The Weekend Railway

[traingeekboy]

and then once you get to youtubing...

">

" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Stanier]

As a child in the 1950s and early 1960s I remember numerous visits to Rhyl Miniature Railway which was then just one of the attractions at the Marine Lake site. Although a shadow of its former self, the RMR is still running, from a Lottery-funded new-build station, workshop and museum. I believe it still uses some of its original steam locos from way back. There is plenty to see on YouTube, but try these for starters.

">

" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and

">

" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; The RMR website is here http://www.rhylminiaturerailway.co.uk/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and there is lots of info in this wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyl_Miniature_Railway" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

BTW I've really enjoyed following the development of the Weekend Railway. When the weather improves, I hope to progress my own 00 garden railway which I have started to 'transplant' from the garden of my previous house.

[Stanier]

Just to add to my previous post, these two photographs give an idea of the RMR as it was (some years prior to my childhood visits).

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Gp9SopwuqMM/TELckBT_ZWI/AAAAAAAAJcA/CcukdPyUsxM/s1600/4.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and http://i2.ytimg.com/vi/9BLkV8HBqbI/mqdefault.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

For those who may not be familiar with the UK, Rhyl is a once popular holiday resort on the North Wales coast.

[traingeekboy]

Love the old photos. Very lovely with the whistle clearly blowing on one loco too.

[Stanier]

Could be a whistle, but more likely a safety valve lifting.

Glad you liked the photos.

[ChrisC]

WeekenderSteve gave me a nudge about the thread, given a bit of my past. I started being interested in railways when I was small with both Grandads super keen and Dad mildly so. So, having had my 00 gauge indoors for 12 years, at the age of 16 I went and got a job working at the local parks railway. Much more fun than stacking shelves! I've put a couple of images below, the first is myself driving the 2-6-0 Willis Engineering narrow gauge prototype, with a good friend on the 0-6-0 tender Canadian standard gauge prototype. I ended up being passed out for steam there before I got my car license.

http://www.miniaturerailwayworld.co.uk/images/Watford.jpg' alt='URL>'>

Second is a better view of the 0-6-0, with me looking grumpy

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3577/3459280550_9d26c955cf.jpg' alt='URL>'>

From that led into a bit of work with miniature railway supplies and looking after track work both at the park and private railways. Hence explaining when the Weekend Railway was being laid the slightly OCD nature of how I wanted to see the track go down (and why I was then volunteered to do such!). You see so many railways from N up to 18" gauge that just don't look right in videos or photos and given our plan was always to make Kellogcam I wanted to see lovely sweeping curves and none of the "Settrack jerkiness" even if you were going to see some stunningly... erm... interesting... permanent way with it. There are a couple of zoo's and theme parks I can think of around Europe that look like big train sets when you watch them run and I always think it's a shame. On the whole, I think we managed to capture it, though I'm sure if we ran the camera on the track right now it'd look pretty awful.

Traingeekboy, that property is nothing short of stunning. Such attention to detail has given what looks to be a lovely railway that will last. Thanks for that video!

[WeekenderSteve]

Back with more mundane matters, as the increasingly misnamed Weekend Railway approaches its first birthday, the question arises: have Winter's depredations turned it into the Weakened Railway?

Sorry, couldn't resist that one.

Back in January I posted some pictures showing the sodden and swollen OSB. It's dried out since then, but it hasn't shrunk back to its original thickness - no surprise there. The mild Winter spared us the hard frosts that might have done more damage.

But apart from the OSB, it all looks more or less as it always has.

As the weather improved and we started thinking about recommissioning the railway, I pondered options for cleaning the track. Manual track-cleaning is never fun, made even harder when you decide to stack your railway vertically - some of the rails are very hard to reach. So I wondered if I could fathom up a way to automate the process. A lightly tarnished track can be brought back to life by the various proprietary cleaning wagons, but the track has to start off clean enough for a loco to be able to propel the wagon. The pigeons round here seem to subsist on a diet of Araldite and Sandtex, so a light pass with IPA-impregnated foam rubber is unlikely to do the job. In fact what the pigeons leave on the track is quite resilient enough to derail trains, never mind interrupting electrical contact.

So I wondered about a self-propelled cleaning system that didn't pick up its power from the rails. I've recently seen a proprietary battery-powered loco on another thread, but on this railway, just buying a thing that works is far too simple.

