hmmmm....

Yep, part 2 of making a point can wait, I have been busy and haven't put anymore thought into it. I have been playing around the layout room and because of the resent cool weather and rain decided to do some weathering of my own. So due to my new spray room being so accessible and easy, I attacked an On Track Models LLV.Didn't want to go to hard but what the hell. Apologies in advance I only snapped these photo's with a little instamatic, "must get serious about photography one of these days."

I also had to get in and weather wheels and bogies so I brushed them with some Floquil Rust and roof brown, then followed up with a black wash. Then finished up with some Aim Powders and am quite happy with the results. Did a similar thing with the LLV.

Other then that I put a coat of primer on the Infront Models DOT Tanker. It's ready for the final coat but will have to wait till I go to Epping on the long weekend to pick up the right colour paint. Ian and I will be there on the Saturday so If  you run into us stop for a chat.

I also played around with Austrains MLE. I need to do some more to this as I had had enough by now but It still looks ok. I will need to look for some loads although I was thinking of making some rolled up tarps.

Anyway thats what I've been upto and now looking forward to Epping, as a visitor this time.

At the end of the day I stopped at the level crossing on the Canowindra Road, climbed on the bonnet of the Challenger and snapped a photo of 4716 leaving Bowen Creek after its shunting duties.

Making a point...

Well now that basic trackwork is behind us, I guess we should look at building a turnout. There are numerous articles on the subject and everyone pretty well has their own ideas, so I will just describe the basics of what we did to build ours.

First thing that needed to be achieved was to build a frog. Not to many detailed P87 ones available particularly to NSW standards. First a copy of a number 6 point was used which Keiran Ryan had drawn up with correct sleeper spacing and alignment. Or use Greg Edwards data sheets. This was then white glued to a small sheet of ply and left to dry. Next some copper clad circuit board was fixed down and special shapes brass soldered as cross members. Now using the paper template as a guide the straight stock rail was soldered down. From here on track gauges are used in case there are any irregularities in the paper copy. Plus without correct guages that 0.58mm flangeway is a little hard on the eyes. Rather then me go into all the technical specification a down-loadable pdf is available here.  The frog which has been tested and all working nicely, is cut from the jig and nut and bolt detail added.

That was a fairly time consuming job but the best part is that now we have an assembled frog, ready to be sent to the caster so we have lots of little drop in number six frogs. We couldn't seem to locate anyone to cast these in nickel silver so we had them cast in brass and in silver by Apecs Investment Castings. The silver won out and were used. From memory I think it cost about $40 for the molding and then $6 for each casting.
To Be Continued...

Trackwork...

Trackwork is most likely the main reason why I got into Proto87. I have always believed that we spend too much time on loco's and rollingstock, then neglect the scene. Don't get me wrong, I like loco's and rollingstock but what's the point if the track looks like what I ran my old lima on when I was 7 years young.

I think you will agree that the photo in the last post is a big improvement on any manufactured point but for it to be accurate all the tolerances have to be accurate. To give you an idea, the flangeway scales to 0.58mm. Later I will do a post on making a P87 point but for now lets just do basic trackwork.

We ended up doing two different methods of hand laid track on Bowen Creek, both of which are totally acceptable. As I mentioned in an earlier post we used 3rd planit to do the track plan, the advantage of this is you can print it out to scale and glue the paper down on you road bed so all your sleeper spacing is marked out for you. So the first method is to lay a copper clad sleeper every sixth sleeper and then solder the rail to this. I liked this method, I found it to be forgiving and reasonably quick. The slow part is etching the copper away, pretty mind numbing. Especially seeing we etched all the copper other then where the rail would sit, leaving just a little play. The reason for this is you can gouge some grain into the fibre glass and it looks more like timber after painting. Then airbrush the rails, hand paint the copper sleepers and slip in the timber sleepers to complete. The timber sleepers are the sugerpine sleepers by Kappler (part No.KP00SL8-HO)and are available from Gwyder Valley Models. The Timber is stained with India Ink and is a mix between the white and black to give a nice light grey colour. The tip is to start with white and add a little bit of black, not the other way round. The other option is to use the Aim weathering products which are also very good. The rail is painted with a blend of Floquil paints. the blend was around 50/50 rail brown and rust. I say around because only god knows how accurate it was.

Can't tell you who turned up the roller gauge for us, he will kill me.

The other method is to lay all timber sleepers, already stained, glued with white glue and weighted over night. Paint the rail on the work bench, this was a bit of a pain and is why I preferred the first method. Next is to brush on the glue to the bottom of the rail, an even bigger pain. The glue is called Pliobond and is used in the building industry, pretty hard to locate in Australia but click here for an equivalent. It is heat activated, so after it is applied it sets as to not be very messy. Once you have the rail in place we applied a warm iron (still to hot to the touch) to the rail which causes the compound to run and once the iron is removed it cures. You can reheat it but I don't think it is advisable.

As I said both methods work very well and I grant you the end result is a major improvement on any commercial track.

Next is to apply some ballast, being a branch line it needs to be blended with ballast and dirt as branch lines don't use a lot of ballast anyway. Only thing was we decided that this was now to be a more secondary line so we used more white and black ballast then dirt. This is all from Chucks.

