Another week gone and end of March '14

Had quite a constructive week.

Power-routed another set of points, this one the approach to the main station.
Fixed my blown bi-coloured LED.  This was really frustrating.  After installing, testing revealed only one colour was working.  Had to un-solder and wire up another LED and during this time, the search light head came off as I tried to place the LED into the head!  It's time like these I think is this all really worth it.  Utter frustration.  Soldered another LED and all was good.  So far the most challenging has been the signalling on the layout

I now have all my signals up and connected to a detection circuit.  The only one remaining is the approach from the east.  This will require two signal circuits created, one for the low-speed and one for the main head.
Was a very wet week.  One side of the layout faces the shed's roller door, and this section is open to the elements.  Gave some thought on how best to fill this gap.  Eventually settled on 3mm MDF covered with 1mm sheet.  This should stop the MDF from getting wet, but I am not sure how well the 1mm sheeting will stand up to the hot summer sun which rises from this side.

wet week - source: bom.gov.au

I am rethinking the Flour siding, looks to cramped for my liking.  Most likey I will do away with it and have a dock road to shunt the Perishables siding.  I had to be honest to myself and although I would like to have another industry here, it just doesn't look right.  This leaves me with three shunt areas if I include the sidings, and three shunt areas at the minor location.  The minor location is worked by the pilot from the major location.

Had quite a constructive weekend.

Had quite a constructive weekend.

I wasn't too happy with the "Flour" siding coming off the main like that so I have now abandoned the dock road and made a siding running behind the station to the Flour merchant, idea inspired by the track diagram of Nhill, Vic.  This has the added benefit of reducing the total number of points on the layout by one.  I like it whenever I reduce trackage, I take it as a big plus.  I am thinking GY and/or GJF traffic on this siding?

Also didn't like how road 3 was coming out of road 2, so I have added a curved point at the beginning of the yard which makes road 2 longer, and made road 3 a partial head-shunt.  See schematic below and photo.

Also, power-routed my double-slip which is in its new location given the changes mentioned above.

Spent alot of time trying to wire up the signalling.  It's a rest nest!  Unfortunately I think I blew one of the bi-colour LEDs so will need to re-wire another one of those.

Also had some time to run some trains and do some shunting in a very casual manner.

Had quite a constructive week and a track-plan

Had quite a constructive week.
Changed the approach to the (small) town (bottom of track-plan).  Initially I had a Left hand Curved point.  I didn't like how the main line was on the deviating track and I didn't want to have the secondary road nearest to the edge, so I shortened the
secondary road and replaced the curved left hand point with a right hand point.  This made the approach longer, however it reduced the secondary road somewhat.
Power routed three points.
Moved the colour light signals to the other side which was formely staging, as this side is now a yard and station complex.  Signals are active but do not detect presence of a train and drop to red at this time.
Changed the point work at this location so I have a couple of sidings / head shunt on the eastern end (anti-clockwise is heading to Melbourne).  The double-slip is moved to the secondary road.
Add some paste to existing trees I had created a while back.  Inspiration comes from Geoff of Spitters Swamp Creek fame.  Still need to paint them up and add foilage.
Started cleaning some rollingstock wheels - some were incredibly flithy.  Took me a few hours just to do about a dozen.  I used Acetone and ear-buds. Locos also run alot smoother now.

Here is the trackplan for those interested.

0-5-0 Staging

The following changes made since last post.

Due to the lack of main-line run,  I have done away with the concept of staging, using the good old 0-5-0 instead.

One side of the layout will be a smallish yard with some shunting possibilities, the other, a small outback town with two roads, one being the main and the other servicing a goods shed, a silo and a cattle siding (for example Gerang Gerung  (photo))
I usually run one train at a time.  This train will run a few laps until I am content, then it can do a number of things:

1.  Shunts at the small town
2.  Shunts at the larger town
3.  Crosses another train at the larger town or
4.  Goes directly "off line"

All locos and wagons are stored away so every time I want to run a train, I basically make up a consist on the fly.  One thing good about this is that I can have many consists programmed into the controller and don't have to worry about killing a consists after a run.  The down side is that there is much more handling of the rolling-stock.  Removing and adding a new train takes under a minute so its quite easy.  For the precious space that I have got back by not using staging, which is basically nearly 6 metres, it is of little trouble to me to manually stage trains.