Received the S Classes today

No derailments!! But I think the B Classes look better - some reason I think the nose of the S classes looking from above its too flat.

Changes to 'Ingle'

Well, what do you know - again a change to the trackwork.

As suggested by Anthony on a recent visit to make the main loop track at Ingle longer and to use a curved point at the west end. Spent the morning (beginning at 0530am when it was nice and cool and bright) relaying this section of track - alot of hard work, drilling, cutting track, soldering, going through the steps multiple times to get it right.

I think, its better to have a longer loop track rather than a head shunt at both sides.
Now, I will get 8 of the ANE model point servos so I can press a button and simulate a signal man at this station.

Here is a photo:



Followed by some signal pics:

Signal Placed on track

Here is the signal on the track - looks quite real.





and here is a video

San Mateo Signals

This week I began constructing the double head San Mateo Signals. I really had a very tough time! One thing I noticed is how delicate the brass work really is! I made a complete mess of it. Luckly I ordered two and hope to improve on the second. And to make matters worse, one of the LED legs broke off so now I am down 1 bi colour LED :(

The instructions were very poorly written - even the grammer was not up to scratch - anyhow I called Bill and he explained a few things on the phone and sent me another diagram which explained things further.

Here are some photos:








As requested by Wayne, here is the schematic for the detection circuit and signal - all credit goes to John of course (and Rob Paisley http://home.cogeco.ca/~rpaisley4/CircuitIndex.html) as he created and helped me with these circuits.

Detection Circuit WORKS!

Thanks to John from railpage.com.au, I build the circuit which detects the passing of a train turning the signal to red using a current sensing architecture! From what turned out as a dream, I cannot believe this is now reality!!

Here is a small video:

Grade gone

I built it and it took me 1 week and its gone in 5 mins....

Somehow it didn't do it for me - layout seemed more toy like - maybe because it felt like a yo-yo - up then immediately down mmm... oh well at least I gave it ago and will reconsider my options - I really want to add a trestle bridge in that area so will most likely build a small L girder benchwork or something.

Building the Grade

I decided to build an incline because my layout seemed too flat! So, using some basic calculations I build a 2% or 1 in 50 grade (to calculate this you divide 1 by 50 then multiply for 100 to give you 2%)

I see that the maximum grade or most frequently used maximum grade used by VR was a 1 in 50 so I thought this should be my maximum on the layout.

Here are some photos for the building phase.

Track Plan

Some Changes
Create another 'branch' line from Ingle to staging. I thought part of 'operation' is also controlling signals and points - so this branch line adds another dimension to the layout - also it gives at least one more operational move. Only draw back is that this branch line is a 'dead-end' where the 0-5-0 will have to play its part to move the loco the other way round -
Another draw back is that the the radius of the curve of the main track to staging had to be reduced to 20inches - quite tight - but since this is 'not visible' I think this should be OK

B Class

Received two B Classes today - B67 and B75.