A dork? Is that a good thing or a bad thing to be.

See Wikipedia - Dork and make your own mind up!

Aha, not a good thing to be I see. Ah well, never mind.

You were maybe thinking of "Stork" Bob. :lol::lol:  That's either margarine, a bird or something on a flower (although the spelling differs !!)  Does "dork" have as many meanings ? :roll::roll::roll:

Marty, be sure to send a piccy of your shed to John Wiffen at Scalescenes.....:thumbs

Marty,
Lovely shots of the shed and your weathered loco and cattle wagon. Just think…if it were not for those couplings,those shots would be hard to tell from the real thing.
  G'wan….whip 'em off….you know you want to!!!:twisted::twisted::twisted: Fit some nice DG couplings.

Cheers,John.B.:thumbs

[user=285]Alan[/user] wrote:

Peter

That's a very useful experiment :thumbs

I have always used PVA, takes a little longer to dry, but always works, but then I don't have any of the other glues in the shed :roll:

There is an ideal glue sold [yes, a four-letter word I'm afraid…] for gluing polystyrene, in the form of 'coving adhesive'. It's a sort of paste which is also gap filling and dries a lot quicker than PVA on Polly Stireen.

See  Error 410 | Screwfix

It should be better known to modellers and it is really adhesive, in fact, silly Doofers who get it down their shirt front have been known to remove a three-penny bit sized bit of skin and fur together with their shirt at bed time…..


Doug

New Morely Controller, Cab Control Panel Operational and modifications to "the mountain".

So, the madhouse of a retailer's Christmas behind me, several days of lying in a crumpled and exhausted heap on the lounge watching the Boxing Day cricket, a week or so R&R (including modelling) and it's now back on deck.

Nice to be back too but it's going to take me while to get up to speed with whats going on… if I ever do.

It was such a delight to get back in to the layout room after weeks of wistfully glancing in while rushing past.
The Dapol track cleaning car was rolled out of the MOW depot in "vacuum" mode (Stunningly effective but where does all that fluff come from?) and then "cleaning" mode with some isopropyl alcohol as track cleaner.
A train was run on the old controller to confirm all wiring had survived the neglect and then it was full steam ahead adding in the new Morely Controller and wiring up the remainder of the control panel for Cab/block control.

The Morely controller is the N Vesta Zero Two with two controllers, a CDU and handhelds with 2.5m leads and was a Christmas present to ME from ME as I can't seem to get across to T that buying me railway related presents is the preferred option!?

In all fairness the Christmas present to ME from T was a combined Digital radio/Ipod docking station for the railway room to replace the dying 1980's turntable/stereo currently in service.
Since the new radio has a significantly smaller footprint (as well as incomparable reception/quality of sound) and leaves more room for modelling "stuff" on my workbench it was actually quite inspired.

Under the bench it was obvious that there were parts of the original wiring that could have been done better and so it was re-done, improving with practice, there is hope for me yet.

Probably 4 days of wiring, including a couple of hours of solving that elusive short circuit problem, and twin cab/block control was finally instated on the Newcastle Emlyn Branch, something that I had been dreaming about since I started the project, sheesh over 5 years ago!!!! Progress is being made.

The station diagram, probably revision 6, was upgraded, printed and added to the control panel, point levers and isolation switches were numbered and eventually we get this…





and on the inside…





Both sons have been involved in test running sessions, tasked to shunt the goods and the consensus is :thumbs:thumbs:thumbs

Sick of wiring, the east side of "the mountain" is getting some Terra-forming, an ongoing process, new house (Kestrel kit) under construction and in place to provide some scale and a road and bridge block hacked into the hillside roughly where it should be. The trusty tractor is on the road and the Henllan station area on the right.





The CDU in the Morely Controller doesn't appear to have enough grunt to throw the majority of my point motors, mostly single PECO or Seeps and certainly won't throw sets 4 and 5 which are PECO's in tandem.

Could be my wiring, as my points and controllers run back through the same common return, which does work quite happily with the power pack that is currently being used to power the point motors but may require more amps than the CDU puts out.

More thought is required to determine why the Morely CDU won't do the job but at this point in time, trains are running, points are throwing crisply and that is just fine by me.

 

Marty,not too many CDUs will throw 4-5 Peco motors at once & if in tandem, depends on recharge time, sometimes it is cheaper to provide a few more CDU & split the circuits up.
Talk to Richard Johnsson about Peco motors - Mmmm  stand back & he may sell you his Masterswitch.
Even single motors have to be free to move.

Welcome back by the way - this time next month, you may catch up with what has been happening !

