Tales from The Room of Doom. Dipping a toe in various bucolic backwaters.

[PMP]

In other news, I have been working on a rather old layout.

Ranelagh Bridge was built around 2012 by a friend of mine and featured in BRM in July 2014. It was exhibited at a number of exhibitions for a few years then quietly retired.

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At some point, it found it's way to Lord and Butler, where it it appears to have had some work done to it...............It was certainly not as built by my chum.

When I started there, some four and a half years ago now ( ! ) it wasn't really doing much, other than taking up rather a lot of much needed space. It wasn't operable and frankly looked unfinished and a bit of an eyesore. I offered to store it, with a view to improving both it's appearance and allowing something to move about.

Well, I finally had a look at what was involved a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't encouraging..Who ever had tried to up date the wiring, had simply ( in my opinion ) had just over complicated things and had actually not covered the basics. The layout was DCC. Keeping it simple, the layout needed to have the track live ( obviously ) and the presentation needed improving, mainly because it looked unfinished and essentially crap following it's " upgrade ".

Wiring was a nightmare and the layout was hugely over weight.

First job was to a few pounds and everything, backscene, 'roof' and ends all came off. It had also been extended using a lump of 3x 2 at one end where a bathroom mirror had been added.......

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The wiring was a nest which seemed to have been added to without any real plan..Colours changed on runs and multiple wires stuffed into screw terminals. I am as far from an expert on layout wiring as you can get and as a result, it has to be simple. This was not simple. Bizarrely, the point motors were wired, but there was no provision to make them move or in fact power the frogs. I am not about to lift the track so that was out though to do it properly, that should be done. So I've decided to dispense with that as it really isn't needed for what will be a display/ test track..

Literally, yards of predominately red wire have therefore been cut out.

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The track is now 80% powered. The stumbling block is a Peco asymmetric 3 way point which has no power whatsoever going to it but given it's location, it leaves a small section of the layout unpowered. Access to the rest is fine and will be sufficient for what is required of the layout.

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This is proving to be an interesting exercise. The on layout lighting to buildings and lamps is being worked on and should be completed over the weekend and I hope to start on the replacement backscene and fascia, etc.

I will update accordingly.

Rob.

I’ve just fitted MP1 point motors to (tt120) shelfie5, and they have built in frog switching polarity. They’re also compact, so may be worth investigating if you’re looking to activate the three way. Mine are powered from an old mobile phone charger

This was before a subsequent tidy up of the wiring, as I too am back of the class material for wiring students!

 

[Flaxfield]

At a recent show one of my old layouts was there and I got asked to have a look as no points were working. It had been converted to dc by adding a seeming birds nest of wiring into choc blocks! Tracing power was very difficult and it was all loose so i suspected a crucial wire off somewhere, I politely left them to it as i had to run my layout and the chap who did it was now en route.
Turned out the wrong power supply had been plugged in! All it really needed was labelling to avoid that
I’d have just put a few single pole isolating switches in to achieve the same thing with far less wiring.
Good luck with the renovation, when it comes to powering frogs I just drill a hole through and run an extra wire then cut the rails to isolate it between two chairs so it’s supported well.

Hi Paul.

My solution has been to remove even more of the wiring, again seemingly without any ill effect. The lights in the buildings are now working, with the exception of the three houses at the one end of the layout. I have also trimmed off some 50mm of track and base board, moving the buildings up accordingly. This now puts the layout back to it's original size. I'm not, however, reinstating the sector plate and have removed the last remaining track from behind the scenes in that area. As a result, more wiring has been removed.

I shall give the frog remedy some thought. That's a good idea.

to

Hi Jonte.

Thank you for your thoughts. Bang on. Those photos are fab and yes, I had a fleeting thought of how a terminus could fit into this same area. The two boards are 105cm x 60cm and 107cm x 60cm respectively, so not huge. A respectable pre-grouping terminus could be acheived using the same basic orientation of the track plan.

The houses, by the way, are Bachmann Scenecraft resin jobs. Ordinarily, if this were my build, I'd be painting and weathering but this isn't in the brief. If I start that then this is no longer a quick recondition. No, I'll save that for my own projects.

But don't be surprised if photos of SE&CR stock posed thereon appear.......

Rob

 

[jonte]

Hi Paul.

My solution has been to remove even more of the wiring, again seemingly without any ill effect. The lights in the buildings are now working, with the exception of the three houses at the one end of the layout. I have also trimmed off some 50mm of track and base board, moving the buildings up accordingly. This now puts the layout back to it's original size. I'm not, however, reinstating the sector plate and have removed the last remaining track from behind the scenes in that area. As a result, more wiring has been removed.

I shall give the frog remedy some thought. That's a good idea.



Hi Jonte.

Thank you for your thoughts. Bang on. Those photos are fab and yes, I had a fleeting thought of how a terminus could fit into this same area. The two boards are 105cm x 60cm and 107cm x 60cm respectively, so not huge. A respectable pre-grouping terminus could be acheived using the same basic orientation of the track plan.

The houses, by the way, are Bachmann Scenecraft resin jobs. Ordinarily, if this were my build, I'd be painting and weathering but this isn't in the brief. If I start that then this is no longer a quick recondition. No, I'll save that for my own projects.

But don't be surprised if photos of SE&CR stock posed thereon appear.......

Rob

Great stuff, Rob

I think the houses which look great btw would help with the hemmed in look, conducive to these types of termini where land I suppose was at a premium.

As you write, the baseboard dimensions aren’t the most generous for a terminus station, but as Monks bears witness to, many of these early termini weren’t of cathedraleasque proportions of later termini, and were crammed into wherever space was available. Good use could therefore be made of your short pregrouping stock such that the platforms could be kept to a minimum. The odd inclusion of some ‘vans’ would also help to keep you busy shunting here n there, and remember, that while the three way point is a great help as a loco release for two of the prospective platforms, many of these centre roads were used merely to store stock in between services, shunters then pulling out the stock at the platforms to release the loco at the buffers.

I want one!!!!

Jon