Hellier Train Care

Finally, after much deliberation, I have come up with a name for my railway. The idea came to me at work while talking with one the volunteers we have helping out. So after a bit of fiddling I finally came upon the name for the railway. From this day forth, it shall be the unknown railway no more, It's name will be the Deltrats Line (and yes that's startled in reverse which is how I felt when I started it all).

Quick update first regarding my last post. The problem regarding the track constantly needing cleaning is solved (amazing how a plug not fully connected can affect the running of a layout). So onto the main subject of the post. I have got myself an Autocoach and B set Coach to run behind my 14XX, a few things are needed to be done. First step in a lot of coach rebuilds/repairs is to completely disassemble said coach. Autocoach Fully Disassembled,  front shows both bogies and broken under frame detailing. Middle shows base and weight for coach. Back is clearly the coach and roof is removed and loosely placed back on top First things I plan to do is re-wheel the bogies with metal wheels (which is why they are currently missing), repair the broken part of the under-frame. I will also look at weathering the under-frame and the bottom of the coach. Finally I will add detail to the inner of the coach, added painted seats and passengers. Once finished with the autocoach I wil

  Well, the ballasting is now more or less complete (places that don't have it at the moment, probably won't ever have it) There's a few problems yet to be solved (such as why after 12 hours a clean track need cleaning to allow you to run anything).  As you may be able to guess I am now starting on the landscaping of my layout, as with everything it will be modular  I glue triangles or card to what will be the inner tracks tunnel wall which will help reinforce the roof when fully assembled. The tunnel mouth is next, where I take a series of measurements from the track and loco heights to craft a twin track tunnel mouth wide enough for two passenger trains to happily go through. Although not pictured I have put reinforcements on the top of the tunnel mouth for the tunnel roof, I have also put extra reinforcements on one edge of the tunnel wall to allow me to link the mouth and wall together. Not quite sure how I will finish the tunnel mouth at

Since my last post, I've fitted a DCC chip to the 14xx (quite simple and apologies for not adding pictures). However as it's my shortest loco I've found it having issues going over the pointwork on the inner track, such as stalling when on the point blades between the main rails and the electro frogs, after a bit of testing and installing extra wire at the toes of the points I've found that what is causing the problem. It would seem that for some reason the point blades on the inner loop isn't picking up power off the main rails as they do on the outer loop, to bypass this I'll add extra droppers into the point as shown in the image below.  In the image the red rails are fed from the red wire of the dcc bus and the black from the black wire of the dcc bus, the blue section is fed from the point motor to switch the polarity depending on the position of the blades. The additional wires to add extra power to the points will be added where the small circles

As my railway is going to run what I feel like running on it, I have decided recently to buy the new Hornby GWR 14xx, now of course this, because it is using old airfix tooling, has no socket for a decoder, so in order to make it work with my control system, I need to install a decoder. Thankfully hard-wiring decoders into steam engines is a little easier then fitting them to diesel as there are no light to wire in, instead all I will need to do is to de-solder the wires from the pick-ups to the motor as well as removing the capacitor (as this is not needed with dcc), and then solder the red and black pick up wires to the red and black wires on the decoder and also solder the orange and grey (correct me if i'm wrong on this) wires from the decoder into the motor. When I do this, I'll update once more on my progress.

So, I've decided to make a few modifications to my class 56. To begin with, to smooth out its running I'll simply be chopping off the capacitor near the motor, as from my understanding, this can cause problems when running a loco on dcc. Once this is done, and I've made any other requirements for it to run smoothly, I will work on motorizing the roof fans. From what I've read, this can be done by installing an additional decoder (and set it to a different number) which connects up to a specific motor (a mashima 1020) which should fit in the space left when removing the drive shaft. Then all I should need to do is to program the chip before installing it (I'll be making use of the speed function that usually controls the loco's main motor) and add a little rubber ring to the end of the motors drive shaft to enable it to rotate the fans at the speed I require, when I want it. When I start on this, I will add pictures showing what I'm doing.

For quite some time now I've been trying to come up with an interesting name for my layout as it stands at the moment. I've come to the choice that for now, due to the size, that it would be best to make it a branchline of sorts, though this would change when I manage to get a place of my own and expand it, thankfully how its put together at the moment and the fact I have a few redundant points in it will make it much easier to achieve. As for the name, I'm thinking of calling it something like the Woodbury Line, though I am still to make my final decision regarding its name, suggestions are welcome though.

Well as most of my track is down, I've started ballasting the track, half the track so far is ballasted, which is one boards worth so I have the remaining board to ballast, once this is done I will be looking to start adding and planning the scenery. Something I have started on already, I have started to create a tunnel that covers half the track of one of the boards, this is something I'll show in future pictures.

