Model Railway

[Spack]

I've been at work (and busy too, got another site to go live next week and it's still very much in it's infancy development wise), managed to squeeze the railway stuff into the odd few hours during the week evenings and then a few hours at the weekend.

As to "thin" controller, I think you have me confused with someone else

[Herne]

Cool thread spack - great to see you having so much fun. Do me a favour though - let the kid play with it too! By the way - been looking at a lot of train stuff on ebay recently as am building my own little gaming table and supplies - Javis walls etc are perfect for 40K and Fantasy. Would anyone happen to know a good and CHEAP supplier of quality 'flooring' that I can use for some boards. What I want to do is build some sets of 40K scenery - manufactorum, basillica etc, but I don't want them to have just a plain base, I'd like it to look like there was originally a real floor there, that I can stick piles of rubble etc on. I'm thinking if i were to inset some flooring like stone flagging, tiling etc onto the base of the models then the walls would look like they originally surrounded a real building. Any ideas of suppliers? Cheers. S.

[timewizard]

Would anyone happen to know a good and CHEAP supplier of quality 'flooring' that I can use for some boards.

Is free cheap enough? Here is a site http://www.mazeforge.com/html/finishing.html that has free printable textures (bricks, stones, metal, etc.) that you can print out on paper and glue down for flooring.

I've used them myself with excellent results (if I don't say so myself ) and there is a nice variety. Worth a look at least IMHO.

[mattjgilbert]

http://www.plastruct.com/picat/PLAIN_PATTRND_SHTS_9.pdf - page 7 onwards
http://www.plastruct.com/

[Herne]

Superb links fellas! Thanks muchly.

[Spack]

Also might be worth popping to Modelzone in the city centre (St Martineau square, where MVC used to be) to see what they have, although I think most of their materials for this sort of thing are OO gauge so will be a bit small.

[mattjgilbert]

Ah... tried to find these guys last night for you but they've change their address. Found them again now: http://www.antenocitisworkshop.com/warg ... heets.html

[Herne]

Ah... tried to find these guys last night for you but they've change their address. Found them again now: http://www.antenocitisworkshop.com/warg ... heets.html

Superb - a useful site - prices aren't too bad either.

This post was deleted by Herne on Sat Oct 01, 2011 5:29 pm.
Reason: duplicate post

[Spack]

My son wanted me to post up a video of his track, so here's one of the cheap diesel engine going like the clappers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMvey6Rzb78

I haven't done anything else on the track this week, although I've been mulling over putting a second oval (inside the existing one, using part of the existing track through the station) so that he can run two trains at once and hopefully keep his interest for longer. Already have plenty of 1st radius curves left over from the original layout for this, will just need a couple of extra points. Will also end up with a second bridge, although I'll probably have it set lower than the existing one so that the inclines won't be too steep. I'll also have to get a second controller so that the inner and outer ovals can be controlled independently, and make sure I put insulators into the crossovers to prevent shorting anything out when switching trains between ovals. Pretty simple, and should make it a lot more fun as he'll have to figure out how to use the sidings to swap trains around without colliding.

Current layout:

Proposed layout:

[skywalker]

Looking good. That Diesel is travelling faster than most of the East Coast mainline trains running between London and Edinburgh on a daily basis.

[Spack]

I think a snail would travel faster than most rail services I've been on

[Spack]

Time for another small update. Last night I knocked together a simple bridge for the track over road using some hardboard I had kicking around in the garage, small piece of cereal packet card, and a few small blocks of wood.

The hardboard was cut into various rectangles which when glued together would make a U shape (easier than trying to cut out a single U shaped piece with a saw, plus having the extra strip on the outside along the top stops it looking flat from a distance). One of these was then glued to a pair of the wood blocks, along with two more rectangles of hardboard to make the end piers (the other U is not glued on yet as I needed to be able to slide the bridge under the existing track rather than pull the track up, it'll get glued on when the rest of the bridges are ready to be glued to the baseboard). Thin strips of card were then cut from the cereal packet and glued on to add ridges to the upper strip to represent a simple metal plate bridge.



