Hellier Train Care

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.