Thanks guys the fibers are all Owens fault as he mentioned them at the Darlington exhibition. Mine started life as one of those batery powered novelty lights that had colour changing leds in the base. I got them half price when woolies were closing down. Ron the stencels were done on the PC using the picture it software. Basicly I mesured the signal set the ruler in the tool bar to mm then drew a black box. Then I added the letters in white over the box then to allow for error I enlarged the box without changing the size of the letters.

Oh is that all you did Dave, so eay aint it, :roll:. I think now mate.

Well done anyhow on them. A clever idea, who would thought from novelty lights to signals on the railway.

Phill

The great thing about posting on forums is you can look back and see how your layouts devlop. After looking back over the past few months of the garden railway im looking forward to getting some more work done on it. With BST starting tomorrow and all the major construction work done on Potters lane work will start again on this mamoth project shortly with the aim of having an open day sometime this year! :roll: ;-)

With the weather nice and sunny again today I decided to do a bit on the garden railway. First job was to clean up the track bed as it was burried under soil and muck. Next job was to repair the viaducts as the sides were starting to come off! I did take some pics but they came out blured. :roll: To fix the sides I drilled into the piers and inserted some rawlplugs and screws. The mortar 'balast' has come loose as well proberly due to having two big falls of snow sitting on it! The rest of the track is in pritty good shape and shouldn't take much to get trains running again before the summer rains start. With the viaduct sides now fixed back on attention turned to the wiring runs. Origanaly I had a 6 core alarm cable running beside the line that operated the signals. This was only a tempory set up so with the weather being nice I decided to fit the rest of the junction boxes and conduit. I just need to find a sutable enclosure now to house the working bits for the level crossing as the conduit will loop in and out of this box. Once this box is fitted I can then wire all the signals again. ;-)

Well done for getting some work done on the main layout Dave... wish I could say the same for myself! Newcastle Emlyn is rather neglected at the moment.

Latest on the garden railway…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2a3HS45W8k

Enjoy!! ;-)

:wow:Happy:wow

Dave, now that was impressive. Those large curves sure make the difference in the way the train looks. Much more realistic.

Wayne

Great video Dave, but where did you find that muzak? C G C G …. the vid deserves something more lively! IMHO of course

mikey

Excellent video!!! When those trains fly along that high edge,it scares the bejabbers out of me! I'd be worried about locos going over the edge!
  Have you thought of a safety rail???
Still bloody impressive,though.Nice one.

Cheers,John.B.

The railways future is hanging in the balance at the moment. After over two and a half years construction it's still no where near sorted and i've had enough. Apart from the fact that I was planing to do a video shoot when the local yobs decided to ride a motorbike up and down the grass behind the house. Just when it quitened down the local kids then decided to kick a ball around using the fence as a goal. All my locos need rebuilding as they struggle up the hill with any stock on so im fed up!! Not to mention sods law that says that a loco will derail once a camera is pointed at it! Carn't help thinking there has to be a better hobby that crawling around outside on the floor in all weathers :roll:

Dave you can not do this. Just take time away from it, maybe concentrate on the indoor stuff and your new adventure, come back later, maybe a few month and start a fresh.

It is such a lovley railway it be a shame for you to destroy it now.

Phill

I have spent a while looking back through this thread and have found the history and development of Heatherburn to be a very fascinating read.

What you are creating there is an unusual project which has a lot of hard work and good ideas clearly put into it.

Now is not a time to abandon the dream.

I share your frustrations in as much as my layout is also outside and , although not fully exposed to the weather, it does suffer for being out there and sometimes so do I.  Any work under the boards always involves a fight with the entire local spider population and often some other critters as well.  Even running trains - something which a casual observer takes for granted - usually means a good de-spidering session first and the removal of leaf and other natural debris.

There are stages where no matter what you seem to do - even after hours of work - you don't seem to have got any further.  That can be very testing.  I have walked away several times and done something else for a few weeks before slowly getting some enthusiasm back for the railway.

Aside from the practical issues of operation what plans do you have for garden maintenance?  There are some nice looking baby trees in there at the moment but what happens when they grow?  Do you have in-built access points for gardening work?

I look forward to the next chapter in this story, whether it comes sooner, later or eventually.  Good things don't happen overnight.  Take your own time and things will fall into place as you go along.

Dave

leave the garden alone until the sun is shining in a month or so. you built it to sit out and enjoy the trains running, it is still to cold to sit out and enjoy anything at the moment.

