The Weekend Railway

[WeekenderSteve]

Inner Grumpy Curve then. The last part of the level C approach involved the 'bridge' across from the treeline to Gumpy herself, and the transition curve from that into the long curved piece that was already lying inside the car. The bridge can be seen in the next photo, the chunky piece of board with the brown goo on the side. It's cantilevered off the side of the prop for the upper-level support, since OMG isn't really strong enough there to go resting trackbed on. I had to reshape the old bit of corrugated steel slightly to allow clearance, and then could cut another piece of OSB for the transition curve, and secure it to the long curved piece, all as seen here:

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The diagonal prop from the Shed can also be seen. A different viewpoint shows that while the trackbed needs a 3" spacer from the seatback one side (above), it rests directly on the upholstery the other (below) - even though the latter is the uphill end. Suffice to say, OMG has quite a list these days. That might be the source of the error in the surveying. Did I assume she was level?

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Looking at that, I reckon another chock between the beam and the upper trackbed OSB wouldn't hurt, before the OSB sags.

With that section finally battled into place, I could return my attention to the lexan bridge, and add some overhead braces. More bits of old brake pipe, bent to shape and dropped into the lexan voids.

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The hoops can just be lifted out for tracklaying and cleaning. And for reshaping when you discover that Kelloggcam won't quite fit under them.

So that was it. The lower level circuit trackbed completed. All that remained was to lay track, and run some test trains. Only trouble is, by then I'd had another idea.

[WeekenderSteve]

The next idea, as anyone who's seen the post 63 video will realise, was to turn Grumpy Junction into a triangle. Looking at a view like this, it just seemed to be crying out for it:

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And then this update comes to a shuddering halt. I was going to go on and explain how, with apologies to Roddy (how's the point wiring going now?) the only way to control this lot was more lolly sticks, stiff wire and brake pipes, when I found I've haven't taken any pictures of those. So that'll have to wait till next time. You'll love the changeover switch...

In the meantime, though, one loose end: I've installed the extra chock under the Grumpy Junction baseboard that I realised I needed in the last post. The uphill end of the triangle beam can also be seen under the baseboard, at the left of the shot:

[WeekenderSteve]

With pictures now taken, it's on with the tale of the triangle. I mentioned above that I wanted to link a changeover switch to the point at the apex of the triangle, which required our first permanent outdoor electrics, as well as a way of linking an electrical switch with a mechanical point control linkage. Leave the room, anyone who's just said electrical point operation would make this simpler....

If the changeover switch was a toggle, then the mechanical movement of the toggle could also drive the linkage to operate the point; but the only free on-on toggle switch available had a rather unsuitable steel toggle. Lolly sticks and superglue to the rescue. Take 4 lolly sticks, cut a dovetail notch in the end of two of them that's a tight fit on the toggle, then use superglue to laminate all 4 together around the toggle with the two dovetailed ones innermost, and now there's a toggle long enough to link to the point with the usual cat's cradle of stiff wires and perspex relay levers.

Keeping the linkage to the point as simple as possible, and the lolly-stick lever easily accessible, demanded that the control be mounted above rail level. So the switch was mounted to a suitable bracket, and the whole screwed to the side of the Shed within a rainproof cover cut from the bottom of a 4-pint milk carton:

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The linkage for the other triangle point, the Y at the bottom of the steep link, was relatively straightforward, just being taken from the original Grumpy Junction lever, via a long rod through a brakepipe guide under the OSB and along that beam...

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And there we have a working triangle, as seen in those videos twenty posts back!

[WeekenderSteve]

Just when you thought it was safe to come out from behind the sofa...

I remarked at the end of the last post that it wasn't very realistic having a loco-turning triangle, but no passing loop.

The next question was where. If it's to be associated with loco-turning at the triangle it wants to be close to it. It also needs to be long enough to run round a substantial train. The only practical - and accessible - place seemed to be alongside the top level, between the original scary bridge and the fence. A good long loop could start near the arch bridge (nice & close to the triangle), squeeze behind several trees staying close to the fence, and rejoin the circuit by tree 5 - the original one with a narrow squeeze behind it. That also meant that most of the loop could be on the level, so stock could be left to stand safely.

