Lemington docks.... end to end

[Dad-1]

A cracking project.
Note : I thought I'd commented once, but can't find !
Must watch this more carefully.

Geoff T.

[Chops]

Astonishing in every way. Also, you have no idea how rare in North America a point-to-point layout is.

[joshv8]

A cracking project.
Note : I thought I'd commented once, but can't find !
Must watch this more carefully.

Geoff T.

Thanks Geoff!
I understand you have had good success with the Hornby DCC?
Ive got to do some reading now and learn about programing tracks, all a new venture for me.

Astonishing in every way. Also, you have no idea how rare in North America a point-to-point layout is.

I do like the fact in a roundy round that trains can just be running without concern of needing stopping haha. This way allows me to operate trains coming through as a railway however. And Im limited to space along that wall of the garage so we can still get the car in during storms and there's room for my speedster project.

Theres a different feel to North American model railroading, I quite like it.

Cheers,
Josh

[Dublo]

Hi Josh
Lemmington Docks is starting to feel right now seeing an engine on the rails is always a good sign.
That was nice to see a photo of Lemmington Viaduct. Have you any plans for joining the two layouts together here and there ?

[luckymucklebackit]

Great progress and looking fabulous, think this will become a magazine standard layout soon.

Jim

[joshv8]

Hi Josh
Lemmington Docks is starting to feel right now seeing an engine on the rails is always a good sign.
That was nice to see a photo of Lemmington Viaduct. Have you any plans for joining the two layouts together here and there ?

Thanks for the comments. I officially got my final dabs of PVA around the track yesterday to secure everything in place. I'm opting to not ballast any time soon but will paint/ weather the track so it doesnt stand out too much. This allowing me to raise and change things if necessary. Ive also opted to keep it as a train set of sorts and hand throw the switches, although I have point motors here. It turns out it is a lot of walking back and forth throwing switches so I may yet change my mind and add point motors.
The kids and I had Lemmington set up in the shed for a good fortnight late last year and played, my youngest daughter got a real kick out of it, hail storms rolling through ( typical for summer here) meant the space needed opening up for the car and was packed away again. The beauty of the new layout is no packing away!

Regarding joining Lemmington my idea was always to have removable additions to this new layout. Beginning as the run off for the end to end but then I can add short scenic sections. What I would like to do is dismantle Lemminton somewhat and rearrange it into additions. If you have any thoughts let me know!

Great progress and looking fabulous, think this will become a magazine standard layout soon.

Jim

Thanks Jim,
A magazine standard might be a stretch? Haha but we will see what eventuates.

I'm planning out slowly what's going where. I plan to laser cut the vast majority of the buildings. Im thinking I will focus on the low relief buildings for the backscene first of all to give some depth to the layout.
The large Walthers building seen in my final photos was a cheap ebay purchase which I will repair and repaint and will make a nice industrial building in that corner.

I've been looking through plenty of dockside pictures following Dublos earlier comments and am thinking I will build 2 Stothert & Pitt cranes, perhaps one unloading and one at rest to simulate that busy dockside appearance. They wont be rivet counters models but I will laser cut them in modular sides to keep simple and once assembled and painted will look the part.

I plan to run a bit of an elevated road, with a road over bridge, over the rail line to the docks which will slope down to service the station and dairy but will also give a scenic break to the dockside. Looking from the opposite end of the station all you will see is the road, the tops of some industrial sheds and some rather large cranes... should give a good sense of atmosphere.

Cheers,
Josh

[joshv8]

A small update. A nice coat of Tamiya RAF dark earth over the rails today and the tops cleaned up. Looks pretty good to the eye.

Cheers,
Josh

[joshv8]

A bit of excitement today. The East Coast Pullman set arrived from Ebay. I payed $300 Australian so about £160. Not bad for 2 DCC locos, controller and stock including Pullman coaches and there was track packs included to boot.
My first time using DCC, I wired up a test track.
There was an uh oh moment however as the locos didnt run! The box was beaten up a bit but aesthetically everything inside looked perfect.
I have one other DCC loco, a P2 C ock O The North, with sound.
I put it on the track, set an address and it worked beautifully. Worked out the sound functions. How amazingly cool is that! The loco puffing to speed, various whistles. Great stuff.
Ok, so the controllers OK.

