Model Railway Forum

JohnSmithUK wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 12:05 pm My wagons arrived unscathed by their journey.

Less than £20 including postage.

Will no doubt attack them to make more suited to my theoretical area at some point.

You can't go wrong with wagons at less then £5 each. They look good, though I've never seen a steel open mineral wagon with a roof before!
You may also find those wagons do run nicely. If they don't they can be easily improved via new wheels, but unless you are feeling rich, stay with the wheels they have for now. Just buy some spare coupling hooks.

Mountain Goat wrote: ↑Fri Feb 08, 2019 5:23 pm

JohnSmithUK wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 12:05 pm My wagons arrived unscathed by their journey.

Less than £20 including postage.

Will no doubt attack them to make more suited to my theoretical area at some point.

You can't go wrong with wagons at less then £5 each. They look good, though I've never seen a steel open mineral wagon with a roof before!
You may also find those wagons do run nicely. If they don't they can be easily improved via new wheels, but unless you are feeling rich, stay with the wheels they have for now. Just buy some spare coupling hooks.

The roof appears to be an extra. It wasn't attached.

That's better. Keep the roof safe as occasionally the vans (Wagons with a roof) come for sale cheap with missing roofs.

Back on track with my control panel for point control.

Made it thinner so less harsh curves on the wires when starting to dig them in.

All the switches have been predrilled for 0.8mm piano wire.

I've laid some of the control out to get an idea for how it will feel.

Excuse the mess, as at the moment, the layout/table is also my workbench/dumping area.

It feels ok, and will eventually be contained in a building.

Added some piano wire to the switches, and will join them using the insides from terminal block to the bits that will run to the points. Subject to change as always.

I like how your control switch panels are coming along. I did something along those lines but different in regards to manual point control. It is still a work in progress so it could be altered in the future depending on the layouts needs etc. I enclose a picture. There are ways to alter the length of pull which may be useful. Basically a pivoted arm with different positions in which a wire or twine can connect to. The further away from the centre position of the arm the further the pull and vice versa. I only had to make one and it did come in handy to change a far reaching point. I used fishing twine (Hence the need for guide wheels) though for longer distances stiff wire is better as twine does tend to stretch a little.
I did think of making signals and a second bank of point levers where the twine would be used with signals and stiff wire used for point control, but as I've not had any twine break on me I have not done so. Also had thoughts of making a second groundframe on the other board which will give a more direct approach and it will be quicker to part the boards (My layout is built to be portable).

Some top engineering there. Thanks for the feedback.

A big moment happened this weekend. I made some progress!!!!!!!

I have attacked my cork lining on the table with a Stanley Knife (other brands are available) to create the paths for the submerged wires in tubes. I weighed down a sample point, and tried it out moving the wire by finger rather than using my controller, and the point threw quite happily, with only a 2-3mm movement, the same as my switches allow.

Images attached.

Today I have been drilling a few holes, making some bigger, wiring up some switches, and playing with my new buy.

No visible progress but infrastructure wise it is moving forward slowly.