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Danes Wood, a 00 railway in the garden.


fungus
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Hi fungus, Thanks I hope to buy some grass mats from Aussie eBay in QLD to finish off he Tehachapi loop tunnel 9 module and I can move onto finishing off the whole spiral with track laid down too and be able to do a test loco, going to along while before the whole layout is finished.

A friend at my train club was showing me Engine drive on his Samsung phone said it was a free APP.

Like what Griff said too keeping the trains running while you are fixing that problem like the real railways do the same.

Being busy working on other projects, being busy working going other project to do with model trains, 737 fuselage project and a Big Boy plastic kit model .

That video was great , like to see more and the pics keep them coming.

Tony

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Hi fungus, how is your tree route fix program going go it sorted out and trains running, be good to see the train fly over the viaduct past the rock cutting, can't go right out into my back garden as it is pretty steep, would need a few spirals to get up to the top garden, how about your yard, going buy your pics pretty flat.Have to keep to the back and sides of the house, may venture around the garden shed one day, need a few bridges there.

Back into my layout construction this weekend, so long as the winds aren't too strong, we cop the westerly winds in August, and they are have that cool nip yesterday was pretty bad , 60K's an hour, where I live at times got up to that speed, winter is still hanging around, dropped down to 16C degrees.

My layout going to be slow going to I get past the hard parts, Tehachapi loop and station modules, be good if I got some help.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The first train ran through the diversion more than a week ago. Since then my railway time has been spent wiring, ballasting, weatherproofing, operator interface, and all the other jobs that go with a significant change to the system. This evening I put the diversion back into place for a few record photos.

The first picture shows the train entering the diversion through a short reverse curve including a left-hand turnout. The other arm of the turnout goes into the quarry. The ground-frame hut was purpose built to disguise and protect a Peco turnout motor and frog switch. The original main line is in the left foreground.

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Anyone running a 00 garden railway in Britain will very soon discover that keeping it clean can take up a lot of time. And it's not like cleaning the car, or the house, which can always be put off until tomorrow. If your rails ain't clean, the trains won't run.

Something our railway owner might also discover is that running trains regularly helps keep the track clean, especially if assisted by an occasional run with a railhead polishing and vacuum cleaning train. If done once every few days, this seems to be adequate; if left for a week, a manual clean with a track-cleaning rubber will be necessary.

It's not just the rails that need cleaning. The tunnel attracts a wide variety of wildlife, from insects, woodlice, spiders that build webs across the tunnel bore, slugs and snails that derail your train, to mice that eat nuts and acorns and leave the shells on the track. I've even found a large frog jammed in the tunnel.

Today's short running session doubled as a running test of two locos recently acquired second-hand, and needing quite a bit of attention to minor but annoying faults. The first was a Bachmann "Hall", originally supplied with DCC decoder fitted. In its first outdoor trial, it had suddenly lost the changes I had made to CVs (mainly just changing the address away from 3) and reverted to the default (address 3). So I changed its address in the handset, and continued the trial. For its next trick, it waited until I was bringing it to a stop, and when the selected speed was down to 1 or 2, it suddenly shot forward for about a second at high speed. Not good! I opened it up, and the only thing I could see that might have caused this sort of problem was the two capacitors and inductors fitted in the feed to the motor. I thought I'd start with the capacitors as they are easy to snip off, which I did. Today's trial was to see if the symptoms had gone away. I did several runs at different speeds up the 1 in 50 with 6 coaches (all it can manage), and it ran sweetly. It will take a few more hours of trouble-free running before I am confident the fault is fixed, but it looks promising.

