Model Railway

[Socaddict]

Worryingly I've spent more time on this (and World of Tanks, should be able to get my first tier 6 tank tonight, woo!) than 40k in the past few months ...

Just wait until you get to tier 7 or 8, that's when it gets really fun.

[Spack]

If I can afford it in a few years time, and my son is still interested in trains, then I'll look at replacing his playhouse (basically a low 2m x 2m shed with windows) with a larger shed for building train layouts.
....
Worryingly I've spent more time on this than 40k in the past few months ...

I was going to say.. giant hobby shed by owner admin of 40k sites is not going to use it for 40k...ohh how this site has lost its grimdark heart ( at least your still postin )

Who said it wouldn't get used for 40k from time to time? I can always make it quite low with pillars spaced at regular intervals so boards can be dropped on top for a gaming surface, or the Emperor's fist and their enemies could fight it out on a Lilliputian world ...

[Ljundhammer]

"Brother Bastion, check the tunnel for any orks which may have escaped the purge."
"Aye Sergeant, but what of the electrified steel rails which the Techpriests warned us of?"
"You fool Bastion, your base is plastic, the dread current cannot harm you."
"Ah, yes, I see. Right away Sir!"
....
"Can you see anything Bastion?"
"No Sir. I can see right through the tunnel. There's light on the far side."
"Any orks?"
"No Sir. But."
"But what, Bastion? I grow tired of you - I knew I should have allocated the wounds differently, Lorenzo, may the Emperor protect his soul, wasn't a total waste of oxygen as you appear to be."
"Sir, the end of the tunnel appears to be getting closer to me."
"Bastion, you're an idiot"
"No really, it's getting closer"
"By the Emperor, this must be some sort of Chaotic trick!"
"Oh, erm, actually..."
"Bastion, you test my patience"
"I think it's a light."
"What?"
"It's a ligh..." BANG
"A miniture steam driven deamon engine - purge, purge!"

[mattjgilbert]

...story...

I was going to say.. giant hobby shed by owner admin of 40k sites is not going to use it for 40k...ohh how this site has lost its grimdark heart ( at least your still postin )

Wolflord Havoc (all infantry Guard) vs BDA (Grey Knights) last night in my shed alongside a game of KoW so 40K is still alive!




Nice work Dan.

[chromedog]

That's one of Mark's ride-ons (3-1/2" gauge) - he has two others. He also has HO, OO and O gauge stuff.
He's a boilermaker by trade, though - he rebuilt that yellow one from practically scrap.

[Spack]

Somehow managed to persuade myself to extend the layout width by about 6" so that I can move the platform between the rails to the near side, shift the curved inner track closer to the outer oval and move the other platform over too so that it's more like a "real" station with platform either side of a double track. This means that the station car park will be a little bigger so my son can turn his lorries around in it, and longer locos/carriages won't clip the edges of the station.

The train yard will be adjusted a little to work around the points being moved, which is ok as that's the end I haven't covered in scenery yet. It'll also be easier to put the second set of LED signals in, and there will be more space for the switch box to be mounted on the top surface rather than the edge.

After that I'll get on adding scenery, and I'm also looking at maybe picking up a Railroad Virgin trains HST (1/4 the price of the proper HST) so he has a modern train, or maybe a cheap twin DMU set, for his birthday or Christmas.

[mattjgilbert]

So who is having more fun with this? You or him?

[Spack]

Did some more on the layout this week. A 6" strip of wood was added to the nearside edge so that the station platform could be put outside the oval, and the inner track was moved so that it parallelled the outer track to have the station either side of the pair of tracks. The controller was moved to the right hand end of the board, and as that meant switching the lights around I decided to make the second pair for the other track and do all the wiring in one go.

Making the signals

First mark out some panels in plasticard - as this is not a scale reproduction I was able to make them to fit the LEDs, so went with 15mm x 10mm rectangles, 10mm x 10mm squares for the tops, and some strips of 15mm x 2mm for the sides. Pairs of 2mm holes are drilled in two of the panels for the LEDs to be glued into.



Now for the fiddly part - soldering wires to the LEDs. I've gone with using red wire for the red/yellow LEDs, and green wire for the green ones, so it's obvious when it comes to wiring which LED is connected to which pair of wires. The + side uses a longer wire than the - side so it's easy to tell which way round to wire them. For each LEDs the "legs" are cut short and the wires soldered on. I'm using 16/0.2 wire for this (about 1.6mm diameter with the coating, able to carry 3A which should be plenty for a 12V DC supply using LEDs pulling around 10-20mA each). Quick warning - I'm not very good at soldering! Obviously need to be careful when trying to solder LEDs as the heat can damage then.



