Model Railway Forum

Many thanks for your kind compliments, gentlemen. Please don't flatter me too loudly, John. A lot of that joinery was ad-libbed as the work proceeded and has turned out appropriately Heath-Robinson-ish.

Jim, I'm grrrr-ing with you. The garden is promising (threatening?) to become quite time-consuming over the next coupla months.

Cheers,
Artur

And Grrr....again. Tipping down rain today and a trip to the next town restore our hearing . At least we'll save electricity on the tele volume .
Jim.

Just made a start on installing and testing webcams to monitor the hidden sidings, the first section of the layout to be dealt with being the northern loops (dark green area). Not being a great lover of complex electronic systems anyway, I balked particularly at the cost of a professional system like Lauer's, which could easily have run to 1000 euros. I found it much simpler to rely on my own eyes than on some transistor that may well be lying to me because of a speck of dirt.

I first acquired a secondhand HP computer for some 75 euros, plus a number of Logitech webcams for about a fiver each (these are still in the post), and downloaded a freeware webcam program, and that was the capital expense.

A couple of screen shots are included in the wiring up album on flickr (pix 363/4): https://www.flickr.com/photos/53775591@ ... 9557116553

Cheers,
Artur

The webcams for monitoring the northern loops and sidings have been installed and tested. A fair amount of water has gone under the bridge during this phase of the work, owing mainly to indecision about where to actually mount the cameras, which way to route the cables and, last not least, the software to be used. After tinkering with a freeware version of ManyCam, I finally plumped for the standard software supplied by Logitech, which is not sophisticated but does the job without any unnecessary frills. Just a couple more loose ends to tidy up, plus a good hoovering down of the entire low-level baseboards, and I can get stuck into the southern loops.

The work is, as usual, documented on flickr (pix 365-78): https://www.flickr.com/photos/53775591@ ... 9557116553
There are few videos of train movements captured on webcam: https://www.flickr.com/photos/53775591@ ... 9488313446

Cheers,
Artur

Another major stage complete. Looking good Artur nice to see some trains running. This is becoming a magnificent layout, well done.

Thank you, Dublo. This business with the webcams has been something of a Chat Moss. Glad to be able to get with the rest of the project.

Cheers,
Artur

We now have lights in the northern loops and sidings to complement the webcams. Mounting the ceramic GU10 lamp holders was cause for some headscratching at first (beware of splinters!), till my neighbour suggested using pipe clamps. I had some left over from installing the heating and they worked a treat. All I had to do then was mount them on a small block of wood and voilà! Thank you, neighbour! I'm hoping I can now finally get stuck into setting up the southern loops.

A few more test trains have also been filmed.

The work is, as usual, documented on flickr:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/53775591@ ... 9488313446
https://www.flickr.com/photos/53775591@ ... 9557116553
https://www.flickr.com/photos/53775591@ ... 833141776/

Cheers, Artur

Work on the northern loops is now complete. This part of the project has taken far longer than intended and I may well not achieve test running by Christmas as I had hoped. The final task was to replace the Peco PL11 driving point BSL01 with an SM3 (pic 383). Southern loops boards are mounted and first trial placings of points are done. A small amendment to the threaded rod supports was necessary.

The work is documented on flickr:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/53775591@ ... 3524354145
https://www.flickr.com/photos/53775591@ ... 9557116553

Cheers,
Artur

My god that is impressive...

Mr Bones wrote: ↑Sun Aug 04, 2019 11:38 pm My god that is impressive...

I agree. Certainly no micro layout.

Glencairn