It should fit about here.

Keeping you young Marty  


Ed

So…. Denmark in Western Australia, which is on the south coast and about 4 and a half hours drive south of the state capital, Perth, where I currently live.

Not Denmark in Europe…. just in case anyone was confused…. not mentioning any names…  LOL!

We have just returned from a long weekend in Denmark, checking up on building progress and the gyprock interior walls are up.
The Newcastle Emlyn layout, in it's current form needs the new railway room to be a minimum of 2750mm wide.
The laser measuring tool says the room is 2779mm wide…. Phew.

Just over an inch, think that's what's called 'cutting it fine' Marty.



Ed

We've got Clapham Junction in Brisbane. Na na na naaa na

Ed said

Just over an inch, think that's what's called 'cutting it fine' Marty.



Ed

From “Post #288,382”, 8th August 2023, 11:15 AM

Quite right Ed…. I really didn't want to have to shave 5mm off the baseboard to make it fit. So far so good.

peterm said

We've got Clapham Junction in Brisbane. Na na na naaa na

From “Post #288,383”, 8th August 2023, 11:54 PM

Ooooo…. a Brisbane visit is on the bucket list…. I'll have to come and find that layout when I'm there.

Marty said

peterm said

We've got Clapham Junction in Brisbane. Na na na naaa na

From “Post #288,383”, 8th August 2023, 11:54 PM

Ooooo…. a Brisbane visit is on the bucket list…. I'll have to come and find that layout when I'm there.

From “Post #288,385”, 9th August 2023, 1:32 AM

Don't get too excited, Marty. It's down Fairfield Rd at Yeronga/Yeerongpilly and it's nuffin like the real one.there's a bridge there now, but the old level crossing used to catch the gormless types out. It was so far from front to back, that they'd queue across the crossing and get caught when the barriers came down

Further preparations are underway for the move.

While the layout frame was designed to come apart. In some instances, in the rush to get something running you understand, some of the wiring was not so designed.

This is my workspace today as I retrofit the wiring with the ability to be easily disconnected at the board joins. The red line indicates roughly the baseboard join.  The green arrow is the separation point for the wiring.



The smaller wires will be cut and soldered into this Din plug (I think it's a 9 pin) and the larger white, blue and Red wires will be cut and screwed into a chocolate block mounted on the frame.


The black wire is the 240v main cable to the transformer…. and no…. I'm not cutting that…. It will just be dismounted from the spiral binding cable tidy on the other frame. I'm fairly certain that the transformer unit is designed to be removed from the frame to allow it to travel on it's own.

Right…. so much for prevaricating… back under we go…

cheers

The wiring may not have been designed to come apart Marty, but it's very tidy compared to anything I've ever done.

Hats off to you sir  



Ed

Ha… there are places…  but thanks…. as a work in progress and with the knowledge that one day it would probably have to be moved I've tried to keep it relatively tidy.

Don't ask me what they all do though….. It's been so long since I've been under there!!

Generally;

Red for track power
Blue for common return
White for power to the passing contact point lever and from the lever, yellow to the solenoid point motor.
Green from the motor back to the common return
Small black and brown for LED lighting positive and negative.

The double, separatable baseboard edge framing is clearer in this photo and circled in green is one of the butterfly nuts on a coach bolt that is holding the boards together.

The theory is that all I need to do is separate the wiring, undo the coach bolts and pull the layout apart. The legs are held on with coach bolts too.


We shall see.  I know that I still have some tracks that span the boards to gap.

That might be in the next installment.

Going to do some testing to make sure that my soldering has worked.

cheers all.
 

Should have gone DCC Marty, it's only two wires  


Ed

We should ask John Dew or Sol to show us the wiring under their layouts to permanently put that little bit of misinformation to bed.

The Llandifriogg Junction part of my layout has had the wiring set up to allow either DC or DCC, Henllan station on the other hand would need some tweaking.

More packing in the layout room today.

All landscaping materials are being boxed up.

One of the earliest laid sections of track on the layout is across the board join on the hidden return loop. My skill level to lay track securly across board joints was 0 and experience was gained here.
It needs… ahem…. a little bit of work (read totally rebuilt and relaid) as derailments are common, frustrating and difficult to access at this point.
One of the parts of the layout that I am looking forward to fixing as the boards come apart and access becomes easier.

Thought everything was already taken apart for your move Marty.


Ed

I have the same problem with tracks over joints Marty - in my case, a 2 level lift-up across the door.  I've tried almost everything but it still causes problems.  I think it might be because the actual layout isn't fixed to the floor or walls so it can move slightly ………………….

When you've sorted yours, let me know how you did it please. 

Hi Ed,

It's all moved now… and the plan was to have it all ready to go on the day but, as I will document, the best laid plans of mice and men, etc. etc

Peter,

Tracks across baseboard joins have always been a concern for me.  I have attempted a couple of methods with mostly success. We are always up against the expansions/contraction of our base board materials due to temperature and humidity. I'm surprised that with the fine tolerances required by our rolling stock that we do as well as we do as model railway builders.

You, Sir, have set the bar pretty high for yourself, a double deck lift up… that has got to be tough to achieve a consistent alignment.

Here is a picture of one of the baseboard joins. Every part of the layout was built separate during construction… except the double track in the foreground.
In this instance, in an attempt to achieve a consistent track alignment across the join,

1. a section of copper clad circuit board was glued and screwed across the join,
2. the Peco flexitrack was laid across the join and the plastic sleepers removed where the track overlaid the circuit board,
3. the individual rails were soldered to the circuit board (I tinned both the circuit board and the underside of the rails first) and
4. the circuit board was gapped between the rails to prevent short circuits.

This was part of the Llandyfriog Junction redevelopment and several years of happy running followed. Especially as I had never cut the gap.

For the move, the track and circuit board had to be cut through with a razor saw. The block of wood on the left has a couple of grooves cut in the underside at 9mm rail spacing. This block is placed over the track and held down so that the grooves hold the rails in place while the razor saw does its work. The concept being that the grooves prevent the rails from being torn out of the track bed by the action of the saw. Mostly it works.

That's neat Marty.

I did roughly the same thing - i.e. using copperclad as a base and soldering the track to that.   At least I know the track is firmly fixed at both sides of the gap (which I cut with a Dremel slitting disk so a bit wider than the razor saw.

My problem is that the actual layout framework isn't fixed to either the floor or walls - I didn't want to drill holes in the office unit in case I decided to strip out the layout and sell the unit (a Portakabin type unit).

The result is I have to do a certain amount of jiggling to get everything lined up properly.  Frustrating at times but it can be done……………..  A nice, firmly fixed rigid framework would solve the problem but alas, that's not going to happen unless we move house again ………………………………and that is a possibility as we consider down-sizing to better reflect our ages ………

… AND it's hinged and moves… definitely tough to resolve. Glad you can still wriggle and giggle it!

Have you though about having a drop in section of track (maybe 6" long) that can be installed between the track ends after the baseboards are aligned? I think that I am going to use this method on the tight return track that I commented about earlier.

Good luck with the downsizing. We have kept a small apartment in the state capital. Currently used by T as a work base on the fortnightly "working in the office" rather than "working from home". It will also provide a downsizer later on.