Once soldered and tested glue the side strips on - these are just thin strips of plasticard about the same thickness as the wire, here I was using 80thou/2mm, for thinner card just use more strips to build the thickness up. Glue on the back piece, and the top square. Finally slide on a black straw for the post (or any other colour and then paint it black, but we have a box of black straws which is very handy).



Holes were drilled for all 4 signals in their new positions and connected up using choc boxes and more wire. Another switch was added to the switchbox next to the controller, the two pairs of signals are switched independently. I know they're in the wrong places and that having both tracks going right-to-left through the station is odd, but this way my son can sit at the controls and see both pairs of signals without having to move

As well as putting the extra signals in I also added another siding at the far left side, and as the track through the platforms had been moved the train yard was adjusted too. This gives more space at the back left where the houses are to add gardens behind with a wall around them, and also leaves space for the shops that the creator of the houses is putting online next week

So who is having more fun with this? You or him?

During the building, me. Actually using it, him - it's boring watching a train going round a little loop. Maybe a 100' long railway in the garden running a couple of HSTs at speed might interest me.

[mattjgilbert]

Our mate Paul's dad had a huge garden railway layout at his boat-house beside the Thames. You could have about 5-6 different trains running at once on different routes all controlled from the engine shed!

[timewizard]

I like the way it looks Spack! The added strip makes the station look better, and I see it gave you a little bump out track to store rolling stock on, very nice.
I really like the way you changed the angle of the room to accomodate the cut off corner of the train board!

[Spack]

I really like the way you changed the angle of the room to accomodate the cut off corner of the train board!

Yeah, took bloody ages rebuilding the front wall and windows!

[chromedog]

A couple of hemostats make excellent heatsink clamps when soldering delicates.
Other than that, you CAN get heatsink clamps purely for the electronics work.

I found the easiest way was to WRAP the wire around the leads, then solder them (apply the tip of the iron to the join, then apply the solder to the join).

(I've been doing electronics longer than I've been wargaming. I learned to solder at the age of 12. I started wargaming around 16-17.)

[Spack]

The layout this week has had a major rebuild. Last weekend I decided to get my son a proper diesel engine (Bachmann Class 57 "Restormel Castle" as he likes green and the livery matches the single passenger coach he already has) for his birthday (not till mid November) and when it arrived I took it for a spin around the track. Unfortunately it had a little trouble on the curves at anything more than around 1/4 speed as I'd used "1st radius", the tightest curves that Hornby do. They work ok for small engines but for the larger trains can cause problems. So during the week I managed to get some new "2nd radius" curves cheap on eBay and they arrived Friday. Laying them out on the board I realised they weren't going to fit, the board was too narrow! So yesterday I took up all the track, extended the board a little more (took up the previous extension and cut in half to put at either end, and laid a wider extension along the front edge). As the new train is also quite heavy I've started to reinforce the raised track (which is also now at a shallower gradient to help reduce the risk of the new train getting stuck), and the bridge will be getting some pieces of plywood to hold the track level, and then blocks of styrene or wood at each end to support the metalwork. I haven't had chance to run the new engine on it yet, but the small diesel can go round at full power without coming off which is a definite improvement on the previous curves as it had trouble staying on at less than 1/2 power.



The extension has also left more space for the siding to be extended, at the moment it's using some of the 1st radius curves I took out of the main oval, but I might swap them for 3rd radius so they run parallel to the oval curves and will allow the large diesel to use that siding. The inner sidings are still using 1st radius curves so will only be suitable for the small steam engine and the small diesel one, although the new one might be ok at very low speed.

Once the bridge is finished (including adding brick effect bridges over the roads) and the track tested with the new engine properly I'll coat the styrene supports with PVA to seal them, and then build up either side with paper mache. This will later be painted in brown and coated in grass, or on the steeper areas painted to look like exposed rock. I also need to remount all the electrics, but I won't do that until I've figured out exactly how much room the diesel engine and long carriages need around the corners so that they don't catch on the signals.

[timewizard]

Looks like it's close to the point of getting a life of it's own!
Next you'll cut the board in half, separate the pieces by 4 feet, add new side extensions to complete the layout, and have a huge oval with an open center area for the 'engineers'!

[ruffian4]

Hasn't anyone at work asked just where is Spack* these days?

*Aka, the thin controller.