These are single Peco motors Ron, in most cases. Power from the CDU through a PECO passing contact lever to the motor and then from the motor to the common return.

I'll try and do up a sketch of my wiring for you to mull over if you have the time?

if you have a meter, can you read the voltage output from the CDU? The yellow light in the console goes out when you operate the passing contact switch then comes back almost straight away? You could ring Aust Morley in Perth 93056358 .

 

PS Rick has one unit - talk to him as well

Yeah, the meter test is on the list and also a seperate peco motor rigged stand alone as a test.

I should be able to nut it out.

I spent a good half an hour at the WA Morely distributors place here in Perth when I picked up the unit.
Nice bloke, currently working on an N gauge branchline too. Several of ChrisT's special edition N gauge loco's in his motive power fleet. It's a small world.
 A member of the "Northern Districts Model Railway" club too. Useful contacts for me.

Rick, any thoughts about the Morley CDU?

:thumbs :wowfor a novice like me on wiring ……… inspiring stuff Marty! Cool!

Keep going Marty, this is looking good!

Mike

Mud pies

The hill at the back of Henllan has been hacked mostly into shape and the first layer of hardshell and colour applied.

The method used involves:

1. Cutting woven and absorbent cleaning cloths into strips about 4 - 5cm wide and 20 - 30cm long (depending where they are being used),
2. Mixing up a "ground goop" of polyfilla (plaster), plaster/concrete colouring (brown), water and PVA glue to a milky consistency in a large ice cream container (after first putting the ice cream in a safer place :lol:).
3. Soaking the strips of woven cloth in the ground goop, and

4) overlapping the soaked strips (basically my version of plaster bandages) onto the landscape framework.

Drop sheets and track protection are essential, as is someone to turn the outside tap on for you when the time comes! (Thanks T)

The first application shown is still wet and chocolate mudcakish! But the concept is clear hopefully.





The hills were deliberately exaggerated by 1.5 times to give a bit of impact to the layout. The real thing has a gentler slope from what can be made out from the contour maps. However, the railway in a landscape that is hoped for shows potential below.





Eventually the first layer is complete, the Kestrel house was finished between batches and drying and some rolling stock was added for effect. Pre-empting the thaw for those of you in the northern hemisphere but the snow mountain has gone. Thank goodness.





Closer in…
The signal box and lamp hut are Hornby pre-cast RTR, the goods shed is Scalescenes paper and card and the house the Kestrel plastic kit.
The PECO Baby Castle 2252 is reversing quietly after leaving the cattle wagons in the cattle dock and the assorted Farish and Dapol wagons in the morning down goods are heading for the not yet existent Newcastle Emlyn terminus.





Peaking over the top of the hill into the Henllan yard the station really does need platforms, next on the list me thinks…





… and through the "to be constructed" road bridge at the up end of Henllan the signal box and goods shed…





The wonderful thing about the Peco 2251 Collett goods shown is that the new Morley controller has made a world of difference to it's slow speed control.
Originally slow speed was a bitter disappointment with my old controller, jerky and totally useless for shunting.
Now, much to my delight, and I spent the better part of an hour testing believe you me, she coasts up to the rolling stock as gentle as can be and once coupled up (and that's another story) takes up the slack one truck at a time before pulling reliably and steadily away with her train.
Magnificent, just got to remember that "testing" doesn't get the next layer on the hillside done…

As always, any thoughts, suggestions or constructive feedback welcome.

That's excellent, Marty!  You can see realistic looking natural wearing of the mountainside in the raw form.  It's going to be a joy to do the vegetation. :thumbs

Lookin' good, marty! Are your 'cloths' an antipodean version of 'J Cloths'?

Doug

[user=312]dooferdog[/user] wrote:

Lookin' good, marty! Are your 'cloths' an antipodean version of 'J Cloths'?

Doug

They look very like it to me Doof.

You can get similar in rolls of 100 from our mega-warehouse hardware store in Oz. Chux is one brand, Oates do another.

[user=269]MaxSouthOz[/user] wrote:

…  It's going to be a joy to do the vegetation. :thumbs

Thanks Max, champing at the bit…

Henllan platforms first though…

Marty,
Could you please elaborate a little more on the way you made up your mixture of goop?

Like how much PVA to the amount of water, and how much paint to the amount of water.

How long did you soak the cloth in the mixture?

Did your mixture fill in all of the little holes that are in the plaster cloth?

When you laid down the cloth on the mountain, did you smooth out the cloth, or just lay it down?

I am really impressed with what you have done here. I have a very large project coming up that just may turn out much better if I follow what you have done.

Thanks,

Wayne