I was playing around last night with some photos I took of my new Cassilis branch terminus and decided to have a little photoshop fun.
I started with this photo:
and ended up with this:
All a little rough but it is interesting to see the station in an extended countryside setting. I might have to look at painting the black fascias with some sort of foreground scene to blend it in, it could work.
Of course I will also have to build my Keiran Ryan S08 silo to replace the temporary silos, looks like an interesting project. There will also be a couple more buildings on the street behind the station.
During the operating session on Bylong last week the Austrains KP Mail Van had issues with a low coupler, this post describes the resolution of that issue and how I had originally mounted Kadee No. 153 Short Scale Head Whisker couplers to replace the very long supplied couplers. Please note that the minimum radius curve on Bylong is 762mm (30").
The process of replacing the couplers had me scratching my head until I worked out the following:
1. Remove the supplied couplers.
2. Drill a hole of a size suitable for a small coupler mounting screw, hard up against the small rear wall of the coupler box on the van floor.
3. Cut off the small rear wall of the coupler box as per the photo.
4. Carefully cut away the coupler mounting bush from the coupler box (see photo below).
5. Now you need some coupler bushing adaptors from Kadee 20 Series couplers, you are going to use the larger of the small plastic bushes.
6. Assemble the coupler into the box with the bush in the pivot hole of the coupler and screw the lid on.
Kadee 20 Series Adaptor Bushes
Now, the coupler box seems to be a little deep which may help the coupler to droop a little so a 3mm washer needs to be placed on each bogie mounting to raise the van slighty. Adjust the coupler pin with pliers if necessary.
I suspect that the van might be a little low as it now seems to align better to other passenger cars but I have not checked any dimensions.
The Austrains LHO can be similarly modified but it seems to need 1/8" washers as the central post of the bogie mounting is fractionally larger in diameter than the KP.
As a lot of you would know Blair Kooistra of North of Narrabri and Lance Lassen of North West to Southern Cross arrived to chase trains across Victoria, South Australia and NSW about three weeks ago. They arrived in Sydney on Tuesday afternoon for some layout visits and a hobby shop crawl, Lance having to leave early on Wednesday morning and Blair left today but I will leave the details of the trip up to them if they wish to put them on their respective blogs. I mention this to explain why I have been tardy in updating the blog of late.
One of the layouts they came to visit was Bylong so I decided that I should get it ready and to do something about my Cassilis branch terminus that I started about 6 months after their last visit in 2009.
As you know I posted a Cassilis update a few weeks ago and since then I have managed to finish the trackwork, install the Blue Point point controls along with install undertrack Kadee magnets on hinges, start the station and do some scenery.
Here is a picture of where Cassilis is up to.
As you can see the Antons 60' Sellars turntable is sceniced in place along with ash ballast and static grass reaching to the station platform and building. I chose to build the Rail Central Pc3 station building stock standard and I also used the platform with three straight pieces and two end ramps. This makes a very short platform but there is a picture of Gwabegar station on page 22 of the Train Hobby book Country Railway Stations New South Wales Part 6 that shows just such a short platform on a terminus station. There is also the fact that I only had space for a platform of this length. Of course these platforms are very regular in shape having come out of the same injection moulding die so I decided to correct that, I took a file and scraped it along all the timber parts to give some grain and I then added nut-bolt-washer castings and some extra steel strapping to replicate what I had taken photographs of at Crookwell a couple of years ago. After this I painted and weathered the platform and here is the final result.
I haven't finished the Pc3 station building as yet but I am painting it in an austerity version of the stone paint scheme as this branch wasn't going to be a greater money earner (of course being a lazy modeller it matched up with my desire to not worry about too much trim paintwork).
A couple of weeks ago I had the Ramblers over for a Sunday afternoon operation session so that I could fine tune the timetable for the operating session we had last Tuseday night with Blair and Lance. The afternoon session showed some problems which I proceeded to fix with the next timetable. Unfortunately on Tuesday night we had three trains arrive at Cox's Gap Loop at the same time. I figured that someone had left a station without permission of the signalman but no I had managed to timetable three trains to arrive at the same time with two crossing between Cox's Gap and Wollar!
Lance ran several mainline trains and Blair ran the Cassilis branch goods that involved making up the train in Wollar, proceeding to Cassilis, shunting the wagons, making up the return goods and proceeding back to Wollar. All was going very well until James McInerney wandered over and told him about the rules regarding locos with hook gear and wagons with auto couplers both with and without buffers. A little bit of consternation, but he managed very well and completed the moves.
