Banbury_in_00 (Posts about baseboards)

The Dreaded Lifting Hatchway

Tim Pearson — Fri, 15 Aug 2014 12:00:00 GMT

After going all the way around the room I now need to complete the circuit with a lifting hatchway.

I was of course stupid to do this last as it is difficult enough without trying to get the levels on each side the same. I had to undo some of the woodwork that I first put together a few years ago in order to build out a base on which to mount the hatchway hinge side. I have used kitchen flap type hinges which are relatively narrow and allow the hinges to be separated later by removing the metal shaft.

The hatchway itself which is approx 85cm long (too long probably) is made of 12mm ply strngthened on each side by some 2 x 1. The hinges mount into the 2 x 1 through the ply for extra strength. I have made some stops for the hatchway to rest on when it is up, again not ideal but ok.

The whole thing is kept inline laterally by usine one DCC concepts alignment dowel pointing upwards from the base on the open side of the hatch (see the photos).

Finally I have put some wooden sides to the hatchway (painted gray to give the impression of bridge sides) to stop errant derailed trains running off the edge (a la the Tay bridge disaster). This is of course completely non-prototypical for the South of Banbury station but I am too old to go crawling underneath!

Woodwork

Tim Pearson — Mon, 12 May 2014 12:00:00 GMT

The main station board is big, and unlike every other board so far, is supported by a semi-free standing table. This table is like the rest of the layout is of L-girder construction.

One of the things I worried about in the room is what flooring to use. Normally a hard floor would be better for several reasons - less fluff to get in the works, and much easier to keep everything level. But we live in one of the coldest parts of the country and I just couldn't face a cold hard floor! To try and keep levels constant on a carpet I have cut large plywood feet for each of the legs on the table.

This isn't a problem for the rest of the layout as it is supported on brackets mounted to wall so doesn't care what level the carpet is!

I have used DCC concepts alignment dowels to match up the North approach board woodwork to the table that the station is going to stand on.

Power Switch Unit Mounted

Tim Pearson — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 12:00:00 GMT

I have now mounted the power distribution switch unit - that I made ages ago. This has gone a little way to help tidy up the mass of wiring around the main power distribution board. Needless to say it was slightly trickier than I had hoped as I built the distribution switch unit before I knew precisely where it was to be mounted.

A chance to make some progress

Tim Pearson — Sat, 28 Dec 2013 12:00:00 GMT

After a stupidly busy couple of months, the Christmas break has allowed a few days of fairly continuous work on the approach board (that I see from this blog I started in June).

I now have all of the points mounted on the northerly station approach board...

The flange screws you can see between the rails holding the trackwork in place are to allow for minor adjustments, the track will eventually be glued into place when the track is ballasted (at least a year away) and at that point the flange screws will be removed.

I want to check that the track runs perfectly before gluing it down.

I just can't work kneeling down for more than a minute or two so I have tried to make the construction of the layout as modular as possible - such that I can either work at my workbench or at least standing up. To that end the boards are all to some degree removable and the electronics are as modular as possible...

This board is the most complex, it requires 14 point motors and the track-work is split into 15 separate occupancy detection sections. This is because the complex station throat point work has so many possibilities that the required continuous track detection is tricky.

Continuous track detection means the computer never has to guess where a train is. It requires two things - (1) all track be occupancy detected (2) no single occupancy sensors are going to have two separate trains on simultaneously under normal operation.

The electronics for this board (like all of the electronics) hangs on hooks from a supporting L-girder in this case it contains 2 CML DAC-20 Digital point controllers and one Digitrax BDL-168 occupancy detector board.

The feeds to the track and points are mounted along the top on pluggable connector blocks, the feeds into the electronics are two cables attached on the right hand side by locakble circular connectors - one carrying the track feed and one the various power supplies required for the electronics.

There are 6 separate track feeds that come from two central Digitrax PM42 boards - these mean that any short circuit is more easily identifiable as it only affects one area of the track. One track feed goes to each of these hanging electronics boards. The whole board is assembled on the workbench and then can be plugged in when in position with no further wiring required, thus saving my knees.

