An Interesting Challenge

Well, I didn't have much time last Saturday for a quick trip to the Epping Exhibition but managed to sneek in almost 2 hours between 11:00am and 1:00pm. I had a big weekend ahead of me with family flying in from Townsville for a BBQ on Saturday afternoon and into the evening and a christening on the Sunday. I really wanted to get there to pick up the latest Australian Journal of Railway Modelling, check out the Austrains 4 wheel oil tankers and Anton's OZ KIT 3 stall NSWGR roundhouse kit (and the layouts of course).

I thought that Geoff Knott's scenery clinic was sensational and teaching the kids and others how to do it was a great idea. Bowen Creek was back and what a great layout. I wanted to catch up with Andrew Campbell and Ian Millard but they didn't seem to be around each time I passed, sorry fellas, next time. There were a number of other interesting layouts as well but others have covered the exhibition well so I will leave it alone.

First AJRM was a delight, especially so when I found reference to my Bylong layout and this blog. I think Brad may have a rather inflated view of operations on Bylong. We do operate and I try to build in as many aspects of the NSWGR as I can without getting to the difficult bits. I think a balance needs to found between the 100% prototypically correct operations and enjoying yourself. Of course there will always be those who strive for the ultimate in any endeavour, me I'm an 80% plus man.

I checked out the Austrains 4 wheel tank cars but was disappointed to see that the Shell version was not available due to difficulties with obtaining permission from Shell. I was also concerned about the poor detail on the chassis, particularly the axle boxes. Now I know that these are the Austrains Basix range but it isn't any harder to get the axle box looking correct, the cost of the die doesn't change with extra detail. I have since found out that the tanker is about 86grams in weight which is way too much and would potentially have caused me problems when banking trains from the rear up the grades on Bylong. I can't afford to have the wagons jakknife and derail as at one point there is a 1200mm drop to a concrete floor for about 2400mm on a 100mm wide roadbed inside a tunnel. It could be difficult to reduce the mass as it will be inside the tank I guess and opening it up without damage could be problematical. When banking it is best that all wagons are of a similar mass in ratio to their length and I use the 2 grams/foot of body length formula which works well to give suitable prototypical train lengths for our model NSWGR steam locomotives. On this basis the wagon would be about 20 ft so 40 grams is the mass I would be after. It can be difficult to get this amount of weight into an open wagon like an S truck. I am currently doing a survey of models that are or have been available and will publish when I have it together.

I also checked out Anton's engine shed and decided that it should work nicely with the 75ft turntable of his that I have installed at Wollar. So $285 later I headed for home. I did take a few photos but will not post any as they just didn't work, exhibitions are not the place to take good photos.

Now, the challenge.

I opened the kit on Sunday night and spread out the parts, very impressive bit of casting in polyurethane. After a little while the penny dropped! This kit was made for the turntable alright but with the track arrangement as per the prototype which is 60 ft from the edge of the turntable pit to the front of the shed and my tracks were shorter due to a lack of space!

I pondered this for a couple of hours and came to the conclusion that I could extend the existing tracks about 50mm off the rear and could get the shed front 50ft from the pit. OK, so far so good, this kept the back walls the correct width (which would be impossile to change anyway) but the front post spacing would have to be thinner due to the closer placement. I worked out that I could thin down the openings between the front posts and still manage to make it look OK.

Monday morning came all rainy and wet so with nothing to do I sat down and started. The instructions need some work requiring a bit of careful interpretation and the supplied proof sheets of photos weren't much better as they were a bit muddy and needed to be bigger (maybe when Anton gets his web site working again he could make the photos available for downloading). After a careful read and study I began and followed the instructions as best I could keeping in mind that I was changing things. I couldn't use the floor pieces or the supplied inspection pits and these are used as a base to build off!

I carefully worked out the placement of the lower wall pieces on the layout and Super glued them together with a piece of balsa across the front opening. I now had a semi-rigid 'base' to work from.

I followed the instructions after this and everything proceeded very well. After about 10 hours work I had the frame as in this photo.

I managed to find a few photos of this shed style and the Lithgow shed photos below were a bonus as the end wall and some stalls had been removed and there are pictures of the inside (EDIT: The pictures are from Graham H's flickr site, I hope you don't mind Graham - Thanks Darren for the link). I also found some inside shots of the Cowra shed on the Intranet.

When I studied the Lithgow ones I saw the suspended lighting, now here is a challenge I thought. Needless to say the shed construction has paused while I work out the lighting, nothing would look better than to have the inside lit with the dropped lights as per the prototype. So this is where I am at in the build so far.