I guess in a nutshell what I am saying is take your time with your trackwork, It will serve you well into the future and if it looks like the real thing you will always be proud of it. Don't cut corners and if it's not right, hang the expense get it right, you won't be sorry for the sake of a few dollars. My home layout will be right and it will bring me years of pleasure without me saying, gee I wish I took more time with that. Bowen Creek was the test and I've learned alot, it's just the beginning and I hope you learn from it too. Woah....got a little bit out there then, but you know what I'm gettin at. 

Thought I would leave you with this shot. Did a hell of a lot of work to that Traino 47, I will tell you about it one day. Cheers for now.

Lighting...

Hi everyone,

Things have been busy around the layout shed and this means the blog has had a bit of neglect. Not only has installation of the spray booth taken some leaps forward but so has the wash bay.

I also decided to start assembling Infront Models DOT tanker so there goes some more time.

So now that you have my excuses lets move on....

All the lighting is 28w, T5 , 4 foot fluorescent tubes. They are Sylvania (part no. 200768) 6500 Kelvin daylight tubes and retail for around $4.50 per tube. The tombstones are fitted to fabricated bracket and mounted to the ceiling directly behind the pelmet which is 100mm deep and protrudes 100 mm out in front of the layout as to avoid any shadows on the front edge. The 4 scenic modules require 6 tubes, 4 of which are in line and 2 offset to make sure there are no dark patches. Now as these 2 tubes cross a module join we needed to find a way to safely transport them, this is where the T5 tube comes in. T5 tubes fit neatly into 20mm electrical conduit, so two 1200 mm lengths of conduit are saddled to the roof of the layout where they are stored until the layout is assembled. The other four tubes are never touched as they remain housed within the module which make set up very easy. 

That leaves the power source, we wanted to keep the weight down but ballasts are heavy and then you have to find room for starters. This was solved by the use of electronic ballasts. They are very light and don't require starters. The only disadvantage is they are quite expensive but at least one ballast will do two tubes. Lucky for us I had acquired some some without cost so we were very fortunate.

OK that was a pretty quick post but really, its lighting, it has to be covered so hopefully I can cross it off the list. I would prefer to be covering track work so lets do that next post.

Happy Modelling...YEAH...

A few Pics....

I was asked recently for a couple more views of the layout. We have been doing work on the return curves on Bowen which I am glad to say has been successful, it didn't leave me any time to think about an update to the blog. So some pics seems like a good idea.

This is 621-721 crossing Bowen Tresle. It's a popular area for photographers as it gives a nice low angle. The tresle was the first scratch built structure on the layout, and it took me a couple of weekends to build and another couple to fit. All the timber is stained with India Ink and the bolts and rail painted with floquil rust and rail brown then finished with Aim powders. Ian's semaphore and my fettler shed top the scene off.

This one is one of my Fav's. When I made this I thought I was going overboard with detail. I thought the bolt head detail would never be seen but this photo made me think again. Kappler timber was used and brass flat and angle. The nuts and bolts are from Scale Hardware (see links) these are unbelievable.
I will try and follow up with the lighting in the next post but we will see.

Cheers

Alignment Pins

These were made to make sure the rails aligned every time the modules were put together. Ian had assisted with Rodney James' layout Exeter, and was impressed with the reliability of them. They are simple to make and can be done in a short time.

You will require 10mm brass angle and 6.5mm brass rod. You will also need a 6.5mm hss drill bit, a ream and flat file, masking tape, solder, flux, blow torch and a hacksaw.

1. Cut matching lengths of the brass angle and clamp together to form a T shape making sure the top is flat and true.
2. Drill two holes through the facing brass.
3. Test fit the rod, ream out the hole as necessary making sure not to let the hole get to large. It needs to be a snug fit.

4. Now of coarse you only want the pins to solder to one piece of brass or else you will never get them apart. Place a piece of masking tape between the facing brass and slide the rod through the holes between 5-10 mm.
5. Add flux and using the blow torch solder the rod in place keeping the rod as square as possible.
6. Cut the brass rod flush at the back and file smooth. Tidy up any over run solder between the two faces and your done. Now you just need to drill and fit. I suggest small counter sunk holes and use small brass wood screws.

As you can see in the top photo that this can be used using flex track and reliably realigns the track everytime the modules are reconnected.

Design

Now there’s not much there, so a simple unattended crossing loop and goods yard with basic facilities was the format. We used 3rd Planit for the design stage and although it requires some time to learn, the program is well worth it.

Four scenic  modules were constructed at 1300Lx450Wx500H. Why the odd sizes? Well they fit into a ute I had which I no longer have. TIP, don't design things to specifications which can change! Two end modules where later built at 1000Lx450Wx500H which were to house traverse's as this was to be a point to point layout which was later disbanded and return curves were fitted. Man does this sound like a government operation or what!  To save on weight 20mm square steel tube was used to build the frame. This also meant we could use 16mm square tube welded in one end to easily locate the modules together. The legs do the same thing only into 25mm tube welded  vertically in the corners of the modules.  The whole thing then pins together for a total length of 7.2 meters and can be assembled in around ten minutes.
Each module fully sceniced weighs less then ten kilos. This is due to the high density foam used as road bed and scenic area. I wouldn't use this again for road bed as its not perfectly flat and is a bit on the noisy side.
The foam is actually two sheets laminated together giving an overall thickness of 50mm. Timber was then formed at each end for protection and to fit the track alignment pins. More on these next time.

Cheers.