Only trouble is, that top level will become part of the 'express' outer circuit again as and when that's reinstated, and if we have just a just a simple loop, the loco still has to run round on the main line, and I'm not sure that's very realistic either. Surely all the shunting ought to be out of the way of main line trains.So perhaps we needed a loop within a loop, if you see what I mean. And then if you've got two loops, that's halfway to a yard...

The connexions to the mainline at either end would be on OSB (to allow a wide enough base for points and curves), there'd be a bit of single-track on timber sqeezing behind a couple of trees, and then the yard itself would be on OSB again, supported by a suitable frame. So here's one end:

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This is about where Chris pointed out that there was space for a little loco-length headshunt by both junctions. The merest thought of that hadn't begun to consider the possibility of crossing my mind. It must be coincidence the pieces are already wide enough.

Anyway, here are the primary supports for the yard itself:

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And then I could make a cardboard template for the baseboard itself. By this time, the plan had expanded to three tracks:

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And now at last there was a proper surface on which to make accurate measurements, and see how many tracks would really fit. The answer did indeed seem to be four, at 46mm track centres. I think that's pretty-much bang-on for scale, and as long as there were no tight curves (or fat shunters!) it ought to work.

Next question, what's the best layout in the available space? After some discussion, the plan looked like this:

[WeekenderSteve]

So, there was a delay while I bought the points. And delay is thinking time, and thinking is dangerous. If there were to be four tracks in the yard, the baseboard would reach all the way to scary bridge, and would need to be braced to it; which effectively roofs over the tracks beneath, and would make them rather dark. Obvious solution, make the base out of something transparent - like those leftover lexan panels I sued for the level C bridge. A quick measure proved there was enough. Only drawback, the lexan's 10mm thick, and all the brackets were installed for OSB 18mm thick.

So I raised the height of the brackets and supports by 8mm (which gave an opportunity to improve the design a bit in places, and eased the headroom over level B), used the OSB as a template, and screwed some lexan down instead.

And then started pinning points in place:

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I carefully put the appropriate radius (about 24") in a length of rail first, then cut two short sections from it, 0.750" and 0.770" long, for the inner and outer rails. It's not obvious in the photo, but the curve is just about apparent in reality: about 1.8 degrees. It's between the two most distant points in this shot, which also shows the tracks starting to come into place, and the ubiquitous Pullman for clearance checking:

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Again I needed a short infill between the two furthest points: an inch long this time (four sleepers!), same radius, but needing about a 0.028" length difference between the inner and outer tracks. Made by the same technique.

It took a lot of trial and error to get all the points where they needed to be without ever compromising on the 24" curvature, and maintaining the necesary track centres as close to the points as possible to maximise usable length, but eventually it all fitted in. The curves-and-straights through the far points don't actually look too bad with the other tracks in. I've taken the slight wiggle out of the near end of the two tracks nearest the fence, visible in the first photo, since that was taken.

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And a slightly arty shot of the headshunt at the other end, with the mainline turnout just about visible, and another set of nail buffers:

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Oh, go on, one more then: passenger pannier (with a Pullman?!) and Dean goods about to run parallel through the scissors crossing. The lower circuit summit (1:76 approach in both directions) is between the first two coaches, and you can just see their different angles:

[ba14eagle]

I am absolutely enthralled with these latest developments - you really look like your having fun and thats what this hobby is supposed to be all about. More power to your elbow and keep providing these updates

[Andrew]

These are fascinating articles, Steve, and it's great to see how fast your layout is developing. Quite an inspiration. And the practical application of 'use what you've got' is impressive. I'd never have thought of laying track on lexan to let the daylight through. And who would expect lollysticks to work as point levers?!

Hope you manage to spend some time running trains in between all that construction (and thinking).

Your lucid descriptions combined with plenty of clear photos are very helpful, and make your methods clear to follow. Until now I had thought that making point linkages was too intimidating, but you've shown that simple approaches and lateral thinking plus a shedload of bits and pieces can deliver the goods. Keep up the good work - in between running plenty of trains, of course.