Arrival and Departures at Wollar

A comment by Ian Phemister on my last post about the Austrains FS and BS coaches and requesting a video of same led me to quickly do this video tonight.

Operationally we see 3390 bringing a Cassilis branch goods into the small Wollar exchange sidings as 5085 shunts the goods siding on the other side of the yard.
Shortly after 4908 on a passenger working pulls out of the Wollar main platform heading towards Gulgong.
On the way out of the yard 4908 passes the last limit of the town at the level crossing and then passes the flour mill before heading towards the 1 in 40 grade.
As you will notice on a relatively narrow two level layout taking a video without seeing the edge of the layout or the top of the backscene is a challenge, this is why I am working to raise the height of the backscenes to 600mm and yes, in my usual manner I have stalled.
It seems lately that the house requires a bit of maintenance so it is going to have to come first, I'm replacing a second downpipe tomorrow.

Austrains FS and BS Arrive

There was an interesting package waiting for me when I got home from work tonight, yes they seem to be here although no announcement has been made as yet. I must be one of the lucky first mailings.
I have taken a few quick photos, not the best but I think they will show the detail, etc.
One thing to note is that if the lights flicker then the power pick up springs on the bogies (see pic below) might be squashed or bent. These springs are made from soft wire so care will be needed to re-shape them. I think they might be able to be replaced with Kadee knucle coupler jaw springs, I will have to check.
I like the actual light colour and lack of intensity, just as I remember. The real carriage lighting could be a challenge to read by.
The colour rendition of the interior walls in the photo is not correct.
It was also difficult to get a good night time shot.
The slight curvature of the carriages in the photos is not the model, just the photo.

Level Crossing and a Backyard

Lately there has been a bit of discussion on the Yahoo Aus Model Rail Newsgroup about interest in laser cut buildings which led to some talk of backyards so I present a backyard I have been working on.

The yard is question is at the back of a shop at a level crossing at the west end of Wollar yard.

I had been pondering on how to treat a 'drawbridge' section of my layout at the door into the garage for some time and had decided that I wanted a level crossing and some buildings. The buildings were to represent the other end of the Wollar township, the eastern end being near the locomotive depot and previously pictured with the dirt street and shops. The main part of the town being in the operating aisle in front of the Wollar yard.

Over my Christmas/January three week holiday I attacked it with some vigour and managed to almost complete six buildings on the 1160mm x 330mm area.
I have been wanting to document this new area on my blog for some time but wanted to surprise the Ramblers which I managed to do a couple of weeks ago.
I am quite happy with it but still have a few things to do like the level crossing gates, fences, signs for the Farmers Co-op and to complete the rural mechanics building, so here are a few pictures of the area.

An Impromptu Operating Session

As our normal night at Werris Creek clashed with Ron (Eureka Models) going to Hobson's Bay exhibition I had the rest of the Ramblers over to Bylong for a bit of a run.

Not an operating session as such with timetable and all but I did set up the Up and Down Pickups and the Cassilis Branch Mixed.

Gary Laker had the Down Pickup, Marcus Amman had the Up Pickup and Bob Lynch had the Cassilis Mixed. Now of course in the way of things they all managed to end up in Wollar shunting at the same time!

Towards the end of the chaos I realised that I should have taken some video so I grabbed my camera. By this time Bob Lynch had completed shunting the Cassilis Mixed and had put 3390 to bed in Wollar loco depot after dropping the ash, re-coaling and watering.

I managed to get a shot of a through goods driven by Layne Hardie and Marcus left Wollar and proceeded to Bylong in the early part of the video. This left Gary with the Down Pickup alone in Wollar and the rest of the video shows 4908 shunting and then leaving Wollar.

Everyone else ran trains with the usual interesting meets occasionally, there being no dispatcher.

If you pay attention you will notice a new scene, more on this later.

Enjoy.

