That steel ain't light

Following the recent arrival of the NCTY Tubemakers Structural open wagons at Philden, coil steel shipments have begun arriving at the open concrete yard alongside the cement plant. A concrete reinforcing shed has been erected 'just beyond the layout edge' as part of a Nation Building upgrade for the Interstate Highway that crosses the tracks at the mouse-hole end of my layout. The steel rolls are being milled and cut on site to reinforce the giant concrete spans needed for the highway construction. So I thought I'd venture trackside with my camera to capture the first shipment of 1:83 scale steel as it arrived. You may notice the rusted rails from a long abandoned siding that are still embedded in the concrete loading area. I sure hope that 'forkie' knows what he's doing before he tries to unloading the wagons.

She'll be right mate! It just needs a bit more Gumption.

Apparently not. After struggling to lift the giant coil from wagon number 85117G, it appears he didn't have enough back tilt when jolting across the old rails and has ended up with his back wheels in the air, (something that happened to myself a few times during my years driving forklifts). Maybe the site foreman needs to look at buying a bigger forklift!

Those abandoned rails are going to make unloading a pain in the butt for the forklift driver.

By the time he had finished unloading both wagons, it was fast approaching nightfall, and the new LED lights I had installed were on in the yard. While the construction crew probably won't get to work rolling and cutting the steel coils till morning, meanwhile the train crew had returned to collect the empties and were growing irate by the minute that their pick-up wasn't yet ready and were holed up in the platform road at Philden Station, waiting to drag the two empty wagons forward before they could run around to couple on and head off in the up direction towards the staging yard.

While chatting with the Senior SM on the platform, they were however heard to speak highly of the new LED lighting installed recently at the station. The driver even recalled humorously a previous visit when he asked the Assistant Station Master at the time if he was burning the toast in his office. It turned out it wasn't the toast, but the old platform lighting that had begun to melt like toasted marshmallows. Fortunately by now the NCTY's were ready to be pulled clear of the cement road siding and the crew were on their way just as the last slithers of light disappeared in the west.

This short operating session was all just a bit of fun, but it does show that a small bookshelf layout can be used to simulate some real life operation problems. The 86 class, having ventured further than any NSW 86 class has ever ventured before, will now be packed away to await the construction of the upper level of my layout, which will feature overhead catenary and a giant OneSteel receiving shed. Next week 8243 will return in its place. Also due next week, (by means of the post man), is the first of my major rollingstock additions for the as yet un-named upper level, (no, its not the Tangara), but something else that combined with my 86 class electric will provide enough operating pleasure all on its own. But as usual, I'll let that be a story for another day.

See also; Auscision Models NCTY/NODY Wagons

Philden's HO track plan

Here is a look at Philden's final track plan that I will be taking to the Brisbane Model Train Show on the 6th and 7th May, 2017. As you can see, the layout design for the first level is nothing too extravagant, (neither is the drawing itself for that matter). But at the request of Peter, (this one's for you Peter), I thought it about time that I added some kind of track plan to show the overall view of a HO scale layout that had its beginnings 2 years ago at the 2015 Brisbane Model Train Show. Of course, in the year to come a second level will go on top, so I have shown the space allocated for the upper level staging shelf support on the right, with another 6 cm of shelf to protrude out over the lower shelf staging area.

The entire layout is 260 cm (8 feet 6 inch) long and just 32 cm (1 foot and 1/2 inch) wide. With the modeled portion being 188 cm (6 foot 2 and 1/2 inch) long and the staging shelf beyond the view block adding another 72 cm (2 foot 4 inch) of track. As you can see, the staging shelf tracks fan out slightly at the right to allow a little extra room when placing trains on and off the track. The rail height now stands at 112 cm (3 foot 8 inch) from the floor. As readers can tell, it was designed to stand above my desk and somehow inspire me to write my next novel. As readers can also tell, this layout has distracted me to the point where there is no next novel in the foreseeable future.

The entire layout is simple DC operation, and required the following HO scale track to complete;

• 1 x SL-90 PECO medium radius insulfrog double slip
• 2 x right hand SL-95 PECO medium radius insulfrog turnouts
• 2 x left hand SL-96 PECO medium radius insulfrog turnouts
• 2 x lengths PECO code 100 concrete tie flextrack
• 6 x lengths PECO code 100 black timber tie flextrack

Two years after visiting the Brisbane Model Train Show and purchasing the above track (along with a throng of other products), it will be nice to place my layout on public display for the first time at the same venue. On another side note, it will also be 15 years since I last exhibited at the Brisbane Show. I'm hoping to have my layout accepted in at least one more model train show in south east Queensland in 2017, before adding the second level to the layout and taking it to even more exhibitions in 2018 and traveling further afield. My goal was always to make Philden a layout capable of travelling to model train shows, and as nice as it looks sitting above my desk, I'm planning to add just one last touch to the display side of my layout to give it that finished 'wow' factor in time for its' first exhibition. Just what is it? Well, I might just save that as a surprise for the Brisbane Show.