Apart from my three train stuff up and two very late trains (someone forgot to run them) we only ended up about a 6:1 fast hour late on the 12 fast hour timetable. All in all a fun time was had, here are a couple of video clips of the fun.
Well, the lack of posts has been related to a comment I made prior
to having holiday leave at Christmas. I said that I would try to make the six
more points needed to complete the Cassilis yard and I didn’t; no surprise
there. Recently, while reading the Day of the Goods Train book I noticed
that there was a plan of a stock race and I realised that I hadn’t allowed
enough room for the race on Cassilis, it would run into the backscene about
half way down the ramp before it got to the front fencing; now this would look
silly, so I had a careful look at the track layout and decided top move the
stock siding to the other end of the goods yard off the same goods loop, simple
enough. However, the crossover that would have allowed direct access into the
stock siding was now at the wrong end of the goods loop. I had always wanted
the classic two direction staggered crossover arrangement of a NSWGR goods yard
but after careful study and realising that it would have reduced the available good
loop storage capability I decide to leave it out. This will of course require
any goods vehicles in the goods loop to be moved out of the way when the stock
siding is shunted and then replaced afterwards an aspect that might be a little
annoying but which would add to the time taken to shunt the yard and which
would have happened in real life anyway. I also recently bought a Eureka CPH and had built a
fitters/storage shed from a CV on a short turntable track at Wollar loco depot
for a service track for the CPH (planning to buy the CPH at that stage). Now I
had a carriage shed/loco storage track off the turntable road in the original
Cassilis yard track diagram for this purpose so it also was deleted from the
yard. For those who have been counting, my six points to build had now shrunk
to three, a number I felt more like attempting. About three weeks ago Australia Day was on a Thursday so by
talking Friday as holiday leave I got a four day break intending to finally
have a go at those points. So, for the last two and a half weeks I have been a good boy and
have kept pushing myself towards getting trains running into Cassilis. I must
mention too that Chris has been very understanding in allowing me to use all my
spare time including that we normally allocate to each other. I should have a
train running by this weekend. I decided to make Cassilis a manual station in so far as the
points would be manually thrown using Blue Point Turnout Controllers
and the Uneek 60’ Sellars Turntable would be manually turned. I also decided on
having Kadee under track uncoupling magnets that would be mounted on hinges so
that could be manually raised and lowered for shunting. The turntable gave me some worries until I worked out how to
install it. I had to do some cutting into the existing baseboard and careful
placement of more supporting framework. While doing this I realised that I
would not have been able to fit the carriage shed track into the area anyway as
the change in level required for the turntable would have left no space. I laid the trackwork in an unusual way this time by installing the
points first into the yard diagram drawn on the baseboard and then connecting
them with the track (more on this later). I built the points using Micro
Engineering Code 70 rail and did not hinge the point blades but allowed them to
eliminate a potential power loss situation but in doing so I needed to replace
the supplied steel wire of the Blue Point controls with heavier 0.045" (45 thousandths of an inch) steel
wire. I also marked out the Blue Point placement on the top of the baseboard
and used an old vertical drill to drill through the baseboard. This meant that
it was relatively easy to screw the Blue Point controls in place under the
baseboard. It was for this reason that I didn’t lay the track then the points
as the track would have got in the way of the drill stand. When I originally built the station benchwork I decided to leave
the four inner supporting cross members underneath the baseboard floating, that
is not screwed to the outside frame but still supporting the baseboard above. I
did this so that I would have freedom in the placement of the Blue Point
controls and the under track magnets. I finally screwed the cross members in
place last night prior to drilling holes through them for the wiring to pass
through. Here are a few photos taken along the way and sorry for the poor
quality, I used a cheap camera as I didn’t want to take the time to set up my
usual Nikon on a tripod, etc.:
At this stage I still have to wire the track including wiring the
point frogs to the double pole double throw switch built into the Blue Point
control, add operating rods to the Blue Point controls and more operating rods
to the under track magnets for raising and lowering them.
If all goes right then I should be able to finish by the weekend
and keep my marriage intact.
Here is an overall photo showing the yard trackwork and the
turntable.
I hope you all forgive me for the lack of posts and realise that
if I had stopped to do a post or two I would likely have stopped for another
long time.
I can’t wait to run the first train into Cassilis. Now will it be the CPH or a goods train?
I recently found out that a number of files that I had links to in previous posts were no longer available so I have corrected the links in the posts to provide these files on what should be a stable site (Google Documents).