[WeekenderSteve]

Thanks for the kind words. I sometimes wonder whether they're fascinating articles, or whether I'm boring everyone rigid! Part of the reason for keeping detailed records is to see what we can - and can't - get away with. The lexan should be dimensionally stable, but it doesn't dry as quickly as timber trackbed. On the other hand, nor does it absorb water and swell. It's noticeable, even after quite a dry Summer, that most of the OSB is thicker than it was, and steps are developing in the track where it transitions from timber to OSB and vice versa. The OSB's also swelling unevenly, so the top tree curve in particular is starting to become rather lumpy. I rather suspect that by next year the OSB trackbed experiment may have ended in failure, but that in itself is informative. A newcomer to this forum can look at all the careful work that goes into most trackbeds, with bitumen, roofing felt and ballast, and wonder if it's really necessary. I think by next year we'll have proved that it's all very necessary.

In any case, I rather enjoy the experimental nature of the job. I spent most of the weekend rebuilding the steering rack for one of the cars, which isn't a job where you can cut any corners or take any chances at all. So, new bearings, new circlips, shim washers made from scratch, clean grease and a lot of trial assembly. All well and good, but walloping a few screws in a manky old lump of timber, stapling some track to it and seeing if trains fall off is a relaxing antidote! One of the experiments involves the tree branch that waved around too much:

[traingeekboy]

I just peeked at it for now. I must admit my admiration for this vertical creation. Oh, and the lolly lever is brilliant.

[WeekenderSteve]

Griff, I'm no expert in these things, but that middle sentence seems rather poetic. I think it might be a haiku.

One more odd job the weekend before last involved the trackbed by the hinge for the big Shed drawbridge. OSB sag and swell, and the lowering of the far end of the drawbridge, had all combined to create rather a nasty hump in the trackbed here, so it was time to lift the track, attack the woodwork, and re-lay. I took the opportunity to even out the curve slightly, too. Over an eighth of an inch has come off the OSB right by the hinge, and I've blended the gradient in a smoother summit onto the drawbridge itself. The track still needs a lot of shimming where the OSB had sagged, but if I reprofile the OSB enough to eliminate the need for shims in the middle, I'll be able to see daylight through the ends! As the second picture shows, the curve and especially the gradient are rather smoother now:

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My initial thought was that the model had been wrongly-assembled when it was new (it was clear that even if one pinion had broken and fallen out, it was most unlikely that both would have done so). But, given that it had hauled a long train round the old express circuit, perhaps two driven axles was enough, with a pair of new traction tyres. So, with the new tyres fitted, I put it to the test - that's the pictures above. We did not obtain a usable video from that run: rather too many finger-prodding moments, and still an awful lot of wheelspin - especially where gradient changes.

More thorough re-engineering was clearly required. More in the next thrilling installment!

[WeekenderSteve]

At the end of the last post I mentioned the Mainline Dean Goods that had done well on the level, but couldn't even haul itself up some of our gradients. Some? Most.

The obvious fix was to restore drive to the front axle, which required the two missing pinions. And there, on ebay, was a Mainline Dean Goods tender chassis and motor. Perfect. No loco, no tender body, just the chassis, and moreover I could see from the photo it had a pinion on the forward brass stud.

The purchase was duly made. And then things got interesting, because the seller, in an email acknowledging receipt of payment, mentioned that these chassis only have two powered axles. He didn't say which two, and I could clearly see that pinion in his photo, so whilst waiting for the parcel to arrive, we asked what else he knew. Apparently, the story is that with all three powered, the tender had problems on curves, so Mainline omitted a couple of gears. He also mentioned that there was some discussion in the modelling press at the time, and I've also found a couple of odd references on other fora. I note that all the 6-wheel Hornby tender-drives I have are driven on front and rear axles only, with the middle one very loose. It seems that Mainline thought they'd go one better, but then had problems; the design of their gearing makes it almost impossible to 'un-drive' the middle axle, so one of the others lost power instead. But an end axle can't be as floppily mounted as a middle axle, so the undriven front axle takes too much of the weight, depriving the others of traction.

