Glastonbury and Evercreech Junction Fiddle Yards

[Paul Townsend]

So someone let 9 months pass since I posted about stupidity of laying pointwork without tie bars!
John McAleely must be blamed for waking me up by suggesting name change and my own section in OMWB.

I suppose he is on commission for number of posts

The Glastonbury/Evercreech Junction fiddle yard stalled from May to September as I had a lot of work to do on the Broad Gauge Dartmouth project and prepping my BG stall for S4um.

Now the narrow gauge ( "Standard" to the unwashed) FY has progressed greatly.
The necessarily weird baseboard construction referred to has proven itself viable and the two BBs are now in operating trials and minor bump debugging.
Servos and tiebars installed and working, last one still needs servo setting up.

With the advice of 5 of you re tiebars as an afterthought ( mistake really) I decided to use this as an opportunity to try several of the ideas given.
Running for next few months will prove reliability or otherwise.

The best will be used for the BG track in places where my standard below BB tiebar is less suitable.

This FY is a replacement for a much older design that was intended to go diagonally across the room. Although access to that would have been superb for 3 links capers, it had several flaws in that it reduced access to the existing FYs so was abandoned.
The new location is at full arm's stretch so 3linking is out. Pre-dcc this location would have been unthinkable or rather limiting in operating flexibility.

That hard decision gives me the incentive to fully AJ the S&DJR rolling stock which is at present a mix of screw, 3link and AJ. It was always intended to be fully AJ but now it is essential!
So carriages will be in rakes with AJ ends and screw or bar within the rakes.
Locos will be hook and magic AJ. Waggons will be all operating AJ.

This task has started with all S&DJR locos that didn't already have them receiving Nigel Cliffe's magic dcc uncoupling gadget. This allows uncoupling anywhere in case a convenient electromagnetic thingy is not where it is needed. Less propelling of uncoupled vehicles with attendant recoupling risk and generally more prototypical in use.

Will I have time and inclination to follow all Chris Pendlenton's AJ advice?

Next post shows the FY in trial position with a bunch of pix.

[John McAleely]

I suppose he is on commission for number of posts

Now there's a rumour I should encourage!

[Paul Townsend]

Continuing this saga...
Below are 6 pix taken just now. A couple of weeks ago SteamRaiser lent me his ZTC 511 DCC controller so there is a separate thread about that which appears in these pix.

The 2 FY BBs are jury rigged for testing and debugging, hopefully finished by Friday when muscles will be here to hoik them into proper position.

Here is the RH BB which will connect into the scenic line from Highbridge

Next shows middle section of this

and the LH end

Next pic is closeup of the location for East end Turntable. That will be built in next few weeks and added in.

Then here are the wall supports ready to receive the LH FY BB with TT

The foreground line in front of TT labelled "P" will connect to my cassette system which hangs on this wall:

Finally here is the 30 year old Fiddle Yard panel.

The RHS shows GWR FY route select buttons, now augmented by dcc control.
LH hole will receive S&D FYs route selector soon for both Burnham and Glasto FYs.
On the main part of the panel, the lower left area in green is now redundant....this was for the original Glasto FY design, now ditched. I have to devise an overlay for the new design which is temporarily controlled by the top toggle switch aluminium panel. That will be replaced asap.

[jayell]

I rather liked seeing a battered Hille polypropylene chair sat in the middle of the baseboards in the first picture.

I was working for Hille when the chair was introduced to the world and saw quite a few thousand leave the factory in Haverhill where the tubular bases were made. It was while I worked there that I saw wagon loads of rail from the clsure of the Colne Valley line, mostly drawn by J15 locos, pass over the viaduct which was visible from my office window.

John

[Paul Townsend]

I rather liked seeing a battered Hille polypropylene chair sat in the middle of the baseboards in the first picture.
John

Iconic design from c. 1970...still as comfy as when new, provided I don't sit on the 13Amp plug or Andrew Stadden's just arrived pewter figures still in Jiffy-bag, now that would be tragic!

These could be 3D printed today ??

I am now dabbling with 3D printing but affordable machines suited to 4mm model capers won't have a big enough build volume

PS
Insomnia courtesy of students next door presumably rehearsing for New Year Eve Party.
The downside of my Victorian pile with lovely railway basement is that we are surrounded by studes who occasionally cause mayhem.....ah well I was once there
Temporary escape to Firenze is imminent

[Paul Townsend]

Only 2.5 years since this thread updated!
So we now live in peaceful area which is student free...hurrah!
Funnily, while house hunting we looked at a flat very near where I lived a hundred years ago with 3 other students. Did we ever annoy the neighbours.....well not very often.

Back to Glastonbury FY.....the boards seen above will be positioned in the room middle in the new room and approached via a Pelevator. IF you can't work out what that is you haven't been keeping up with the commercial scene as revealed at some shows in last year or two.