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Leasingham Poacher


shaung75
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Bleugh, hadn't thought about that :(

I guess as I always had at the back of my mind I was going to wire for DCC with droppers I wasn't going to bother with bonding, but I suppose as I'm running DC for the short term then I better had. I guess I shouldn't moan too much, at least it'll be more reliable in the future with droppers and bonding.

Cheers Chris

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You've made a lovely job of the track laying with nice flowing curves. One thing that does shout out to me is the lack of sleepers underneath the rail joiners a.k.a. fishplates. Did you realise that you can slice the chairs off the sleepers with a sharp craft knife so that the fishplates rest above them? I think it would look so much better but perhaps I am being picky. Alternatively, you could just slide a couple of cosmetic sleepers under the joins, again, slicing the chairs off first.

Very impressive progress in such a short time.

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Thanks Riddles. I didn't think about just removing the chairs of the sleepers to be honest, will remember that for next time. All of the removed sleepers have been kept though, I just didn't have time to fill them in before Ben came home.

I'm happy with the way the main straight flows but I'm not so sure about where the station is going to be - if you watch the onboard shot its a bit "sharp left, straight, sharp left, straight, sharp left". You don't notice it when viewing normally though, but I'm still unsure about keeping it that jerky in the long term...

 

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shaung75 said:

...I'm happy with the way the main straight flows but I'm not so sure about where the station is going to be - if you watch the onboard shot its a bit "sharp left, straight, sharp left, straight, sharp left". You don't notice it when viewing normally though, but I'm still unsure about keeping it that jerky in the long term...

It's always exaggerated on video Shaun, especially with onboard camera type shots. I suppose what really matters is how it looks to you when viewing it. Mind you, there used to be some track out on the mainline that almost threw you out of your seat so in some ways it not un-prototypical.

Jerky running was something I personally set out to try and avoid and that's why I tried to keep curves to a minimum radius of 6-7 feet. Even that's tiny by true scale measurements but there's only so much we can do in the space we have available. I always use large radius points for the same reason but even they're very sharp and unrealistic when you see trains negotiating them but as I don't have the time or ability to scratch build my own pointwork it's the best I can do.

Do you think it's the sharpness of the curves or that you feel you could have laid the track better?

Looking at your video I'm wondering if you've tried running in each direction round the curves at the same time? Your track on some of the curved sections looks to have very little clearance for coach overhang. Can you get vehicles to pass in opposite directions over the sharpest areas without coming into contact with each other?

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I think it's just my OCD coming out since seeing the onboard. As I said before, when looking from above as you would normally the curves look absolutely fine - I think I'm worrying over nothing. Like you mention, the camera exaggerates things and as it was only cheap (£5 off amazon) the field of view isn't brilliant either.

To be honest, if it wasn't for the fact that I want 4 lines going through the station (I want somewhere to 'park' the trains on view) I would use the whole width of the boards and smooth the curves out a lot more. I was thinking about using 3 lines with 'Y' points to smooth it out a bit, but that brings in the possibility of collisions.

mick said:

Looking at your video I'm wondering if you've tried running in each direction round the curves at the same time? Your track on some of the curved sections looks to have very little clearance for coach overhang. Can you get vehicles to pass in opposite directions over the sharpest areas without coming into contact with each other?

I used the Peco gauge thing with streamline spacing and it gives just enough clearance on all but one bit of track. Even then it is such a small glancing blow it doesn't affect running, and thankfully it's on a section of track that's going to be replaced with points so I'll address it then. I ran trains in the opposite directions for 10 minutes and they were only at that spot once during that time so I'm not going to worry about it too much for now

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I fancied a bacon sandwich for lunch so popped up the road to our local farm shop (as they sell the best bacon in the world) and as they also double up as a garden centre I ended up walking away £10 worth of plants as well. This is one of the main reasons I was attracted to the hobby out in the garden rather than up in the loft, good looking scenery added for very little time, effort and cost - I'm amazed how such a little thing can start to make a rough looking layout start to look so much better

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Looking good Shaun, yeah that is what attracted to the outdoor railway as well, I shifted the spiral out into back side garden to go around the plants just like you have done and the bottom track heads out into another side garden, would like to one day go right around the whole house into the front garden.

I did have one of those Deltect 55class locos , will have to get another one, slowly building up my British rail collection, would like a second Bachman Virgin Super 5car DMU set Doctor Who, got the Cross Country set, very much like our EMU sets.

Cold morning over here, winter is here, to a nice 30 degree day, only leaves me to do a few hours work on my layout gets darker as well, dark before 6pm.

Keep the good work up, Tony from down under.

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Adding plants alongside the layout, and as a backdrop to it, was also one of the things that attracted me to an outdoor railway. There's no way an indoor layout can compete with a thoughtfully planted border outdoors. There are loads of plants suitable for adding to the lineside and they quickly become established often to the point that they take over the tracks if you let them. I don't know much about gardening or about individual plants and their care, and I'm hopeless when it comes to 'garden design' but it's another added interest to a garden railway.

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  • 1 month later...