DecoderPro files for my NSWGR Austrains C36 class set up as described in the post to drift and also to have the exhaust sound increase and decrease in response to layout grades, etc. Both auto chuff and cam chuff files are available.
Here is a spreadsheet that I use to calculate the weight needed for a HO wagon or passenger car based on a system devised by Terry Flynn and myself years ago. This weighting system is designed to allow relatively prototypical train loads to be handled by our model locomotives as compared to the NMRA weighting formula.
I would just like to express my thanks to those who find my blog of interest. I must say that I quite enjoyed posting in November as the blog and the projects each seemed to drive the output and interest along at a great pace. It couldn't keep up though and I did slow down.
I am taking the break and the first week of January off and hope to accomplish some more. I really should get back to the Cassilis branch terminus and psych myself up to build the last six points (I just checked and I made this promise to myself in a blog post in Christmas 2009 as well!).
I am sure something will eventuate but who knows what? I tend to have a thought about a technique or something interesting to build and away I go, not good at planning and sticking to it.
Anyway, I hope you all have a safe and happy holiday season.
After my previous months flurry of posts I ran out of steam however I was off again when I heard that the Model Railroad Craftsman had received the first QSI Titan sound decoders. Now, those that know me realise that I like to experiment and try new things so off to Blacktown and $135 later I had a Heavy Steam Titan in my hands.
Now, what to do with it? You would think that I would already have a plan after waiting for it to turn up for so long but no. The Titan comes in several versions with different sound sets that can be changed so the Heavy Steam version wasn't a problem as I had a QSI Programmer and the accompanying software and could change it if necessary.
After due consideration I opened the storage draw under the lower staging yard and decided on my NSWGR D57 class so the Heavy Steam sound set was fine after all.
There is a story about this particular model that I would like to tell.
In 1973 in the first year of Chris' and my marriage we were living in a flat at Cronulla and desperate to get a block of land I approached Neil Cram who I had built a NSWGR 25 class 2-6-0 locomotive for and worked out a deal. He assisted us with money for a deposit on our land at Helensburgh and I would build him the equivalent in locomotives (no actual number was discussed we would work it out along the way). The first loco of the deal was a 57 class that Neil had some brass etchings made up for consisting of the tender, cab and smokebox. Along with the etchings was a 4-10-2 chassis from a brass loco to be used as the basis for the 57. Anyway after a lot of work on a small desk with a Unimat lathe that could be converted to a milling machine the 57 resulted.
About 6 years ago I was in Tom's Hobbies at West Ryde when I noticed something in the second hand display case that was very familiar. Along with it were several other locos I recognised and I guess Neil was cleaning up his collection, a lot of better model locos having been produced down the years. I couldn't afford them all so I bought the 57.
Now to the present, the Titan comes with two speakers as it has stereo output so that you can get sound from the appropriate areas of a loco. The two speakers being 28mm diameter were too large for what I wanted to do so I bought a 18mm and a 13mm speaker and enclosures. The idea was to put the 18mm one down the boiler as far as possible for the chuff and compressor then to put the 13mm one in the cab for whistle, generator, blower, injectors, etc. The QSI CV Manager software has sliders for each sound so that any sound can be directed to either speaker or balanced somewhere between. The speakers placement was accomplished relatively quickly but I had to put the Titan above the motor and sticking into the cab a bit, thanks goodness for the large boiler made from rolled brass (that was fun to make way back when). I couldn't put the decoder in the tender as I has soldered it all up, no way in and the floor was milled from a piece of brass.
Using the QSI Programmer and the accompanying CV Manager software I proceeded to choose from the available sounds to produce what I felt a 57 sounded like based on a DVD I have with 5711 chuffing away. The Titan has a number of different chuffs, many whistles including the Eureka 38, 60 and Austrains 35, different compressors and generators to choose from. The whole sound scheme can have the overall pitch adjusted (bass to treble range) and the chuff has another pitch adjustment as well. Of course with small speakers some of the bass is not really available. I would love to hear the Titan on some larger speakers. I was also able to nominate 6 chuffs per wheel revolution. There are many other adjustments available that I won't go into but do investigate. I should mention that it allows a 'User sound' to be loaded in and this sound can be looped if necessary, I am not sure what you can do with that though, perhaps a more suitable compressor as it is a simpler sound than a whistle for instance. A whistle could be done but it would always have the same length and couldn't be looped as a whistle has a start, a middle and an end that have to dealt with separately to extend the whistle sound.
Anyway, enough talk, here is another rough video of the 57 in action on Bylong.