As not much has been done to the layout recently, the blog laid more or less dormant. Though now of course two posts come up at once. So recently my birthday came around and I gained a few extra wagons, now I already had the appropriate loco to pull them so I just had to chip it. This however is where the problems started, once I installed the chip and reassembled the body, I noticed a strange issue with the lighting, only one ends lights, if any were on when they were meant to be on. So a bit of fiddling later, almost giving up and returning it and checking the internet, I came across a couple of articles about the lights on Hornbys class 56. Satisfied that it wasn't a dodgy unit, to a certain extent, and more of a manufacturing fault, I reinstalled the chip (having removed it earlier to test it on analogue control before almost giving up completely). After cleaning the light contacts and making adjustments to the springs on the body to help improve the lighting powe

So I keep telling myself that I'm not going to be using settrack on my layout due to the issues it causes if anything with a short wheelbase is run over it (mainly shunters with 0-6-0 or 0-4-0 wheel arrangements) But as happens I see that I can add more track to part of the layout and this track, due to the geometry, has to be set track, so I set about making it live, but of course I refuse to use Hornby's DCC staples, so I set about making my own modifications.   The back of  a Peco settrack point, as out the box   Most of the webbing cut away along one section.   Small sections of wire soldered to join the required rails   View from top once installed on track.  Now although they may be slightly more intrusive at this point, they should more or less disappear when the track is ballasted.

Now this is what you call frustration, I purchased 1 roll of woodland scenics track bed, purely because from looking at the length I thought it would be enough, clearly though, it wasn't enough, leaving me with gaps under the left side curve. Fortunately though I got all the other track bed down without too much of a problem. So my next step is to get another pack of track bed, which I will need for the yards anyway so most of is should get used up. Then I'll wire in the power to the bus lead under the board to send a test train round on, this will pick up on any possible problems I may encounter before I take up all the track, go over it all with a track rubber and stick it down. I'll then test it all again to be sure everything is fine before installing the point motors which will be controlled via dcc, I know some people don't like the idea of dcc points but I have no room for a control box and sometimes I'd like to sit down and watch trains go round, c

So this is how it looks for now, of course nothing is actually fixed in place as most of it will be risen up (thought I'm not sure how some of my locos will manage the inclines so I guess I'll have to see when it comes to it. Now on the left side I'll be using some wood to rise up the track to the required hight, but of course to have motors under the track I'll need to leave gaps in the wood as well as putting a thin sheet over the top to conceal the gap. Despite this I have been temped to use some of the woodland scenics inclines and risers to do the same thing, my only issue with the wood at the moment is that they are not wide enough to fully conceal the under board motors though I can remedy this when it comes to adding the scenery. Initially I was going to make the passing loop removable in one section, though I now believe that that will make things more difficult for me and perhaps my better option would be to forgo that idea. Instead I'm tempted to

Not quite sure how I will manage this, but my plan is to make it as modular as I can, mainly so if I ever get extra room for it I can just add extra boards in between the existing ones. So my first thought is to make areas of track simple to remove, now I've seen this done with scenery which is easy enough, but with track that includes a bundle of points is going to be tricky and at the moment I'm not sure how I'm going to overcome this purely because of the wiring needed and my concern is where is this heap of wiring going to go and how am I going to make it easy to connect up without going through dozens of wires and connecting them appropriately. I am sure there are ways of doing this without creating obtrusive wires and maybe my decision to use dcc for points as well could help. Now as you may be able to tell, the coloured bits of the plan need to be easily removed, although it requires a little testing, one thought is to scratch build a building, maybe a signal

So of course, the first main thing to go when creating a model railway is to plan the track. And this is my plan for my track, now put away your plan books, you won't find it in there, because like most railways I've come up with this myself. Now I know what your thinking, little boring isn't it? A few loops and sidings? Well yes it may very well be but it will be enough to keep me busy for some time to come yet, what with all the track laying, wiring and everything else that ends up in it. Oh and for anyone thats wondering I used a piece of software called Anyrail , its a great bit of software, and worth paying for the full version (trial only allows 50 pieces which you will reach very quickly), though for some reason Norton doesn't like it from what I've heard. Anyway, there will be pictures in a few days time of the work in progress, so keep an eye out.

Not much for now. Though this will be the first post of many to come as I work on creating my first model railway layout in 00. There's no specific era so I will run what I feel like on it, and its not modelled after anywhere specific, so we will see how it goes. As for now I haven't given it any kind of name but I'm open to suggestions, for names for the entire layout, Station and the two yards. I'll be adding a design drawing quite soon.