Leberecht

I just wanted to say "Merry Christmas"!
May you all have a happy and peaceful time and hopefully, Santa brings you some nice things!


© Ulrich Budde c/o Drehschribe Online/Bundesbahnzeite

Best wishes,
John.

Merry Christmas to you John. Thanks for your "rambles"

Some progress, at last?
After building my baseboards, painting them and gluing on the initial underlay, modifying and fitting the turntable, I had come to a grinding halt. Family crises aside, such a delay can only be described as running out of steam!
Suddenly, my motivation and enthusiasm came back and I was able to contemplate the next job which is track laying.
I laid out some track, very loosely and pretty much according to my plans and I liked how it looked.
TRACK PICS






Next, I marked alongside the track for where the roadbed needs to go.
SKETCH PIC


Then, wouldn't you know it? Late in the day I discovered that my last bottle of 'Copydex' had dried up! So next day, off to the shops and resupplies purchased, in smaller bottles this time.
A couple of days work and the roadbed was more or less finished and I can start laying actual track.
ROADBED PIC.




I realised that it was pretty important to work out how to get power to traverser before laying any track so I set to and gave it some thought. The answer came to me in a flash of inspiration when I realised that I need two wires and I had two metal runners.
So, I soon made up some wires and connected it all together, a test run proved the concept worked although I don't know if it will last well but I made a lot of connections to be as sure as possible.
TRAVERSER PICS





The traverser fully prepared for track.
Until next time,

Thanks, Everyone!
It does keep me going when people seem to like what I'm doing.

QUOTE (Mark Campbell @ 4 Jan 2018, 19:02) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Hi, great to see you progressing. However, to show how new I am to this game, what on earth is a traverser?
P.s. thanks for your advice on locos. Hopefully ordering a Brawa DR V100 this week. The Roco one had gone.
Hi Mark,
A traverser is a moving table with one or more tracks on it to feed one or more other tracks, hopefully, it will become apparent with the following;
Here is the traverser with all tracks glued down and electrical connections made,


With a train on and almost ready to go - as you can see, I have six tracks on my table and only one exit track. Therefore, the traverser moves back and forth, allowing different trains access, all from the same entry line. This saves lots of points and for me, more importantly - length.


I had to reduce the track height at the entrance to the traverser very slightly so used some thin copper-clad sleepers and while I was at it, I added a re-railer section, I have tested it and it does work. This is only needed while I have not yet built a locking mechanism to keep each traverser track in perfect alignment with the exit track.


I don't know if you can really see from this picture but the baseboard adjacent to the traverser, had suffered a slight distortion. It was simply too much up and down movement for my little trains to cope with so I cut out the entire foam roadbed out and inserted a finely sanded down piece of curved plywood in place, then re-laid the roadbed, it's not absolutely level but much better now.
Serves me right for not using the very best plywood available.


As you can see from here, I still had to glue some thin strips of card under the track.


I believe that it is bad practice to cross baseboard joins on a curve?


Sadly, it was unavoidable here, I have used soldered copper-clad sleepers again to reinforce the crossing, I really hope that will be sufficient. At the moment, these are not cut through but they will have to be when time comes to split the boards.
Cheers for now,
John.

Oh! Another month or more has passed but at least, I have my initial track laid and (very) roughly wired in.


Looking towards the turntable and loco shed.


Looking along the line of wagons towards where the quarry will be, on left.
Here, you can also see where the wall mounted display unit, has been raised by about 8 inches. This gives a fairly level 'clear area' for the future backscene.
Believe it or not, raising this unit took a full days work, partly due to having to move and clear, adjacent shelves.


Turning the corner, quarry behind.


Onto the traverser.


I think I have left this picture as a link - if you look closely at the enlarged image on Flickr, you can just see where I fitted the Kadee undertrack magnets. I did some testing and although they will still attract metal axles, they are sunk a little deeper than normal to try and reduce that effect, while still giving reliable uncoupling.

I have spent a few days testing the track (of course!) and these big modern diesels worked fine.




