Progress Report 102

 Although it has been six months since my last progress report, there have been only a few developments. The early part of the year is a slack period for garden railways in general as the weather isn't always conducive to getting outside. Once spring comes, there is the annual battle with cutting back the undergrowth and keeping the tracks clear. This year, plant growth has been even more vigorous than usual, with what seems like just the right combination of rain and sunshine. 

However, there have been a few developments. In terms of motive power, another loco has joined the fleet - a 3D printed Manning Wardle 0-4-0T loco. I have converted a few locos from track power to battery powered radio control. Beeston Market station has undergone a makeover and various other cosmetic enhancements have appeared on the railway.

 

Rolling Stock

 Manning Wardle 0-4-0T

 After seeing an illustration of a charming little three-foot gauge Manning Wardle loco in "Stone and Steam in the Black Mountains" by David Tipper .....

..... I tracked down (with help) a couple of photos of the original loco and set to work designing and 3D printing out the parts needed to construct it.

 The gearing on the Bachmann chassis block I hoped to use for it proved unreliable and so I had to resort to my now favoured approach to motorising my locos, using a GA25-370 geared motor and bevel gears.

It has now entered service as loco #29, ENZO.....

..... and seems to be working reliably.

 More information on the design process and construction can be found here:

•  Scaling-down and deconstruction
•  3D drawing the parts using Tinkercad
•  Printing and construction

There seems to be some scepticism among fellow modellers as to the efficacy of using such a simple tool as Tinkercad for 3D model construction but, to be honest, I find it does what I need to do reliably and easily. If it ain't broke .....

 

Battery / RC conversions

 I have also carried out a few battery/RC conversions for other people. 

Most recently, I have converted an 0 gauge Bachmann / EFE Hudswell Clarke 0-6-0T loco using three lipo cells and a Micron MR601 receiver controller.

 

(see How I converted a Bachmann/EFE Hudswell Clarke 0-6-0T loco to battery/RC)

In addition, I converted three G Scale Bachmann Big Hauler 4-6-0 "ten wheelers" to battery/RC, using Micron MR603c receiver/controllers with Micron MSND01 soundcards and 18650 li-ion 3S battery packs.

 For more information see How I converted Bachmann 4-6-0 Big Haulers to battery/RC

There haven't been any further developments in terms of rolling stock, though over the summer, I might continue to slowly replace some of my older early bashed freelance goods rolling stock with more recent 3D printed models based on actual prototypes from, for example, the Southwold Railway.

 

 Lineside and infrastructure

 Detailing the approach to Beeston Market station

 When I rebuilt Beeston Market station and the Copper Mine last year, (see How I replaced the baseboards at Beeston Market Station), I reorganised the track layout to gain a bit more space in the sidings. Unfortunately, this sacrificed the forecourt of the station where the café stood.

After some quick measurements, I realised I could just squeeze in an extra foot or so of baseboard at the end of the station without interfering with wheelbarrow access to the rear of the garage. And so work commenced.

I found sufficient offcuts of fence rails and heavy-duty roofing felt to complete the job (I have whole heaps of stuff which might one day come in handy). The café has now been re-instated and faces forward, so its facade is much more evident.

 

In addition, 3D printed fencing and gates have been added, together with the goods office.

I feel the changes have now much improved the look of this end of the station.

 Relocating the signal cabin at Beeston Market

At the same time, I rehoused the signal cabin at the other end of the station which too had lost its original location owing to the changes in track formation.

 

Repainting the station buildings 

 I had noticed in various videos of the line I made last year that most of the station buildings around the line were looking decidedly tired and unloved. 

As they were cast in resin, I leave most of my station buildings out all year. The only one I do take in is Beeston Market Station building. It took a good two or three days of painstaking cleaning, rubbing down and repainting before the buildings took on a much fresher and cared-for appearance.

I have now decided to only deploy almost all my station buildings only during running sessions. The exception being Beeston Castle where the station building is bedded in concrete and so is not removable (without the risk of cracking the resin).

 

Operation 

 I have been experimenting with making my own sound cards - but with mixed success. I did manage to create a very basic steam sound card using a ESP32 microprocessor and code created by ChatGPT, however it was extremely rudimentary with an intermittent white noise generated hiss.

Experiments to program a more sophisticated sound system using digitised chuffs from real locomotives has proven to be very elusive. The ChatGPT code simply did not work, despite several tweaks and iterations.