Back to the set locos. The wheels seemed overly tight. I could hear the motors had power. I was thinking a good service is in order. After some TLC the wheels freed up! Im thinking some good running and a drop more oil will do these wonders but theyre running well now.
Im betting they have sat for a long time. I hope to get them out on the layout tomorrow!

Cheers,
Josh

[glencairn]

Thanks for the information on the tug, Josh. A little too big for the area I want it; unless.

The layout is coming along at a fast pace. Well done.

The East Coast Pullman looks a good buy.

Glencairn

[heda]

The track is looking good and you bagged a bargain with those train sets.
Dave

[joshv8]

Well, 2 days of holidays left so modelling will slow down a bit then.
In a hit to progress my laptop packed it in this morning and I use that for my graphic drawings and to run my laser cutter so I lost 4 hours of drawing the dairy buildings. Its dropped off for repairs now in any case.

But did get a play with the DCC on the layout. The B12 is running but those garbage plastic wheels on the tender foul on the frogs of the switches. Its such a cheaply made locomotive, I have another one here thats a non runner and always thought it was quite dissapointing... figured Id use it as a static loco one day, I had hoped the set version would be better but oh well.

I removed the axle cover off the J52 and oiled the solid axle bearings. Bingo! Running perfectly now. She shunted some Clerestory coaches out to the main line.

Then the P2 had a run from the engine yard sidings, had a spin on the turntable and went and backed down on the Pullman coaches and ran the layout.
Some very promising beginnings!
On the turntable

Out into the yard

On the main line

Cheers,
Josh

[Dad-1]

Hi Josh,

Sounds like a reasonable purchase regardless. Even railway models are all the better
for regular use. Left for years they become reluctant to run.
Tracks also get 'dirty', just sitting unused. In my garage I try to run several laps every day
and have very little need to clean the tracks. It could be my imagination, but spiders seem
to keep away, do they sense the current and not like it ??

What a difference it makes getting the track work painted.

Geoff T

[joshv8]

Hi Josh,

Sounds like a reasonable purchase regardless. Even railway models are all the better
for regular use. Left for years they become reluctant to run.
Tracks also get 'dirty', just sitting unused. In my garage I try to run several laps every day
and have very little need to clean the tracks. It could be my imagination, but spiders seem
to keep away, do they sense the current and not like it ??

What a difference it makes getting the track work painted.

Geoff T

Perhaps spiders do sense the current, they're sure good at finding areas that are not disturbed often.

I decided this morning no point having a loco that I cant operate on the layout so made the decision to sort out the B12 skipping points or rob it of its decoder for another engine and convert it back to DC.
Im guessing it didnt want to die because after quite a bit of mucking around I sorted the problem.
The wheels on the tender are a plastic wheel with an axle sleeve that covers one half of a metal axle, the opposing wheel and sleeve give the spacing between the wheels so they dont slide into each other on the metal axle. However there is still some side to side play of each individual wheel.
The rear wheel set had this nonsensical metal tag connected to the axle that collects another tag on the tender body to make some sort of chuffing sound.

With the metal tag on the rear wheels, the wheels were fixed too close together to navigate the points. Removed the tag, weighted the tender and happy to report its been 95% effective after an hours running with only one real issue. One thing however she does have a slight waddle. Not sure if this is normal or someone can point me in the direction of a problem.
Hopefully this information may help someone else some day.

Cheers,
Josh

[joshv8]

The track is looking good and you bagged a bargain with those train sets.
Dave

Thanks for the information on the tug, Josh. A little too big for the area I want it; unless.

The layout is coming along at a fast pace. Well done.

The East Coast Pullman looks a good buy.

Glencairn

Glencairn and Dave, thanks for the comments.
Atleast some TLC has the set locos operating well... money well spent I think.

Cheers,
Josh

[joshv8]

Still waiting on my laptop to be repaired to start creating buildings but a little update....

My Rails of Sheffield Caledonian 812 arrived. I always wanted one of these and years ago looked at building a kit but was too many parts from different suppliers to get my head around... not to mention in another country and lots of mail ordering. A fantastic model, love the firebox glow. This is DC, they're offered now in DCC sound but as when I ordered it in 2019 DC was all I had. Going to need to convert it now! Had a nice run on DC anyway.
Cheers,
Josh