Category: Uncategorized

This morning I broke out the soldering iron and resurrected my long disused soldering skills attaching wires to the track. I used T-clips to break into the bus wires I’d strung under the table and connector blocks to take the current to the track. It worked first go and the train went the whole way around … on the outside track.

The other tracks are a bit hit and miss I’m afraid. All those insulator connectors, and I suspect one of the T-clips or connector blocks has not worked as expected as all of the track connected through them remains unpowered.

The three way turnout is going to be a problem too until I get power to the frog – which I suspect means I’ll have to wire it up fully. The single turnouts are easy – the frog takes power from the line which is touching.

Edit: The power problem was in a T-Connector but I just hadn’t seated the wire properly. Five minutes with the multi-meter was all it took to narrow it down.

Today’s task is drilling holes through the foam & plywood top for the servos to activate the points. I’ve got a few weeks before the kit is in to wire them up, but best to do it now rather than try to pull the layout apart later.

I’ve used a felt tip pen that I can poke through the hole in the point to mark the location (moving the point from side to side) and then I’ve drilled a 10mm hole using a spade bit. I’m also drilling small holes to take the wires which electrify the frog.

The 10mm spade bit has made a bit of a mess (heh) but it should be ok once the track is in place and it’s all covered up. I used a 2.5mm drill bit in the dremel to make the holes for the frog & power lines which I will solder to the track tomorrow. I didn’t get as far as I wanted today, but tomorrow’s another day!

I’ve bought some connector blocks which I’ll wire together to make a local bus connection. Pics tomorrow.

Did you ever have one of those “aaaaaargh” moments?

This morning I went back to the model shop to get some more track underlay to complete the layout and I got talking about my setup. I mentioned that the underlay had really quietened the running and it was then suggested that I use insulating foam under it all to really make it quiet.

Initially I was hesitant because it meant lifting all the track & underlay up, putting down the foam and starting again, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a really sensible thing to do. I looked up the foam and found it at Bunnings for $12/sheet at 1200×600. My layout is 1200×2400 so I need four sheets… but wait… my layout is actually 1220×2440 courtesy of the sheet of plywood I used as a table top… so I will need five so I have one to cut up for edges!  I guess I can use what’s left to make a small hill sometime!

The big advantage of the foam, other than the noise deadening qualities, is that I can pin the track to it easily. Thinking ahead, I’m also going to be able to plant trees and stuff in it easily without have to resort to drilling holes in the plywood every time.

I managed (with a little help from my daughter) to slide it underneath the layout without too much trouble and here’s the result:

The two branch lines which finish in the centre are not yet complete.

I’ve used balsa underneath all of the points instead of underlay as advised.

So yesterday I bought the last few pieces of track needed to complete the layout. I’ve ended up with a whole bunch of radius pieces that I’m not using – not sure how that happened but I guess I can save them for the next track 🙂

I’ve decided to nail down the track over foam rather than glue it down. Glue is fine for stuff that you never want to change, but I’m not so sure that the layout will stay the same forever. Also, if I find that I’ve made an error in laying out the track as I have, I can change it relatively easily.

The underlay that I’m using is from Trackrite, an Australian owned company. Trackrite comes in various profiles and I’m using the top one (H505A) which I consider to be the nicest. 10 metres did about half the layout so I’m off to the model shop again today to get another 10m.

To get around the curves, I’m making angular cuts in the foam with a pair of scissors. For a curve of 180° the sum of all the cut angles should add up to 180°. As I’m making roughly 60 cuts per curve, I’m imagining each angular cut at 3° which is working out nicely.  I’m really not getting too hung up on the geometry. Smaller radius curves have the cuts closer together than on larger radius curves.

Contractual dependencies need to be  mapped which will control the way some of the points operate.

For example, points 2 & 3 have a contract with each other wherein when one of them is thrown, the other must match it. Points 2 & 3 are either both straight or both branched.

Points 5 and 6 are contractually dependent as well. When point 5 is branched left, point 6 must also be branched left. When point 5 is straight through or branched right, point 6 must always be straight.

Points 1 and 4 have no immediate dependencies because there is enough track between them and the next point for a train to wait until the all clear signal is given.

For this section of track there are 7 servos required (point 5 uses two), however since 2&3 and 5&6 are dependant, there will be 5 controllers used here.

This morning I completed the layout. I decided against making a three dimensional layout for my first track because I’m more interested in automating it all right now.

The layout has an outside “express” track and three inside tracks which share one line at one end. There are a lot of double turnouts and one triple turnout. The gaps in the track at the ends are because I have a trial version of the software and can’t put more than 50 objects into the plan.

This is version 1.1 of the layout. Version 1.0 used radius 3 track on the inner track at the right hand side and an insulfrog turnout, but I want to use electrofrog on all the points so I had to redesign it. Not sure why there are differences in the track between the two but there are – took me a couple of hours to get it all to fit again.

The track has started going down on the table and tomorrow I hope to make a start on wiring up the bus.

One of the first things I was advised, if I intended to go further with this hobby, was to ditch any Hornby turnouts I had in favour of Peco turnouts.

The Peco ones certainly seem to work better, but they’re different radius to the Hornby ones so it did take a little adjusting.

I bought the Peco Electrofrog points (they have an E in the product code) and I’ll wire them up properly when I get a little further down the track.

I was told (and confirmed myself) that if you buy the track which is in the Hornby Track Kits (A thru F) as individual pieces of Peco track that it works out cheaper! Go figure!

I bought a Hornby East Coast Pullman DCC model train and Hornby Track Pack C set a couple of years ago, put it together in what was then the spare room and played with it for a few weeks watching the trains go around and around a circular track. The train set was very close to one I had when I was a child (a Tri-Ang set that I remember was played with a lot). I don’t know if it was nostalgia that prompted me to purchase it or not.  Anyway, after a few weeks, I then put it away again in its box and did not touch it again. The box got moved around the house a bit, gathering dust, and occasionally I thought about putting it up on eBay, but that never happened.

Skip forward a few years and I had the idea to get the train set out again and set it up. I had some MDF panels that I laid out on the floor, connected up the track and set the trains running. It felt a bit lame, but I found I returned to it every day to look at it and think of the possibilities.

The next task I decided was to set up a table, so I bought myself some pine (19×75) and made a frame and glued and nailed a piece of 9mm A grade ply to the top. The legs I made out of 45×75 pine. The table is what I now know to be pretty standard 4′ x 8′ (1200 x 2400).

I went to my local model train store a couple of days after Christmas and it blew my mind with all the stuff you could get. I bought some track and electrical connectors and headed home to make an interesting (but still simple) layout