I have decided that the only way with the garden railway is forwards so its future is secure for the time being at least! The past few days I have tried to stay off the internet and work on the layout. At the moment work is concentrating on building and installing the OHLE on the outdoor section between the garage and parkway station. Eventualy I want to use this section of line to shoot a promo video for westcoast miniatures so hopefully by this time next week the wires will be up. Pics in due course. ;-)

Sorry no pics as yet its been a stressfull week! The gantries have now been fitted between the garage and the station approch at parkway. Last weekend I got some brass rod to make the registration arms so hopfully I will get round to fitting these this weekend (provided I fix the car's handbrake first!). With the gantries up the railway is starting to look the business so once the wires are added it will look awsome! I have plans to model a feeder station between the bridges at parkway complete with neutral section, etc.

I have mentioned elseware about building a 'dolly' to mount a video camera on. A few years back I tried to get into producing videos of concerts, etc. At the time I was working as a cctv engineer and had designed and built a mobile video editing suite in a small flightcase. The system was based around a panasonic digital video mixer and a dvd recorder. The lid of the case had three small lcd monitors fitted for veiwing both video cameras and the record out. Camera 1 started life as a camera module in a cctv dome camera and was fitted to a standard camera tripod via two model servos. These were operated via radio control and worked realy well. This allowed the camera to be placed either on stage or at the far side of the hall. For camera 2 I used another old dome camera module. This one was complete with 360deg movement as well as tilt up/down. This was hardwired to a small handheld control box that I made and was usefull for getting diffrent camera angles as I could look at the stage and then spin it round to the audence. The trick was to fade from this camera to the radio controled one then spin it round before fading back. The last time I used the equipment I filmed a country and western concert. For the show I built a 10 foot long rig with a moving platform and mounted camera 2 on it. Anyway after much frustration I couldn't get the platform to move very well so it was scrapped. One upshot of this was I had used 00 flexitrack to mount the platform on and also to feed power/control signals. The platform ran on dapol dmu bogies and used five seperate lengths of track side by side giving me ten connections between the rig and camera. Upon scrapping the track formed the basis for the first section of garden railway. Anyway after digressing slightly I still have the wheels, etc for building a push along rig that can be positioned along side the track. This will give me some good shots of my electric locos running under the new OHLE.

Back to the layout… I have also run some more cables from the main board to the control panel. The main board is a big piece of 3/4" chipboard screwed to the wall by the door and has all the power supplies fastened to it. One of the power supplies is a 24vdc switched mode jobbie! To control trains out in the garden I have modified two old hornby controlers. The speed controlers have been disconected from the old transformer and are now wired to the 24v supply. This gives me a bit more power on tap for the garden section and works quite well. The old transformer has not been wasted however as its output is now fed to the panel mounted gaugemaster controls for the indoor bit. The 24v is also fed to the panel to light the 48v bulbs in the panel switches. There is still a lot of wiring to do as the full panel needs wiring up but I need to install all the point motors first (if I ever get a propper job again!)

Drifting off slightly again I was given a peco turntable last week that rachels dad had got from a car boot for £3. I would like to use this on the layout and so far can only find one place to fit it. This is in the corner of the tmd area although it would require a bit of a rebuild to make space for it. On a more positive note I still have a nice 24v motor and gear assembly (ex cctv camera skip salvage) that runs great on 5v. I did use this on my old n gauge layout for the turntable so I know that it will work ok. For indexing I would use magnets/reed switches. Might even give me the push to get a nice kettle to haul the white roofed mk 1's that I want! :lol:   :roll:   ;-)

Ok some pics at last. First heres the first bit done last year note the laminated backscene is holding up quite nicely…



Next the two new gantries looking towards the garage. There is another to be added when I can source so more scrap rail for the posts..



The first new gantry going the other way is this one next to the bridge….





The other side of the motorway bridge…



moving further up the line…





The feeder station will be between these two gantries…



Overall view…



Now Phill these are for you. These are the tesco lorries I mentioned in your post about the tanker and for Â£1.50 each they are a bargan! The yellow merc is a cararama 50p charity shop…..









 

Great pictures Dave. That's a lot of gantries.

Thanks, Dave.  I enjoyed those pictures.  I guess we all would dream of our railway running for miles.  You've done it.  It must feel great.

nice photos Dave i presume you had a good running session today

cheers Brian

That's right Max.  Mine run about 24 ft per lap
 Looking good, Dave.

 Mike