See also; Setting plans in concrete

Really Simple Block Wiring

If there's one thing I struggle with greatly in this hobby, it is wiring. No sooner does the soldering iron come out than my wife invariably grabs the car keys and head to the shops, and I generally find myself quitting the hobby 14 times within the next hour! So this post isn't designed to enlighten the minds of the DCC savvy circuit breaking, record making masters of electrical wizardry. It is purely for the simple DC modellers, like myself, who struggle when it comes to the thought of which wire goes where and would like to master the basic concept of creating an isolated block of track that is controlled by a simple switch. Because, let's be honest, we all have to start somewhere before we stretch our imaginations to the next level.

As you can see by the above diagram that I drew up on a piece of paper, all I wanted to do was create an small set of isolated blocks of track on my staging shelf, that by means of throwing a simple switch would cut the power to one locomotive at a time. I could then throw a switch to the other track to make that track live and bring a different locomotive into view on my bookshelf layout. The problem was, whenever I Googled anything like DC block wiring for a model railroad, the result was a series of diagrams popping up on my screen that resembled the wiring schematics of a Collins Class submarine. Thankfully, model railway wiring and I have reached a peaceful truce. I call it the KISS treaty, short for keep it simple stupid. So this little project had a simple outcome, that simply works.

Visiting my local Jaycar Electronics store, I purchased 5 toggle switches with the simple on/off lever frame, making sure that they were the version that had the on/off marked boldly in red and black. Not only do they look better in my opinion, but eliminating which way was on from which way was off made it a lot easier for me to understand what I was doing. These switches are known as SPST, or single pole single throw switches, and a good run down explaining the differences between SPST, SPDT and DPDT can be found on the website Sparkfun.

The single throw switch simply acts as a current break for the positive wire that feeds from the control pack to the rail. The block of track that will be isolated is of course defined from where you use a plastic insulator join (or carefully cut gap in the track) as shown in the above drawing, or between two insulated breaks in the rail if creating a block section on a continuous stretch of track. The negative wire is then connected to the negative rail, bypassing the toggle switch altogether. On is on, off is off, and a better explanation of how it works can be found on the website Learning About Electronics. The term common rail wiring simply means that the negative wire power feed is already connected to the negative rail (providing a common rail and negative grounding). So wiring a toggle switch using common rail wiring will only require the positive wire feed into the toggle switch and a positive wire out of the toggle switch to the positive rail. I still connected the negative wire to each section I was wanting to isolate simply because of the joins on each track where my staging shelf connected with my layout.

Mounting the toggle switches at the front of my staging shelf kept each one within easy reach.

Looking at my layout I wanted to create five isolated blocks of track. Two for each siding on the layout, two for each siding on the staging shelf and 1 for the main platform road at the station. So to keep the toggle switches reachable from a single operator's point-of-view, I drilled 5 holes centered at the front of the staging shelf, wide enough for the body of each toggle switch to sit flush with the surface.

Underneath the layout, the positive wires went in at one end of the switch and out on the other to the track above.

The wires to each switch are connected from underneath my layout. As you can see in the above photo, the single positive (red) wire has a join that connects with 2 wires that lead to the positive 'in' on both toggle switches. Each switch then has a positive 'out' wire that leads through the holes drilled to the left of picture to the two tracks above on my staging shelf. One is joined the positive rail on track A, the other is joined to the positive rail on track B. On the other hand, the negative (yellow) wire has a join that connects with 2 wires that bypass the toggle switches altogether, they lead directly through the holes drilled to the left of picture to the negative rail on track A and the negative rail on track B. It doesn't matter which negative wire connects with which negative rail above, as they both join beneath the layout and become the same wire below that feeds back to the control pack.

These simple on/off switches will control each block of track I wish to isolate.

The toggle switches I purchased from Jaycar are positioned in place from underneath the layout and secured above by a screw-on washer that tensions down on the face plate. The 9 mm plywood base on my staging shelf proved too thick however for the small clearance on the thread between the washer and face plate, so I had to make a backing plate using some scrap 3 mm MDF board. I then covered the MDF board using some leftover adhesive vinyl wrap, keeping with the same steel checker-plate pattern that I used on the back panels of my layout. I glued the backing plate in place using some craft glue and then tensioned the washers on the toggle switches until the whole assembly was held firmly in position.

Mounting the switches neatly didn't detract from the overall appearance of my layout's staging shelf.

The finished panel looks stylish, but is really, really simple. The simple switches provide simple operation on a simple block wiring section of staging tracks.

While I am still no expert at model railway wiring, sitting down to write a how-to article such as this really makes the lessons I've learned stick. For those that argue that DC control should be referred to as Dinosaur Control in this digital age of model railroading, this simple block wiring technique has stood the test of time in this hobby. With Philden now wired and ready to handle the coming-and-going of two different trains on an up-and-back layout, I feel a lot more confident that this simple project will add a lot more visual operating fun to a small layout such as mine. Now all I have to do is send in my exhibition applications and see how my new layout handles some model railway show appearances this year.

See also; Let's wire this up