Just a little resistance

For decades (since the 1980's) I have been interested in the possibilities of some sort of computer based control of my trains. With the advent of DCC this has moved much closer in recent years.
My idea is to be able to drive a pickup goods while the computer sends trains along the main line from staging yard to staging yard. This of course is just for me to operate alone. Now, that is not to say that I want to always operate alone but it is more the challenge of doing it in the first place.
I am one of those people who like to try things out and am quite happy to build say one BWH wheat hopper but don't ask me to make the rest of the kits I have stashed away (thankyou Trainorama for rescuing me from that dilema).
A couple of weeks ago I found some SMD (Surface Mount Device) 5.1K ohm 1/8 watt resistors at the Model Railroad Craftsman at Blackown NSW. The brand was Ngineering and there were 20 for $2.50 in the pack. I bought the only two packs that Gary had and then the fun began.
What are the resistors for? They are used across wheels in a wagon to trigger a track detector (NCE BD20) so that a computer or other circuit can know that a train is in a block (or section).
Since Bylong is set in 1965 the wagon of choice is the guards van or passenger brake van, the locomotive is already capable of being detected due to the resistance of the motor, DCC dceoder or other circuitry.
If I was modelling the later no guards van period then I would have to consider adding a resistor to at least two axles on every wagon.
The idea is to connect the resistor between the two metal wheels on an axle. My first attempt at using the resistors involved coating the metal axle with super glue as the resistors have solderable contacts at each end but also on the top and bottom so insulation from the axle is the first priority.
Next the resistor is picked up with fine pointed tweezers and super glued to the now hardened glue. The last step is to use some solver conductive paint to make a connection from each metal wheel to each end of the resistor. I used a pointed toothpick to apply the paint and as can be seen from the picture below I ran the paint up the spokes to the rim to ensure good contact. I will of course spray paint the axles later.

Here is a photo of a Trainorama PHG with a couple of different ways to mount the resistors, on the left are the axles with the coating of super glue while on the right are two different size resistors mounted at an angle from the axle to the insulated bush on the other wheel, this is the easiest method but you need to watch out for the runny paint (see below). The small resistor comes from an alternate source but is extremely fiddly. The source was Altronics, an electronics supplier who had them in different sizes at 10 for 85c or $21 for a reel of 5000, I bought the reel figuring that some of the other Ramblers will want to do the same.
I checked each wheel set with a meter set to resistance. Easy enough? Not as simple as I found out. I kept ending up with short circuits as the silver paint ran around the resistor by capillary action and joined the other end (yes they are that small). Or, as I found out, the solvent in the silver paint was strong enough to eat into the super glue and get enough silver paint through to the axle. Now, the reason for this I think was that I was impatient and if the glue had been allowed to go off for say 24 hours then it probably would have been OK.
Why not use water based glue or paint so that this doesn't happen? Easy, water based glues and acrylic paints are of course going to be conductive until they are very dry, yes, I tried it also, same result, a short circuit.
Is it all too hard? No, I soon got the technique sorted and the success rate climbed but you can usually save the situation if it does happen by scraping away the silver paint and trying again.
I ran a series of tests on the layout while I was doing this, I tried one axle, no go, intermitent, two axles, yes if the wheels were spotless but intermittent even if not too dirty, so four axles which worked well.
The easiest axles to do were some Walthers Proto 2000 36" wheel sets that have plastic axles, dead simple.
Well, I have done 9 guards vans so far and have 18 guard vans and brake vans to do in total so I am going to have to get over my resistance to just completing one thing before moving on to something else (I still haven't finished the hand built points for the Cassilis branch terminus yard).
For those who are interested, I am using JMRI and Panel Pro on my computer which is interfaced with my NCE DCC system. I can see trains in the Bylong yard and on the main to either end and I also have a signal acting as a starter for the top staging yard that indicates if a train is in the block outside of the yard as it is about 24' long, that's all for the moment though.
Don't wait for the next installment it could be a while.

Main Western Line Video

A few weeks ago Chris and I visited John Brown, who is the builder extraordinaire of the Main Western Line layout that models the NSWGR Main Western from Tarana to Bathurst with the branch to Oberon.
I was invited up to take some pictures and video of this huge layout. I keep forgeting the exact dimensions but it is I think 70' x 33' in a room that is something like 80' x 45'. Apologies for the lack of metric dimensions but the old measure just seems to give a better idea of the size.
The layout is a U shape with two teardrops at each end of the U and the staging yard at the base.
I only managed to video two trains, one each way in the 4 hours that we were there.

Here is a short video of a western line goods passing through Locksley and then through the well known three arch road bridge.
Unfortunately, John was asked to build short backscenes so that the owner's wife could see out the large picture window at one end of the railway room (a hall really) and this makes shooting a video less than ideal. Still pictures can of course be edited to make the walls, windows, etc. disappear and while it is possible if the video camera doesn't move it is no where near as easy.
Chris and I drove via the road from Tarana that follows the railway which was very interesting, at one stage as we were leaving Tarana we crossed a bumpy bit of road with two cracks across the roadway and realised it was all that was left of the beginning of the Oberon branch, very sad.
The road is very narrow and I was glad that we didn't meet any cars coming the other way as I was too busy with one eye on the railway line.
At one stage we passed a large brick retaining wall that seemed strangely out of place at the time as the railway was out of site well above us.
We hope to visit again and with a bit of planning to get a better video view of the layout.