However, I have gone back to very simple sound systems designed for use in greetings cards for some of my smaller diesel locos and have found they are quite satisfactory.

Operating sessions

 The majority of videos I've made and posted on YouTube since my last Progress Report have been to test locos and conversions. However, in March, I did manage to find sufficient dry weather to have a running session which included a special sawmill train.

 In addition, I took the opportunity to give my most recent loco a role in a full operating session (as seen above) and create a retrospective of how freight traffic has been handled over the years on the PLR

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How I reprogrammed a Deltang Rx102 with a Prog4 module to operate a MyLocoSound sound card

Preamble

Although I have previously written a post about reprogramming the Rx102 receiver (see How I reprogrammed a Deltang Rx102), things have changed a little since then and so I felt it was time I replaced that post with a more fully detailed, up to date version.

I wanted to reprogram an Rx102 receiver so that I could use spare pins to trigger the effects on a MyLocoSound sound card. The MyLocoSound card (like most sound cards) need a 0v signal to trigger additional effects. The default outputs from the Rx102 are either for servos (on Pins 1 to 5) or for directional lighting (on Pins 6 and 7). As I wanted to use my Deltang Tx22 transmitter to trigger the effects, I wanted to use the Bind Button (Channel 5) and the Direction switch (Channel 3) as sound effect triggers. For more information on interfacing the MyLocoSound card with Deltang receivers see How to interface Deltang receivers with sound cards - MyLocoSound

The outputs could just as easily be reprogrammed to provide 3.2v positive outputs to power LEDs eg for interior lighting (see below). There is no need to include a load resistor when wiring up LEDs to the signal pins of the Rx102 as the receiver outputs include appropriate resistors.

Contents

• The Prog4 Programma module
• Installing the software (on a Windows 10 PC)
• Setting up CoolTerm
• Binding the receiver to the Prog4
• Creating the text files
• Sending the text files to the receiver
• Checking

The Prog4 Programma module

 The Prog4 (like the Prog1, Prog2 and Prog3) is a modified Rx102 receiver. The most significant difference is that the Prog4 has a rather prominent push button mounted on one side. This is the bind button (on the other Prog modules, it is also used for transmitting the programming instructions).

The Prog4 needs to be connected a computer with an RS232/USB (CH340) cable.

I got mine via eBay by searching for PL2303TA TTL to RS232 Converter Serial Cable
. The first one I purchased failed to work (not sure why) but the second one (and a third) worked well so it might be worth persevering if things do not work out OK the first time you try.

When it arrived, I connected the lead to the Prog4:

• Black lead to the Bottom Pin 7
• Red lead to Middle Pin 7
• Green lead to Upper Pin 7
• White lead to Upper Pin 6

Installing the software (on a Windows 10 PC)

Before installing the software, I needed to download and install a driver for the interface cable. This was downloaded from https://serialio.com/drivers-and-set-up-usb-rs-232-adapter-in-windows. As indicated on the web page, once the .EXE file was downloaded and saved, I had to install it 'as an administrator'. I right-clicked on the saved file and selected 'Run as administrator'.

Once that was installed I downloaded CoolTerm from http://freeware.the-meiers.org/ . The zipped file needed to be extracted which I did by right-clicking and selecting Extract all.

 I dragged the resultant folder on to my desktop so that I would know where to find it in future (the program does not install to the programs list in the Windows menu).

Setting up CoolTerm

Before starting up the program, I inserted the USB lead into a USB socket. The driver had installed successfully (I had rebooted the computer to make sure) and so there were no error messages. The LED on the Prog4 came on to show it was connected.

In the CoolTerm folder on the desktop were a couple more folders and the CoolTerm.exe file. I doubled clicked this to start up the program.

The program loaded OK and the LED on the Prog4 started flashing 3 times, then pause, three times, etc. (ie 3-flash) to show the software was communicating with it.

Before using the software, I needed to set it up for the Prog4. Clicking on the Options Button ......

.......... took me to the Options screen.

On my computer and with my USB socket, the Prog4 was showing up as COM3. You might need to click on the 'Re-Scan Serial Ports' button to get your Prog4 to show up. If it doesn't you might need to try another USB socket (or buy another lead - see above). Your USB lead/Prog4 might show up on a different port (it was COM7 on my old laptop).