A bit of experimentation revealed that D-cells in 5-plank wagons just fit within the OO loading gauge, and that four of them was enough to drive my half-cab Pannier at a reasonable speed, so all that was then needed was some short lengths of wire, a couple of croc clips, some elastic bands (to hold the wire contacts on the batteries) and some tape to tame unruly spare loops of wire.

That was the propulsion sorted, so heady with success I cobbled up a wagon that would carry a stiff brush, as the first stage of the cleaning process. The brush could clear physical obstructions, I thought, then an alternative wagon could do a couple of passes with a track rubber, and then we'd be fit to run proper trains.

Some hope. The pressure required on the brush to achieve any meaningful effect was far too much for the loco chassis (running bare for easy electrical access), even when its traction was increased with a great lump of lead ballast. And despite what I thought was an ingenious brush hingeing system, the main thing achieved by the brush wagon was derailments. Plenty of them. Now, when a loco's powered through the track, derailment removes the power source. But when it's powered by on-board batteries, it'll happily jump the rails and proceed along sleepers, timber or anything else until it reaches fresh air. And when the train comprises a string of coupled wagons, in which are resting (unsecured) a string of coupled batteries, trying the catch the whole lot before it plumments groundwards is akin to juggling strings of greased sausages. I imagine. Maybe the sausages are easier. They wouldn't have coupled wheels still churning merrily around.

Here's the benighted contraption, on its only outing:

DSC06105cr65.JPG[/attachment]

We made 4 videos in total: two in each direction, one viewing the track directly, the other watching the battery-train from the separation of a couple of flat wagon chassis, because the relative motion seems to show up irregularities that the direct view misses. As usual, the videos are embedded, with a youtube link below for those who prefer the full-screen experience. There were occasional derailments and clearance issues, which remain in the videos, though I've usually cut out the long wait for the giant hand to descend from the sky and make all well again. At least unencumbered by the brush wagon, the derailed train tended to stay on the trackbed, though you'll hear it clattering over sleepers once or twice.

aZXvupQEKdE

">

" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

9NqO_6skRlw

">

" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

KUt7OcCxSGI

">

" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

L3JhLtjb0PY

">

" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So the track's mostly survived, but needs an awful lot of minor fettling, not least to ease the steep ramps on and off the OSB.

Thinking about those led to the next dangerous thought - could we make an accurate gradient profile of the whole layout? I know what gradients we were aiming for at any given point, but objective and achievement aren't necessarily the same thing. And in any case, it's all moved around a bit since then.

Measuring gradient accurately on a nice sensible open circuit with beautiful sweeping curves might be relatively straighforward; on this tangled contrivance it isn't. Various methods were considered ... and then I discovered what Weekender-Chris had built some years ago for an undergraduate project, and recently rediscovered.

But that's a story that'll have to wait till next time.

[grockle]

Loved the description of the train taking its downward journey. Again the vidoe's give a good insite into this garden layout and all its quirks. Makes a change from the 'must be perfect' brigade. Like me you enjoy the fun side of modelling the railway outside with all its NO NO's and what iffs.

Ian

[mick]

What a journey!!! I haven't a clue where I've been and didn't have a clue where I was going next. I thought we'd done a full loop and then I realised I hadn't been this way before. I'm just glad I don't have to recount the route or give directions.

I don't know how you've managed to create all those levels - I've just got the one to contend with and, half way round, I'm worried I'm already out of line.

Looks a great deal of fun. I certainly enjoyed the videos.

[WeekenderSteve]

Thanks Mick, you've just answered a question Weekender-Chris & I were discussing a couple of days ago. He said we need to post a decent plan of the layout, I said be my guest, it's no easy thing to survey with no fixed points of reference and all the crossings (there are 29 places where the centreline of one track crosses over the centreline of a lower one - not including the yard!). In any case, I said, people have followed the build, they know roughly what happens, and the videos make it all clear.

Chris reckoned not so - and from what you've just said, clearly Chris was right!

Looks like we need to get the coloured pens out, then.

[ba14eagle]

Really pleased to see you chaps back on the forum

I may well be one of the must be almost perfect brigade, when it comes to certain aspects of my railway (ahem), but I find your railway such great fun and brilliantly devised. I am looking forward to some more developments soon

[grockle]

A track plan. This is going to take some serious use of coloured pens by the sounds of it. Look forward to seeing the final results

Ian

[ChrisC]

A track plan. This is going to take some serious use of coloured pens by the sounds of it.

