Progress Report 91

According to the meteorologists, May was one of the wettest since records began - and it felt like one of the coldest. However, the weather turned completely during the last weekend of the month and I was able to have a full running session which gave an opportunity to test out a few of the projects I had been working on during the bad weather.

 

Infrastructure

 Fencing

Owing to the poor weather, I was unable to do much out in the garden. However, following a tip-off from a fellow GardenRails forumite, I bought a few lengths of Fairy Garden fencing from eBay.

I hadn't seen it before, but I was told it's been around for a few years now but it seems good value for a 90cm length of fencing in the right scale. The palings are thin wood (similar to coffee stirrers) and they are held together with twisted plastic coated wire. This means the fencing is very flexible in both the horizontal and vertical planes.

 

Level crossing

 The first application of the fencing has been alongside the level crossing on the approach to Peckforton station.

To fix the fencing in place, I added some copper wire stripped from 13A twin and earth electrical cable. This was forced in behind the twisted wire of the fencing at roughly six inch (15cm) intervals and secured with a couple of bends, leaving a tail of around an inch (2.5cm) pointing downwards.

The tail ends of the copper wire brackets were then inserted into plastic rawlplugs forced into holes in the concrete breeze blocks which form the trackbed.

 

 Permanent way

Remote point operation

A couple of hard to reach points (turnouts) at Beeston Market and Beeston Castle stations have had push-pull point rodding added, using galvanised fencing wire and screw eyelets.

In addition, the two points for the storage sidings in the lean to can now be operated remotely from the entrance to the sidings with twist point rodding. 

For more information see Operating points remotely using simple point rodding

Stock

Double diesel

The double ended diesel loco which I 3D printed has now had its dummy trailer loco motorised.

It already had a 3D printed chassis which was designed to accept a motor and worm gear set from IP Engineering and so it was a quick and easy conversion. Four wheel drive was also added with Delrin chain and sprockets. 

 Although the locos are powered with cheap three volt can motors, the loco is now quite powerful coping easily with a train of eight loaded hopper wagons and a brake van up the 1:40 gradients on the railway.

In addition, the locos have been given name and number plates, drawn in TinkerCAD, 3D printed and painted. 

The names, Dorothy and Diana, as well as being alliterative with Double Diesel, are taken from two of the daughters of Lord Tollemache, the supposed benefactor of the Peckforton Light Railway.

Schull & Skibbereen loco

 The motorisation of the 3D printed Schull and Skibbereen loco (see How I drew and 3D printed a Schull & Skibbereen loco) is still being worked on. The original Bachmann Lyn motor block proved to be under-powered and so I have been seeking ways of improving its mechanical efficiency.  Initially, the difficulty was finding smaller diameter worm gears which were compatible with the original worm wheels. I tried using different gear sets but they weren't sufficiently robust. I then discovered that the worm gears on Bachmann motor blocks are fairly interchangeable and so I am presently redesigning the motor block to make use of the worm gears from another Bachmann loco.

Getting the gears to mesh reliably and smoothly is proving to be very difficult inside a fully enclosed motor block housing. 

However, I will not be defeated!

Second SR coach

 After developing the design of the Southwold six wheeled coach, I have now constructed a second one.

I discovered during a test run, that the centre truck kept derailing. Closer examination revealed that the arms of the swivelling mechanism on the outer trucks were 4mm too short. Not sure how this happened when I redesigned the trucks, but it just emphasises how critical the dimensions need to be.

A third coach should hopefully finalise the design.

 Cleminson open weathered

The six wheeled Southwold open wagon has now been weathered

I have now used the wagon twice on operating sessions and, touch wood, it seems to be performing well. It did derail on one of the points at Bickerton Station, but hopefully this will not be a regular occurrence.

Operation

Running session

Although the weather has generally been bad through May, it improved markedly towards the end of the month and so I managed to organise a full running session.

Using the Psion

During the running session, I made good use of my Psion pocket computer to manage the freight handling (see How I programmed my Psion 3a pocket computer for freight management).

I am very pleased with how my revisions to the original program performed. At the start of the session, the location of some stock didn't match where it was supposed to be according to the program. This is because through May, I had been having ad hoc running sessions and testing locos and new rolling stock and so the wagons had become displaced.

I found that the easiest way to change a piece of stock's location in the database was firstly to reset all wagons to Beeston Market and then use the List and Move functions to relocate stock which had found its way to other stations. 

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