Ok, so I had a bit of me time today. First job I did was to fill in between the cork underlay to bring the ground level up before I put down some soil for ground cover. Once the glue has dried I will paint it a suitable soily grey before gluing down some sieved garden soil. While the glue was drying I knocked up some back scene boards, just need some chemical plant type photo scenery. Thats it for now. Cheers, Pete.
Great start Pete. Looks like an interesting layout for operations. Should keep you busy shunting wagons about!
Sorry for not updating lately, things are a bit upside down. SWMBO has decided we need to redecorate the lounge so all the stuff that can be moved has been moved......... To my shed . Upside, I've had another small windfall, so I've bought another new telly, and I'm just waiting for the brackets and cables to arrive so I can nail it to the wall, once thats done I can move the furniture back where it belongs and then get back into the shed. Hurrah!! Stay safe! Pete.
Hooray! decorating finished and stuff shifted out of the shed . Anyway after a tidy up to see where everything was I had a go at the free ratio shed that came with Whimsy sidings. First thing I did was separate the walls from the sprue and give them a lick of paint, first light grey for the mortar coarses followed by a browny brick colour dry brushed on. Then assembly, still some detail to finish it off but it looks to me pretty good up to now. Cheers, Pete.
I'm always envious of modellers who can make plastic brickwork look realistic. I'm rubbish at it, which is why I use printed photo papers for mine! Lovely work, Pete.
The ground between the tracks have been given a covering with sieved soil, not quite finished as I ran out of soil Still not to bad, I just need to dig some more once it stops raining. The white patches are the watered down pva. They've dried out really well now and look totally different. No points were glued up which makes a change! Anyway thats all for the moment. Cheers, Pete.
As I had some time to spare I made 4 tanks for the loading area. They will serve rail tanks as well as road tankers. Made of 65mm plastic drain pipe cut to 100mm with plasticard tops glued with two pack epoxy resin. Cheers for now, Pete.
As I had been spending a lot of time on my workshop build and assembling my J69 not much playing trains has happened. So these last couple of days have been spent on resurrecting Whimsy from the back of the big shed, a clean up of the track using carb and brake cleaner, which worked a treat and didn't harm the track!, I had a play. Since I am rubbish at importing videos, here are some still photos. Not much has been done since the previous post other than buying some tank wagons. I am still having a little trouble with the running on DC, so my next job will to fit the two Laisdcc chips to my locos, the layout is switchable for DC and DCC operation. I'm not going for sound but hopefully it will improve the running standards, especially if I can squeeze in some stay alive's. Cheers, Pete.
Pete, You need to get the DC running properly first. DCC will not make running any better.. DCC requires a cleaner and free from issues to run smooth. Andy
Nice Pete. Always good to pull the layout out and have a play, oops, I mean an operating session ! As for uploading videos, you would need to upload to youtube first, then provide a link in your post on P1MRC. Cheers, Gary.
As Andy stated if it doesn’t run well on DC it probably won’t run at all on DCC. Track, wheels and pickups need to be spotless.
Thanks Andy, Brian. On the plain track it runs fine. Every section of track has dedicated power droppers on them, all the points are fed separately with switched power feeds to the crossing v's but as they are crappy old Hornby "insulfrogs" rather than electrofrogs they are never going to work well with short wheelbase locos. I should have swopped them out for electrofrogs at the building stage but I wanted to try and make a silk purse out of a sows ear, it didn't work. As I said earlier it has been wired for DCC from the start as that is my choice of control, the chips I have also have stay alives for helping with stuttering running, I don't see that will hurt to fit. The only reason I'm running DC at the moment is I haven't got round to up grading the locos. Cheers, Pete.
Indeed I believe the stay Alives will help, as you say, over the insul-frogs. It’s not something I’ve ever had the chance to use yet so you may find it’s your life saver with the DCC and indeed it does run smoother. best of luck.. I look forward to hearing your progress Andy
My Dcc chips and stay alives arrived t'other day, I have fitted the first to my Jinty, what a palaver, the loco was not designed for dcc and was a really tight fit. I think I may remove the body before testing as the wires to the stay alive are quite close to the drive gear and I think I will have to stick them to the upper inside body. I found one of the points was not getting power to one of the switch rails despite being hardwired, I think it was the pivot point that caused the problem, after cleaning all the touching parts it improved no end, something to keep an eye on! Cheers, Pete.
Hi Pete I like the progress you are making remodelling your eBay layout purchase. The track and wiring work looks great.
Well, after a few days of domestic servitude I've had a couple of hours back in the shed. I wanted to get my two locos, a Bachmann Jinty and Hornby J93 chipped so to that end I dismantled the Jinty which was a proper faff as it wasn't designed for DCC but with a large hammer and crowbar I managed to get it done, today I've done the J93, that to wasn't designed to be chipped, however with my trusty hacksaw I made room for both chip and stay alive under the chimney. I had to cut a lump off the cast weight which left a gap I could squeeze the chip and capacitor in. I connected the NCE up to the layout surprisingly easily fired it up, placed the Jinty on the track, selected loco 3 and.... nothing. Made sure all the switches were on, everything appeared to be working but no movement. Swopped locos, same result. Now I've hard wired a Lais chip in my O gauge Lima shunter just the same and that worked straight away, so, am I missing something here? Can anyone make a suggestion? HELP!!!! Pete.