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 fini...

  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 ...

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.