Some Vaguely Scenic Work

Tim Pearson — Sat, 14 Sep 2013 12:00:00 GMT

Up until now everything I have done has been on the non-scenic part of the layout. The station approach board is the first that has to be scenic, and whilst I don't want to get into the scenery yet, the one job I need to do before laying the track is to colour over the new cork and track bed so that when it is ballasted some years hence it will blend in nicely.

Here is the board with the cork laid on it

And here it is with a bit of colour

I am using the Chris Nevard recommended "misting" with cans of red oxide, matt black, and primer grey. It doesn't need to be a work of art right now because most of it will not be seen, all that is necessary is to remove the shiny newness of the cork and surrounding board.

On to a new board

Tim Pearson — Sun, 05 May 2013 12:00:00 GMT

Hmmm so after several months of work I am still struggling to get all the gremlins out of the over-complex control panel. So I have turned my mind back to woodwork. Everytime you do woodwork you remind yourself that almost all wood you can buy is expensive and warped...

More expensive this time as I had a couple of big sheets of ply for the next couple of boards and so needed to pay a delivery charge from Inverness.

I have used my standard wall mounted L-girder technique - though the pictures below show with only one girder fitted.

I have used 100mm sections to hold baseboard surface rather than previous 90mm as this gives just a little more room for getting edge connectors on and off the Tortoise point motors.

Overpass

Tim Pearson — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 12:00:00 GMT

I have been working on the woodwork for the North end of the fiddle yard and the overpass for the reversing loop.

The reversing loop itself has two different gradients - shallower on the way up - and steeper on the way down - necessary to give good clearance across the tracks but also not kill the locos when pulling long trains.

The up gradient is about 1 in 60 with approx no gradient at all around the curve of the overpass.

Curves and gradients are really hard for the rolling stock to cope with.

The overpass sections have been cut out of 12mm ply with a jig saw after printing out the template from xtrackcad.

Hello to clean room

Tim Pearson — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 12:00:00 GMT

Now that the test layout has gone the room has been cleaned ready for the new track to be built. So far only the back wall shelf and two 2 metre wallmounted benches have been assembled.

Working hard for not much visible progress

Tim Pearson — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:00:00 GMT

Over the last couple of weeks I have been working hard on the layout in my spare time, but as ever it takes longer than you'd think.

One of the first jobs I did a couple of weeks ago was to lay 1/8th inch cork over the shelf that will act as the temporary back of the layout.

These days many say cork isnt worth the bother but I like it as a surface and the alternatives look quite expensive and so I have stuck with it

Here is a 21ft shelf corked up....

Baseboards

Tim Pearson — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:00:00 GMT

I started thinking about Railway modelling a while back when I realised that I wouldn't be able to go on flying areobatics for ever.

I first built a one trestle table test network to find out about DCC then over the next year or so expanded that into a simple circuit to test out block detection, and computer control which took me a while to get clear on.

Since then I have been working on a design for an OO version of Banbury (ca. 1962) this has been going on for several years and getting nowhere - so before Christmas I decided to get started with some baseboards and only try and finalise the design for the station and the fiddle yard for now. SO currently I have left the long back wall undesigned.

For this reason the long back wall baseboards for the moment is just simple shelf bracket supporting 21cm wide ply that will just support joining tracks. The East and West boards are to be L girder style of baseboards with 62cm wide ply - although the east side will be wider cross members to support a raised loop to allow trains to turn.

Banbury_in_00 (Posts about baseboards)

The Dreaded Lifting Hatchway

Woodwork

Power Switch Unit Mounted

A chance to make some progress

Some Vaguely Scenic Work

﻿On to a new board

﻿Overpass

﻿Hello to clean room

﻿Working hard for not much visible progress

﻿Baseboards

On to a new board

Overpass

Hello to clean room

Working hard for not much visible progress

Baseboards