Thanks Richard, Almost finished my lockdown layout that I started last year. Now my attention is turning to rolling stock. One of the best locomotives for this layout is the Powerline 48. They are robust, with not too many details to get lost, important as this is a traveling layout. Not having a flywheel they have a rather direct control feeling, which is good for inexperienced drivers, and there will be many of them. They have a small scalelectrix type motor mounted on one bogie, which drives 2 axles with traction tyres. Electric pickup is from the side of the axles without the tyres. The other bogie has no driven wheels and has electric pickup for the other rail. Despite this, as I am using electro-frog points, there are no issues on the points with this arrangement. Added kadees instead of the hook and loop couplers supplied, and done a light detail job, blackened the wheels and found some flushglaze in the details box. Probably not going to weather it, as this loco will be handled a lot. Now onto a Tuscan one, then maybe a blue one. Can't believe the prices of these old things on eBay at the moment, they seem to get almost to the price of the much more detailed and better running modern ones, glad I have had these for a while. Cheers Tony
I now have the Tuscan one fully serviced, new traction tyres, glazing, blackened wheels and Kadee couplers installed. One more to go now, the blue 4807 in the picture above. This unit appears to have never been used, its wheels were totally unmarked. Pulled it out of the box and was greeted by a loco that performed faultlessly for what it is, which was a bit of a suprise, as it would have been in that box for years. Cheers Tony
I have a couple of these locos which were put into retirement some years ago when I converted to DCC. By the time I got around to thinking about their conversion, well, the Auscision models were released and I have six of them in my stable. However, looking at the results you have achieved and with the time available arising from Covid lock downs, I think I will review their future. I have a couple of decoders in my parts box (sound decoders failed by operator error!) but they still work without sound. I will let you know how it turns out with a post on my Dargan thread. Cheers and happy modeiling Richard
Haven't done a lot with this layout for a while. Pulled it out last weekend just for fun. Had a play with some different light conditions to the usual. It almost had its public debut 2 weeks ago. Almost there. Cheers Tony
Finally getting back to an update on this layout after about a year...But I have been busy, finishing off another layout, and starting a new one. But i might finally have a chance to exhibit this layout in a couple of months, so there are some mods I would like to do. I decided that changing the points was just a bit too awkward with a finger under the layout. Also I wanted to be able to change points from either side of the board. One of the main things I was concerned about this though was that there should not be any knobs or wires poking out the side, these could get damaged in transit, or damage the layout or something else. With a bit of pressure on I finally had an idea. I needed the switch to be directly moved, as this is the point of highest friction, not the point mechanism itself. I needed something to act directly on the switch. I have been using threaded rod for a lot of other things lately, then inspiration hit me. I could use threaded rod to go from one side to the other. Feed that through a piece of metal that grips to the switch. Then at either end of this threaded rod, which would finish before the edge of the layout, there would be a joiner piece, that would allow a bolt, or in the future, a nicer actuator, to be screwed in, so a finger could reach it easily. I was going to use brass for the piece to grab onto the switch, but i found some aluminium, hopefully lighter, certainly easier to work with as i needed to make a 5x6mm rectangular hole in it. I then needed to come up with something to hold the rod in place, this was some left over sleeves from 6mm shaft dynabolts, which i had lying around. Then a bit of fabricating to hold it all together, and a means of being able to pull it all apart should something fail. In about a week of on again off again work (what that means is about 10 minutes per day, all i can get) I had a system that seems to work and fits all the requirements. This layout has 2 sets of points, so I need to do it all again for the second one. That will need some slight differences due to the method of attachment of the original system, I never planned to do this in the construction phase. Cheers Tony
Finished this little project off, ended up making removable knobs for users either side of the layout, colour coded might help some people, certainly helps in getting the right knob for the right actuator, as they are all different lengths. If I was making this layout again i would have planned this from the start and it would be a lot neater. Now to spend time on scenery and rolling stock. Cheers Tony
Well, the big debut is tomorrow at Thornleigh. All set up now, just have Maynard on the platform, waiting for his train and the exhibition to start. Cheers Tony