The settings needed to be changed to those above, ie:

• Baud rate = 115200
• Data bits = 8
• Parity = Even
• Stop Bits = 1
• XON check box ticked

I also clicked on the 'Receive' settings and ticked the Ignore receive signal errors check box.

The program was now ready to send information to the Rx102

Binding the receiver to the Prog4

Before the programming info could be sent to the Rx102, the receiver needed to be bound to the Prog4. The receiver was put into Bind Mode by connecting the black bind plug (supplied with the receiver) across signal Pins 5 and 7 (ie the uppermost row) and turning on the receiver.

The LED on the receiver started flashing rapidly showing it was in Bind Mode and so I removed the bind plug.

I removed the Prog4's USB plug from the computer and then, holding down the bind button on the Prog4, I re-inserted the USB plug - this puts the Prog4 into Bind Mode.

I removed my thumb from the bind button and the LEDs on the Prog4 and the Rx102 flashed once a second in unison and then after a few seconds they both started flashing three times and pausing, three flashes, pause, etc. The Prog4 and the Rx102 were now bound together (Note: if the Rx102 had previously been bound to a transmitter such as the Tx22, it will not forget that bind).

The Prog4 was now ready to reprogram the receiver.

Creating the text files

The easiest way to reprogram a receiver with the Prog4 is to create a series of text files with the instructions for the receiver. I wanted to set up my Rx102 so that I could use the bind button and direction switch on my Tx22 transmitter to trigger sound effects on a MyLocoSound sound card. The Bind Button sends Channel 5 low when it is pressed and the Direction Switch sends Channel 3 high or low depending on which way it is switched.

To discover what instructions need to be sent to the receiver, I consulted the table for the Rx102 on the Deltang website. (click on the image to enlarge it).

This table showed that the codes needed to reprogram pin 5 on the receiver were:

1,5,2,5,4

• 1 = menu one
• 5 = Pin 5
• 2 = on/off
• 5 = Channel 5
• 4 = Off when the channel is Low

In other words, when the Bind Button is pressed on the transmitter (sending Channel 5 low), the receiver will turn off the output from Pin5 (ie the output from Pin5 will become 0v)

The codes for the Direction Switch were:

1,3,2,3,6

ie. The output from Pin3 will become 0v when the Direction Switch is flicked in reverse (ie sends Channel 3 high).

And.......

1,4,2,3,4

The output from Pin4 will become 0v when the Direction Switch is flicked forward (ie sends Channel 3 low).

I used Notepad on my computer to create the text files (if you can't find it, type Notepad into the search box on the bottom left of the screen and press return). NOTE: Although you can save text files from MS Word, the files include all sorts of additional gobbledegook which could confuse the Prog4.

The text file for the Bind Button instructions........

The text file for the Reverse Direction Switch ......

and the text file for the Forward Direction Switch......

 Each text file was saved (in a folder inside the CoolTerm folder) so they could be used later.

Sending the text files to the receiver

 With the receiver bound to the Prog4 and the Prog4 communicating with the computer through CoolTerm, I was now ready to send the instructions to the Rx102.

I needed to unplug the USB lead and re-insert it because the Prog4 had gone to sleep. It switches off after 5 minutes if nothing is happening.

The first job was to open the connection between CoolTerm and the Prog4. I clicked on the Connect button.

Once connected, I then clicked on the Connection menu and selected Send Textfile...

I navigated to the folder where I had stored the text files and then clicked on the first of them and clicked the Open button.

The information in the text file was sent from the computer to the Prog4 and then on to the Rx102.

The other two text files were also sent in the same way. I got a series of messages in the CoolTerm window to show the files had been transmitted OK

Note: these messages do not always appear straight away, even though the files have been transmitted successfully. The best way to find out if they have worked is to check the receiver (as below).

The receiver was turned off (to save the changes).

Checking

 To check that the receiver had been programmed correctly, I wired-up an LED to a servo plug. There is no need to include a resistor with the LED as the Rx102 includes load resistors in the circuitry for the output pins. The black lead from the servo plug was connected to the negative leg of the LED and the white (or yellow) lead was connected to the positive leg of the LED. The middle (red) lead from the plug was left unconnected.

The receiver was bound to the Tx22. The LED was connected in turn to Pins 3, 4 and 5 and the relevant button or switch operated on the transmitter. When first connected, the LED glowed steadily but when the switch or button was operated on the Tx the LED was extinguished showing the output was going from 3.2v to 0v.

