Starting the station

 Now we have the baseboards down and the track spray painted (Railmatch Sleeper Grime) I can get on with building the station. I am using Metcalfe platforms and a laser cut station (can't remember the make). Now that I have the platforms, I have found that the station was too deep to fit so I have had to cut of the back half of the building so that it will sit in half relief against the background (more on that later).

The station building has now been hacked to fit leaving the back open. And you can see, the lights of the cabinet behind make it look as though it has lights fitted. I started to make that really so yesterday but my 5V power supply wasn't working so I have ordered a 5V "Walwart" - as the Americans call them. I have mocked up some furniture for the inside and will put a 3mm LED in each of the three rooms. I am not really impressed with my attempts at the platforms but it's the best that I can do for now and I want to get something down before I start to lay the ballast. Anyway, here is what I have.

The three Hornby boxes contain Mk 1 coaches - 2 x Brake 2nd and a 2nd. They are there to get the platform length right. These will become part of the holiday train that will be pulled by my Accurascale Manor.  I got these off eBay for around £16 each so they were bargains. At the Warley show, I bought three sets of coach lighting but I can't get the roofs off so I am going to use the lighting sets on the GWR Collet coaches and the Auto coach instead. It's a pity as I wanted to put passengers into the coaches but hey ho!

Levers

Here is a photo that I took at the Warley show of "Long Melford". Long Melford is owned by Nigel who lives locally. The railway is supported by both Brett from Orwell Model Railways and Kevin from Coastal DCC. What struck me was how good the signal lever panel looked so I decided to see if I could do something similar although I only have 8 points. As good as my Digitrax system is, it is a bit of a faff to switch the points on the hand controller so a set of levers would resolve that problem.

I had a quick word with the wife and then popped into Coastal DCC to pick up one of the DCC Concepts Cobalt-S levers. After checking with Kevin that it was easy to set up, I found that just three wires from the lever to one of the Cobalt IP Digital  point moters had it going in no time. What was worrying was that I had to remove the "Do Not Use" sticker on the motor warning about plugging the power into that end. I have done this in the past (before they put the stickers on) and the point motors DO NOT LIKE IT!

Anyway, three wires connected and everything worked with the point changing as required.

Further discussions with my wife resulted in me being allocated £106 to buy a box of 6 levers and a pack of the brass numbers to label them up. Coastal and DCC Concepts were both out of stock but I found a shop called House of Hobbies in Ormskirk that said they had stock. Hmmm. 9 days after placing the order I haven't received anything other than the initial confirmation. Also, no answers to 2 e-mails and the phone doesn't get answered. I have put in a report to Paypal so we shall see what happens. I am glad that I used Paypal for this although I tend to when first using a new supplier.

This hobby is expensive. Not only did the levers cost £106 but I have decided that I should put them in a box and connect using DCC Concepts ESP wireless connections. This comprises transmitter boards in the box and a receiver under the baseboard. Each transmitter has three connections, so I will need three of these. The receiver converts the signals from these transmitters into DCC commands and uses a connection to the railway DCC bus to send the appropriate instructions for the point movements. However, this is another £100 or so pounds. Good fun, what! Mind you, without these, I would have needed 21 wires from the box to the layout with three of these 21 going to each point so using the ESP system is much easier. I had to convince SWMBO though.

If the levers come in good time for Xmas, I shall get on with that. Otherwise, I will finish off the station, lighting and placing so that I can get on with the ballasting.

Running in and new fiddle yard

 I bought one of the new Rapid GWR/BR 15XX shunters from Rails of Sheffield. When it arrived it ran but when I set up a circle of track to run it in, it wouldn't go. An exchange of e-mails with Rails and they agreed to take it back. They even sent me a prepaid label. After a week or so, a parcel arrived and I had the loco back in full working order. Hence the next step was to run it in. 