Well I've given myself a couple of months off from the layout and I think it's about time to crack on again. Well, when Summer decides to pay a visit anyway! I've still been lurking on here and I'm amazed at how much progress some people have made in such a short period of time!

I've just placed my order with Hattons for another box of flextrack, 6 points, 3 crossovers and a few packets of joiners - £170! It still sickens me how much track costs for what it is, but moaning aside that'll now give me enough track to get down to the shed and back with hopefully enough left over to convert the station area to either 3 or 4 lines. Even 2 months later I'm still undecided!

I've been "umming" and "arring" at type of baseboard to use in the shed and trying to work out if I can acquire some for free from somewhere, and when my wife suggested getting a new set of wardrobes for our bedroom to replace my ancient thing the problem was solved! I don't think I'll bother adding cork to the board unless the noise of the locos running on it can be heard from the garden; I won't be spending time in the shed while they're running and it's only going to be used as a fiddle yard to hold the trains rather than a scenic area.

So the plan of action:

1. Get the remaining couple of posts into the ground towards the shed

2. Cut the baseboards to shape and bitumen coat

3. Fix the boards in place and felt

4. Lay boards in shed and cut access hole

5. Re-roof and declutter shed

6. Lay track

Sounds easy when you list it out like that :? Looking forward to getting back into the construction side of things again though!

Shaun

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Construction has finally restarted on the Poacher Line, I'm resigned to the fact that given how expensive things are and only allowing myself £50 a month to play with, there are going to be periods of inactivity. Ah well.

Only the two points and crossing laid today as there's not much point putting down too much track until the rest of the boards are in place, but I needed that to give me tue enthusiasm to get back on with it :-)

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Its suppriseing how much you can do on a tight budget, and once you get started you find you get a lot done over a short period as well. I find that l do nothing for a while then you get a sunny day and go mad.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I know I said there wasn't much point laying down too much track until the rest of the boards are down, but the problem is that it's been raining here every weekend that I can work on the layout, and the one day that we have sunshine (today) I'm stuck indoors messing around with flat-pack furniture! So sod it (gruble grumble) I've been out for an hour laying points on the other side tonight.

I've had to reduce the radius of the chord down to 3rd radius to get them in though, I'd originally planned for the geometry of set-track points as I didn't have streamline at the time. It's a shame, but I've tested with the locos/rolling stock I have and all works well so I'm happy. Was hoping to get the 'wye' junction down as well but I've gone and misplaced my bag of track pins.

Ah well...

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Hi Shaung75, looking good, you could of used a short Peco crossover in stead of the long one, all to do with the angle of the cross over, then you could of used larger radius curves.

That is a pain with it raining every weekend, down side to garden railways of any scale, mine is a modular set up designing it so I can join some of the sections together and run a train in under the pergola when it is raining, being like that over here as well. I am trying to finish the main spiral, Saturday we had a federal election and I was booth captain at a polling booth all day to after 9.30pm at night doing scrutineering 15 hours all up

It will be Christmas time before I will be able to run a train around the whole layout, looking forward to that big moment.

Tony from down under.

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  • 7 months later...

Well it's been a while since I was last on here and I'll be honest and say nothing much has changed unfortunately other than where the two pairs of points lead off from the loop in the above picture, they were connected a week after the photo was taken. My wife became pregnant with our second so ultimately funds were diverted from the railway to higher priority items. However, now my daughter Frankie is safely with us and I'm taking 9 weeks off in the summer for paternity leave, construction can resume :)

Plan of action hasn't changed from June, however at the moment I'm looking into DCC options and after doing some research I'm going down the DIY route and and building my own basestation using DCC++. I'll start off a separate thread on the subject but basically it's a system built from an Arduino Mega with a motor shield, controlled using JMRI, and gives the options of integrating sensors and automation scripting. I already have an Arduino but the shield and a decoder are on order so I'll get to have a play soon.

Anyway, thought I'd swing by to say "hi" again. Excited to be cracking on again!

Shaun

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It's been a lovelly day today so I've managed to get outside for the first time of the year - winter and Doris have not been good to the garden! Still, after a bit of tidying and creosoting of the shed it would have been rude not to get the trains out.

As you'll see on the seperate DCC++ thread I've managed to get it built and working, so I'm really rather chuffed. I didnt't test it out on the layout though as I only have JMRI (the DCC software) installed on my desktop and not on my laptop, I'll be getting that sorted ready for the next good weather day.

Good afternoon out, enjoyed it :-)

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Great to see you up and running Shaun. Thomas and Percy can certainly motor.

With the weather beginning to warm a bit up I hope there's a lot more activity on the forum soon and more opportunity for us all to get back outside. It'll be good to catch up with how things stand with everyone.

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Thanks Mick, they're not exactly running at scale speed but that's what you get when you hand over control to a two year old I guess! Where the points join at the bottom of the picture (which have had the rails bonded), it has electrically connected the inner and outer loop for now so both trains were running off the same power supply, meaning I couldn't independently control their speed :D

 

 

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It looks like he's getting to grips with it well enough. :)  I've got a very 'loved' Thomas that I've had since I was a kid, that i'll be using as a test loco on my outdoor layout ;) I used to have Percy as well, but i'll be damned if I know where he went... 

 

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