UppyDownyRoundyRoundyRailway

[NedFlanders]

The Eurostar Coaches did fit.

10 but does the Eurostar.JPG (105.52 KiB) Viewed 1878 times

And then some Gratuitous handsome loco running....

Until we meet again Neighbours.

Ned.

[Chops]

Very nice. Whatever it takes, I say. BTW, I rather like those high granite retaining walls. Adds depth and ambiance.

[Bufferstop]

Give them a few more years of British weather, the moss and creeper will have started coming through the gaps, real creapy stonework.

[NedFlanders]

Best Laid Plans and all that!

Christmas time came and much progress was briefly made, then, like its been for the last two years, everything got complicated and progress ground to a halt again.

Here's a couple of photos of what had started to happen on the Diagonal board which I had resolved to get the basic scenery in place over the festive period.

The Skew Entrance to the tunnel was condemned and a new support structure out of foam board was created to allow for a 90 degree entrance instead.

On the other side of the incline, a Metcalfe kit was Stretched to fit the bill for the tunnel exit on a tight curve.

Some landscaping started - Foam board formers filled with foam packing and then masking tape over it with much PVA.

One of the retaining walls turned out to be a bit tight on clearance.... I think that's what you would call an "interference fit"?

4 Thats a bit tight.JPG (72.24 KiB) Viewed 1589 times

But after some slicing and dicing to allow some packing to be put in to push out the wall - success!

5 Better Now.JPG (81.75 KiB) Viewed 1589 times

I'll try to put up a few more detailed photos giving more of the story - Also the mysterious derailing locos are to follow...

Cheerio

Ned.

[NedFlanders]

Last year, a fine set of Irish Rail ( Iarnród Eireann) IE Locos became available, the first GM engined Irish loco - the 121 ( on the right) And then the A class ( on the left )

The test running showed them both to be well detailed, well weighted and smooth running locos - Until, that is, the case of the mysterious derailments began!!!

A sudden bump followed by silence peaked my interest. the 121 was lying on its side just through the point on the upper level. "Hmm" says I. Lets go again - Trundle, trundle, trundle, point, fall over! set it off on the other loops - loads of trundling and a distinct absence of falling over.... Back to the inner loop and through the point on the upper level - fall over and silence......

Ran through any number of other locos until finally I ran the A class through it - trundle, trundle Trundle, fall over, silence......... "What the Fruit is going on here?"

Run through it wrong way - no problem, run through it right way - fall over like a drunk each time.

(Keep in Mind the two Items Circled in red here)

Much inspection - back to back/gauge checking, etc. of the point ensued, much checking of the rails before the points - no problems found. "Aw Shazbat! I'll just replace the point!"

You'll never guess what happened after I replaced the point..... trundle, trundle, trundle, fall over, silence......... No problems with Mallard, Ketly Hall, J15 etc.... "Oh Fluffle!" ( you can see it was getting serious - I was running out of my stock of euphemisms )

Ok lets start again - watch, watch, watch, wa... hold on, am I seeing right? yup, just before the point, the leading axel of the trailing bogie was riding the outer rail, and then the inner wheel of that leading axel would catch on the back of the frog (circled in the second photo above) and "Fall over, silence...."

In the photo below you can just make out the wheel with the red arrow isn't actually on the track, the second axel indicated with the green arrow is clearly on the track correctly

NearlyDerailedJPG.JPG (33.89 KiB) Viewed 1498 times

Ok, where is that happening?, is it on the curves on the way into the station? - Nope
Did it happen on either the joint at the end of the bridge deck or the start? - Nope!
Is it happening as it leaves the tunnel ...... yup.

So in this photo where the outside wheel starts to ride on the top of the outside rail is at the the baseboard joint just at the tunnel exit ( Orange Arrow), and then managing to keep running all the way up the incline, across the joints of the bridge deck, through the tight curves into the station and only then keeling over at the point in the station ( Red arrow)!

( apologies for the old photo - I don't have an up to date overall photo of the layout)

The Fix Follows.....

[NedFlanders]

Looking at what was happening my estimation was:
Both locos are relatively short.
Both Locos have all wheel drive via central motor to driven bogies
because of the two driven bogies there is less up/down movement/articulation in the bogies, than on the locos with one driven bogie, to accommodate the relatively short ( non existent) transition gradient ( what did I say back a few years ago....)