The other loco was a Bachmann BR standard 4MT 4-6-0, to which I had fitted a decoder. It ran up and down the 1 in 50 with trains of between 7 and 11 coaches, double heading with a class 4 2-6-0. The only observation was that the tender seemed to be dragging on one side, and at intervals would emit a creaking, groaning noise. On later examination, the cause of this proved to be a large dob of carpet fluff and hair wrapped tightly around one of the tender axles. When I had first received the model, the loco's axles had been similarly encumbered to the extent that it would barely move at all, and I had spent a couple of hours with a pair of tweezers removing it. But I had missed one of the tender axles, an omission I have now rectified, and I hope that there will be no groaning at the next running session.

Attached are a couple of pictures of the double-headed train. If you are a regular follower of these reports, you might notice that I have put the GWR Centenary coaches away in their box, and found a rake in the BR maroon that is more appropriate to most of my locos.

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140905-2013_Double headed BR 75xxx & 76xxx.JPG

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Hi Fungus, awesome close up pics of your double headed steamy's, that is what I forgot to take of my Flying Scot yesterday at the train when she went well on her madden run since the up grade of the duel tender diver tenders, how many coaches were you pulling, I mainly took pics of the length of the train. There is close up pics on my post page and gallery of the Flying Scot with the two tenders and pics of yesterday's big event at my train club , quite a few members were asking questions on how I did it with the two tender drives on the Flying Scot.

Looks good on the tree route track and point upgrade too, looking forward to seeing the new viaduct finished also, keep the pics coming, agree to what Griff is saying.

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Today's excuses for a running session were

1. Indoor testing and running-in of newly-acquired loco complete; garden testing required.

2. Frog switch for viaduct turnout replaced and needs testing.

3. Who needs an excuse, anyway!

So here is Midland 1F "half-cab" 0-6-0T number 41708 photographed at various points along the line. The engine is still in "out of the box" condition, with no detailing or weathering yet applied.

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140909-2001_Track cleaning train.JPG

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The steps are an alterative route to the compost heap, the other being over the tunnel. They also lead to the extreme tip of the garden, were there is theoretically a view of the real railway. However, at the moment the view is obscured by bushes, as Network Rail only clear them at irregular intervals, and they were last done about 5 years ago. No viewing platform for the model railway.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Today I had enough of the track modules for the quarry sidings complete and ready for a live operational test. There are two removable modules; the "black plank" and the "quarry turnouts". The "black plank" is effectively a bridge allowing space below it for the tree roots to grow. It contains the main line, single track at this point, the shunter refuge siding, and a turnout switchable between the main line and the quarry sidings. The "quarry turnouts" module contains two turnouts toe-to-toe, fed from the quarry turnout on the "black plank", and feeding back to the refuge siding and forward to the exchange siding or the quarry floor.

The turnouts are switched using Peco point motors, which are hidden under appropriate-looking building. The building on the "black plank" is a ground-frame cabin, based broadly on the one at Midford North sidings near Bath. It was purpose-built from "plasticard". The other building covers two motors, and I found something suitable in Hornby's range, a weighbridge office I think it was described as. I decided that in real life, these turnouts would have been operated by the train crew using a special token to unlock the ground frame. In model form, therefore, I use the same principle; I have a ground frame in a box, which is plugged in to the track modules via a length of cable, and used to operate the points. (If you are an expert in these matters on real railways, please let me know whether the terminology in my description is correct.)

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Hi fungus, Wow just pure awesome, I love your quarry,1n5 gradient is that pretty steep , how did you bend the track like that, looks pretty real.

Got a link from another bloke that is in another forum, said I can share it, British railway operations.

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/gansg/index.htm#fops

How are you going the extended viaduct past where the tree root problem was, like the little building covering the Peco points .

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi fungus, yeah it is a big difference over my side of the world, a heat wave is hitting us at the moment peaking 40 degrees, all work outside has been halted , be like this all week, a good time to work on the hobby projects out in the nice lounge room with the air-con on and is mid spring heaven help us when summer hits.

Even too hot in the hobby room to do maintenance wheel cleaning on the locos and rolling stock, no over head fan either, no work outside be like this all week into next weekend, storms predicted for the next few days including today, need the rain bad.

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