Cramdin Yard

[Class 60]

Dave, that is one superb piece of Modelling - from the tufts in the grass down to the weathering of that loco!
everything is unbelievable in regards to eye to detail! One of the best threads/layouts i've seen.
Cheers
Adam.

[tonycougar]

I messed up one of my 37s and initially I thought I'd gone overboard, but evertime I bring it out I think "Thats not too bad, looks better than it did".
Must take a pic of it somewhere soon.

[ElDavo]

Nothing like a long weekend for getting stuff done, assuming SWMBO doesn't find too many other things for ya to do. In Cramdin Yard the infrastructure and permanent way teams have been busy. Lots of track fettling and faffing around with point motors has got quite a lot of the running up to standard. Still some issues with switching the single and double slips due to the short point blades. This is going to need some creative re-engineering.

Bank holiday Monday saw an extension to Cramdin Yard in the shape of a cassette fiddleyard. This is just short of 3ft long so that it can support a cassette with the longest receivable/deliverable train (about 34 inches). As can be seen the normal level of engineering has been used evidenced by the "lightweight precision adjustment tool" on the floor!



The electrics team got their hands on the this last night and wired up the 3 tracks to an ancient (valve socket!) plug and socket and thence to the main board. A mark I automatic cassette power feed system was rigged up just to check things are working. I suspect there may be a mark II and possibly III and IV.



Amazingly it all seems to work! I managed to run an 08 with a few wagons backwards and forwards from the layout on to the cassette without any major mishaps. Here's the 08 arriving back on to the main board after an exploratory trip.



Still some work to do to iron out one or two track alignment issues, create a couple more cassettes (preferably with emergency end stops!) and finalise the electrical connections. Then it will be on to some coupler experiments as I am heartily fed up with these tension lock things. Even the same type of coupler from the same manufacturer seem to vary in height and they really are flippin unreliably and ugly.

Cheers
Dave

[davek]

Well done sir!
I wouldn't know where to start doing a cassette yard!

[ElDavo]

Been finishing off (sort of) the fiddle yard this weekend. I was getting a little concerned that one of my treasures would take a nosedive off the end of a cassette and have an nasty meeting with the floor so I've added an end panel and just for good meaure a front panel to screen the yard. Also created a bunch of different size cassettes so a few things can be lined up at once. Here's what the fiddleyard looks like when loaded up with stuff!



So now here's an overall view of Cramdin Yard rigged for business. Apologies for the piles of junk attached in every conceivable way to the walls of the garage. One day the layout might make it out of the garage to a more suitable home.



As it was all rigged up it would be rude not to test it i.e. play trains so here are a couple of shots of things about the layout. First up a shot showing a busy moment as an 08 shuffles some wagons around past a 57 parked up for the weekend on one of the wagon works roads. In the background a 60 is working its way from the up mainline across to the fueling point.



Here's a follow-up shot with the 60 parked up at the fueling point alongside her somewhat more decayed 58 sister.



Cheers
Dave

[leopard]

magic.. just magic.

like the cassettes as well, the angle metal as opposed to track is a great idea, using the cassette as part of the track.. like it.

[ElDavo]

Never one to miss out on an opportunity to avoid doing something difficult by playing with something new, I avoided sorting out the operation of my single and double slips and had a play with different coupler types. Reading various threads and exploring t'internet I thought it might be nice to have a play with P4ME couplings and see if these could be made to work on an OO set up. They are very simple, have the advantage of allowing delayed uncoupling and best of all are almost invisible. They are made from spring steel wire and here's one fitted to a Bacchy 57.



Even though it's still bright metal and hasn't been painted it is hardly visible. Unfortunately even with a bunch of tinkering I couldn't get them to work reliably in OO. This is the same as other folks have concluded and due to the slop (lateral play) between the RTR stock and the OO track. Sometimes the couplings simply don't line up and thus don't couple. Bother!

Never one to give up I moved on to playing with the father of the P4ME coupling, the Alex Jackson coupling devised in the late 40s/early 50s. These do work with the sloppy standards of OO but are a little more complex to create having a number of bends and varying angles. They have all the same properties though, fairly unobtrusive, close coupling, remote uncoupling via electromagnet and delayed coupling. In fact pretty cool and an ace invention. I roughed up a couple from some scrap wire to try then out on Cramdin yard. Here's an 08 fitted with a fixed version...



...and a wagon with an operational version. You only need one coupling in a pair to operate in order to uncouple so having short fixed version on locos works and makes things much easier.



So what do they look like when coupled?



Again these are rough and haven't been painted to hide them. As the smallest radius I have on the layout is 3ft I havent encountered any buffer locking problems (yet!) so I have order up a quantity of wire and aim to set about equipping all my stock with these. I may be gone some time.

Now all I need to do is source some electro magnets, 4 I think, to rig up uncoupling points. Time to look for a couple of old H&M or SEEP point motors on fleabay I think.

