Dave

Correct the test forum is totally seperate from here so you need to regiter there to be able to see inside it.

It is only a test forum a present so there is not a great deal of content there.


cheers brian.w

As Brian says it is only a test forum for the members on here,  including yourself of course, to log into and test the facilities that are available. For the exclusive use I might add. We have the use of it for 30 days and we have about two weeks left. At the end of the 30 days the forum will be deleted by it's owners and everything on there will be gone.

That looks MINT!! Very impresive! :wink:

We had a lot of fun shooting that video as none of the track was wired up for most of it! With some help from the misus the trains were pushed by hand. If you watch it again you can see the train enter the station then speed up due to my misus letting go of the coaches and allowing them to roll downhill into the tunnel. At least the bridge was at the other side (minus track) preventing a mini 'tay bridge disaster' with the pond! The cameras that are now installed on the railway were used in conjunction with a microphone stand to get some of the shots. Just as well that I have more than one 86 electric as I replaced the power bogie with a dummy for the video. Only the last shot of the train entering the station was actualy powered. The second video was even more complicated as by this time I had tempoarary wired up the rails. The video was shot using short video clips on my ordanary camera. The track at this time still was not completed so the trains ran past the camera and straight off the rails! :lol: I am in the planing stage for video three. Just need to persuade a member of my family to lend me a DV camcorder and finish composing some background music. At least all the track is now there for the trains to run on!! :lol:  :wink:

Forgot to mention about the dockside area! This is at the end of the branch line that starts beside the parcels depot. This addition to the heatherburn 'empire' will be a future project and so far I have managed to resist working on. The only work that has been done on this section is to install the scalescenes dock walling……

The branch will have a scotish feel to it with large logo 37's in control. At the back of the dock area will be a station with a run round loop. For the building I quite like the look of the new station building from scalescenes. This will blend in perfectly with the rest of the layout. Access to the station/dock area will be through a small tunnel that will help to discuise the gradient linking it to the main layout. Another area not mentioned is situated behind the TMD. This is a small oil terminal again a scalescenes kit using an old paint pot as a base.

A man of many talents and determination. No doubt about it.

This is a amazing build, i am just gob smacked each and every time i look. As for the wife letting go of the train, i thought the vid had been speeded up by a fault on my comp at first  :D . Look forward to more and i like the oil cylinder for a oil refinery.
Phill

This weekend has seen me stuck on call so this has ment spending the weekend working on the railway waiting for the phone to ring. :lol: I decided that it was about time I finished off some of the work on the indoor section. Another reason was so I could take a few pics and send them to scalescenes. Anyway work has concentrated on the canal area. For starters I thought something was missing from the area. One cardboard tube some card, double sided tape and brick paper and I made myself a blue peter chimney! The only problem is that it looks great on the layout but I can't fit it in any of the pics!! :D Heres my best attempts including a Fred Dimnah shot from the top…..

The black cable sticking out of the top is for the red flashing light. :wink:
The other main features finished off are the road bridge and second warehouse. The warehouse has had a glass porch added to make it look like it's been converted to flats. The road bridge has had the parapet walls finished of and work has now started on the embankments on the other side…….

I have to say that thsi is my favourite area of your layout and its gets better every time I see it. Like the glass porch.

John
RJR

Thanks John. After some careful thought I have had a rethink about the area behind the canal scene. Origanaly there was going to be a viaduct linking the canal area to the TMD. This was to allow access to the lower level storage sidings. However I have decided to do a bit of remoddeling. The viaduct has been removed and a hill is to take its place. This will eventualy have some houses built on it and possably another warehouse and will provide the perfect backdrop to the canal section. I have mocked up the new section with some old laminate flooring peices and scrap wood and placed some hornby houses on top. Now the canal looks like its at the bottom of a hill with the town behind. Watch this space..... :wink:

The railway has now been added to the links page at scalescenes.com with some pic's in the gallery. 8)

Dave

on your outside section near the viaduct where you have used plaster or some other compound have you drainage holes at certain points?

I know when it rains even with track with ordinary sleepers on a flat bed water collects and with yours i would imagine between the rails must be a good water collection point, Or do you perhaps not run at all when it is wet?
cheers Brian.W

No there are no drainage holes although the railway dries out pritty quickly for some reason. From the summit of the line(where the three arch viaduct is)the water runs downhill anyway. My inspiration for the line happened years ago in my teens reading about the daventry garden railway. The railway is the one in the peco publication. Anyhow I remember reading how the trains could still run in the rain but how tap water shorted out the power. Somthing to do with the minerials in the water apparantly! I have found this is true as i've ran a couple of test trains while the track was damp. I dont run when its raining or a lot of standing water as the gears on the motors dont like getting wet. My biggest water problem is caused by the dogs peeing on the track turning the rails green! :lol:

Dave

I have lines that run out of my railway shed around the top of the garden and back to the railway shed its not developed like yours and certanly does not look scenic as i stopped working on it really over 2 years ago.

I have noticed that the track does not tarnish as much outside as much as it does inside most of the outside track i have is still bright you tend to get a bit of what looks like copper rust on the side of the rails.

Have you run larger diameter cables further down the garden to compensate for voltage drop or is the supply more equilised from the controller point than one might think?

cheersBrian.W

Do I detect a garden railway in the planning stage? ;-)
No I dont have large cables for the power. At the moment the control system is still in the planning stage. I have fed the garden section with 24vdc from a switched mode supply. With a loco on the track the voltage drops to about 20-21v. I did this mainly to get my APT to run as this has been rebuilt with two power bogies in one of the power cars. The other power car has been altered to act as extra pickups. Since this experement the track is now fed via a gaugemaster panel mount controler and the APT is going to be rebuilt with a better drive system! The gaugemaster feed's power directly into the middle of the garden section with power for the garage section provided by an old hornby controler. The track in parkway station has been wired 'cab control' style but uses a double pole changeover relay to automaticly change over between the diffrent power supplies. Operation of the relay is via reed switches and so far has worked quite well.;-)

Dave

Have you re motored the APT with higher voltage motors?

Or do you find just overvolting them doesnt cause much heat problems.

cheers Brian.W

B. Did'nt have any heat problems with overvoltage however the bogies on the APT power cars are cast metal unlike the flimsy plastic bogies on the trailer cars. The biggest problem with the APT is the articulated bogies derailing. I was thinking of gluing some weight inside the bogie frames to help keep them on the track although another idea was to ditch the power bogies in the centre of the train and instead fit a couple of black beatle motor units to the articulated bogies. ;-)

Dave

How about magnetising the wheels on the unpowered bogies that may hold them down better.

Of the top of my head im not sure how to magnetise them thou.


cheers Brian.W

If you rub a magnet on metal it makes the matal magnetic ? so rub a magnet on the wheels ?

John
RJR

That might work except for one small detail. The track is nickel silver! Would proberly work on the old hornby steel track though. ;-)

First heres some dodgy pics of the area to be rebuilt……



I managed to get some points at the weekend from a model show at locomotion in shildon. I still need to get them laid first before work can proceed on the remodeling however I did manage to build the scalescenes small station kit last night…..



This will eventualy be used on the dock area that will be known as albert dock.;-)