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Today in Game of Trains: Winter is coming!
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Well, two things. The Gilpin tramway was built up around a valley. The slow geared locos would take longer to get to some places than you could walk it yourself. I have always liked Narrow gauge trains, but to do it "The right Way" costs money. So all of this is just a fantasy train. I am trying to keep things somewhat simple and fun for now. Scratch building also takes time. I will try not to think much beyond my next build with the Gilpin caboose. Well, ok... What I will need then is a small string of Gilpin ore cars. And... The Gilpin never had a box car, but I would like a box car. Here, go to this link of thumb nails, then when you click one there is a zoom bar and you can drag around the images. You can even zoom in and see people's faces. http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/search/searchterm/gilpin tramway/order/nosort
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Hi Thomas, wow you have being busy, that is a lot of turnouts are they scratch built, save some money, I have run out of larger straight points, one 7 inch point left, that one is for the middle shunting track in the station complex, need one more and a large wye point come later. You are building a second helix wow the first one is awesome can't wait to see the second one, you are freezing we are swelting , humid here, could get a storm soon, will wait till later on after lunch, I hate summer . Yeah keeping a close eye as well on your progress, you must have heaps of points, can you get track and points cheaper in Germany , cost over $30 for an express Peco point , $70 for a double slip, I can get the box of Peco flexi track at a good price on Australian eBay $110 plus postage , got three boxes. Will continue on working on redrawing my track plan today, have asked my brother if he can help me finish off the last of the layout construction, after New Year. Keep the good work up and lots of pics. Tony from down under
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Christmas not far away, the last construction state is well under away at very long last, I started on the spiral leveling with the special jig ,, every 3 feet goes up 3/4 of an inch,I replaced the wider curved for 3 inch wide curved decking till I have to use the wider decking, play to cut 3 inch wide 4mm ply for the sides on all the curved decking. The first pic is the finished spiral corner module and second module looking down to the start of the spiral , third and fourth the spiral is the end of the layout at 54 feet , the metal shelf bracket I will also be using on the car port side wall . Pics five and 6 the finished Large S bend from the bridge to the car port , in pic 006 at the corner steel car port port the short gray piece bridging the gap between the two 6 foot radius curved decks I will be cutting it to 3 inches for a single track rail bridge and 4 lane HWY under neath coming off the double deck bridge. I have some great ideas , in pic 5 the lighter curve I plan to run off that onto my vertical staging yard using a slide draw set up to set on points , to get the vertical yard I be using an ironing board perfect for what I want to achieve, will start off with a couple of tracks , depend on how long the ironing board is how long the stating yard be. Today I will screw on the extended length to the first gray large curve deck and cut the brackets for the other curve sections, might get a chance to set up the car port corner module depends on the weather pretty muggy out side so might get an early morning storm. Can't do much, Monday and Tuesday, be Wednesday , start heating up again, 39 degrees on Friday and be humid, will have to wait till a cool day but can working on the curved sections, painting and laying track , I am using Andrew's idea in using the rails as bus wires and joining each rail on the joins, save on wire. All goes well trains running May next year , can't wait , the stool on wheels the pic in the last post I be buying on Monday, perfect for sitting at the control panel controlling trains. Tony from hot down under keeping on moving ahead
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Hello Tony This helix does not get higher, it is just to lift the track over the other tracks to the right, it then continues along the wall. On top of this helix comes another ans bigger helix that will be multi-lane later. But I was not so lazy, have already mounted the drives on 16 turnouts and connected them with decoders and programmed them. I also follow your progress carefully.👍👍 Regards Thomas
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Hi Griff and Roddy, wow, that is a very nice pic of the water ,I could sail my model boat in that water very calm water, would get rough with strong wind. Nice build Griff, are you planning to have a coach and have a mixed freight train , will you be repainting the loco and what colour. It is pouring rain here at long last rain through to next week and back to hot weather again Friday. Tony from down under
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Hello Thomas, as I typing it is pouring rain here, we are copping a cyclone up in the Gulf of Carpentaria North Queensland and heavy rain down south, they say both lows will join up, Sunday the worst rain, gee we need it bad. We both are working on our spirals, I am only going up one level , really two levels up to the bridge , are you going up any higher than three levels, looking good, only single track , see a super liner on its side in the middle of the spiral , how many of them do you have, I have 9 , aim to get more , like 16 and auto carrier wagons behind the train . We are very hot you are freezing , how is the track and points. going with ground frozen, don't forget to take some pics. I am heading over to my post now , Tony from hot down under keep warm .