Cheers
Dave

[NGaugeJames]

Dave everything looks so realistic!

Can you give us a run down of just what you do to weather your stock? That Freightliner 57 looks great and I've never gone near the process of weathering before!

[ElDavo]

...Can you give us a run down of just what you do to weather your stock? That Freightliner 57 looks great and I've never gone near the process of weathering before!

First up a couple of caveats, I'm still experimenting with weathering (no two items have been done the same!) and none of the techniques are my own. All the ideas and techniques I have used have been "adopted" after reading tons of stuff on the net. If you search around on RMweb you will find a ton of threads on the subject and some truly exquisite examples of the art. There are also a number of websites, especially to do with wargaming and dioramas, where techniques and materials are explained. Having said all that I will describe the steps I used in weathering the 57 which was all done in one go taking an hour or two one evening. I used some acrylic paint (white, dark umber) and Tamiya weathering materials.

First up and probably the most important single step is to fade the paintwork. Railway stock lives outside in sunlight and almost all paintwork fades. There are lots of ways of achieving this but in my case I used white acrylic paint, just a small blob thinned with lots of water and a miniscule amount of washing up liquid. The paint is thinned till you think it will probably not leave any colour at all. The washing up liquid makes it stick. If you use diluted acrylic (even undiluted) on plastic it tends to run off or glob together rather than spreading out and adhering to the surface.

I painted with a small brush, or rather sloshed, this dilute white mixture over the whole of the body of the loco. After a few minutes, just before it was dry I dabbed it with some kitchen towel to remove any spots of paint that had accumulated and would end up looking white. Afte this you will be hard pushed to spot a difference! So, do it again. After a couple of washes you will end up with something that looks slightly faded.

Now I mixed a bit of dark brown and possibly black into the diluted white mixture and slosh it all over the underframe and bogeys. Again I mopped up any overly large accumulations of paint with kitchen towel. The 2nd rule of weathering, it's as much the paint you take off as the paint you put on. Again this step can be repeated until you get a matt grubby looking underframe. With the 2nd and subsequent washes I also started to add some of this faded grime on to the lower parts of the body sides.

I missed a step on the 57 that I think would have improved it. At this stage I should have made the wash more black and run it into a few of the grill and major bodywork grooves to accentuate the detail. Doh! Next time.

At this stage I had a faded and slightly grubby looking loco. At this point I added some sooty black gunk around the place. On the 57 I used Tamiya weathering materials that look a bit like cakes of makeup in a compact and are applied with a sponge thing or a very fine brush. I have also previously used black acrylic and artists pastels powdered by rubbing them with sandpaper. So I added a generous amount of black stuff on the roof starting around the exhaust ports and working outward progressively. If you think about it this is how it builds up on the prototype. Start around the exhaust and work out going over and over the area more and more times expanding the are as you go. You are simulating the effects of years of build up. Make sure you get black in all the nooks and crannies.

After the roof looks suitable messy add a few very light streaks down the side. If you look at prototype photos you will see that rainwater often runs in particular areas on locos and drags the black muck down with it. Don't over do this otherwise it will look naff!

I then did a similar trick of dabbing and smudging mud coloured weathering materials around the underframe, bogeys and lower body sides. Again I could have used weathering powders or ground up artists pastels. As a final touch I added some silver weathering powdery stuff on some of edges of the steps to the cab.

In my case the weathering materials and acrylics are fairly resilient and I may want to do some more work but if you have used weathering powders or artists pastels now is probably the time to give the whole thing a spray over with matt varnish to seal it all.

Again I stress I am no expert and none of the above are my original techniques, they have all been borrowed from more knowledgeable folks. Look at prototype photos and play with the techniques others have described more accurately than I. If you use acrylics you can largely wash off your mistakes. At the very worst you may just have to learn how to do a complete respray.

Cheers
Dave

[leopard]

AJ couplings do certainly look the business, when painted or stained virtually invisible as well from the examples I've seen. someone on a P4 forum suggested that if you do suffer from buffer locking a short length of wire between the buffers will avoid the problem totally. if you have 36" curves it should be fine, but you may have problems on 'S' curves for crossovers.

the delayed action is magic.

didn't realise the fixed version would work though. good to hear it does. Have been considering something similar in 2mm, just to play.

apparently these work very well with stock with sprung buffers if you only need to couple on straight track you can have very close coupling.

either way they are much better than tension locks, and more useful as well.

[Lukasz]

i love the detail dave its spectacular liking the gronks btw and the wagon works is gr8

keeep up the good work!

[peak]

I love this layout the attention to detail is outstanding.
Nice article on weathering, some good tips even if you do say you have copied them from others.

[NGaugeJames]

Thanks Dave...that's a great start!

[mmurnin900]

fantastic little gem. Can't believe I've missed, i'm always looking for 66's too!

Well done.

[Graham Warren]

I have enjoyed watching the progress of this layout, the attention to detail is fantastic, keep up the good work

Graham