What I hadn't counted on was the superb current carrying (& storing) capacity of these superb ESU diesels, they just rolled straight over any dead sections as though they weren't there.
Try even a big 0-10-0T let alone a tiny 0-6-0T and they stall all over the place!
So, I now have to split the boards and turn everything over in order to fit point motors and micro-switches in order to feed the dead sections. Only then will I be able to properly test the layout with the small steam power for which this layout was designed.
Cheers,
John

QUOTE (Allegheny1600 @ 28 Feb 2018, 13:33) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>So, I now have to split the boards and turn everything over in order to fit point motors and micro-switches in order to feed the dead sections.

All looking far too neat and tidy for my liking - please go away

I can empathise, I will be at that stage in a couple of weeks and also need to build in the LK200 reverse module for the loop.
I can follow the logic of wiring but as the work progresses, I somehow lose my way, so we will be taking it on step at a time.

Good to at least achieve a step forward each day
Cheers

QUOTE (reddo @ 1 Mar 2018, 09:02) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>All looking far too neat and tidy for my liking - please go away

Tee hee!
Thanks, matey, glad you like it!
It doesn't look neat and tidy underneath but it will soon.
Cheers,
John.

What do you mean? It will look tidy underneath. Is this possible? All I've got is bus wires and droppers and a few bits of wiring for lights and it still looks like an explosion in a spaghetti factory.
Very neat work John

QUOTE (Mark Campbell @ 1 Mar 2018, 19:11) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>What do you mean? It will look tidy underneath. Is this possible? All I've got is bus wires and droppers and a few bits of wiring for lights and it still looks like an explosion in a spaghetti factory.
Very neat work John
Thanks, Mark!
Actually, I think I should have said that it will look tidier! Because at the moment, it looks similar to the description you just gave!
Cheers,
John.

PS Thanks also for the link, (Peter) - that gives me ideas.

Oops! Another too long a break between updates.
To be frank, although there has been some progress, it has been of the brain numbing variety, which is why I've found it difficult to discuss it much.
Once I had all the track laid and running moderately successfully, I gave the layout a bit of a shake down and was quite pleased with it. This did show that I needed to get the points motorised in order to be able to get the electrofrogs energised, so that my small steam locos can operate with some reliability.
Splitting the boards with a view to working on them upside down, I realised that I needed to protect the ends of the track. My usual way of doing this is with 'C&L' track end protectors but it had been a long time since I used one. So, being less than careful, I managed to break the first two of my 12 that I had in stock, until I got the hang of bending them again.

Some filing.

Ready for soldering.
Then, I made a horrible discovery: I actually needed not 12 but 24 of these little blighters! Not only that but they were out of stock at C&L and everywhere else I could think of that might sell them, including eBay. I placed a "wanted" ad on one of my favourite forums and thankfully, a kind soul helped me out.
Having received another six packets of these things, I set to work, cutting them out of their frets, cleaning them up, adjusting them so I can bend them to my specification, bending them, soldering and finally cleaning them up, it was then that I realised I now had too many!!!
Yes, I need 24 in total not an additional 24, stupid man! D'oh! Oh well, they will come in handy for any future plans.

Too many!
Now it came time to fit them to my boards/track and I realised that I could use a 16mm Forstner bit to help set them into my timber. I do have the same size flat wood bit but the Forstner bit makes a much better job and I find, easier to control.

Prepping.
However, this meant an additional delay while this new tool arrived so I started something else;
The station building!
Here is my Kibri 39492 "Bahnhof Reichelsheim" station building with it's main component parts laid out;


A little bit of 'Googling' revealed that a similar building was built of yellow brick so I thought that would make a pleasant change from the supplied red brick so I set about a repaint. This also means that I must also repaint the loco shed, of course.
I also needed to paint the window frames as white window frames is a much more 'modern' thing. I chose dark brown 'Oak Beams' as a suitable colour as that appears to be similar to the pictured building and I have no way of knowing for sure what the original might be.
John.