I will attempt to make a video showing this process but it will have to be a combination of screen captures and live action and so it might take a while to figure out the best way to achieve this. In the meantime, I hope the information above is useful.

Progress Report 71

Introduction

We don't seem to have had much of a summer in terms of fine weather - and it also seems that when the weather was good I was elsewhere. We spent a long weekend, for example, in Yorkshire where I drove a steam loco on the Elsecar Heritage Railway as part of my birthday present.

However, I have managed to complete some projects and engage in a few operating sessions since my previous Progress Report, and also hosted a visit from another of my Antipodean friends.

Permanent Way

Apart from ongoing maintenance, the only significant development in the Permanent Way Dept has been to iron out a hump in the track just outside Bulkeley station. 

Many moons ago, when I first built the railway, I constructed a wall from breeze blocks and bricks to support Bulkeley station. I wasn't entirely sure at that time where the tracks would run and it turned out that the wall cut across the track leading from Bulkeley down towards Bickerton. Over the years, the trackbed at Bulkeley has dropped by around 1.5" but, of course, the wall has remained the same height. Last week, I decided this hump also had to go and so the brickwork on top of the wall was attacked with a cold chisel and angle grinder.

Once the hump had been eliminated, a layer of concrete was put down to smooth out some of the irregularities in the underlying blockwork. I find this is easier than lifting the blocks, tamping down the soil and relaying the blocks - only to find they will sometimes sink again as the soil settles.

Most of the stock had little problem negotiating the hump previously, but occasionally a wagon might become derailed passing over the point leading to the Copper Mine branch. Time will tell if this has solved this particular problem.

Lineside

 Refreshment Room

To fill a gap on the approach to the station building at Beeston Market, I decided to construct a small refreshment room, based on a building which used to stand beside the overbridge below Beeston & Tarporley Station on the Crewe to Chester mainline railway between the two world wars.

Using dimensions derived from the photo, plus a modicum of modellers' licence, I drew up a sketch plan and constructed the building primarily from plasticard.

It is still awaiting interior detailing and needs to be sited on the vacant plot beside the station at Beeston Market, but I am pleased with the result so far. For more information on the build see How I constructed the Refreshment Room.

Water mill

Another vacant plot on the railway is in the process of being occupied. For a while, I have been planning to construct a water mill to sit beside the stream near Peckforton (eg see Progress Report 41). Over the past couple of months, this building has slowly been taking shape.

The first stage was to remodel the stream to create a mill stream (see How I revamped part of the stream). Once that had been done, the area between the stream and the mill siding was landscaped.

 
Meanwhile, the building itself was slowly taking shape. I used PVC foamboard for the main structure - a new material for me and one with which I am most impressed.

The building and its location are taking shape - more work is required on detailing and a sluice gate needs to be constructed to control the flow of water under the wheel.

[Awaiting photo]

For more information see How I constructed the mill - pending

Operation

Market Day

A few minor operating sessions have taken place since the past progress report and one full scale operating session. In this session, I imagined it was Market Day and so extra trains were laid on to accommodate the increase in passenger numbers and the additional livestock and farming related traffic.

The Up Market Day Mixed passing the Copper Mine hauled by Bagnall 0-4-2T No. 11 Bunbury

Down Special Market Day Goods approaching Beeston Castle with Beyer Peacock(ish) 0-4-0T No. 12 Tiverton

The Up special goods returning passing the River Gowy

The Down Market Day Mixed arriving at Bickerton

The scheduled midday Up passenger arriving at Beeston Market

The Up pickup goods approaching Beeston Castle with Black Hawthorn 0-4-0T No. 14 Burwardsley

A short video showing some of the Market Day Train movements

Visitor from New Zealand

During one of my operating days, I was ably assisted by Andy Murray (the other Andy Murray) from New Zealand who was over on a family visit. He took charge of the pickup goods, carrying out shunting duties as it passed up and down the line.

Many thanks to Andy for his company and his patience.

Post Script

I received a request from a fellow modeller for assistance in setting up his MyLocoSound steam sound card - particularly regarding the settings for getting a loco to coast when slowing down. I felt the easiest way to demonstrate this was to make a video.

This video now also features on the MyLocoSound website.

I am hoping to take delivery shortly of the latest version of the MLS soundcard which incorporates brake squeal when the loco comes to a halt.

<< Go to Progress Report 70