Progress Report 92

 July has been an extremely busy month family-wise and so very little has been done on the railway. A pity, really, as there have been some good spells of weather. However, I've been told that there are times when the family must take precedence and who am I to argue?

I have managed to complete three projects - a new siding was added to Bickerton Station, scratchbuilt manual point levers and I have found a way of controlling points with servos using cheap servo testers. Apart from those projects, the railway and workshop have lain dormant for a few weeks.

Permanent Way

New siding at Bickerton

Over the years, I have been steadily constructing, adapting and acquiring goods rolling stock because I really enjoy the operational aspects of running my railway. I have developed several computer based freight management systems to make the handling of goods traffic more interesting (see Computerised freight management and Managing freight with my Psion pocket computer).

There are five stations on the Peckforton Light Railway, each with sidings, and three additional lineside industries served by their own branchline or sidings. Over the years I have steadily expanded the number of sidings at each of my stations, apart from one - Bickerton where, until now, I have always thought there was insufficient space for expansion.

I created room for another siding simply by adding a plank to the front of the station which is mounted on a couple of paving slabs.

 I took the opportunity to improve the appearance of the rear of the platform - using PVC foamboard and 3D printed fencing.

Owing to a combination of family ties and poor weather, I've not yet had a chance to run trains since this modification was completed, but I'm hoping the weather will improve before August is over.

For more information see - How I added a new siding to Bickerton Station

Scratchbuilt point levers

Although LGB point levers are spring-loaded and are fairly robust (the can withstand being stepped on) they are not particularly realistic when compared with the weighted point levers found on most UK based narrow gauge railways. I therefore decided to construct my own. After a few experiments, I have perfected the design which makes use of a couple of sleepers from a plastic sleeper strip, a few bits of brass, some brass disks and some brass M2 screws.

They allow stock to trail through the point against the route set but, unlike LGB point levers, the blades don't swing back. It might be possible to achieve this by altering the distance between the pivot and the linkage on the lever, but I've not yet found a reliable means of achieving this and so, for now, I'm happy for the blades to be switched by the flanges on the wheels.

For more information see - How I construct point levers

Controlling points with servos and servo testers

The majority of points on the railway are operated manually with a mixture of LGB and scratchbuilt point levers (see below). However, some of the more inaccessible points are operated remotely using LGB point motors and a modified Deltang radio control system (see How I operate some of my points using Deltang equipment)

I have two sets of storage sidings at opposite ends of the railway (see How I made storage roads in the garage). Until now, I have resisted operating the points in the storage sidings remotely - after all, they are only ever used at the start and end of operating sessions. However, I got fed-up with trotting in and out of the garage and lean-to to change the points and so looked for ways of operating these points by remote control. The points in the lean-to are now operated using simple point rodding (see Operating points with simple point rodding) but this wasn't feasible for the points in the garage as space was much tighter and so I found a way of modifying cheap servo testers to operate them with servos.

The two points in the garage are now operated by servos ........

...... controlled by a couple of toggle switches mounted in a box which hangs from a hook beside the access flap to the sidings (the other switch is the on-off switch).

For more information, see How I operate points remotely using servos and servo testers

As I look out of the window while writing this update, the rain is starting once more. After the heatwave in June, the weather is now unseasonably cool and the weather each day is very unpredictable - certainly not conducive to running trains.

At least it's providing me with an opportunity to catch up with a few jobs in the workshop - see next month's progress report.....

 

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