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Tramway


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I've been cracking on with my winter project, my tramway.

Before starting on the new board, I've had a big push to finish of the one I started last winter.  It is a corner board with a bandstand on the inside, and allotments, pinic area and market stalls on the outside of the tracks. This is how it's looked through 2016.

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The first job was to add a building as a tea and coffee bar. The Metcalfe cricket pavilion fitted the job, and the space. I also put together the Metcalfe pub tables I'd bought last year. A couple of low relief tree finished off the back corner.

I wanted a tarmac path around the band stand. I would have used Metcalfe card sheets, which the roadways are made of, but I had run out. Instead I used a cereal box and aerosol paint.  I needed to do some careful cutting to get the path to fit the landscape as the bandstand sits atop a small rise. I am pleased with the result. I used acrylic window sealant in the flowerbeds.

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I was going to flock the grass between the bandstand and the tracks, until a mate pointed out that a grass mat would be better. I'd run out of grass mat so bought a new one. He was right, it went down a treat and really looks the part.

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I'd also got to work on the allotments working on the greenhouse, pigeon loft raised bed etc.IMG_4939.jpeg

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With most of the elements for the allotments made it was time to plant everything in the scene. Lots more brown acrylic sealant was applied to create soil and hold things in place.

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Noch laser cut plants are used for the veg. The runner beans are Busch.

Today I finished the allotments off and planted the flower beds. The flower beds were mainly made with pan scrubs and grated wax crayons (the purple bits were from Woodland scenics). 

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The tulips are Noch, but I added a flake or two of wax crayon to improve the look.

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There are a few more jobs to do. I will add gates to the allotments. Buildings need to be glued down. The market stalls require items to sell. It needs to be peopled.

The final job will be to add the overhead. This has to be done last because it really gets in the way of doing everything once it is installed.

Edited by chris
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Lovely work Chris and very well detailed. You should be very pleased with what you've achieved. The sealant makes a convincing soil and I'd never have guessed at wax crayons. It's amazing what you can come up with given just a little thought.

And this is the board you started last year so you have another still to do?

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Yes Mick, I've done some preliminary work on board 4. My attention should switch over to that in the next couple of days. And if you think that they wax crayons were imaginative then my first posting on board 4 will blow your mind. :S

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  • 1 year later...

A quick update on my tramway.

I built a fairground on a return loop baseboard. 

I also scratch built a helter-skelter

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I'd built the baseboard and track last winter, so back in December I pushed on to complete the scenery.

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I spray pained cardboard for the tarmac areas and used metcalfe papers from the cobbles.

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Grassmats and ballast was next

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Wet and dray paper for the crushed stone/cinder paths.

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more grass matting to complete

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There has been some further "dressing" of the scene. But I still need to put the overhead in on this board.

Here are some other pics from the other areas of the Tramway.

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I have done some more dressing work since t here photos were taken.

It's now all packed away in the loft so as not to distract me from my summer homies in the garden.

 

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  • 7 months later...

I came across an interesting issue with the tramway this week. The reversing loop has a DCC reverser circuitboard wired to a short length of track. I's decided on a length slightly longer than my longest tram, a twin bogie 8 wheeler. This short section was required because trams can follow each other round, unlike trains which are kept apart by signals. I needed to avoid the situation where one tram was entering the reversing section of track while another tram was leaving it and a short section seemed like the best option.

That was until this week when a friend brought round his modern Blackpool Flexity tram. This is a 3 bogie, 12 wheeler and it's about twice as long as my short section of reversing track! I may have to rewire the board so the entire return loop baseboard is run through the reverser circuitboard to allow my mates tram to run.

That said, the quick test we did, which stopped short of the reversing section, showed that the Flexity wasn't that flexible and it derailed on my 8 inch curves. I'll have to take it apart and see if I can make any adjustments to it so it can snake around my tramway.

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  • 1 month later...

Hi Chris, is this another layout to your HOn30 layout, I like your air grounds and your street, are those building full kits.

Keep the good work up and great to have another layout to run when it is too cold to venture out side, it is too dam hot here, cool change coming in next week happens every year when the kids go back to school, need the rain badly.

Tony from down under

 

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Yes Tony, this is a OO tramway. It's DCC which enables prototypical operation.

