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.