I bought the circle of track from a trader at the Milton Keynes show - at a cost of £40 - because I had hunted high and low for my rolling road but couldn't find it any where. When setting up a drawer unit that my wife gave me to store my railway stuff - lo and behold - there was the rolling road but pushed right to the back of the drawer. I sold the circle of track to Rails in a bunch of stuff that I no longer needed. 

Here is the 15XX on the rolling road being run in. It is a lovely little loco. The Walchaerts valve gear is especially nice. Note the firebox glow.

Secondly, I have built the fiddle yard. This is a two track storage yard fed by a single point.

This sits on my desk and connects to the main board just using Peco rail joiners. At the moment, the power comes in from the joiners. Next plan is to provide a power feed from the DCC bus on the main board.  Here is all the wiring and the point motor. Note that I use Wago connectors throughout the layout.

My next video will cover the unboxing and running in of my new Accurascale GWR/BR Manor 4-6-0 loco. That's going to be a great addition to the fleet.

A new foam core baseboard works

 So, we have torn down the wooden baseboard as it was totally impractical due to the weight of it all. Even with my wife's help, I couldn't manoeuvre it around with any ease. Now it has gone, I bought a pack of black A1 sheets of 5mm foam core. Black is much stronger than the white. This went together really well and I now have all the track relaid and wired up. Unlike the wooden one, where there were issues with point motors, there are no issues with this version so I can get on and build the fiddle yard.

One of the big changes is that I have got rid of the Cobalt Analog motors and some SwitchPilot accessory decoders as there is much more wiring. Now,I have all Cobalt Digital ones which only need two DCC and one frog wire.

Moved on a mile

 I built the layout as described using my usual foam core but - stupidly - I cut a hole in one of the side rails to make space for the Digitrax controller panel. Next thing I knew, the side rail had broken and there was a great dip in the layout surface. 

I was concerned about this and thought that I might make the rails out of wood and thus recover the whole thing. Common sense told me to rebuild and I decided to do it using more common plywood/ 3" x 2" planed pine. I even bought a new chop saw to make sure that I built it nice and straight. Well, first off, it was straight but had a few misfits along the way. You would never believe that I used to make oak furniture for a living!

I have got to the point where the track is down, everything is wired up and testing is taking place. 

The only trouble is that I can't lift the boards up as they are very heavy so testing and fixing wiring problems is very difficult. My wife tries to help but, even between us - we are 76 and 78 -, we have trouble. So... Down it will come again only to be rebuilt once more. This time, I am using black foam core (which is much sturdier than the white) but keeping the wooden outer rails. It is the sheets of plywood that are so heavy so this time it may work. I am also reducing the width a bit from 60cm to 40cm in an effort to make it more manageable.The track plan is being simplified from 11 points down to 7 or 8. I will also buy some more Cobalt Digital motors - which weren't available when I started all this. This will reduce the amount of wiring required.

I have spent a good amount of money on locos. I now have the pannier tank and the small prairie but now I have a Rapido 15XX which I am going to use as a local shunter. The problem is that it doesn't work. I am in conversation with Rails of Sheffield, where I bought it, so together we are trying to fix it. I thought that I had lost my rolling road so bought a loop of Hornby track but I have finally found the rolling road so testing should be easier. I have also bought an Accurascale Manor which has just been released. I have also bought a couple of carmine and cream Mk. 1 coaches to go with it and provide a Saturday holiday service. I do need one more coach but I am waiting for the two to arrive so I can get  a second Brake 2nd to match the one I have bought.

More to see soon.

 Well, the Kato layout went to Rails of Sheffield as did all my US outline N scale and all of the Marklin/Piko/Roco stuff that I had left. SWMBO agreed to a 1.8m x .35m switching layout which I managed to build a running layout. That was as far as it got because I got fed up with the cost of US outline stuff.

