Great Chesterford Junction Part Two

G`day Folks,
Well that little continuity tester I built for Gormo`s Shed this week has come in handy today.
I have added a wired walk around controller to my control panel. I have until now, felt a little limited by the fixed controllers in the control panel, especially the yard controller. The yard controller controls an area approx. 12 feet / 4 metres long and it is a stretch to shunt at the extremities because you can`t see the couplings very well.
I had to get into the control panel and trace some wiring. That`s where the continuity tester came in handy. I have common feed wires that stretch across the panel and they had to be reconfigured slightly to accept the walk around with out electrical conflict.

I started behind the main feed in area from the track and one common feed had to be cut and then connected to a switch at the other end. The terminal blocks show the broken wire circuit.

I have added a switch ( Red ) at the opposite end to allow me to switch between the walk around and the fixed controller. The switch diverts the power feed from one to the other but only one can be on at any one time. The switch also controls two common feed wires.

I have used an aviation / microphone plug and socket to connect the controller into the system. The plug and socket is a four pin arrangement and the plug can be locked to the socket via a screw on locking ring. So no accidental pull outs can happen. The controller can also be easily removed to use in another location if necessary.

So this is the controller nearly at full stretch in the goods yard

And this is the other end of it`s reach behind the loco shed.

So now I can shunt with more confidence and this little controller also has a slightly smoother approach to speed control, which gives a more realistic effect in the slow running range.

More as it happens.
Cheers
Gormo

 

Yes Ed,
I think if I were going to change I would leap frog DCC and go straight into battery / wireless. I have been looking at some systems and they are quite impressive.....especially the American manufacturers.
I`ve seen a demo where a guy lifts his loco off the track and then runs it along a table. No need for track wiring......frogs are no longer an issue and you get about two hours running out of a charge......that`s the way of the future I think...????
Gormo

 

G`day Richard & Toto,
Thanks for your comments.
Richard that is a considerable stay alive..........how would you stop the loco where you want it to stop..????? seems like it would over run the area in question or is there a way around that ????
Gormo

 

G`day Folks,
Thanks for the links Ed......

Well folks.........not much happening railway wise, however ideas are still surfacing. Motivation is in a slump at the moment after a drought of no running the railway.
So the antidote is to get out there and run some trains. I did that and finished up in repair mode instead.
I guess the thing with a railway that`s been around a for a while is the fact that things wear out or break. In the last couple of days I`ve re-soldered a rail to copper circuit board out in the back shed / storage room. Whether the joint was mediocre in the first place or not I`m not sure. Mind you we`ve had some exceptionally hot days this summer, so I wonder whether that played a part in the demise of the joint..???
The next cab off the rank was a switch in my control panel. It isolates one of my mainline roads in the fiddle yard. Turned it on and it didn`t want to play. Several on and off`s resulted in some sort of response to which I thought.....Oh poo !!!....looks like it`s gotta come out like a bad tooth. On the other hand I thought maybe a couple of drops of WD40 down it`s throat might kick it into life and blow me down it did. Don`t know why....don`t care.....it works.....
Of course I was full of myself by this time, fixing everything in sight. I then thought I`d run a loco onto the turntable and reverse it. The loco stalled in the middle of the turntable. Blimey !!!!....I must have insulted the railway Gods at some time during the last couple of months..?????......Turns out it was the card planking down alongside the rails. Again the weather may have played a part in it buckling slightly and the glue letting go..........Fixed that easy.....
Then I tested the turntable and ran it around to one of the engine shed sidings. I slid the little locking lever to lock the road to the siding and the locking lever came away........Holy cow Batman !!!!.....should I just shut the door and go and do something else???????
Well I fixed that too........no big deal really, but it just makes you realize that things don`t last forever.
The other thing I have been doing is learning my way through some new video editing software. I was fluent with Moviemaker which is a linear system, however now I`ve gone over to Openshot which is a non linear system. At the end of the day, I think I prefer the latter, especially when it comes to cutting and assembling clips. The only way for me to get to grips with these things is to play with them and gradually learn and understand the ins and outs of it all.
So here`s a short sample / test run



Gormo

 

Thanks Ed & Richard,
Richard I will help if I can or worst case scenario, try and work it out....
I have tried Openshot before but it was the Windows version. My laptop struggled with it to the extent that the previews were jerky and I think, deep in the bowels of the system there was some incompatibility at work. Anyway I discarded it at the time and soldiered on with Windows Moviemaker.Now that I have gone over to Linux Mint and once again tried Openshot, it`s a whole different ball game. The program has fancy animated titles which are a bit beyond the capabilities of this computer, however the rest of it works fine. I just have to adjust to doing things differently and work my way through it.
Keep fixing those nagging issues and running trains is much more pleasurable.....
Gormo

 

Thanks Richard,
Well said and I agree..........it will never be really finished.
Cheers
Gormo

 

G`day Folks,
Well I`ve taken the plunge back into the railway build today. I have been somewhat distracted of late with various things going on in real life, not to mention moving across to and bedding in the new computer operating systems on my computers. Things are settling down now and my mind is in the right place to continue on with the railway.
I have today commenced the build of some Elizabethan cottages ( Superquick ) which will be added to the gradually growing Great Chesterford behind the main station.
This is the first building of two from the kit. They are pretty ordinary so I`m adding detail and I`m prepared to use the knife to achieve a more realistic look. The fundamentals are there though so that`s a good base to start from.

The first change I`m making is to the timbers within the building. I copied a pic from the net of aged English Oak and then copied and pasted it several times in my drawing program to make a sheet of Oak. The sheet looks fairly repetitive here, however thin strips will be cut out from the sheet at varying widths and I`m confident it will look OK.

The sheet has to be sealed first and I`ve adopted this method for quite a while now where I pin the sheet to some polystyrene, spray both sides and on a day like today, I take it outside into the yard to allow it to dry in the sunshine.

Another thing worth doing on these kits is colouring any exposed card edges. I use watercolour pencils or you could use textas. I always work from the back in case the pencil slips. A mark on the back will never be seen but on the front, it will have to be removed immediately.

It just tones down and blends in the card to the printed material.

It`s always good to try and keep the work area tidy and have a box handy to keep all the small parts in

Now here we go with the new timbers being added. It`s easier than it looks and to over come the look of the straight cuts I`m doing on the paper, I`m giving some of the timbers a slight twist as I glue them down, so that they look uneven, or hand cut if you like. They are also getting slightly grubby as I place them on the model, but that`s Ok too because I don`t want a pristine look.

Now this is where it`s going to be placed.

With a roof on looks better, but then again the roof is going to be doctored as well. I am going to make some triangular roof trusses, all slightly different from each other. Place them in the model and then glue on maybe three layers of newspaper to form the roof base. This should hopefully have the uneven, wobbly look that you get with these old buildings and then I`ll add roof tile strips over the newspaper base.

So there we have it for today folks. Might get some done tomorrow and also Easter approacheth.!!!....so socializing will be the order of the weekend........so we`ll see how it goes.

More as it happens
Gormo