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Hello everybody! Somehow I am so lazy at the moment and just got through the first helix with a lot of effort ... Outside, however, it has frozen for the first time really strong and stormed and rained pretty strong and, to my great joy, my layout has survived very well except for very small losses on gravel. But I suspect that are the places where too little ballast adhesive has arrived. Regards Thomas
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Hi Mark. I set up a siding in my shed as a programming track and I found that I never use it. Now it just confuses me because occasionally it doesn't have power and I fail to remember that there is a reason why and what to do it fix it. These day I do most of my DCC programming by directly attaching my PowerCab to the wheels of the loco using crocodile clips. It removes any issues with the wheel rail interface, ie a dead spot. cheers chris
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I have only got a very basic hornby DCC controller was have been looking into the Lenz p100, powercab, digitrax and the Z21 black system. Honestly at this moment I have no idea which to select. I have three sound fitted locos that the hornby controller cannot operate all functions so I am waiting for now. Your ship is coming along nicely. You have amazing patience with it! I am a volunteer coastguard so I am off to teach a bit of VHF and GPS tonight. regards Mark
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Morning Mark, what brand DCC are you using, all goes well I hope to buy my friends old DCC Lenzs next year at a good price and his remote hand set in the deal , a start, it is so expensive to go Wi Fi what I was planning to buy in 2017 , my son passed away the end of that plan still can happen. Seen the progress on my ship build, finished closing in on the starboard side, need to fill in the gap joins, just finished the smoke vents on the port side of the main deck pics to follow. I managed to get season 9 of BBC coast and season 10 is in region 2 sadly , the last disc in season 9 they are doing the Canadian coast, a couple 100 years back the Scots got kicked of their farms and migrated to Canada, I now have the complete series of BBC Coast great program, 15 DVD's. We had 41 degrees a couple of weeks back, hotting up to the mid 30's, storms predicted for Friday and Saturday, can't do too much out side on the layout, see what Friday is like so I can start work into the car port ramp, two 6 foot deck lengths already have track on from the old layout Don't you have snow where you live in New Zealand, in winter, would love to come over to New Zealand for a holiday, pay you a visit , cheaper to fly over there than flying to our other capital cities in Australia. I will send you a couple of pics to your email or could text them to you, the Captain mightn't like me to post pics on the forum with out his permission . Tony from down under. Tony from down under
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Thanks Tony, I was going to make one of the sidings in the shed section a programming track but think I will keep it simple and have a separate piece on my bench and use by locolift to transfer the locos. Warm and wet here in New Zealand. Forecasting 32C for Christmas Day. Being a Pom I still cant get used to that. I do however have my fake snow on the windows to pretend it will be miserable outside come the day. cheers Mark
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Hi Mark, yes to your answer is best to have a desperate length of track for DCC programming, my old train club had that same with a friend on his layout , that way you can do the programming with out going outside on your layout, could be raining . I wont need to worry, when I go DCC wont be any sound decoders, cost just as much as a loco, be nice if I replaced the decoders on the Thaly's TGV locos , nice to dream. How are you going Mark , Tony from down under
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I have a quick question for you. Do you incorporate a section of programming track on your layouts or do you have a separate piece of track on a workbench upon which you carry out your programming? I never thought about it until now and only have two sidings left to lay. If I am to include a section on the layout I need to do it now. My own thoughts are to lay a separate piece of old hornby set track on a piece of pine 2x1x about a yard long I have lying about and transfer the locos using my locolift. It just seems less complicated than isolating bits of sidings and installing additional switching. Let me know what your experiences are. Thanks mark
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Quick post just some pics. Just plugging away at the Crap Building.
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Nice work and good to see you back!
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Hi Mark, good to see you back on leave, how long will you be home to your re join your ship, I had fun tracking your ship The World as I do with Corona Sea, know when you are in port and out at sea. Nice lot of work there with those points,agree to fun to see the coaches going from one track to another coming into the station complex, how many coaches do you plan to run, 8 looks good. Tomorrow I be starting the last stage of my layout, be good if I could get some help to finish the layout, could do it a few days with help, that is not with the track only decking, I wont be using cork added cost. My friend want's to sell me his old Lenzs DCC hopefully at a good price, with a bit of work I can switch from DC to DCC, got a TGV 13 car set, it has DCC on board and a Bachman DD40AX Centennial loco 6900. Decoders are cheap to buy now , last one cost $24,, most locos come with Decoders now . How is the weather, it has being stinking hot here, have had a cool change but starting to warm up again. Tony from down under.