I've sorted the issues with the Flexity. Awhile DCCing it I made it more flexible so it now goes around the tight bends OK. Much really sure how I did this. I've also rewired the reversing loop to include a switch which allows the section of revering track to be electrically extended so it's longer then the Felxity.

That said. I haven't done a test run yet.

 

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  • 1 year later...

With the weather turning colder and wetter it was time to turn to the list of jobs I've been putting off to a literally rainy day. May be I should have written the list down, because i couldn't remember all those tasks I'd mentally put to one side.

The one I could remember was to build storage trays for my trams. I'd dug out a suitable box over a year ago and it's sat waiting for me to get round to working on it. Procrastination on how to arrange the trams within in the box had to end and work was required. A shortened beard stroking time resulted in the decision to build trays to sit in the box with the trams laying on their side. The Tescos delivery had provided an empty box which had once carried 6 bottles of wine. The side of which turned out to be a very good match for my storage box.

It was cut  into a tray and glued. A forensic search of the house provided me with several packing materials and double sided carpet tape was used to hold the various lumps of cut foam in place. 

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The trolly polls are a real pain to deal with and made it difficult to place padding on the roofs to hold them. Thinking about it now, if I get round to converting any over to Bow Collectors then they may not fit in these trays.

As with all things the second tray was much quicker to build, evening tough the trans were a little more varied in shape, size and trolley poll.

Each tray could do with a padded lid/cover to hold the trams down. And then they are done.

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That's a nice collection of trams you've got there Chris, I hadn't realised you had so many. Great work with the storage box too - should keep them all nice and safe and together.  That's another little job completed!

 

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I'll admit that I was surprised to find that 8 running trams. 5 are Bachmann. The 3 Leeds trams are die cast models that I've motorised. Not that I can run them, my tramway is socially distancing in the spare room of my Mother In Laws.

I've 4 white metal kits of trams to build. One, a Dearne District Light Railway tram is almost complete. The 3 others are still in their boxes.

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Edited by chris
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  • 1 year later...

Although Ledston Tramway looks the same, I've done a lot of work under the baseboards. When laying the track I wired it so I could later add train (tram) detection. This was always prohibitively expensive. That was until I came across Arduino Microcontrollers. I Joined MERG to enable me to purchase cheap train detection kits (£3 per block). For less than £100 I had 18 separate detection blocks on the tramway and a few other bells and whistles, namely a Layout Control Bus.

This time last year I played around with JMRI automation, but couldn't quite crack it. I got distracted with other things, but I've come back to it this week. Rather than trying to automate the whole tramway in one hit, I'm starting with some simple functionality, points changing automatically after a tram has cleared them. The next step is to have the trams stopping and starting automatically, but that will require writing code in a language I'm not familiar with.

I'm going to upgrade the fairground.

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The merry-go-round is motorised, but it's an AC motor which is limited to on/off. I'd like it to been able to speed up and slow down so I'm planning on replacing the motor. I have a Cakewalk, which I'd like to motorise. But the big challenge I've set myself is to build a working Steam Yacht ride.

I've made a start. I've designed the A frame to be 3D printed and I'm building the steps out of card and StripStyrene. Not sure how I'm going to make the "yachts" yet!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Slight drift here, but... When I was a kid back in the 70's / 80's my uncle used to be the guy who repaired, overhauled and restored all the steam engines for Carters Steam Fair. Many a childhood winters day would be spent cycling over to White Waltham. First for a look around the airfield, then for a trip up on to the bridge to watch the trains going up and down the GW mainline before finally popping into Carter's place for some quick chat and if we were lucky a go on the shooting game. Happy memories...

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  • 1 month later...

Work on the Fairground rides continue. I’ve motorised the merry go round with a stepper which I can accelerate and slow. More realistic than the one speed AC motor supplied by Faller. 
I’ve scratch built a rocket ride. Again a controllable stepper drives it. 
I have push buttons on the baseboard. They can also be started by a signal from the computer that controls the layout. 5CA96D4A-B2B6-4C38-9D68-918F540CFE80.thumb.jpeg.819fd29f6d7a30676146b7b88ff8ed0c.jpeg

i have plans for four more rides. 

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  • 8 months later...

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