 

I have packed all that away to await my hobby room coming back and some (hopefully) injection of funds down the line. I really like my local hobby shop which comprise Orwell Model Railways and Coastal DCC. Who can complain when Kevin works 5 minutes away! I decided that I would make everything simple and build a nice little GWR branch terminus using (Oh No not again!) Ashburton as the model. Having moaned about the cost of US stuff, I now had to convince SWMBO that £600 as a budget for a new railway was reasonable! Orwells and Coastal will get as much of my spending as possible.

 

The board has grown to 1.9x .45m. The track is Peco code 100. All the points are medium radius. The points will be switched using DCC Concepts Cobalt  motors. Unfortunately, when I wanted to buy them, the digital motors were unavailable due to chip shortages so I had to buy the Analog ones. I did get one digital so 5 points will be driven by the Cobalt analog motors through Switch Pilots whilst the last one will be driven off the DCC bus, as usual.

 

I have decided on a layout. I have bought a 64XX and a 45XX plus some wagons and an Auto-Trailer.  I have some Milk tanks on order so I can service a creamery. This will be fun as these wagons are for Express train use and thus can only be used on fitted freights so they will come in and out on the back of the 64XX and the auto-trailer. Great fun.

 

I have recovered the base of my board (all built of 5mm foam core). I have extended it to the new size and replaced the surface with new board. The track is down and I am in the process of wiring it up.

We have extra lighting

 Our living room is 40' x 18' but the ceiling lighting is just 6x5w LED (used to be 50w Halogens). This means that the railroad sitting on one corner doesn't get enough light to be able to work easily. Hence, I decided to install some "under cabinet" LED puck lights. Thinking about how to do this without annoying the other half led me to think that I could use her pile of Jigsaws that sit on top of the glass cabinets which are directly behind the railroad. I thought that, if I could make a strong structure out of my stock of 5mm foam core, then I could hold it up by sliding the back part under the jigsaw boxes.

The foam core was cut with channels from my 'v' shaped cutter. This enables me to fold the foam core easily. The result looks like this.

The puck lights look like this.

The lighting set came with four lights. The finished article looks like this. (Sorry about the Captain Kirk photo at an angle. My wife told me off for that - she is the Star  Trek fan.)

It's not perfect but it is the best that I can do, given that we rent. At least, I now have consistent lighting across the board which is brilliant.

Uncoupling Saga

 

I have great difficulty using a skewer to uncouple cars so I decided to try out the Kadee under track uncoupler. Stupidly, I bought the 5 that I thought that I would need before testing them out. Well, I have installed one of them.

As I have laid all of my track, I had to cut away from the underside. The magnet is then stuck to the bottom of the track; the hole below is filled with a square of foam core and then a piece of 2mm cardboard  that is larger all round is glued over that to keep it in place. Sorted, I thought and happily went on to the testing stage.

Well (as my youngest daughter would say) that didn't go too well. It seems that  all couplers are not created equal. They may look like Kadees but Kadee they are most definitely not. I tested some of my cars and only the real Kadees worked. I had a long exchange on Model Railroad Hobbyist about the issue and came to the conclusion that I must convert all of the non-Kadees to the real thing. £62 later and I have now received a pack containing 25 pairs of 148 whisker couplers. I have also ordered some "Grease-em" which is a small tube of graphite dust to blow into the coupler boxes.

Last week one of my favourite Youtube channels - Chadwick Model Railway - had a video on installing Kadee electric uncouplers which made me wonder. So (again as my daughter would say) I have ordered one set of his recommendations to try out. The complete set comprises a Kadee electric uncoupler, a relay/timer board and a momentary push button as described by Charlie. Here is the eBay order.

I have just received today's post and included in that was the pack of 25 pairs of couplers so I can  at least test out the current under track magnet. More on this to come.

The baseboard and track are painted

 Finally, the baseboard is all wired up and sockets fitted for plugging in the ECoS and the 5V DC supply. The staging track has been built and can now be attached to the main board.

First off, the track has been sprayed with "Ammo by MIG" Railway Fast Method paint set. I can't see me using all the colours but the rust worked very well.