This base board joint appears to have lost its transition gradient

Before.JPG (47.68 KiB) Viewed 1497 times

The leading bogie goes through and goes up the incline, the leading axel of the trailing bogie is momentarily lifted up by the front of the loco going up the gradient as it is going around the final stage of the curve - thus the outside wheel begins to ride along the outside rail, the trailing axel of the trailing bogie stays put on both rails.
The loco continues with the one axel derailed until it hits the point on the upper station.

So you mean there was no need to replace the point on the upper station....? lets not go there!

So what was the fix? I unsoldered the track going across the baseboard joint and raised the rails a few mm here and then re-soldered them back to the screw heads - success. All my all-Wheel-Drive locos navigate it fine now.
Hopefully you can make out here with the two rails closer to us (Red arrows) that there is more space between the rails and the screwheads than with the rails in the background (Green Arrows).

Well Neighbours, Two morals confirmed here - If you see badly laid track - fix it!, and keep looking until you actually find the problem..... Doh!

Cheerio,

Ned.

[Mountain]

I gave up on the idea of bringing the track to the baseboard edges and instead use little bridge tracks which go over the join to ensure that I have good running. It may work better if one has circumstances where one boards framework moves at a different angle to the other in the summer and moves back in the winter as the wood expands and contracts. One of my layout boards slightly twists by about 2mm between the summer and winter so using track to bridge over was the best solution. One needs plenty of room to slide the railjoiners. I use the good old Lima joiners as they are very well supportive of the track and well made. I have heard people with portable layouts changing their Peco railjoiners on these bridge track sections after every exhibition, so I hope these Lima joiners work a lot better than that. Time will tell.

If the join is due to a lift up bridge for access, then one can't use this track bridging method so one is back to making track adjustments.

[Bigmet]

Good 'show and tell' of demonstrating how to understand derailments; that would be worth 'pinning up'.

Looking at what was happening my estimation was:
Both locos are relatively short.
Both Locos have all wheel drive via central motor to driven bogies
because of the two driven bogies there is less up/down movement/articulation in the bogies, than on the locos with one driven bogie...

My experience suggests 'not necessarily so'. Major advantages of the centre motor both bogies driven layout are that both bogies are mounted alike in the chassis, and carrying equal weight, and the flexibility is potentially very good.

However, the potential is one thing, but it can be negated by constraints in design, parts design and/or manufacturing errors, and imperfect assembly. Over the past 30 years I have had four brand's RTR OO centre motor drives to look over, and between them they have managed multiple instances of 'limiting bogie movement':
NEM coupler pockets fouling bodywork;
Bogie detail fouling bodywork;
Bufferbeam detail fouling bogie;
Wiring interfering with bogie movement;
Hamfisted internal assembly;
Bad internal components and/or layout.

More tinker time if you are up for it.

[Bufferstop]

Where the baseboards are semi-permanent (split once in a blue moon) I prefer to use the bridging track method. Around 150mm of Streamline with the end rail fixings cut back enough to slide the rail joiners completely onto the rail. Once the section is dropped in place I use a small flat screwdriver to push the joiners forward onto the fixed rail. It needs a patch of new ballast laying. Realistic enough it looks as though the track gang have been in and laid some new sleepers.

[NedFlanders]

Once I had the derailment issue sorted I turned my thoughts to the scenery on the diagonal board.

Tall straight retaining walls ( a board with 7 tracks crossing at 3 different levels without adding the trigonometric challenges with a sloping retaining wall on curves ), two tunnel entrances and some ballast should be achievable by the end of the Christmas Holidays... Right? Not Even Close - but we did get started at least.

So to the skew tunnel entrance - nope, it just looked too odd even for me.

I rearranged the retaining wall to intercept with a tunnel entrance at 90 degrees to the track, instead. This is what it kind of ended up looking like initially

I used the Wordsworth single tunnel template scaled up so that the Eurostar coaches would clear it on the curve. Foamboard was cut to size, Metcalfe castle walls glued on and then cut out to the scaled up tunnel entrance.
this is what the template looks like from the back having been used to cut out the Foamboard, the outer red lines are the double tunnel size - you can just make out the single tunnel red lines on some of my cut edges.

2 Template .JPG (24.73 KiB) Viewed 1388 times

I made a box structure behind the tunnel entrance to support it and left it for a while to check how I felt later. - you can see this in the first photo above.