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Ive been busy this leave. The baseboards were removed from the shed and transferred to the garage to begin work on them. I purchased a load of electrofrog points from the UK and had them posted out whilst I was away last time and they were waiting for me when I arrived home. Each point cost me 12 pounds. At todays exchange that's 24 NZ dollars. Here they cost 38 dollars each. Now I am all for supporting my local shops when I can but even allowing for a markup to make a bit of profit and postage I can't see where the price difference can be that much. The baseboard is 12 feet long and varies from about 18 inches to 3 feet wide to fit the shed and under the work bench. The first job was to alter the electrofrogs for smoother operation soldering wires between the stock rails and closure rails, cut the minute wires underneath and but seep PM1 motors to with the frog polarity. After watching a few youtube videos for guidance it was easy. Cork trackbed was glued down and track laying has begun. Here is my progress to date. Two main lines run through the boards and will connect to the outside track when its laid at the bottom of the picture. The station and sidings are at the top. My three old hornby coaches are placed for scale. Once the track is down I will begin the DCC wiring and install the point motors by turning the boards on their sides for ease. Even pushing the coaches up and down and a single truck full of fishplates is quite exciting. Cheers Mark
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Back home once more with a few more shots from my travels. I was in Rouen recently. Not far from where we docked plumes of steam and smoke could be seen rising above the warehouses that lined the docks. I found out after we left that there is a large marshalling yard there and its home to a steam locomotive collection. I missed it. It was only 30 minutes walk away. I will definitely do it next time. There were however some other interesting items of French railways moving in close proximity to my ship. The truck that was used for shunting was interesting. It was moving 7 fully loaded grain hoppers about. Not bad traction for rubber tyres on steel rails. The tanker vehicle was taken to help with some weathering ideas I am collecting for future use. cheers mark
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*sigh* land bound and I love the sea.
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Snow? This is today. 8 December. Unbelievable.
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The module wiring checking is coming to an end , pic 008 I finished soldering the last feeder wires, the unfinished track to the left is for the suburban and one main line, stage two after the layout is up and running, the last point to the right of the pic I may change it to fix that curve on the temporary main line and terminus station platform track, That point will have access to auto train carrier wagons unloading and loading dock to come later. Pic 009 the over head rail bridge when the second station be in use, pic 010 the empty space will be fulled up with 5 platform track for the terminus station, I have finely decided on my station , be modeled on the Denver Union station , Griff's state. Second last pic the other modules , don't worry the trains won't end up on the floor, I plan to put in a siding that will have the first auto carrier siding on the approach module the one sitting flat on two other modules, the module closest to the house is the last module and will have a platform . Not going to get much work don on the spiral tomorrow be raining on and off, Monday is a fine day , hope not a hot one, once the spiral decking is in place, the track laying and wiring all over again . Lucky last pic after the new year when the sales are back on I be buying that stool , I tried it out , be able to slide around form module to module hooking the wires up, right height and adjustable too at the moment is $89, on sale $49 big saving. Tomorrow all I have to is re staple block 3 , block 4 to the right of the bridge will leave to when I build the other siding bridge and label 3,4,5 and 6 blocks, be a change to start work on the other decking. Tony from down under keeping on moving ahead
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Nice indeed on the paint finish, I wouldn't go any further either where you can stuff up, can't wait to when you start on the tank car. I have some 00 scale tank cars and they will get a new paint jog to look the US modern tank cars, will then have a good rake of tank cars, I want to build up a modern manifest train,longer the better . I stumbled across some floor plans of the Denver Union Station, wow even shows the grand stair case to upper levels, I think they turned the station build old office space into a hotel what I might do,them main ares wont be as wide and lend floors a long. Starting to cool down any snow. Tony from down under,keep the good up.
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more work. I could probably get really OCD and put nail holes in and scribe cuts in some of the wood, I'll let it sit for now. The tank car awaits it's turn in the background.
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Thanks Tony, I am having fun no idea where it will all lead. Just fun playing around with things. he he yeah, I love keeping old odds and ends, you just never know. And yes, the old wrist watch gear came in handy. I kept that originally as a load for a N scale Gondola.
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