I then painted their whole of the baseboard and the staging with some Hobbycraft brown acrylic paint. This has given everything a nice overall colour ready for ballasting.

The staging is attached using a couple of 50mm x10mm magnets. One is set into the staging board and one on the main board. They are strong enough to keep the staging in place but not too strong to affect removal. They also snap into place quite well but I also have a couple of rail joiners to make the final connection.

The site from the staging track connects though a small barrel plug and socket but it isn't really required because the rail joiners make an electrical connection as well.

Lastly, I have built a box to hold all of my current locos and cars. This is made out of the black foam core so is very sturdy. 

Each car has its own compartment. The scruffy bits of foam are made up from an offcut that I bought at the local "foam" shop. These stop the cars from rattling around when I pick up the tray or move it.

There is a photo of each car in the bottom of each compartment so that they can go back where they came from.

Finale

Well that is the current state of play. The track has been cleaned and tested and all of it works as expected. The two locos run  freely and both have sound so they are great fun. I am busy writing some Car Card software. I have decided not to use the software that I wrote for my degree as that was way too complicated for my little switching layout so I am writing some code that mimics the Micromark car cards. I will have more on that once it is capable of operating at its full design capability.

Wiring is all in place

 Having put in a DCC bus and a 5V bus, I now needed to connect up all of the track before I start putting the point motors in. The idea was that I would use some clever suitcase connectors that I got from Amazon that have a socket for a plug that lets a new connection to the bus. However, the suitcases needed squeezing shut and the plugs needed a compression on the wire. Both needed a good set of pliers, which I don't have so I muddled through with a pair of adjustable pliers. 

I carried on and connected all of the track droppers BUT - they didn't work! It seems that I couldn't cramp them tight enough. A combination of the wrong tool and arthritic hands. So, it was a case of going back to the old methods. I have a large collection of some connectors similar to Waco except that they are grey with orange levers (you can see the pass through ones in the image above). I have these as a 2 wire pass through or single channel 3 up to 5 way connectors.  They are a bit messier than the suitcase ones but, at least, I know that they work. After connecting all the track using these, I checked it out to find that a) I had missed a couple of places and b) in two places the wires were reversed! How can you get "black to the back" wrong?

Once I had sorted that out, it was time to go for the point motors. 

Fitting the motors

I have had trouble in the past getting the motors securely fastened to the foam core. Basically, the covering of the foam core is just a sheet of paper either side of the foam interior so there isn't a lot of shear strength in it. I cut out some 2mm plastic card to the footprint of the motor and used UHU glue to attach these at each point location. I had previously drilled pilot holes in the card to match the screw locations on the point motors. Once the glue was fully hardened I located each point through the holes in the board that I had made when laying the points. The screws held the points nice and securely so that all worked.

Now, I have never used the Cobalt Analog motors so I made a bit of a mistake in wiring them up. I assumed that the track voltage feed was all that was necessary along with the frog so I wired the track to 1 and 2 with the frog on 3. Wrong! The track goes to  1 and 2. Then you wire the track to 4 and 5 with the frog in 6. If the loco causes a short when passing over the frog, you reverse 4 and 5.  That sorted I had a railway that was wired.

I bought a couple of Frog Juicers as I was having trouble getting some of the points sorted but eventually the juicers weren't required. 

Adding the Accessory decoders

I use ESU SwitchPilot decoders to run any points that aren't DCC aware. These have to be adapted to operate Cobalt Analog motors as these motors, like Kato points, only require 2 wires and are switched when the plus and negative are reversed. So, we have to add some natty little DCC Concepts gizmos that take the three wire output of the SwitchPilot and convert it to a two wire feed.

As there are 6 points - well 7 actually but two are in a crossover so have the same DCC address - I needed two SwitchPilots. One of these worked and the other didn't. I spent over a day trying to sort this out. I asked questions on the ESU forum and, typically, got no answers. I tried two different SwitchPilots and even replaced them with s TrainTech device and nothing worked.