I tried a couple of options for the tunnel portal but wasn't happy until later ( July ) when I picked up a Metcalfe single tunnel kit, Carefully cut out the portal and glued it to the front of the Tunnel face.

3 Tunnel portal.JPG (88.81 KiB) Viewed 1388 times

Coupled with the buttresses either side Its starting to look a bit better now, and once I have the D'angles of the intercept with the incline retaining walls sorted I will add more detail.

4 in situ.JPG (124.01 KiB) Viewed 1388 times

Until Next time neighbours,

Cheerio

Ned.

[NedFlanders]

After all the foibles with the derailing I then went back to running some clearance tests with the longer locos, principally to see if they would foul the new tunnel entrances....

Ooops, a bit too close! This is going clockwise coming down from the bridge just as it goes on to the embankment.

I briefly thought - "Darn it, I'll have to pull the whole wall off and put in fillers and try to get the walls back on without damaging them too much." I thought better of that and an alternative plan came to mind.

Slice down into the track bed and push in some fillers and see if the wall will push out enough? ( I would also have to slice horizontally under the wall as well but hey-ho it worked!)

Slice down from the top vertically

Slice in from the side under the retaining wall

3 Slicing from Below.JPG (93.27 KiB) Viewed 1238 times

Push in some mounting card into the slot cut from above.

4 Push.JPG (59.73 KiB) Viewed 1238 times

Now we have (plenty of ) room at the front of the 4-6-0/2's and the Eurostar. ( you can see I had to push in more than the original two pieces of card to make it work)

5 and now it fits.JPG (54.08 KiB) Viewed 1238 times

Perhaps some ballasting next?

Until next time neighbours.

Ned.

[NedFlanders]

Some time passed......

I started ballasting the inclined track - perhaps a year later - "Who's to say?"

Suitable tools were used - note the "percussive persuader" to the right!

A spot of care and orange cabling around the points

This was around the same time I decided I did want cable trunking ( yet another "why did I do this to myself? ).

We are now here - filling in the space between track and wall on the lower interchange loops. One baseboard done, the other to be done this weekend (he says hopefully)

also note I have put the capping on the walls - this is wall capping from the metcalfe platform kits. I haven't been able to decide what to do with the top of the buttresses, so there's just plain card on the top of each one for the moment.

Cheerio Neighbours.

Ned.

[NedFlanders]

I picked up a 5 car APT in a Sale and finally got it out of the box to run it in.

I switched out the outer loop to analog control for the APT, put the IR A-class on a Guinness train on the middle loop and put a pair of IR 121 class locos on a container train on the inner loop.

I find it wonderfully relaxing to watch (in person), its like watching a fish tank - theres always something happening somewhere. ( It is in Exteme widescreen so you can see the full layout so best viewed on a bigger screen)

https://youtu.be/_YPl68M2nA4

The APT is perhaps a little fast for the full meditiive effect but I thought you might like to see.

Cheerio neighbours,

Ned.

[NedFlanders]

The Railway room got annexed as a study room for a state exam so not much happened for a while this year apart from the odd bit of Loco maintenance, it gave me time to contemplate a couple of things.

First thing - the embankment.

I wasn't happy with the masking tape and paint method I'd seen working on some Hornby Magazine layouts. It might have been me, cheap masking tape, the wrong paint - whichever way, it didn't work. The edges kept peeling themselves off (see red box) I tried "pva"ing the edges but it wasn't having it.

The other thing that annoyed me was that I had gone for a very geometric shape of the embankment (See Yellow box) - i.e. the line had to be dug in to the land so the only bit of the embankment on view would be harsh angles from the civil engineering for same - but I just didn't like it.

So... I stripped all the masking tape off - added another layer of (Non Geometric) foam and then some filler and the the brown paint again.

Then I could go play with the static grass and all the various gubbins I had bought nearly a year ago.

This is what it looks like now.

the Grassing/Gubbins gluing is probably 50% done on the the first half closest to us and the second half of the embankment has only the first two layers of grass and the initial clumps.

I'm getting happier with it now. I hope to pick up some longer grasses and some coloured flock this weekend to give a bit more depth and colour.

Until next time fellow landscape gardeners!

Ned.

[Admin4]

Good to see you back