Pencarrow

Western Thunderer
PS, We all got there other a very snowed in Richard on top of his hill and are glad we did.
Simon

I know where Richard lives, we have friends who used to live a stones throw away from his pad.

They are still local but say the weather has been excellent, almost tropical, good enough for shorts, cocktails and BBQ.

There were unconfirmed reports of a man on a hill answering Richard's description tending a BBQ in shorts whilst drinking cocktails. I hear he's quite good with Photoshop, particularly heavy snow scenes...

(good to hear the rest of you had a worthwhile trip)
 
Last edited:

Pencarrow

Western Thunderer
More snow last night, thought it was now supposed to be getting warmer and melting?

In late Feb and early March last year i was out in the garden preparing a large border and planting hedges. It was actually T-shirt weather!

Edit: Raining now, snow starting to go, floods next then...
 
Last edited:

Peter Cross

Western Thunderer
No snow here. Lots of rain though, tends to in the rainy season. Only another month or so. Then it only rains a little each day.
 
Last edited:

simond

Western Thunderer
Miss Spelling, an English teacher, perchance?

:)


I hate the “new” iPad keyboard. If you hit the keys just right it puts in th3 number or the symbol that# located on tha5 key! Inplace of 5h3 letter 5ha5 6ou aimed to type. I was quite happy with a shift key... I think it’s called progress.

Best
Simon
 

Pencarrow

Western Thunderer
A while back I acquired a job lot of Exactoscale wagon chassis parts, including these two etches:

rps20180310_074419.jpg

rps20180310_074434.jpg

My mind reading skills are not what they should be, so does anyone know where destructions can be found for them? Nothing jumps out on the C&L website.
 
Turnout chair corrections

Pencarrow

Western Thunderer
I've been working on trying to finish off the turnouts, including a little bit of extra detailing. In doing this it was pointed out that I'd got the bridge chair and ordinary chair on Timber 14 (B6 turnout) the wrong way around.

Bottom!

I had followed the chair types on the C&L drawing:

rps20180311_211704.jpg

Apparently the bridge chairs should be on the diverging road. This was supported by info on Martin Wynne's Templot site.

Oh dear, 7 turnouts all built wrong.

Correction time, with inappropriate tools to chop out the existing chairs.

rps20180312_140025.jpg

Process half done...

rps20180312_140047.jpg

Nearly there

rps20180312_140113.jpg

Done.

rps20180312_140147.jpg

The downside of this correction is that I used up the last of my stash of bridge chairs. A big thank you to Daifly for coming to the rescue on this front.
 
Board 3 wired

Pencarrow

Western Thunderer
Managed to spend a bit of solid time on the board 3 wires. All finished this evening, apart from the simple(?) job of adding four point motors...



Also spent a little while doing a spot of tidying of the wires. I did remember to leave the area for the point motors and signal(s) free of wires. Must be something I've forgotten though...
 

Pencarrow

Western Thunderer
So that's three out of the four scenic boards wired. Home straight now.

Suppose I should start thinking about making a panel for their various section switches, point motor switches, signals switches and uncoupling activators.

I'm thinking of having a top half with a mimic diagram which has the switches for the sections. Below it a row of switches set in a line line a signal box for the points and signals. A rotary dial to the side to choose which electro-magnet to fire.

Not sure what to make the case out of though. The top will be about the size of an A3 piece of paper, needs to be thin enough to mount the switches but will need to include a printed or painted mimic board and lever frame.

Any suggestions?
 

adrian

Flying Squad
I'm thinking of having a top half with a mimic diagram which has the switches for the sections. Below it a row of switches set in a line line a signal box for the points and signals. A rotary dial to the side to choose which electro-magnet to fire.

Not sure what to make the case out of though. The top will be about the size of an A3 piece of paper, needs to be thin enough to mount the switches but will need to include a printed or painted mimic board and lever frame.

Any suggestions?
Sorry I can't remember your plans for this - is it simple analogue control or digital control?

I think it depends on how you want to operate the layout and the sort of switches you intend to use. Again I really must update my Holywell Town thread as I've been sorting out the electrics as well but it's difficult to show any progress. All I can do is show what I have decided on. My intention was to use the MERG CBus system to operate the servo point motors. So I have little pcb mounted switches and LEDs, as the pcb is on a fixed pitched it was simple to draw this out in CAD and laser cut an MDF template of the layout.

control_panel - 1.jpg

I wanted portability and with the CBus system I've used the standard ethernet connectors. So I've squeezed it all into an aluminium instrument box and I used the MDF panel as a drilling template for the aluminium box. I'll then using lining tape/lining pen or printed label to sketch out the layout plan.

control_panel - 2.jpg

Just one option to consider - if you have a plan sketched out then I can cut it out in MDF for you - as long as it doesn't exceed A3 in size!
 
Control panel thoughts

Pencarrow

Western Thunderer
Sorry I can't remember your plans for this - is it simple analogue control or digital control?

I think it depends on how you want to operate the layout and the sort of switches you intend to use. Again I really must update my Holywell Town thread as I've been sorting out the electrics as well but it's difficult to show any progress. All I can do is show what I have decided on. My intention was to use the MERG CBus system to operate the servo point motors. So I have little pcb mounted switches and LEDs, as the pcb is on a fixed pitched it was simple to draw this out in CAD and laser cut an MDF template of the layout.

View attachment 85595

I wanted portability and with the CBus system I've used the standard ethernet connectors. So I've squeezed it all into an aluminium instrument box and I used the MDF panel as a drilling template for the aluminium box. I'll then using lining tape/lining pen or printed label to sketch out the layout plan.

View attachment 85596

Just one option to consider - if you have a plan sketched out then I can cut it out in MDF for you - as long as it doesn't exceed A3 in size!

Many thanks Adrian, that's a very kind offer. As soon as I know what I'm doing and the switching plans are finalised, I may well be in touch.

How is the layout being worked? It's being wired as a two controller, DC cab control with 12 sections. The complication is that there's a master switch that kills the DC input and replaces it with DCC from an NEC controller.

Why both? Well, when building locos they aren't generally fitted with chips until all the bugs and shorts are ironed out. Also I would like the layout to be welcoming to visitors of both the DC and DCC variety.

Turnouts are going to be operated by Tortoise point motors on conventional DC using on-on switches.

The 12 sections switched via on-off-on switches.

There's probably about another 6 switches for signals and ground signals.

I'm going to use Dingham couplings operated by electromagnets. These will be wired back to a rotary switch to select the magnet and a push button to fire the juice.

I'm thinking at the moment of splitting the panel into 2 horizontal sections.

The top strip will have a mimic panel which also has the section switches plus LEDs to show which section is on which DC controller. The diagram will also label up the magnet, turnout and signal references.

Below, on the lower strip will be a strip of switches for the turnouts and signals mimicking a signal box lever frame.

Below is an earlier sketch up of the idea. The turnout numbering etc is wrong as I missed that there are two further crossings that only need a switch each not two.

The small grey circles in the mimic diagram are the section switch locations. Letters A-K the magnet positions. Numbers 2-19 the turnout and signal refs.

post-6675-0-14605800-1516054825.jpg

I do have another version with the corrected numbering, an extra FPL and few other tweaks but that's saved on the laptop not the phone.
 
Top