Finally, I applied a bit of logic and compared the two to see that 1) The lights were on one and not the other and 2) the switch that determines the protocol was on User and not K84. I always thought that User was the right setting but I switched it to the other and all the lights came on.

Finale

Everything worked except one frog feed needed reversing. I have a running layout. Next step is to build a tray to hold all of the cars and locos so that I can put trains together easily on the staging track.

First run of Amtrak 737

 While I am waiting to receive the switches for the railroad I thought that I would check out the loco that my friend Dan, in Connecticut, sent me for Christmas a few years ago. I have had it fitted with a sound decoder so it is really a nice piece of kit. Also, I bought a few freight cars on eBay which have now arrived. They were an absolute bargain as the cheapest I can find a car on US web sites is around $19.99 and I paid £15 for these four! I have laid out two yards of track and coupled up the freight cars and of it went.

I think that, considering it has been sitting there for around 3 years, it went very well.

Putting in the Wiring Buses

 I am awaiting my LHS (local hobby shop) to get my Peco code 83 switches into stock. They are promised for tomorrow. In the meantime, I have been carrying out a few tasks that can be done without the track.

First off, I have been putting in some wiring for the two busses that I need along the length of the baseboard. These are the DCC bus and a 5V bus for lighting and Arduino use. The DCC bus is laid with 16awg stranded wire whilst the 5V one is 22awg as little power will be going down that. The DCC bus is also twisted. To connect wires together, I use what are called "Lever nut wire connectors" which I get from Amazon.

I have these as shown which are through connectors. I also have a large collection of these for single wire distribution - I have them with 3, 4 and 5 connections. These are convenient for distributing wires around a larger layout. As it is, I use these through connectors as terminations for the two busses. as can be seen in this close up.

The whole underside of the board looks like this now.

The red and black are for the DCC and the white and green are the 5V DC. Once installed, I run them both out to 5mm jack sockets on the side of the layout.

ECoS is my DCC controller. Lastly, I have been laying down some DCC Concepts foam roadbed. I am not sure if this is a mistake laying it before I get the switches but I am laying it down using Copydex, which is rubber based UK carpet glue which should be relatively easy to lift if I need to.

The white extension is the staging yard - off scenic. It is a u-shaped construction out of foam core. I have installed some Neodymium magnets in the end of the staging and the side of the main board and the staging now jumps onto position making it easy for connecting the track between them. As you can see, the staging encroaches onto my computer desk so it has to be moveable.

As I mentioned, I have been promised the switches by Wednesday (tomorrow)  but if they don't come, I will have to think about buying over the internet, which I am reluctant to do. What is happening on the internet is my selling of all my N Scale and unwanted Märkin/Roco/Piko European stock. I have been given some good prices by Rails of Sheffield. So far I have gathered over £250. Although, it doesn't seem like much for each item, eBay was producing worse prices and I need the capital to invest (!!) in some HO stuff. I need a collection of freight cars, at least one more loco (see below) and some structure kits.

The loco that I have is a circa 1942 EMD SW1 ex-NYC that is still in use by Amtrak in Sacramento. There are two arguments against using this. Firstly, I don't really want to model the present day as all the cars would be longer and I don't want to repaint the SW1 as it was a present - although I have fitted it out with a decoder and sound - and a limited edition Walthers item!

We build baseboards

 I have mentioned on many occasions that I make my baseboards out of 5mm foam core. Well, this time is no different, except that I videoed the whole process. I got my usual four sheets of white A1 foam core from Hobbycraft for £10. I then went to my local art gallery/art supplies shop to get a couple of sheets of black foam core. I like this for the basics of the boards as it is much denser than the white and is very much tougher. The only issue is that the art gallery wanted £12.50 per sheet! I did ask how much their white was and the answer was £8.50 - a sheet! I will continue to go to Hobbycraft where their service is great and they know me by name.

