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Worsley Dale Garden Railway


mick
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Happy New Year Tony and to our other members from Down Under.

aussietmrail said:

Hi Mick , how was Christmas get lots of trains from Santa,.....

Oh yes..... Well, I have two new display cabinets that need filling now and there have been some sale offers that I couldn't resist. I'll get round to posting details eventually.

Hope all our UK members have a great New Year - Best Wishes to everyone.

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Impressive work, Mick. My viaduct uses similar construction techniques to yours, and is double-track, but not trouble-free! The worst part is the S-bend section between the lawn and the barn, where the calculations to provide a gradient of 1 in 50 on the curves proved too much for me and I reverted to trial and error!

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fungus said:

...The worst part is the S-bend section between the lawn and the barn, where the calculations to provide a gradient of 1 in 50 on the curves proved too much for me and I reverted to trial and error!

There's nothing wrong with trial and error Ian. I use it all the time.

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Just been carrying out my regular pond cleaning duties and took the time to have a look over the layout. Everything appears to be okay but blooming heck, isn't it wet and miserable out there? It's times like these when I begin to wonder what the heck I'm trying to do. How could anyone contemplate running trains outdoors when it's like this? A nice dry spring/summer seems a long way away right now in the UK.

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Hi Baimor, fancy that summer down under is on the same date as yours, I believe this year is a Leap year the reason and Easter is early.

Do you guys get snow where it berries cars, a friend on the that lives in Oregon in one of towns near Seattle said he has had to dig his car a few times now.

Tony from down under

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Hi Tony.

We rarely if ever get snow as bad as that thankfully!! God, a few inches here brings our whole travel infrastructure to its knees!!! I recently returned from my nieces in Lloydminster where it can be quite a nice day one day and They can wake up in the morning to 5 feet of snow in the morning!!!!

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  • 2 months later...

I mentioned in another post about sending a batch of DCC soundchips away last week for the sounds reblowing and they duly arrived back today. It was rather like getting nine new engines for the price of one. All the soundchips are early Loksound v3.5 and all initially contained the standard factory fitted sounds which in my opinion were quite poor. Some of the sounds weren't too bad but the way they interacted with the speed of the locos just sounded a bit silly. The class 45 in particular had such a monotonous sound that it drove me crazy and I completely overlooked it when considering something to run. Now they all have a new lease of life with 'Howes' sounds and you can tell the difference even on a one metre long length of track.

Here's some photos of the loco's after having their chips refitted. In the top photo there are two class 20s in BR Green, a BR Green class 24 and a BR Blue 24. The bottom photo shows two class 37s, a 45, 25 and finally the only non-Bachmann loco among them, a Hornby class 31. What strikes me about the photos is how small the class 45 looks compared to the others, rather as if it's modelled to HO scale (or is it just me?).

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The reason for sending the chips away was that I was increasingly concerned that the v3.5 chips might soon be not catered for and I feared being stuck with those awful factory sounds or else having to replace them with the newer v4.0 chips at much greater expense. I can certainly live with them now but I have another smaller batch to send away before I am completely done.

I'm not sure if you can go off the one metre track test but the best sounding by some way is the 31. It's loud and deep sounding and I was pleasantly surprised by that. I might just have to look round for another as it's the only example of the class that I currently have.

As you can see, I have still to get round to adding detailing parts to my loco's and the majority of these I have had for about 7 or 8 years! From the photo the 31 also looks like it has a deformed sandpipe so I need to look at that too. I think there's a good chance that 6 or 7 of these loco's will find themselves running on Worsley Dale.

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Well it's taken me literally a good couple of weeks to get through this post, and I have to say I've really enjoyed reading it. Good work Mick, it's really impressive. Looking forward to seeing the home stretch being completed.

I don't know if it's still an issue for you as you posted about it in (I think) 2014, but rather than using twigs for your logging wagons I've read somewhere cutting up willow screening works well.

Anyway, will be keeping a keen eye on updates.

Shaun

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shaung75 said:

Well it's taken me literally a good couple of weeks to get through this post, and I have to say I've really enjoyed reading it....

I'm pleased you enjoyed the read Shaun. It just goes to show the merits of recording everything you do because believe it or not I sat down last night and quickly went through the entire thread myself just to look back over the photos of what I've done and how things have changed. Yes, it's taken me longer than I had planned and I'm still not sure when it will all be completed but I do hope that it will be sometime soon.

shaung75 said:

..I don't know if it's still an issue for you as you posted about it in (I think) 2014, but rather than using twigs for your logging wagons I've read somewhere cutting up willow screening works well....

2014? that's quite recent then :oops: Was it really that long ago? In my greenhouse I now have three piles of prunings all ready for cutting to size in readiness for loading onto the OTA wagons. I don't really want to start anything until I have somewhere to run them but the OTA's are top of my wagon 'to do' list, followed closely by the MGRs. I hadn't thought of willow screening - maybe that way the loads would be a more uniform size whereas I'm going to have to grade my 'logs' individually as I chop them.

Back to my loco's and another six have now been selected for sound reblowing - five class 37s and one class 20. This time they're not all going to the same place so there'll be some variety in the sounds. I think it will then be time to select which loco's are to be permanently resident on Worsley Dale so that I can create a kind of 'history' behind the railway. I'm looking forward to that.

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mick said:

I'm not sure if you can go off the one metre track test but the best sounding by some way is the 31. It's loud and deep sounding and I was pleasantly surprised by that. I might just have to look round for another as it's the only example of the class that I currently have.

A rolling road makes a lot of sense when it comes to sound. I've recently bought one from Direct Train Spares. I got 4 cradles and they are fine for Bo-Bo and Co-Co locos.

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That's just me Chris. I spend a fortune on loco's and never seem to get round to buying things that would make everyday tasks so much easier. Those from DTS look as good as any others I have seen and are certainly less expensive than most. I have a Hornby rolling road that I can use for steam loco's but it's no good for diesels and their twin powered bogies.

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