SouthernTom

Amazing!! Truely stunning!!!

right, lets upload somephotos on here of the club layout. Some of the photos may be blury or out of focus. i just resized the photos and uploaded them. there is my 7F and schools class. and theres a viaduct onthe layout! Tom

it is on the club layout, Wellbridge. it is a lovely finescale layout. lets upload some more photos shall i?

as there has been a lack of updates, which i am upset about, i thaught i'd upload a few pictures.

this is a great soulution to many of our problems with points. if it can be made water tight then a very good solution. i think this will have to be tested at some point... ( no pun intended) i have had a few solutions running around my head, they still need more thaught. Tom

i'm sorry to say i still havent ordered it. some unexpected expenatures have not aloud for it. besides, i havent had the time to test it out should i have baught it either. so it may have to wait a little while longer which is a little bit annoying. Tom

Looking great Mick, i'm amazed at how much work you have done in the last few months! i think you have chosen very wisely to go with operational intrest rather than 2 continues mainlines. i do think that if you had 2 contollers you could get away with still running 2 trains if you so wish. or an extension lead run on the side of your layout to your favorite operating spot. just a thaught. Tom

i'm sure between us something can be done. the thing that annoys me is that i baught 3 large radius right had points from the same shop at the same time and the other two are fine in the garden still. must had been a slip in quality control maybe. i do have a spare one but i will have to spend a while getting the other out first. it is in the middle of a set of 3 points so will be a challenge to release it. i do have a solution. its how we change points on the gauge 1 points. i will have to take a photo and upload it shortly. it will have to be made in minature to fuction perfectly though. Tom

right, please excuse the lack of updates. been very busy at work, urgh. the last 14 days off work i have had 2 days of, and done 66 hours a week. and the days i have had off, one has been for a wedding, and the other for the girlfriends birthday. getting pretty tired of work at the moment :'( have been keeping up to date with other peoples threads when i get 5 minutes at work on my phone. i have dug up a few photos from an array of media devices ready to resize and upload when i get my laptop back but still awaiting its return. it should about another week. had a walk round the garden last night with a torch just to get my fix of the railway. had a feel of the points to see if the had grit in the blades, and came across one where the spring bit has rusted through! not to happy as it has been down 2 months max. its all bonded in and will require alot of work to replace the point. not to happy. Tom

opps, my bad. i meant i have a couple of Standard 4MT tender locos that are rather easy to do. but my tank loco, that will have to be send off to howes or somewhere similar. i would really like to watch this loco with a sound chip in it plot around the garden! it would look so ellagent. cant wait to watch a video of your's in your garden when its done!

i would really enjoy reading how you fitted the chip! when i get my first DCC system, i have about 5 locos that i need sound chipping asap, some i want done by experts so to speak. I have a couple of standard 4MT's that are fairly easy to do myself, so i have been told. i Have a couple of 4 foot baseboards for an indoor layout that will be made into a sound fitted only loco shed and coaling yard. all singing, all dancing with lights, signals and all things you would see. it will just be locos moving around re-coaling and turning around. thats the plan anyway! ahaha.

urgh after i posted that post, looked at the photos on the tread, the quality is awful! cant wait to get my laptop back!

It is great to be back posting on the forum. i had been keeping up with all other threads on my phone at work when i wasn't busy still no work done on the line but i did have an hour or so running session today so i have a few photos to upload. its a very time consuming process to upload photos. My laptop is in for repair so if i wish to upload them, i have to connect my Camera to my Playstation 3, copy the photos to my Blackberry then use some photo editing software on there to re size the photos, copy them back to the Playstation and then use that for my Browser to upload them to the forum. or take them staight from my BlackBerry, resize them and upload them that way. either way, it takes a long time!

I suggested this on my thread a while back. hoping to have one this coming weekend. but i couldn't get the week off work and been working to much that i have been unable to get sufficient track laid to complete the full loop. It may happen in a few months. if i am lucky!! but because of how seperated we are over the country, i think this would be a very rare occasion. i know there is a few members near york? and a few all the way down south. not forgetting Griff or Roy!

well, i dont quite know how to get the droppers to the rails without having them to visible. i'd still bond all the joints as it is a tried and tested method on the forum. as george has mentioned about how he is going to wire his (i think it's george who said this) but solder droppers to every length of track. that would involve half as much soldering. but, you still have to solder to the track, and to the bus. so your not saving much time by doing that but it will still work just as well, it is just the method in which other people will choose to do it one way or another.

by all means go about getting one, it will only set you back £1995 haha. all the once i have seen have been built by George's method. It's powered by methalated spirits. My dad had his scratch built 4F coal fired. he sold it a few years back from a rather tempting 4k. the sleepers are real timber. all cut from long strips, soaked in preservatives. there is a huge stack in the loft from when it was lifted from the garden. in gauge 1 i also have a, 3f, class 02, a half built schools class, half built k3, and a kit m7 to be built. the schools and k3 are both going to be coal fired.

here are some pictures of my gauge 1 4MT against my 00 4MT.