This was left to dry overnight. This morning I took my trusty can of Halfords grey primer and coated the "metal" sides of the bridge and the track support area. I then printed off a sheet of bricks (from http://www.paperbrick.co.uk , great site with a tool to create an A4 sheet of bricks in various colours, patterns, and scales). The bridge was then placed over one of the roads and the little diesel shunter dragged up a passenger coach to try it out.



It's rough, but as this is for my son to play with it doesn't need to be a perfect finescale replication of a real bridge. The open ends will be butted up against hillside on the right, and the first pier for the girder bridge at the left. The girder bridge already has hardboard bases and wood block supports loosely in place, the pier blocks will be wrapped in hardboard and then given a brick paper coating, the bases painted grey and plastic I beam (which I found 2 long strips of in my bits box last night ) added to the edges of the bases to hide the hardboard. Also needs another road bridge at the other end of the girder bridge, and as the layout is getting a second inner oval that will also need a bridge - I'll make it simple and go with a hardboard frame and all brick coating.

[Spack]

Rather than having separate bridges for each track my son has decided that double bridges would be better. Adapting the bridge I built last night is easy - as one side isn't yet glued on I simply need to widen it by adding a couple of extra bits of hardboard. Before building the larger bridge over the water area I decided to mock it up in Google Sketchup first - this makes it easy to see how it will fit with the space on the board and with the bridge already built once it has been modified, lets my son see how it will look before I start cutting it out, and enables me to use the virtual model to figure out how to cut the parts for the real thing.

The bridge over the road at the right is based on the one I built last night, the one on the left is simply a copy rotated for simplicity. I should be able to make the main bridge out of 3 blocks of wood for the concrete foundations, 2 pieces of hardboard with arches cut out for the sides, rectangles stuck on for the wider parts on the piers, and the underside of the arches I'm thinking of making from card as it should be easy to just cut out rectangles and glue them onto the underside.

[Spack]

Spent another day yesterday mulling over how to deal with the double oval track on gradients and decided to remove all the styrene and the Hornby incline piers and replace with hardboard curves as these would give me a smooth gradient without flat spots and loose areas, and also could be cut wide enough for all the track to sit on. After roughly marking out the track positions on the board and cutting out with a jigsaw a few additional cuts to tidy up the edges and it was ready to go in. All the existing had to be taken up as to get a smooth transition from the station area to the gradients I decided to add hardboard under the level track too so that there would be no "stepping" at each side into the upward slopes.



The curved boards are being held up temporarily with the Hornby incline pieces just slid into place underneath, I'll be replacing those with pieces of wood cut to height and glued to the baseboard with the track board screwed onto them to make it all solid. The main bridge will be replaced with a hardboard frame covered in brick printed card shaped into a double arch over the water with road bridges at either end, wide enough for both tracks to run side by side. In the first pic above you can see a card mockup of one side of the bridge that I used to see how large it would be (this was printed a 1:1 scale from my Google Sketchup model onto 2 pieces of A4 card and glued together).

I'm also waiting on a replacement 2nd controller - unfortunately the one I got off eBay this week didn't work, the transformer and powerclip were fine but the controller was only giving out up to 0.4 V; oddly it was 0.4V at the zero setting, and down to zero 0 at the full power setting, I guess it was well and truly shot. The seller is sending a replacement which should arrive in a couple of days so I should then be able to test the track with 2 controllers; insulating connectors are already in place between the crossover points in the station area, and the crossover curve on the right side between the outer and inner ovals.

If I get time tomorrow evening I'll be building the bridge frame and getting the track laid across it, and chopping up lots of small pieces of wood for the gradient supports. Once that's all in place I can add the card sides and arches to the main bridge and then start on the styrene and paper mache for the slope sides, and a new tunnel with brick printed card entrances to span both tracks at once and with a smoother outside grass area than the previous one had. Over the next week the road along the middle will be moved closer to the station as the terraced houses will be going in the middle between the road and the water so that the sidings can be extended and the left 1/3 of the board will be a large train yard.