Trackmaking XXIX

A session out in the Man-sion at the weekend saw the point actuators for board 1 progressed a bit more. I had thought about how I was going to mount the switches, and after wondering about how I was going to cut and drill aluminium sheet, finally decided on my old fall back, bits of plywood. the switches were mounted in place with wood screws, and the cabling was held in place with computer cable tidier naily thingummies. This seems to be ridged enough but I will add some glue to hold everything in place as well.

'Dead sexy that is....'

Compared to my normal work its almost tidy. It also seems to work OK.

I'm going to have to sit down and make a list of the jobs that I need to do. Things occur in a bit haphazard order at the moment and that has to change at some point if I want to get the whole thing running by the end of the year. The overall target is the convention at Easter next year, and that's going to take a bit of doing, without mentioning the locomotive roster.....

Boxfile II; progress

With all my modeling stuff being relegated to the back of beyond behind the garage, modeling in the evenings has become a bit harder compared to Nelson. In the old days I could model while watching TV from the spare room and being on call to top up the lady of the houses wine glass when required. This now requires a phone call (no, I'm not joking :v). To cap it all off, its rather chilly out there. However, there are some jobs which can be achieved indoors in the warm and in earshot/dispensing. Today's job is a good example.

Having sorted out the baseboards for the boxfile layout, it was time to start sorting the track out. This involved the now time honoured method of laying out the sleepers on double sided tape. Instead of doing this on the workbench, I'm going to attempt to do it all in situ. After a couple of hours this was all sorted.

Here's how it looks all laid out at the moment. As you can see, its almost 4' long.
(W wagons added for visual interest).


Despite this it all still fits into the box.


The more astute of you will have noticed that one of the crossovers straddles 2 baseboards. this was unfortunately a necessary evil. Its either going to work or not.

While sticking the sleepers down, I was also thinking about the points themselves. As this is all going to be infilled with concrete style stuff (and I'm not sure what yet, but I'm trying to avoid cardboard) I'm wondering if I can go with a tramway style point with only one switchblade and get that to work, as its very common on infilled trackwork like this..
I'm also going to use code 55 rail. Code 40 would be nice, but its only going to get buried so there is not much point in wasting it. Plus code 55 is much easier to work with.

And I'm not yet ready to reveal how the base boards will be joined together, or how I'm going to actuate the points. you will just have to wait...

So, how are everyone else's layouts coming along?

Co-opted in

Last weekend, At the invitation of another modeler, I took a bit of a road trip. After passing through 3 of the longest speed bumps in the country (namely Masterton, Carterton and Greytown), I arrived at my destination, Featherston and more accurately the Fell museum. I've been co-opted to help with completing the N gauge model of Summit by B 0-4-4-0 of this parish. He has put quite a bit of effort into the scenery and another local modeler has built some nice houses for the railway settlement. My job is to sort out the rolling stock (apart from the locos). I've been presented with a large amount of old rolling stock that ,while domiciled in a box labeled NZ120, is actually built to a scale of 3mm to the foot. This is the 'British' TT scale. Why, I've got no idea. Unfortunately, so is the model. We 'proved' this by placing some of the 3mm rolling stock on the layout, and then some of my 2.5mm rolling stock. The smaller scale stuff just looked completely wrong, and was lost in the yard.

So, squirreling the boxes of stuff home, and inspecting it in the cold light of day.
First up, Its all made of balsawood and card, and its very well made.


4 Vr refrigerated wagons. Impressively well made ladders and nicely detailed ice hatches.


A collection of Uc wagons. Wood tanks with paper and card details.


4 S sheep wagons. these are very impressive, even down to the wires. The roof walks are a bit bendy, but I'll replace those with strip wood


T callte wagons, a Ua gas holder wagon and Zp vans.


A 47' car-van.The detailing is especially fine around the windows, and its all square as well.


47' van.


This demonstrates how much larger these models are than Nz120 models. End on view of 2 47' vans.

There are also some locos.


Dg's, again all card and balsa wood. The bogies are from old Lima models which are best used for stationary models.



A De sans bogies. I'm torn as to which loco to use as the De gives a 3 year time window, where the Dg's are only really 6 months in 1955.

There are also some Lc-2's, a few 4 wheel vans and some other bogie wagons.

B 0-4-4-0 has also been busy, working on the Fell vans. He has made a master and gone a bit nuts casting them.


I think this is the total number of Fell vans ever built. For a first attempt at casting its very good.

So, what I have to do is tidy the wagons up and sort out the running gear. Fortunately its to be a static display so nothing needs to work.

out and about

On my way to work each morning I have noticed that I cross an old level crossing. This is part of the old Wellington and Manawatu alignment, and was replaced in the 1960's with a new bridge about 200m further downstream. Today the old mainline is a cow path.

Trackmaking XXVIII

(Back again with today's roman numeral lesson. As an aside, I was looking at some acronyms at work last week and on picking up one sample I just translated it as 'Oh, that's 1950'. That got me odd looks from my workmates).

I managed to get some time out in the shed today, and made some more progress on the wire in tube system. Magikan was on the money this morning and a visit to Jaycars scored me the requisite DPDT micro switches. I also picked up some piano wire on the way home.

The main problem is that I had foolishly set the track down in a few places in order to hold everything together for the shift This bit will be edited out if its ever a journal article). This then had to be undone and carefully lifted to allow me to cut into the foam to lay the curtain rail into it.


The more perceptive of you will be wondering why I didn't lay the curtain rail under the ply baseboard. My main concern against this is that the acting wire coming up through the baseboard would have too much flex to throw the points properly. This is something I've observed with using tortoise switch machines to throw stiff points (which these hand made points can be afflicted with). When everything goes back together it looks like this.


I had to cut the outside plastic layer off to get the tubes under the rails. I've covered the exposed coils with sellotape as my gut feeling is that these are going to leak glue when its ballasting time.

Next time the switches.

(As a final note, I must do something about the height of the layout. It's killing my lower back)

Trackmaking XXVII: in control

So far I've made a lot of track work, but have made no real decisions about how everything will operate. This last weekend I've made some steps towards this.

In complete contrast to some of the other cutting edge techniques and ideas that have graced the pages of this blog, I'm making a great leap backwards. While I could throw a heap of money at the problem (the tortoise) or gamble on unproven technology (memory wire or servos) I've gone back to something that we used in Otago all those many years ago.

Yes, I'm talking about piano wire in a tube.

OK, so its low tech, but it does work. It also has the plus that it is exceedingly cheap. The curtain wire was purchased in spotlight.

I'd like to buy some curtain wire"
"How much would you like?"
"How much is it?"
" A dollar a metre"
"Oh, make it 2 metres then".

I cut some groves into the track base and laid the tube in. flexing the tube means that you can get all the point throws into one place on the module.


There are 2 options for placing the tube; above or below the trackbed. I've gone with above. The pros for this are that there is less flex possible in the actuating wire. The right angle bend is only 2-3mm below the point throwbar. If it was under the plywood trackbase it would be 10mm. This could lead to the point not throwing completely due to flexing and friction.


The other end of the wire ends with a microswitch (SP/DPDT) to switch the polarity to the frog. All very simple and quite cheap as well.

Found again.

I've often wondered what happened to my models from my 1990's era. They went west in 1997 I think. A couple of weeks ago I was pointed at this website which among other things, a collection of my old models.

So, have a look at a blast from the past, and compare with the photos here. Its all about the big picture, and making sure that the scene is greater than the sum of the parts.

This should at least cheer you all up about your own modeling, and show that there's no reason not to show yours on the forum.