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Jim's Garden Railway


jimbob
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The sun has got his hat on today so outside to play! Have got some exterior sidings to lay today. There sort of carriage sidings for the station but also a fiddle yard to park up stock waiting for use. There will be an other fiddle yard in the shed opposite the station, the plan is to have this station to fiddle yard section covered over so that I can have a small section usable in the winter when weather permits.

Kinky track, will try that, always end up cutting ends of on curves so two birds etc..

Pictures, well the computer still says NO so any help gratefully received. Using a smartphone camera but everything to big to send, treat me as an idiot as I'm not a techie when it comes to these things !

Car? well "Matthew" is coming to fix it tomorrow so his computer tells me, we shall see...........

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  • 1 month later...

laser method device is all I use

but remember no track is perfect level or straight in the real world.

I mark out top end and bottom end of area for the levels and across the width to get a 4 point line

then I use my eye to join up that gives you the odd gradients in the track

works for me.

happy laying

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Hi Jim you are using the wrong thing there it is , or [image][/image] an easy way to post pics is you scroll down to attachments that will get you into your computer gallery then a matter of choosing a pic, that is if you c=are getting the from you gallery on the forum

There is another way scroll down and you will see add a file when you click that ill take you to your computer picture files, make sure the pic isn't too big. After you have chosen the pic you will see one at bottom of the page open it will become a JPG with your pic number right click it and grad it into the post, quite simple when you get the hang of it, there is other ways as well, let me know how you get on, took me a while to catch on

002  a.jpg

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  • 2 months later...

Been buying Dapol/Airfix station canopys (cheap!) on e bay. Was very supprised to see on the Airfix ones a production date of 1959 stamped on them. Can anyone think of any other railway model item this old still in pdoduction?

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There was a thread a coupls of days ago about photo/slide scanner which l seem to have lost so replied here. Several years ago l bought an Optic field 7200, bit pricey but very good. It allows you to crop or zoom in so you can centre etc, slow but good. Any way the warning here is that after 2 year and 2000 pictures someone decided to relive me off my lap top with them all on. Should have backed it up l here you cry, l did, everything on an external hardrive, l"n not stupid, well l am because it was with the lap top and they nicked that as well!!

May start again if l pack up work this year . Defo a retirment project!

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I've had LiveDrive installed on all the family's laptops and PCs. Just install and forget. Everything is backed up whenever you go on the internet. If anything is lost or blows up, just go online with another device and restore what was lost. For the last 3 years, I've only paid £10 p.a. for unlimited storage on every device, but there are even cheaper deals available through re-sellers on eBay. PC World will sell you a Cloud package for £15 to £30 but there are limits on the number of devices or the amount of storage.

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  • 1 month later...

Spent a couple of hours this week repairing winter damage, mainly where fishplates have come adrift and reinstalling the bus wire which l had to remove when l raised the trackbed up at the end of last year. Done the short loop from one side of the shed out and back round to the other side.

Not sure what to do on that side. The track just runs through and out the other side at present. It was used as storage sidings last year but something there kept shorting the circit out so l took it out and just left the main line in.

The choices are now either a through station, a goods yard (l love a good shunt) or an engine shed/ MPD. The areas 10ft X 2ft so l can run wild. Plenty of track and points in stock to do it but the creative jucies just arn't flowing at the moment.

I still need to finish the station canopys as well. Bought loads of Airfix/Dapol ones over the winter but boy are they fiddly to put together! The first completed one, 6 joined together is a right mess, but viewed from a distance has the effect l wanted. I shall see if it comes apart and try again. I am trying plastic weld instead of glue this time (only becase l've run out) so we shall see how that goes.

Also tried out my new (pre loved anyway) Dynamis controller as well. Its not what l wanted, looking at NEC system, but as my other controller went up in smoke last year and the budget wont strech that far yet this was a cheap alternitive. I know it wont work outside very well but it gives me cable free operation in the shed which is at least part of what l wanted, and all for under £100.

Went to the Alley Pally show last weekend and picked up some used point motors to experiment with, inside at least. May try surface mounting at first as theres not a lot of room under the baseboard. Wire in tube with motors hidden in buildings? We shall see.

The Easter weather looks like being a washout so back to the canopy kits lads.

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  • 5 weeks later...

While ago l bought a job lot of colour light signal on line, mixed bag, old style Hornby, even some original Hornby and some part built kit ones, might even be scratch built.