OK, so I had all the board that I needed. Then I had to make sure that I had a plentiful supply of hot glue sticks and 2" double sided tape. To outline the process, I cut the white into 3" strips along with a few black one. The top of the boards and the outside of the supporting bars will be black and the rest will be white. When laminated using three sheets and the double sided tape, the resulting girders are very strong. Anyway, I have created a stop frame video of the process. I am sorry that the beginning is dark but I was still getting to understand the process. My nice Olympus mirrorless camera takes up to 999 frames  at your choice of delay and when finished melds them all together into a video - very clever.

Here is the baseboard in position. I have used the legs from the previous layout.

Here is the view from the left hand side where you can see the white extension for the staging.

I have printed out the Anyrail layout in full size and run along the centre of all of the rails with a pounce wheel.  Following that I am outlining them using a white marker. Here are the pounce wheel and the marker.

and here is the board with some of the track centres highlighted.

Next up, I have some DCC Concepts trackbed to go down and, then, when the LHS gets their act together and gets some switches in stock, I will lay the track. As I am waiting for the switches, I will probably put the DCC bus and a 5v bus (for structure lighting) under the board ready.

Oh dear, here we go again!

 Yet again, I have destroyed what I have and have moved on to something different.

I was contemplating opening up a Youtube channel and describe how I would make a small 6 x 1'  switching layout in HO. Then I tried ballasting the N Scale layout. I managed to glue up 4 out of the 10 points and couldn't fix them. As they were now ballasted, they were stuck firm so I couldn't get them out to try and free them up. So... I decided that the idea of an HO switching layout sounded good - especially as I have a nice little SW2 switcher complete with DCC and sound that I had left from my previous HO layout that got taken down on the arrival of my mother-in-law. In fact, the loco was a Christmas present from my friend in Connecticut so I would be glad to be using it again.

Then, I proved one of the laws of entropy. It takes you weeks to build the basic structure of the layout, lay track and fix all the wiring BUT it takes 2 1/2 hours to rip it all up! The foam core went down to the apartment block bin room, the wiring went into a bag for later use (that includes the SwitchPilots etc.) and the track went into a box ready to be cleaned up and sold on eBay. 

After cleaning the Kato track, I put it all back in its display cards ready to be sold. Then I realised what a huge task it would be to actually ship all of the Kato packs that I had. I might have achieved £100 for the lot but I can live without that. I came to the same conclusion about selling 25 freight cars. Hence, I now have both of these packed away in our storage unit for later use (??).

I have dug out all of my Märklin, Roco and Pike stuff which I will try and sell as there is a lot of money there and I will also try and sell the four N Scale locos, all of which have nice decoders installed.

I have bought a couple of lengths of Peco code 83 track and 2 #5 points plus a couple of DCC Concepts Cobalt IP point motors. The idea behind that was to test the plan for the 6' x 1' layout but that has been overtaken now. It seems that DCC Concepts IP motors as unavailable so I will go with their analog motors which I can drive with my Switch Pilots. My LHS is getting some more code 83 so, hopefully, in a few days I will be able to buy the rest of the track. Now, the problem.

I would like to try the idea of a Youtube channel as my use of foam core is quite unusual and might get some interest. However, I am hesitant about doing it for a few reasons. Like a lot of people, I hate the sound of my own voice when I hear a recoding. Secondly, I have to get the flat quiet which is currently an issue as my wife has a bad chest cough! I do have a nice Olympus mirrorless camera which can take first class video and can also take stop frames so, once going, I can do some good stuff when building the baseboards, for instance. Also, I am quite adept at iMovie and have a copy of Adobe Premiere so am well set up technically.

The New Layout

Here is the current thinking regarding the new layout. It will be about 7'x 1' 4" with a 2' 6" extension as a "fiddle yard" or staging as  the US calls it.

More to come on this when my thinking is straighter.