Progress and taking in other people's layouts

A fair bit has happened since the last blog and I'm confident that I've almost got enough of the bits and bobs to further progress Mount Wilson. Until then, here's what else I've been doing modelling-wise.

NSW Diesel Era Modelling Day

Every year, the NSW Diesel Era Modelling Facebook group are very generously loaned a layout from the Epping Model Railway Club to gather and run on. It's been going for four years and as I've missed all of the previous ones I was determined to get there this year.

This year EMRC loaned Binalong with it's dual DCC and DC operation, and the new owners of Stockinbingal generously brought that along too. I can remember seeing this layout at the AMRA Liverpool exhibition in the 1990s and marvelling at how detailed it was then. Naturally, this was where I wanted to use my allocated path for the day.

I brought 42106 out again with a short wheat train. What seems huge on a 1.5 home layout is dwarfed on days like this!

Marcus Ammann's Main North layout

I was also lucky to be invited to run at Marcus' Main North layout (blog here, including a video walkaround of the layout) along with a few other modellers. It is a seriously impressive space, over 3 levels with no helix.

All of the crossing loops are steam-era sized, so my shorter late 70s-wheat train (with 48 kindly loaned from Marcus) parked to let a number of the larger diesel-era trains pass and cross, which made operating the layout a lot more realistic and a lot of fun. Add working signals, block detection and DCC sound-equipped locos to the mix and it just increases the play value.

Passing through Ardglen:

Dropping down grade from Murrundi to Broadmeadow:

Apparently it took him 28 years to get to this stage. It would be nice to be in the one spot for that long build something similar!

While I was there I took the opportunity to ask Marcus a heap of questions about DCC, particularly about accessory wiring and circuit protection. He made a good point; for a layout with a single operator there's not much need for an accessory bus as you're going to be running one or two trains at a time and you'll be able to fault-find fairly easily. More importantly, a single operator doesn't have to worry about the disruption to other operators caused by a short. Summary: just use the track bus for accessory power.

This is exactly what I've done on Rozelle Street, and it's worked fine. To reinforce the point, Marcus' Main North layout has just a track bus and power districts. It seems to work fine for him. As usual, I was about to over-complicate what would be a very simple branch line layout.

Mount Wilson Progress

Lastly, progress on Mount Wilson has been positive. Firstly, I've bought all of the turnout servos, another frog juicer, another power pack, an NCE panel interface for the PowerCab I've already got off Rozelle Street and fascia panels for the servo controllers. I later realised I've bought the wrong fascia panels for the servo controllers, so they will be going back to MRRC and be replaced with the right ones from Ray Pilgrim's Signals Branch on Shapeways.

I've also decided to not use underlay on this module. I didn't use any on Rozelle Street either and haven't had any issues with it, and nor do I run trains fast enough to get much of a reverberation audible over the sound-equipped loco running at the time either. I will stick with powering the point frogs though. I own a number of short wheelbase shunters and find that a powered frog and/or keep-alive devices improve performance of these locos at low speed.

After playing around with the magnet uncouplers I've also decided to bite the bullet and buy Rapido on/off uncouplers, which are now also on their way here. Going to be a lot to do when the postman turns up!

So I'm up to here: track cut and ready to be glued down, lighting tested and waiting for the roof to go on, and a mock-up of the initial landform and buildings.

After getting some ideas from a presentation on coal mines in the Lithgow region at the MRNSW Convention back in May I've also decided to change the coal loading method on the coal siding from front-end loaders to an older, overhead bin. More on that in a future post.

Once I get the roof on and the lighting installed I'll lay the track, wire it up, and test it all. The Auscision 85 class is on it's way so I have a bit of a deadline to work to.

Til next time!