Anyway, the new chassis arrived, and although it had a gear on the front brass stud, the pinion below that was indeed missing. So it had the same 4 wheels driven as mine - it just had a spare pinion going round on a brass stud to no purpose at all. Kind of reinforces the inference that Mainline were omitting parts in production to solve a problem. But, the gear trains to front and rear are the same so I could still cannibalise it to make mine 6wd, and see how it coped with my tightest curves, which at 24" are tight for a garden railway, but still a lot bigger than the stuff supplied in 1980s train sets.

In the web discussions of the tender's poor traction, I'd also found reference made to its plastic chassis. There is a ballast weight inside, but the motor's big and the tender's small, so it's not very heavy. And the chassis that could have been a nice heavy metal thing is actually quite bulky, plastic, and hollow.

Hollow.

So part B of the plan involved stuffing it with lead:

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Edited October 26, 2013 by Guest

[WeekenderSteve]

As promised, here are the Kelloggcam videos of the tests of the 6wd Dean. I've embedded them but also included the full links below for those who prefer to be able to enlarge them.

With two flat wagons between the camera and the loco, changes in gradient (intentional) and superelevation (rather less so) can be seen quite clearly, although the field of view of the camera is narrow enough that it doesn't really show the full extent of the irregularities that are developing on the upper tree curve. it's clear that I need to even out the radius of the lower curve at that end too. The effects of gradient can be clearly seen, and heard: the train slows noticeably going uphill. But at least it now has the traction get up hills! You'll also see a near-disaster from a dangling wire where I was testing the connexions on the triangle apex point, two-and-a-bit minutes in.

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Light levels were fading, and although the camera adjusts the image white balance effectively, its response time gets much slower - which is why the video gets blurred and jerky when the train's in the shade.

The first video ends with the train running up the spur so it can be turned (now that the point switching contacts have been cleaned), so the second starts with it reversing down the steep side of the triangle. I'm not sure that taking an unfitted goods down that 1:39 would be such a clever plan in reality (especially at that speed!), but my tiny crew seemed to get away with it. And then the traction of the modified tender is clearly demonstrated by the restart on the 1:60 upper Grumpy curve.

In this second video the odd rhythmic shunting on straights occurs more - especially in the last two or three of minutes, where a really jolty run on a straight smooths out completely as soon as the tender is on a curve. In this on-board video, the rhythmic shunting can be heard more than seen - you can hear the couplings bounce - but standing alongside the jolting of the whole train can be seen clearly. It didn't do this before I modified the tender, but I'm still puzzled as to exactly why it's happening. You'll also see towards the end that although the traction issues seem sorted, pickups were still giving trouble, especially on smaller radius points like those where it runs through the 'yard' and on the triangle points on upper Grumpy curve - which is why the video stops where it does.

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Since those were recorded I've attacked the point flangeways with a fine file, which has made a huge difference: the loco wheels were climbing the check rails, lifting one side enough to break contact, which no longer happens now that I've relieved the check rail faces a little.

I suspect we've now done the last runs this year, though. For a Winter project I'm contemplating plans for some sort of track clearing/cleaning wagon.

[traingeekboy]

The cold weather seems to have slowed your progress. I know that feeling well.

oh, and have a Merry Christmas.

[WeekenderSteve]

Thanks Griff, and a Happy New Year to you.

The Winter weather hasn't so much slowed progress as arrested it entirely. We're now very much into Phase Two of the experiment: how much of the lash-up can survive the Winter? So far, all the track is still in place, although the sections laid on OSB - and the tree curves in particular - are now starting to look very irregular. The extended lever on the triangle apex point switch has delaminated, and something's also stopping that point from working through its full travel. The other points and remote control linkages all seem to be OK so far, and rather surprisingly the lexan-sided bridge hasn't fallen to pieces yet either. Overall, could be a lot worse then! Still plenty of time for more weather though, and it hasn't had a hard frost on it yet. On the positive side, I haven't had to demolish it to dig a big hole....