As you say you had one point of power going to the layout at Selby? my concern of that is that you could loose power to half of the layout if a problem arrives. but, i would suggest using at least 4 because then if something goes wrong, you can locate it to a smaller area. the more droppers you have the current & voltage will be more constant. if you where running just DC then that would have been more of a problem. instead of 4mm cable you could use 2.5mm as a BUS and 1.5mm copper core ( used for lighting circuits) as the droppers. up to you really though. but as your using DCC at a constant voltage, the less voltage drop the better and as you are running a long line, a large BUS would give less drop in voltage. 2.5mm would be much cheaper too. and as you say, easier to hide. i dont think having larger BUS wires will cause problems. as for my Railway, i will use 2.5mm for BUS and 1.5mm for droppers, as it isn't that large. but as another example, on Roys layout, i would use 4mm for bus and 2.5mm for droppers as the line is so long. in your case, for hiding wires, i would run them on the underside of the board next to the concrete foundations. then run 2 wires up to one track then a meter futher do the same for the other line. and repeat where you want more droppers. i would suggest drilling a whole next to the first track and connecting the line power to one rail and run the neutral under the sleepers to the other rail. that will keep the wires visable for the shortest distance possible. and you will still bond the rail's right? Tom

Thanks mick, they are very nice when i look at old pictures of the gauge 1 loco's going over them but i have now lifted on section of gauge 1 track and put 00 down. very much smaller. one day i will upload a photo of my gauge 1 4MT against my 00 4MT. The bridges are 12mm ply with roofing felt on. and the girders are some sort of aliminium in the shape of an H on it's side if you look head on. they have been curved to get the curve of the bridge. it just has little bits of plasticard for capping on the top and rings of plasticard glued to it for rivets. i never think that it is up to the standards of others. as i do not like gardening that much, my limit is trimming branches and mowing the lawns. if i had a new garden, i could start again, make it so the concrete blends into the garden like yours Mick. but i can only work with what i have really. the final stage of track laying will blend into the garden more i hope. i will try and get some videos up as soon as i can. Tom

so, not much has been done on the line the last few weeks as i have been working most days. i have missed most of the good weather ( for now ) but i have got the old gauge 1 bridges out of the shed, there a bit dirty and still have the gauge 1 track on. i will have to use these bridges for now untill i build replacement's. some photos to follow...

This may be where I have the upper hand of electial wiring. My suggestion would be, go to you electrical wholesaler and ask for 2 drum's 4mm squared copper core ( I think its 16 strand). 1 drum of Brown and the other of blue.<- that is for the bus wire. And then for the droppers, buy some 2.5mm squared 8 strand copper core. Again, blue and brown. Then if you run the 4mm cables under your boards. Where you want the droppers to connect to the track, simply cut a ring of insulation off the bus wire and solder the droppers on to them. Be sure to cover the solder joints with something like hot glue just to protect them. Solder the other ends to the rails. That's just my thaughts on it. Tom P.S Because of the size of the cables, there will be very little voltage drop round your rather large railway. P.P.S As your using DCC you will only need 2 bus wires and just take the droppers of it to feed both tracks.

i agree that the idea of connecting your ipod and ipad is a great idea and i am really excited for when i get to that stage. but for the time being, the Powercab is ideal for me. may buy it tomorrow. I will have a read of your tread Chris, i think i have read it before but now i'm interested in the Powercab it may be a good read! if i have any questions i will post them on this tread. Tom

Sorry for the late reply, i checked the back-to-back's there fine, but however, on both the pony and bogie, there was no spring action, the front just required a tweak on the sprunk piece of metal on them to give some more force on the pony. and the bogie had a spring that was as useful as a chocolate tea-pot, so to speak. so i replaced it with a fairly stong one cut down to size. it now runs very well and smoothly. with no de-railments. (forgot to reply before) Tom

i see what you mean about how good that system was, i had a good read on there website and it is top stuff. Griff, you are right, that's one of the reason why it's so appealing to me. but, as my track will be so long, i will need to have two control's one at opposite ends. so for the price, the Powercab this is more acceptable. but, for the time being, and for my open day i will only have one track running DCC and another DC so my fellow club members can run there DC loco's on one line and others on the DCC line. FOR the time being untill i get a second controller on the system. as it will still be very expensive to buy 2 systems and chip all my locos. i still would love to hear some thaughts on the Gaugemaster system. Tom

Cheers for the info George, just did a quick seach on that system, i think i hadn't seen it becasue it's not that avalible on most UK sites. but saying that, for the price of it, it looks very user friendly! and the spec's, it is something every special! i think though i would rather go for a system that is easier to get hold of, therefor finding support much easier. Both of the systems i am looking at can be expanded and can be connected to a pc. as for me being my age, i have grown up with the technology advancing rapidly, and i since having my first hornby train sets when i was alot younger i have always wanted to operate trains with a computer, and now its so easily avalible i would love to be able to do it. and as for something Chris said, a while ago where he can connect his ipad and iphone to his DCC system and control trains from them, that would be a huge success. i think his DCC system was something to do with the NCE Powercab. another thing is i do have a few locos that i would like to sound chip too, so a DCC system where it is easy to control all the fuctions is a priority, unlike i have seen on a few lower market DCC systems. Tom