Month: May 2021

Yr Hen Felin & Gorsaf Newydd

Since the last virtual meet-up I have been busy with lots of PVA and scenic treatments so that my original shunting puzzle now looks like this:- and the new station boards at the other end of the layout thus:- and here is the entire layout:- Trains were played this afternoon:- A passenger train had run from the mill and shunted to put the brake van on the rear Later:- A passenger train arrived whilst a diesel hauled train that had been formed during the shunting puzzle at the other end and run round at this end awaits departure:-
The diesel hauled train then ran back to the Mill but was too long for the siding so the light engine could not be released to allow shunting with massive cheating! The end of the day, all locos and stock at one end for putting away, no room to shunt anything. Phil.

Nettles

Despite the new station site still being elevated a couple of feet of the ground (which I will bring up in due course) the nettles are already above track height… There has been a serious lack of weeding in May!

No. 2 Chough had had a reversing problem but upon steaming up to investigate today it had gone away – steamed up twice, no issues at all…

Simon
Moel Rhos

Steaming in the sun

At last – some sunny warm weather! And after several weeks of wet weather with no track maintenance there was certainly a lot of line side gardening and track maintenance to do – about 3 wheelbarrow loads in fact!

During May I took a fancy to Regner’s new steam tram and bought a kit with the intention of running it on some of our Group’s 45mm lines. It went together fairly well and three steam-ups on blocks were done in the shed while the wet weather continued. The first identified that the Regner gas filler is useless. With a Ronson replacement installed, the second identified that the pre-build of the gas regulator had incorporated a scrappy bit of PTFE tape which subsequently blocked the jet. The third run was quite successful. So today it seemed a good chance to have a test run on the track, after re-gaugeing it. Steam was raised quickly and all was well for a couple of minutes – but then it ceased up solid and in the process put the gas flame out! Several further attempts had the same result. And so the engine was returned to the workshop, and the GVT Tank came out.

I’ve been doing some repair work on Sir Theodore – a new pressure gauge, replacing the rear cab spectacle plate that popped out unexpectantly a while back (and putting glazing in plus blacking out the large brass area inside), and trying out the original Accucraft regulator spindle to see if the performance might be better than the TTD one I’d fitted when I put R/C in it. All was well this time and the engine was given a mineral train to try out on the gradients. I think the response to the regulator change was better than previously so I’m hopeful this will be an overall improvement.

Mike Barton

Train shelves

It’s a year since I knocked a hole for the railway to enter the shed and it had always been my intention for this to provide storage for keeping trains coupled up and on the rails to get things going more quickly when I wanted to run something… but since I’d got a couple of yards of track under cover, I lost the motivation to take things further. Even just having one train ready to go makes a huge difference.

But I’ve finally got round to bringing the line round the corner and making my train shelves – these were inspired by the 4mm scale cassette fiddle yard system – but out of necessity (it’s not a big shed!) the cassettes are stored vertically. It’s a space saver and also a money saver – no need to shell out £50 for a pair of points for each storage siding… I’ve ordered enough angle for a couple more shelves already.

Trains sit on aluminium angle gauged at 32mm of course, I’ve printed a flap to sit between them, this firmly locates the cassette with the approach road…

But when it folds back so you can remove the cassette, it acts as a buffer stop, preventing trains from diving onto the workbench…

And on the cassette side of things I’ve printed these pegs that slot into a hole to stop unbraked trains sliding off if I don’t manage to keep the shelves perfectly horizontal as I lift them.

The weak link is, of course, the shelves themselves – they’re wooden (decking board) and some have already warped… in a damp shed there’s no guarantee they’ll keep their shape. I had considered trying to construct them entirely out of aluminium but these seemed like a lot of designing and manufacturing so I went ahead with these as a proof of concept. They also need side rails, which should be easy enough when I’ve decided how best to implement them, and ideally handles so that the centre of gravity is much lower than the point from which one lifts the shelf…

It has occurred to me that a solution to the material issue would be to replace the wood with… eco-ply (aka Flicris) although I’m not sure how resistant to warping it will be. But something to experiment with.

Simon
Moel Rhos

Progress since easter

As I suggested during the Easter weekend virtual event, my sm32 system could grow and indeed it has. Simon has some video of a test train running along the extended system which now forms an end to end layout approximately 35 feet long which is set up on a garden wall. I hope he will be able to add that to this post.

At one end is the shunting puzzle game 8’ long, and at the other a new station 7’ long. Linking these are two straight sections of track on ply boards which are supported within straight sections of my O gauge test trackwith a small bend at the centre. Joining the to ends to this straigt section are curved sections to take note of the curvature of the wall. None of this is intended to live outdoors.

Shown below is the station section a couple of days ago and this morning with the platform painted.

Phil.