Coloured pens and the most geekery we can work out how to use to get something that looks noddy but being worryingly to scale is the hope

The pair of us have the problem of taking things a bit too far when it comes to data acquisition and processing, as will become apparent when WeekenderSteve comes along with a gradient based post.

[WeekenderSteve]

Right then, in response to numerous (OK, two) requests, plans of the layout. It sounds like such a simple thing, and it would be, if we had a point of reference anywhere. But there's no baseboard, nothing's on the level - and the Fence isn't straight (or vertical) either, it follows the random locations of the tree stumps that support it.

So the first step was to survey the trees. We made various assumptions - like them being round, and vertical, neither of which is true of course, but you've got to start somewhere. All the tree trunks were triangulated from each other, the Shed, Grumpy's rear pillars and a random post erected for the purpose in the middle of the garden, from which a scale plan of that lot could be constructed. The four "levels" of the layout were then drawn freehand on tracing paper placed over that background survey. Chris has turned my pencil tracings into lurid colours, and combined them all into a single plan - so here it is:

Schematic2cr33.jpg[/attachment]

So operationally, it's really pretty simple - it just doesn't look that way in photos, or on videos. The options are basically to run it as two separate circuits (AB upper, CD lower), or set the scissors junction the other way, and run it as a single long circuit, up and down all four levels - which is how most of the battery-train survey videos were done, I think. Except the odd occasion when the train took a 'short cut' through the yard.

The spur off the triangle is the line that runs across the front of the two sheds, left over from the original round-the-garden circuit. Not much use operationally, but a good place to start/stop wagoncam trains.

The AB circuit length is 75 feet (1.08 miles to scale), and the lower CD circuit about 82 feet (1.18m), so the full circuit is about two and a quarter miles.

[grockle]

Thanks for that lads, it not only looks great but I could actually understand it as well. Now that has got to be a first

Ian

[aussietmrail]

Hi WeekenderSteve,

That is some layout track plan going by the colour coding you having the bus wires as a block system, the size is mind blowing also and the different levels.

The big question is what are you using to power the layout and is it DCC, I love the video's too , continuous running, my last layout was designed that way on two levels, since I have also gone the same way outdoor garden railway, my track design is single track running with passing loops, like it that way especially when a friend or friends is over running trains too.

My layout is 54feet long by 24feet wide at this stage, plan to make the width of the layout wider and would love to head more into the garden to get longer running and passing loops.

Saw in one of your earlier posts page two your wife was helping out, is she still interested in the hobby,my wife is not interested at all, lucky just to get stuff out of her when I need to buy it, on the con to buy a replacement 5-pole motor for the second power tender for my Flying Scotsman .

[traingeekboy]

Good to see you back at it. I hope you're having fun with your trains.

[ChrisC]

PW Apprentice on page 2 is my girlfriend, who was taking a break from planning lessons (she teaches during the week) to come and play railways. As to still into the hobby, she says it's less fun now there is no track to lay but does enjoy finding random line side scenery to hide in and around when Steve isn't looking so that it appears on Kellogcam later.

Rather than being into railways, she says she likes playing with interesting things, she has helped (in a useful sense) in getting the engine out of one of my cars before

And she bakes good cakes

[Andrew]

Those maps are really helpful, Steve, for those of us who've been puzzling over your complex, multi-tiered layout, so that we can now see how it all hangs together.

The schematic is particularly helpful in clarifying the operational aspects, and I can now see that your scissors crossover offers an elegant solution to a common problem. I had been toying with having two separate crossovers (facing and trailing) to link my (potential) two circuits but, as you so helpfully point out, a scissors arrangement provides the unique extra option of routeing one train round both circuits indefinitely. It took me a while to work out why the scissors is better than two separate crossovers - it's some property of the geometry that I still can't quite put my finger on, but your diagram shows it very clearly. Thanks for the enlightenment; I'll have to design something similar for my layout in due course.

[aussietmrail]

Hi Andrew,

Didn't know you called the cross overs scissor type, we call them double slip and single slip cross overs in Australia, I have a straight cross over and both of the other type, they sure save space on the module cutting back on extra points. I have done that same so I can route a passenger train from the left hand track to the right hand crossing the middle track, if you have a look on pave 5 of my post Camdle layout you will see the cross overs in the pics.

The single slip cross over is heading into the terminus platforms crossing over to the right hand track and for shunting the locos around the train, on the middle track platform one an two track there is a third track in the middle for the shunting of the locos.