Continental Shelf

reddo said:

if poss, could you take a pic standing away from the shelves to give an idea of the space they use

Click to expand...

The 'main' part of the layout. The length is about 8' 6".



And the other half ...

The shelf on the left is 10" deep.
The bridge section is about 5".

And the chair is where I WFH and at weekends it becomes my hobby workbench.

David

reddo said:

I also really like your overbridge station; you say the first part is a Faller road overbridge but the rest looks v similar? And you hv some very neat staircases down to street level ie was it a different kit?

Click to expand...

The station is two Faller kits back to back - FALLER - Urban-railway station
Everything you see is from the kit.

There are several other kits to match - A plain viaduct - FALLER - Arcades with track bed
With small shops - FALLER - Arcades with shops
With much larger shops - FALLER - Arcades with shops and interior equipment

Each kit has the same track foundation and is 360mm long. Three kits was the most I could fit in the space I had available before the point and double slip and even then I have had to undercut the side of the bridge to fit the point motor.

I also got the Faller lighting strip for the station and will wire it up eventually.

David

As I mentioned elsewhere I had a delivery from MSL this week and I built it this morning. It's a Faller goods shed for the station yard:







The kit seems to be popular as it was in and out of stock so much at MSL, that I placed a reservation for it. Once I got the email to say it had arrived, I added the two Brawa wagons in the photo to make the carriage cost worthwhile.

The ramp in the track to the left is a solenoid operated uncoupler but I am waiting on a Roco accessory decoder for it - they are also in and out of stock a lot at present.

The station area needs some detail parts now to bring it to life but the major buildings are all in place now.

David

Progress continues but as this layout has reached the detailing stage, less appears to happen and it takes longer.
In the case of signals this is due to several factors

• Signals are expensive so are slow to acquire if I'm to stick to the monthly budget.
• Which decoder - these aren't cheap either.
• How to connect the signals to the decoder.

The easy answer for DB HO modellers is to go for Viessmann for the simple reason that they have a multiplex drive arrangement which means four wires maximum to connect the signal for the decoder and you get the wiring harness ready made. The cost is not that bad either but I didn't go down that road because I have a Z21 system and I use the Z21 app on my phone to control it. One of the features of the Z21 app is that for the right kind of signal decoder, you can display facsimile replicas of the signal you are controlling. ie what you see on the controller app is what the signal looks like on the layout.

Now the 'right' kind of signal decoder means the Roco Z21 signal decoder. The outputs are intended to control individual signal lamps, not Viessmann multiplexed signals. As I really liked the idea of 'proper' displays on the app, I chose the Z21.

The next step was to choose signals to go with it. The convention for all the signals I looked at is common positive which matches the Z21 signal decoder. MSL have recently started selling a range of DB signals by Spanish company Mafen. They look rather good and they are incredibly thin front to back just like the real thing. This is an entry signal:

It has four wires which are terminated by resistors for the LEDs and I assume a diode for the positive. The base is by Viessmann!

This is a departure signal with distant signal, with marker light to show that the stop signal referred to by the distant is closer than the standard distance which I think is 1km on normal lines.

This signal has 12 wires! I have not yet dared to mount it on the Viessmann base because there's some filing to get a good fit and then all 12 wires + resistors have to be fed through the hole.

Deciding how to connect the signals to the decoder was a challenge. The leads out of the signal are about five inches long and have to go through the baseboard. The decoder is not going to be close enough which means creating an extension harness. The wires will have to go through the baseboard unconnected and then need to be reasonably easy to connect once there.

The solution I have adopted is to create a connector mounted on 0.1 inch strip board. The signal wires go into PCB mounted screw terminals and the cable from the decoder goes into 0.1 inch pitch dual row header / crimps. I was able to use parts left over from my LED lighting project from a few years back.

Here's the completed connector.


The next step is get the decoder mounted under the baseboard and the signals on top....

David

I had time to myself last weekend which allowed me to remove the two baseboards under the railway section and fit the decoders for the signals and uncouplers. Once reassembled I was able to install the Mafen departure signal with distant signal at the end of the passenger platform:



The signal showing Stop

And then proceed with speed restriction with the distant indicating the next signal is stop.

The departure signal and distant take three of the four ports on a Roco signal decoder. There is a total of 12 connections.

The ground signals are from Viessmann and connected to a Roco accessory decoder. Using a Roco signal decoder would be expensive just to get the 'correct' icon on the control display.

Meanwhile on the city side of the layout, a building next to the railway bridge is being renovated

The kit is from Auhagen.
The red tube thing in the background is an industrial chimney also by Auhagen.

Adding the steps and safety loops took three sessions spread over three evenings.

The chimney will form part of a factory/warehouse complex made with panels from Auhagen's BKS modular system.

David