A rainy day, time for trains!

The first properly rainy day in about a bazillion years combined with no other plans means I am able to dust off the layout and do some more work on it!

So welcome to an update of several parts. Firstly, the ballast is down on the town side. I did in fact complete sticking this down about a month ago, but only today have I had chance to tidy it up, make sure it wasn't obstructing the rails. I seems in places I got the glue mix wrong and the ballast has come away when hovering. But I have other plans for the area in question anyway so I'll deal with that another day.

For the ballast I have used Woodland Scenics Fine Grey Blend. I originally used Buff coloured ballast in the same range, but I disliked it. The new ballast is much better.

To fix it in place I used 50:50 Copydex/Water solution with a few drops of washing up liquid. Copydex being a latex based glued. Firstly the ballast was CAREFULLY sprinkled onto the track, trying to make sure between each sleeper was filled, but not overly filled! (This I learnt from my first attempt - there is such a thing as to much ballast!) I then took my trusty miniature "Henry the Hoover" and sucked up the stray ballast around the edges of the track to create straight lines. Henry is invaluable when ballasting, every railway modeller should have one! Finally I took a pipette and carefully dripped the solution onto the ballast. This is when you realise how important the washing up liquid is as it helps the solution soak through the ballast more easily as it breaks the surface tension of the solution. Once applied leave to dry for at least 24 hours. Or in my case, a month :P

Using a latex glue over PVA seems to have a few advantages. The major advantage is that because it is rubbery you can peel it off the track and base board without it ruining either - excellent if you make a mistake! (...such as changing your mind about the colour! *ahem*) And from reading around it appears it does not colour your ballast as much as PVA can. The rubber also apparently softens the noise of the trains when running.

On the downside Copydex can be more expensive than PVA, and it has a slight odour of something close to cat pee when wet - it is thankfully odourless once dry!

Once the ballast is dry the track needs a thorough cleaning to ensure there is no debris stuck to the insides of the rails and between the blades of the points. One note of caution, always ensure your points will still operated before the glue dries.

Prior to ballasting I weathered the rails with a 'rusting' solution using Miniscenes Model's "Realistic Rust". It was an experiment and given the size to n gauge rails its not that noticeable, although on closer inspection it does make a difference... and where it is built up it looks quite effective.

So, after all the cleaning and fixing a few small power issues I finally tested the track. And I'm glad to say everything ran like a charm, including the steam locomotives, which have a habit of finding problems in the layout! For the full test I ran a goods train, usually the most troublesome of trucks, and it ran like a dream! All in all, I'm pretty pleased. The ballast needs weathering yet with soot and weeds and this will be done at some point in the future.

And so on to the loco fleet! I have two new additions. One is a Warship class diesel in maroon which I got for my birthday, and the second is a class 37 diesel in green which I have been waiting for Farish to release for ages! Both are late crest era. The warship isn't strictly the right region (its more south west) but I liked it so I don't care! :) Both are Graham Farish DCC plug and play loco's, and it seems someone at Bachmann/Farish have been listening to the consumers because the new Class 37 was very easy to get into to fit the chip!

An interesting side note with the DCC chips. When I got the Warship I got two Digitrax chips instead of the Bachmann chips. They seem to act very erratically, not responding to the controller sometimes when I change the speed and then suddenly changing speed later on. I have replaced them with Bachmann chips and the problem disappears. Its probably a configuration issue, but I have no idea what to do about it at the moment.

So, with out further ado, here are the obligatory photos of my latest work and the new loco's :)

More little trains...

Real ones this time! Any holiday to Wales wouldn't be complete without a ride on one of the numerous narrow gauge railways! So last week we picked the one rainy day to travel on the Vale of Rheidol Railway from Aberystwyth to Devils Bridge. And here are the snaps!

These were all taken at Devils Bridge.

Buff part 2

Just rang the shop, and no, they don't have it in stock. To be honest they never seem to have anything in stock!

In the buff

Have spent half the day today putting down ballast on the Yuletide side of the track. This was the first ballast to go down and also the first ballast to come up. My gut instinct was to use granite grey ballast, but when the shop I went to didn't have it in bulk I decided to try Woodland Scenices fine Buff instead. I should have stuck to my gut feeling. Whilst it looked ok when I did a sample (ok-ish... I convinced myself) as more of the track was covered the more I disliked it. It went a little orangey and looked more and more like sand... exactly the look I didn't want.

I did a little research into ballast colours and if I had been modelling GWR I might have got away with it. As it is I am modelling Midlands/North east and it just looked wrong.

I have tried to remedy the situation with a grey paint wash but the effect was not great. So the final solution is to take up the ballast I have put down so far and start again. Thankfully I used a latex based glue (Copydex) to stick the ballast which makes taking it up a lot easier!

