Seeing Spots

"I've done something, and you're not going to like it!"

Ominous words from Himself a few days ago confessing that he'd taken an 'executive decision' to make life easier shunting wagons around Minffordd Yard.

There are all sorts of tricks layout builders use to mark the magic spots where automated uncoupling things are hidden.

On Minffordd we use magnets buried in the ballast for the Kadee couplings on the standard gauge and to animate the loops on the Greenwich couplers on the narrow gauge.

Some of the places are marked with a model person, and others with a sleeper placed beside the track, and many of the locations have some small bushes springing up as well.

The problem for Himself, and at least one other of our operators at the SEC show in Glasgow, is that they struggle to pick out the brown sleepers and the green bushes because they are red-green colour blind.

Himself has decided to try another trick which is to paint white dots on the shoulders of the sleepers either side of each magnet.

These, he hopes, will stand out like a sore thumb to him, and make shunting the narrow gauge a little less frustrating, with not so much shuffling backwards and forwards trying to stop the train in the correct spot over the magnet.

The trade-off is that while the marks may be more intrusive for the layout viewer, more reliable uncoupling might bring back a little more of the magic of hands-free, effortless uncoupling.

How do you get the balance right on your layout?

Short Circuits = Short Fuses

Digital Command Control - or DCC as we have all come to call it - is a wonderful thing, but let's not pretend it doesn't have a lot a downsides.

Many might regard the cost of the chips as the biggest drawback, which is especially the case when you're going for sound as well, because it can sometimes double the price of a new locomotive.

Then there's the complexity of the control handsets themselves.  

A couple of times during the Glasgow show I looked across at some of my fellow operators and saw only furious button pressing and furrowed brows, and no trains moving.....

And at exhibitions I would argue that perhaps the biggest issue is the way that everything on the layout comes to a stop as soon as anything creates a short circuit.

Mostly this is because of simple human error - a failure to check the route has been set before moving off and the loco runs towards point which are set against it.

The problem is affects everything on the system, not just the single train involved.

But as the weekend in Glasgow wore on we began noticing an increasing number of mysterious occasions where a train made up of our set of 'Barn' carriages would come to a stop in the middle of plain track for no apparent reason.

The instinctive reaction each time would be to assume a short had occurred somewhere else on the narrow gauge side of the layout.

(Minffordd is divided into two separate circuits for 009 and 00)

The fiddle yard operators, and the person on shunting duty on the remote controller at the front, would face increasingly irritable accusations and interrogation.  "Was that you, again??!"

By the Sunday afternoon it had happened so often - and there had been so many false accusations bandied about - that the finger of blame started to be pointed at the train itself.

But how?

It was Himself who did the detective work and found the culprit.

It was carriage 14 what did it!

Here's the explanation.

The wheelsets we're using on these carriages are insulated on one side only, which means that on a bogie you need to have both orientated the same way if you are not going to risk creating a short circuit,

This is especially the case when the bogie frames are brass, and the axles fit into brass bearings, because the whole bogie becomes live.

We'd taken care to ensure each bogie on the set had the wheelsets matching.   

What we hadn't done was check that every bogie on every carriage matched.

On carriage 14 we had the wheelsets in the bogies the opposite way round to the rest of the rake.

With us also using brass couplings soldered to a brass bogie, the last line of insulation defence is the paint on the couplings.

As that begins to wear and chip after 3 days of intense running at a show, snaking over crossings and into fiddle yard sidings hundreds of times, it opens up the potential for the different polarities of bogies on adjoining carriages to briefly come into contact with each other, creating the short circuit.

It's simple fix to rotate the wheelsets on the bogies on 14 to they all match now, but it shows how careful you have to be.

More Couplings

Do you ever regret starting on a job?

I think that’s how Himself is getting to feel about the process of replacing all the couplings on our fleet.

Most of the carriages have been done and now he’s ploughing through the freight stock.

It’s a slow process because the original Bemo couplings have to be removed with the minimum of damage, and it’s a two stage process to fix on the replacement Greenwich couplings - first with superglue and then with epoxy resin (just to be in the safe side).

You also have to ensure the coupling heights match perfectly before finally touching up any paint chips that appeared while all that was going on.

Happy Couplings

Himself is on a mission at the moment to standardise, as far as possible, all our couplings.

This has gone so far as to fit brass Greenwich couplings to the lead and tail waggons of our slate train where they couple up to the locomotives.

Previously these were fitted with chunky plastic BEMO couplings which for a long while were the standard in OO9.

The most vital thing with couplings in any scale, but especially this one, is that they are aligned properly for height with one another and you can see in the picture how we use a little jig knocked up out of styrene to set the height of the bottom of the coupling face.

The advantage that the Greenwich design has over all overs is that because the shaft is made of brass it is easily bent either upwards or downwards to make fine adjustments - the key thing is to make sure it is fixed very firmly to the model, otherwise you will pull it off when you go to bend it.

Van Rails

I've been adding the final details to the WHHR ex-VoR brake van, such as the couplings, air brake pipes and grab rails.

The holes have also been drilled for the T door handles and the glazing cut to size.

The next stage, I suppose is to prime it.

Bogie Bearings

The first of our WHHR carriages is on wheels now.

While the plastic used for the injection moulding in the Dundas kit is nice and soft for cutting and altering when I was kit-bashing the body, these days they're now using it for the bogies as well.

This means that it's a very necessary precaution to drill out the axle boxes from the inside and fit some brass cup bearings.

With Bron Hebog being a very long layout by 009 standards the chances are that left in their original state the pin points on the wheel axles would very quickly bore out the locating holes in the bogie

frames leading first to loose wheels, and then eventually, no wheels.

This was certainly our experience with Dduallt so we're taking no chances with the even longer run.

You can see in the picture that he has also soldered an extension to the Greenwich coupling so it can be glued into position on the bogie.

Next it's onto painting the carriage in a mix of green and brown shades which is never going to end well for Himself, alas....

Greenwich, Meantime

I've had a change of plan with what to do next on the carriage.

Instead of adding the vacuum pipes I got out the soldering iron and added the couplings to the bogies the other night.

We have standardised with the fold-up brass Greenwich couplings on our rolling stock and they are the default option for any stock I am building for a client too.

Among their advantage is that it is very simple to re-position them, you just apply the hot tip of the iron and melt them off and fix them back in place.

I don't know what the client has planned for his Disco Car yet, and whether it will ever run on a layout as part of a train, so it is hard to know whether to set them in a close-coupled position or not.

So I have played safe and set them very generously so to reduce the chances of things like the corridor connections or the vac pipes locking with those on any other stock it is coupled do.

It's possible, after all, that it may make a guest appearance on Dduallt or Bron Hebog one day.