Making it work in N-scale (part 2)

OK, so now I have an idea of what my layout should look lie and that it could work well in a real model. How about making it.?

Well, before doing that I need to see what it will really look like using the parts that I can buy.

My last layout used a lot of flex track which I soldered together at the joints and had to bend around corners and cut with a small bone saw. This is really a total pain.

This time, I'm making life easier and using as much set track as I can except for large straight-ish sections.

So I need to find a way of drafting this up using Peco set track to scale. Obviously, time for CAD.

Now there are a few CAD packages out there and the one that gets a lot of noise is XTrkCad. Well, it does work but in my view it's a pain to use. So what did I use? I borrowed a copy of RailModeller. The shareware version is free but you can't print your model nor can you save it. Not a problem for a small layout, really.

If I was going to make anything more heavy duty, I'd certainly pay the $50 license fee. Not a big deal.

So what can it do?

I think this is really just about all I need. It has all the maijor supplier's parts in there and it shows the part numbers on screen - just right really.

Now for the trivial part of just making it happen.

The little engine that...couldn't.

So the smoke came out, but not in a good way. Why?

To be honest I don't know the reason it actually failed. I know all the details of what happened but not why it happened.

Here goes...

All of these little engines have an electric motor at their core, of course. These motors are brushed DC motors. This means that they have a part that is stationary that brushes against the moving rotor of the engine. Now the bit the brushes contact is called the commutator. This has copper plates with small gaps in between (for technical reaosns). The theory is here.

In this case, the commutator wore down and the edges got sharp. They then started to eat away the brushes causing the fragments to get caught in the wiring and burn causing smoke and short circuits.

My first service call was to replace the brushes which lasted about 15 minutes.

My next was to replace the entire motor at $129 OUCH!! But the new engine costs $250++ depending on where you buy it. And it's discontinued now so is rare.

Of course, all of this was managed through the tender (and good value) ministrations of the guys at Train Trader in Pymble. You'll hear more about them later. Hey, they got her going again like new.

It's a beautiful engine and I have a lot of nostalgia for it - especially since I bought it in Germany 15 yars ago. I had to save it. Mein liebchen!!

An interlude for a little play time.

Well, that's all pretty serious and, frankly, just a bit scarily earnest. So, how about some play time?

I have all these nice engines lying around. Can I actually get to use them? How about that computer control stuff I was talking about in the 'needs' blog post?

Well, get a load of this video...

I had some awful old Atlas track lying around that I bought second hand. I got out my nice old Santa Fe engine and got a back-and-forth system running using an Arduino, a L298 Motor Shield and a few IR sensors.

The electrics came from Littlebird Electronics. You can find heaps of stuff about Arduinos on the web. These guys are Australian so anything you order will be delivered quickly - they're also really nice to deal with *and* deliver their goods in cute reusable containers which satisfies my 'neatness' fetish.

Of course, you can also buy direct from the USA if you live there - Sparkfun is popular as is Adafruit. Even Amazon!!

I don't want to trivialise this electrical work but it was pretty straight forward - I did build a lot of good wiring and nifty little boards but nothing was too complex. After all, the really hard work is in the pre-fab boards. If you ever need help getting up to speed with this stuff then post a comment and I'll call you!

Of course, the sad part of all this is that my nice little Fleishmann engine burned out just about this time - smoke came out, quite literally. Boo hoo :-(.

Making it work in N-scale (part 1)

Before I took this any further I wanted to have a really good idea of how this might work out in N-scale. I started trying to make a scale drawing using a CAD package and realised this was a bit of a pain and I had trouble getting gradients working in a sensible way - most free pagkages on the web come with sapporpriately priced help - yes, close to useless.

So, I had to make a scale model of my scale model just for the sake of settingmy mid to rest tht I'm going to love this layout.

I got some basic idea of standard radii that I could use and set about doing to cutting and pasting - physically!

I used 3mm foam core because it's light, easy to cut, sturdy and cheap. I bought a stack from Eckersley's.

Notice that I've added my tram line on top and also placed a few buildings which I already own - just to see where they might fit on the layout.

This is  a 1:4 scale model of my layout (which is already a 1:160 model of the real world). Hey - we're smaller than T-scale now.

The other great thing about having this little model is that I can simulate operation on it whilst sitting on teh sofa watching TV. Note my very beautiful scale model engines below (T1-T3).

The New Layout.

So, what am I going to do for a new layout?

Firstly, I want to try to keep it to a dekstop - 1200 x 600mm. So far I've compromised to make it 1350 x 600 due to practicality of curves, points and set-track options.

I spent a lot of time looking at track layouts and puzzling.

I used Google maps to find small German towns and look at how they are layed out and where the railway runs. I got pretty keen on having a railway station by a river with a town elevated next to the station.

I've filled up lots of scrap paper with doodles. In fact, some folks spotted my doodling at work and thought I'd gone even more crazy. Just as well I didn't 'fess up that it was for a model railroad (actually, I did!).

I found this really hard to do free-hand so I made some simple templates up in powerpoint. You can see below that I'd drawn up a scale grid with some parallel curves at each end and outlined the baseboard in red. I managed to squeeze 5 sketch layouts onto an A4 page.

Now, there are, of course, a lot of resources on the web and I've listed my favourite one here: Small Trackplans. I really did not see anything here that caughtmy imagination.

Of course, there are always books: Sixty Plans for Small Railways, Book of Model Railway Track Plans. Of course, there is always Hobbyco's offering which was a pleasant surprise.

Having continued to dig on the web, I later found something that I knew was just the ticket. It was a small HO layout here (copyright.....Reinoud Kaasschieter, Nederland/The Netherlands). 

Here are the images:

HO Layout showing tunnels.

HO Layout showing set track part numbers.

What I then had to do was translate it to N and to use Peco track. Also, how about my beloved tram?

It will run along the road shown above which goes from the sttion to the church on the hill.

This has a station and two hidden sections inside tunnels that I can hold trains in if I want to.

My needs for the new layout...

What do I want from my new layout? Some of the things my old layout did are still important to me. Some more stuff that I'd like to have done are just easier now...

My needs are:

• I want to be able to actually run my trains and watch them trundle along. I don't wnat to be just running them between a fiddle yard and a terminus and I don't really like shunting. That means that it should essentially be a very large loop with twists and a few points.
  
  Why the cunning twists? For interest and so that I can have a few trains running simultaneously.
  
• I also want to be able to control this via computer - I'm an electrical engineer and I just have a strong need to do this.
  
  Last time I just did not have the technology at hand - it was too expensive and time consuming. Now I have just the thing...for a future blog post.
  
  
• I'm going to set this up as a German layout this time - I've got a splendid Fleischmann engine and coaches and just scored a few more at a second hand stall.
  
  
• Also, I want a tram - just for fun.
  
  
• It has to be small and portable but not hokey and pokey.
  
• It has to be really nicely landscaped.
  
• It has to be good!! No crap.

Some photos of my old model...

I still have both engines but the Fleischmann 2-6-0 needed some serious work - a new motor for $129.

My new model railroad

After about 15 years, I've decided to get back into model railroads. I thought hard about resurrecting my old model railroad which is out in the shed but:

• It's too big
• It's too heavy
• I can't remember the wiring
• It's not as much fun - I want a new one

Times have moved on and it's time for a new toy.

For old times sake, I'm going to post some video of the old one here in the near future.