So the next job is to source some fine/extra fine granite grey chippings. Hopefully my local n gauge shop is open tomorrow and for once is stocking the items I want!

It's progress Jim, but not as we know it.

It's been a slow month on the model railway front all in all. All the other jobs around the house and garden, plus a busy time generally and the death of my Granddad have all absorbed my time and energy.

But still I have managed to get a few things done. Firstly I have fixed the problem on the fiddle yard and the trains now pass each other without clipping. Secondly, I have ripped up the town level ready for putting back in AT THE CORRECT SCALE height! Thirdly I have cut a new backboard to separate the fiddle yard from the layout.

I had trip to the Nottingham Model Railway Fair the weekend before my birthday where I managed to get an early birthday present in the form of a new loco - a Class 42 Warship in Maroon called Hermes (Graham Farish) - late 50's early 60's era. Strictly speaking it is not the correct region in comparison to the other loco's in the fleet, which caused much ummming and arrring about whether to get it. Then I remembered I liked it and didn't care that much... and it was the right era anyway! It looks great with my rake of chocolate and cream coaches. It's been fitted with a Digitrax 6 pin chip. Fitting of this diesel was a much easier affair than the Class 108 DMU (which is still functioning by the way). However, the loco does seem to exhibit some erratic behaviour sometimes, especially when the speed is changed gently. Sometimes there seems to be a lag between commands taking affect, even with regards turning on and off the lights. I can say I ever noticed this with the Bachmann chips but then again, I never saw the momentum effect using Bachmann chips either and its definitely evident with the Digitrax chips. I think I need to look into programming the chips to different settings. I will experiment with a Bachmann chip at some point to see if the problem goes away.

Speaking of Bachmann chips, good old Rails of Sheffield have continued their excellent customer service and will replace the blown chip once they have more in stock. Plug and play chips should not blow.

And now, bed....

Track testing, the DMU fry-up and other mistakes

Tested the track this weekend, uncovered one problem in that I have put the two main tracks too close in one section of the fiddle yard (I did wonder, but I hoped I was wrong!)



My solution (I hope) will be to ease the outer curve out. The other solution would be to make the inner curve tighter, but a, I don't want any more tight curves, and b, I'd have to cut more cork, and its rather neat at the moment!

A part from that little issue the new look fiddle yard is a success! Even the radius one curve into the station sidings works nicely. In spite of its tightness all the locos traverse it with ease. It may not look pretty but, hey, its a fiddle yard, so who cares?!

I've also started on making space on the fiddle yard board for controllers and (eventually) transformers (and possibly switches?) to control and power the layout. When I say start, I mean I drilled a hole in the base board and frame to feed through the power cables and wiring to the track! Small acorns and all that...

And onto the DMU... The DMU dummy car's lights had stopped functioning. I assumed this may be a loose connection, but in fact I found that the Bachmann DCC decoder had died. I replaced it with another from a different loco and hey presto it lit up again.... sort of - during the period when the shell was off the lighting was changing colour randomly and flicking on and off and the merest movement. I put the shell back on and thankfully it did settle, but I'm now wondering if the dummy car has a short somewhere that fired the chip.

Anyway, I am now looking at getting a new chip, and I have been recommended to get a TCS or Lenz chip due to the excellent manufactures guarantee. Its like my mother always says, buy cheap, buy twice!

Other mistakes...

I have realised my judgement of scale for n gauge is way off in some cases. Take the upper town level for example, its far too high, about twice the height it should be. So that is the thing to be changed, along with the fiddle yard back scene as I have changed my mind about the dual hieght look, and the portals are far to big.

Next time, do it properly!

This weekend I decided to change the fiddle yard area. The original was a bit of a bodge job... for starters I used 6mm MDF instead of 9mm that I used on the main board. This required me to build up a massive amount of cork underlay and also exasperated the difference in height which occurred from one end of the loop to the other.

The other issue I had was the inner siding and points combination. This combined with changing heights caused all sorts of problems with the locos - bad connections, derailments etc. It basically meant the siding was useless.

I removed all the track and cork from the board and then removed the board entirely, replacing it with a equal sized piece of 9mm MDF.

I then laid a single piece of cork sheet, with extra height on beach side as the attached extension board on that side is a millimetre or so higher.

The outer loop and siding was relaid as before. However the inner loop has undergone a transformation. The inner siding is now a complete loop, and the complication siding junction as gone and the siding feeds directly into the 3rd platform at the town side station from a a new curved point from the other side of the fiddle yard.



Whilst the outer loops are all radius two or great I have had to compromise with the inner most loop, using radius one curves. As the original inner siding was also radius one I don't see this as backward step, although its not necessarily a satisfactory solution either. But given the space it really is the only solution!

All the wiring has been redone (mostly reused, I only had to solder one more wire!) and connected, and the next step is to test the circuit and the locos for reliability.

New track plan...