I plumped for colour light as l had this dream of working signals and the electric semi ones were out of my price range. The Hornby ones even l can wire up but the others, jeez l've never seen so many wires to change a signal.

Back to the drawing board l think.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thursday has been declared railway day this week the grass and hedge can grow for a bit longer. First a problem. Been soldering connections to the track for the bus wire feeds. Been no problem before but all of a sudden the solder refuses to stick to the rails. Tried flux powder, cleaning both the track and the soldering iron and even roughing the place to solder to no avail. Any suggestions?

The recent high winds have finally done for the fence at the bottom of the garden and made access to the line round there very difficult for a fat old man like me so need to order some fence panels. This will mean l can wire up that section again and get the whole line back working. At present it only runs on a short (well 25ft section) out and back to the shed. The curve in that area needs sorting as well as the baseboard supports are naff. So l've cut back a pyracanths (?) bush to give me better access hopfully without cutting myself to shreads on its spikes.

The weather looks good through to the weekend so make hay etc....

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Try some practice soldering, wires to copper clad or solder tags. Wires to wires. Anything simple and (in theory) easy. Get your Mo-Jo back and your confidence up.

Watch a couple of You Tube videos on soldering.

Some days I can't solder anything to anything. It's very frustrating.

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Well the railway day did not happen. Wasted an hour on the phone to BT having a Meldrew moment with them, then long queue at post office with E bay stuff by which time the moment had gone. Still hedge cut which means one less job. New doors being fitted tomorrow so another train less day but all looks good for Saturday.

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jimbob said:

...Wasted an hour on the phone to BT ....

A while ago I wasted so much time on the phone to BT customer support that in the end I cancelled my account with them altogether - and even that took me the best part of two hours to accomplish. I hear they've decided to move their support desk back to the UK now so that might improve things a bit but there's no way I'd ever consider going back to them. But saying that, I do have an EE mobile data account and doesn't that come under the BT banner now?

I agree with Griff about the practice soldering. It does give you the confidence to try again. I've also had occasions when for some reason or other the solder just wouldn't stick, even when I felt absolutely sure that everything was clean and the iron hot enough. Frustrating isn't the word.

Weather on Saturday looks good for most of us so hopefully it'll give you the opportunity to get out there.

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Well what a fantastic weekend weather wise, said sitting here with it tipping down outside. That summer dealt with then.

So Saturday contiued doing silly little track fault and after getting stuck in a rose bush (dont ask) got some trains running. Yippe.

When I started the railway it done really as a temporary thing, put up quickly and it sort of stayed and grew. Last year saw the arrivel of the shed and the layout became a bit bigger and permanant. Track cleaning was doing my back in so l raised the trackbed up about a foot. Big mistake, if it aint broke dont fix it comes to mind, and its not been right since. Trouble is nothing was finished everything was "temporary" and l'd get back to it latter and just started something else.

So as time is now not an issue l've decided to go back to square one. The thought of ripping it all up and starting again was rejected but the thought was there. So to start with the station in the shed needs to be leveled out, looks ok but you could turn it it a hump shunting yard quite easy so trip to B & Q for wood (how do they get away with selIing wood thats bent like a boomarang) and the power toys sorry tools are on charge and tomorrow is the start of a new era, maybe. (if the weather holds!).

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Nothing wrong with making changes Jim. We all learn as we go along and even with all the advice available and freely given by other members there's still plenty of opportunity for us to make mistakes and although ripping up track can be a pain in the ass you'll no doubt be glad you did when you see the improvements.

 

jimbob said:

.... tomorrow is the start of a new era, maybe. (if the weather holds!).

Well I'm looking forward to seeing the new era but I hope your weather forecast is better than ours.

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Nothing stops the new era not even rain, draged the gazebo out of the shed and of we went. Supprised my self actually, everything went together square and as planned easy. The idea was that the new base for the staion would be in two 4 foot long section so l could just jack it up a bit and remove the old supports and just slide the new ones in. What l had not taken into account was that the width between the baseboards on the opposing sides of the sheds was narrower than the size of the new supports. Que lots of huffing puffing and good old Anglo Saxon swearing and they went in. Not quite level but much better. At least l can drag my poor old body of the floor now without the risk of everything colapsing. Indoors now with a nice cup of tea and a piece of cake planning day two.

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