg
And now jumping ahead a bit, the almost finished frame tried in position on the baseboard. I've got various bits of hardware to add to the frame - like nuts and washer plates. I've started machining some of these out of styrene on the CNC mill. I need another fifteen of these frames to complete the underside of the jetty.

The wood is all lime strip from Cornwall Model Boats since there is a good range of cross sections which suits me.
Lime Strip

Jim.
 

JimG

Western Thunderer
The next things was a bit of detailing on the timbers. I worked out that there must have been some form of holding everything together although I couldn't dig anything up on the matter. So I thought up my own method on the assumption that someone in the USA would have done something similar. :)

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X137.jpg
The first thing was to machine up some nuts, washers and washer plates from styrene. The ones on the right had large washer plates for the main beams and the ones on the left just nuts and washers for smaller spars. The smaller ones are 2mm overall diameter and the larger ones, 4mm OD. The holes for the screw are 0.5mm.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X138.jpg
US-S-SwitchingLayout-X139.jpg

The parts are applied to the timber using butanone. A hole is drilled into the wood through the screw hole and a piece of 20 thou styrene rod inserted, glued, then cut off to length.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X140.jpg
The frame with all the nuts, washers and washer plates fitted - and on the other side as well. :) I've got another thirteen to do. :)

Jim.
 

JimG

Western Thunderer
Things have jumped on a bit and having a right dose of the flu hasn't helped matters. :)

One other tool I found very useful was a small alloy mitre box from Cornwall Model Boats which helped keep things reasonable square so that the disc sander didn't have to work overtime.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X141.jpg
It was designed for a deeper saw than the razor saw, so a bit of work with needle files was necessary to get clearance.

I ploughed on with making the "ironwork" for the jetty. I opted to make the parts with the rod already inserted whcih made cutting to length a lot easeir.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X142.jpg
The hypodermic with solvent is now becoming the tool of choice when working with plastics

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X143.jpg
US-S-SwitchingLayout-X144.jpg

...and the resultant parts. Clearance holes were drilled in the wood in the appropriate places and the plates inserted and locked in place with a drop of Butanone from the syringe.

Now there's a bit of a jump.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X145.jpg
US-S-SwitchingLayout-X146.jpg

The camera seemed to be packed away when all this happened. But I was recovering from the flu and doing bits and pieces when I felt like it and taking pictures didn't seem to feature. :)

A plan for the jetty area was drawn out with all the trestle positions marked. Then the trestles were all stuck to the plan with a small dab or two of PVA. Then they were all connected up with longitudinals and diagonals and the main longitudinal bearers for the rails laid in and aligned with the existing track. The whole assembly is removable because I still have to stain all the assembly and also do the scenic treatment around it.

US-S-SwitchingLayout-X147.jpg

I finished off the hardware on the front of the jetty and removed the paper plan preparatory to getting to work with shoe dye and IPA. :)

Jim.
 

Yorkshire Dave

Western Thunderer
getting to work with shoe dye

As long as it's not oxblood polish/dye....:eek:

What will you be using to represent the water or is it going to be a tidal basin with exposed mud?

Or will the jetty have barge floats which will act as lift off/on fiddle staging yard.
 

JimG

Western Thunderer
As long as it's not oxblood polish/dye....:eek:

Well, I started last night with a diluted brown dye at one end and I don't think I'll continue on in that style. It looks a bit too brown and I don't know if I can tone it down by applying different colours. I've just sent off for some Tudor Dark Oak dye which I used years ago and I remember it ageing to a nice silver grey finish.

What will you be using to represent the water or is it going to be a tidal basin with exposed mud?

I'm thinking of applying layers of varnish over a painted baseboard top. The jetty is supposed to be at the limit of tidal effect in the river concerned so the water level is reckoned to stay fairly stable - no Severn tidal rise and fall here. :) In fact I'm thinking of attaching the bow one of the very distinctive Great Lakes carrier ships in front of the jetty so that would tie the layout down to a tidal rise and fall of about 5cms at worst. :)

Or will the jetty have barge floats which will act as lift off/on fiddle staging yard.

At the other end of the layout there will be a barge dock and that will have some representation of the floating bridge used to adjust for tidal changes - although with a 5cm change you might think that unnecessary. :)

Jim.
 

mickoo

Western Thunderer
The tide may not change but the vessel draft most certainly will as you load and unload rail cars. The vessel will also almost certainly heel unless tandem working is used....if you even have twin track link span, so the link span is there to flex and deal with these changes.

I've not heard of a floating bridge before, most are a flexible bridge with one end fixed to the shore, I would of though a floating bridge unstable with load changes to work well.
 

JimG

Western Thunderer
[QUOTE="mickoo, post: 164965, member: 177"
I've not heard of a floating bridge before, most are a flexible bridge with one end fixed to the shore, I would of though a floating bridge unstable with load changes to work well.[/QUOTE]

Mick,

Sorry, should have said float bridge, where "float" refers to the car float which carried the railroad cars. Good shots here


Jim.
 
  • Like
Reactions: AJC
Top