[traingeekboy]

Track seems to be the least of ones worries assuming you use nickel silver rail. Although everyone favors Peco for the outdoors, I used Atlas, three years on it is still looking like it can handle the heat and cold without cracking. I can't say as much for the dummy point motors, they've gotten all bent from the sun since they are made of a different plastic. I suppose it all depends on what type of track you used, I hear the steel railed track can get a bit rusty. Although a little bit of plastic safe oil applied to the rail tops might prevent that.

All the lumber is of course a completely different story. I saw a lot of what we call chip board on your layout. Must be the wood you call OSB that you say is looking irregular, I wouldn't expect anything made of chip board to survive well in your humid climate, but one never knows. The ply on my layout that was not covered with roofing felt started to look pretty bad at first, but it seems to have settled down and is no longer showing anymore signs of aging. So for your layout I guess the only thing to do is make some test runs as soon as the weather gets warmer in a couple months.

[WeekenderSteve]

The track is indeed Peco nickel silver, and looks fine so far. The stuff I know as chipboard is made of almost sawdust-sized chips, not very heavily compacted; get it wet and it just turns to mush. By comparison the OSB (Oriented Strand Board apparently) has much larger chips (up to a couple of inches) and they're more heavily compacted. It doesn't fall apart as soon as it gets wet, but it certainly swells quite significantly, and not entirely evenly. I've taken a handful of photos to show the current state of the line:

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It remains to be seen how much the OSB will shrink again if/when it dries out. I anticipate some shrinkage, but it won't go back to its original thickness. Depending how bad it is, it might be possible to restore the track alignment with judicious localised shimming. The alternative, remaking the curves in plywood, would be rather costly.

But, as I've said before, it's an experiment. Most garden railway builders invest significant effort in weatherproofing their trackbeds and they last years. This one was thrown up with no weatherproofing at all beyond the fact it's mainly pressure-treated timber, and the first winter is already taking its toll. Moral, if you want your railway to last, weatherproof the trackbed properly!

[mick]

I'm not sure how you manage to keep this running but you obviously do and it's clearly a whole lot of fun. Love those latest (most recent should I say) videos.

Chipboard and OSB aren't suitable for outdoor use without some form of protection as you've discovered. The OSB sheets seem to have become popular for shed floors and roofs and with a covering of roofing felt they might last a good while but exposed to the elements they'll quickly deteriorate, especially when they're in strips just a couple or so inches wide. All timber is expensive these days but there's no substitute for getting quality materials that, once protected, will last a number of years. Having said that, a lot of the fun of an outdoor layout is trying to keep it running and battling the elements and that's what you seem to be doing and doing well from what I've seen. I'm afraid that I might have given up by now but it's good to see you persevering with it and keeping us all duly entertained.

I do enjoy trying to get the best from a loco by adding additional weight etc where it's possible to do so. You've made an excellent job with the Dean and it's good to see it with a decent train in tow.

[traingeekboy]

Two things. Not sure if I mentioned it before, but that power truck looks distinctively like what my Lima's have in them. They really do run nicely once taken apart and properly greased.

And regarding the temporary quality of your layout vs others. Well planned/weather resistant/ permanent is just a set of lies we tell ourselves whilst designing/building. I would say that nature always has other plans.

But if you want to go more weather worthy, here's a property for sale. I'm quite the pack rat and everything looked a bit too tidy for me so I decided to pass on it.

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I think what you guys call OSB is what we call chip board. It has very visible big chunks of wood in it, as opposed to the MDF or fiber board.

I forage for all my layout lumber. If you look around you'll see smaller than as sold size pieces that people are throwing away. I haven't paid a cent on materials and consider it part of my personal rules of layout building. Ok, I think I bought the water putty I used on my platforms and a couple other small things.

[roddy]

But if you want to go more weather worthy, here's a property for sale. I'm quite the pack rat and everything looked a bit too tidy for me so I decided to pass on it.

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Your video reminded me of this in a park less than 10 miles from me.

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[traingeekboy]

Very nice and it's American outline as well! Now that's strange.

We have a local amusement park that is decrepit and truly falling apart. Yet they have a rare collection of loco's

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