Glenmutchkin - Water Tanks

Tell us about your layout, where you put it, how you built it, how you operate it.
Mark Tatlow
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Re: Glenmutchkin - A Bit of a Slip Up

Postby Mark Tatlow » Mon Oct 30, 2017 1:03 pm

Thanks Keith; I will look into the interlocking of the two turnouts electronically as I would appreciate the improvement of the idiot proofing of the layout as there are a number of idiots that are likely to use it!!

With regard to the differing cab sections, I am splitting the layout into power districts and one boundary happens to run at this point.

Having been at someone's fairly extensive DCC layout on Friday where the entire layout went into meltdown as a result of a very small knock to a connector; power districts are good!!
Mark Tatlow

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Re: Glenmutchkin - A Bit of a Slip Up

Postby DougN » Tue Oct 31, 2017 1:21 am

Mark, I hope you don't have to name the idiots one day :D

This is great as I have a thought to have 2 slips near each other and a 3 way point so all this discussion is rather interesting. I am also thinking of the Frog juicers which could solve a heap of issues.... though it is a very expensive option compared to using switches!
Doug
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Jol Wilkinson
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Re: Glenmutchkin - A Bit of a Slip Up

Postby Jol Wilkinson » Tue Oct 31, 2017 9:03 am

Mark,

as Keith suggests a three way switch may provide a simple (?) answer.

I used a three way, four pole rotary switch for a similar "layout" on London Road to control the three routes through the point and slip (I had another point in the mix to create a double track junction). Two of the point motors are linked electrically, so you end up with a system that will only select the route needed.

I've modified my original wiring/control diagram I used to work it out, removing the extra point. It's a mirror to yours but may help. The point motors are Cobalts and I used the internal switches to feed the vees.

SS wiring.pdf


Jol
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Re: Glenmutchkin - A Bit of a Slip Up

Postby FCA » Wed Nov 01, 2017 4:19 pm

Jol's diagram does I think help to clarify the problem and its solution.

If you simply wire the slip's motors to act in tandem, that is giving only two possible blade positions rather than four, the possibility of creating conflicting polarities between the slip's crossings is obviated. The three possible routes through the slip remain uncompromised.

The wiring can then be done on a conventional basis.

Richard

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Re: Glenmutchkin - A Bit of a Slip Up

Postby grovenor-2685 » Wed Nov 01, 2017 5:55 pm

Jol's diagram contains additional switching only needed for analogue and not for DCC. It also omits the switching for the crossings of the slip.
The diagram in this most, https://www.scalefour.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2420&start=125#p56572, in my view represents the conventional arrangement.
As mentionedby Mark and implied in Jol's diagram, the turnout works with the far end onf the slip on one lever as a crossover with the other end of the slip on a seperate lever. The interlocking needing the latter to be reverse before reversing the crossover. This interlocking prevents setting conflicting routes over the diamond.
If the two slip points are on a common lever you cannot get all of the 3 required route settings, it does not work.
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Jol Wilkinson
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Re: Glenmutchkin - A Bit of a Slip Up

Postby Jol Wilkinson » Wed Nov 01, 2017 10:48 pm

My drawing was intended to show how you can operate the three motors for a point and single slip using a three way, four pole switch which gives the three possible route options and avoids conflicts. I didn't include the wiring to the Vees, as Keith has shown.

The system works satisfactorily on London Road which also has another turnout as shown here in the foreground of this photograph( taken during construction), operated by a separate toggle switch.

Under construction cropped.jpg
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Mark Tatlow
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Calming an Exhibition Manager's Nerves!

Postby Mark Tatlow » Wed Jul 24, 2019 9:57 pm

With nine weeks to go (a couple of which will be lost with a summer holiday) to Glenmutchkin's first outing at Scaleforum, the state of its progress is at the forefront my mind!  It is probably rather more at the forefront of Terry's mind! 

So help to calm nerves, here is a progress report and update photographs to prove that even if I have not been providing many posts, progress is being made on a number of fronts:

IMG_2861 (2).JPG

Most of the track is laid and wired; much of it is also ballasted, although it still needs colouring.

IMG_2869 (2).JPG


IMG_2880 (3).JPG

Most of the signals are finished but not yet linked up (which explains some of the droopy angles of the arms!).  There will be more posts on this topic soon.

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The principal bridge has been finished for a while, but it is looking a bit more "at home".

IMG_2881 (3).JPG

.....especially with a fine loco to set it off (thanks to John James for this!).

IMG_2891 (2).JPG
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Calming an Exhibition Manager's Nerves!

Postby Terry Bendall » Fri Jul 26, 2019 11:24 am

Mark Tatlow wrote:So help to calm nerves, here is a progress report


No nerves need calming here Mark - I gave up that sort of thing a long time ago. :D

Progress is clearly being made and I think the majority of visitors like to see a layout in progress and ask about how things were done. There will be nine other layouts to look at almost all of which are complete, finished even and enough to keep everyone interested.

Terry Bendall

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Re: Glenmutchkin - Calming an Exhibition Manager's Nerves!

Postby essdee » Fri Jul 26, 2019 7:13 pm

Mutch to savour there, Mark - worry you, not!

Hat-coat-gone...

Steve

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Re: Glenmutchkin - Calming an Exhibition Manager's Nerves!

Postby Paul Willis » Fri Jul 26, 2019 9:26 pm

essdee wrote:Mutch to savour there, Mark - worry you, not!

Hat-coat-gone...

Steve


But in the pictures I see no Munchkins?

Coat? In this weather?

Cheers
Flymo
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Calming an Exhibition Manager's Nerves!

Postby RichardS » Fri Jul 26, 2019 9:55 pm

Flymo748 wrote:
essdee wrote:Mutch to savour there, Mark - worry you, not!

Hat-coat-gone...

Steve


But in the pictures I see no Munchkins?

Coat? In this weather?

Cheers
Flymo


I keep reading it as GlenMunchkin too. (Although Glen is not the name I would expect a munchkin to be given.)
After all it is 4mm scale.

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Re: Glenmutchkin - Calming an Exhibition Manager's Nerves!

Postby Mark Tatlow » Tue Aug 13, 2019 8:15 pm

With the need to load the layout in the back of a van to get it to Scaleforum looming, I have been pressing ahead with the creation of travelling boxes for the boards.

Despite being pretty simple, they do take a long time to make but those for the main visible boards are at least all now complete – and here they are on parade!

IMG_3148.JPG


A bit more on the detail on their features and how I built them can be found here. https://highlandmiscellany.com/2019/05/ ... ng-clever/

IMG_0932 (2).JPG
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Putting a Backbone into a Goods Shed

Postby Mark Tatlow » Mon Sep 09, 2019 8:16 pm

The advantage of a railway company using standard building designs is that you can get to use them more than once. Thus Portchullin's goods shed will be getting to have a new lease of life on Glenmutchkin.

I think my goods shed is the oldest model that I still have and over the years it is fair to say has suffered. Some of this is simply the thirty six shows that it has done with Portchullin (hell...…...thirty six shows.......!) and almost as many years, as I was about 17 when I made it. However the main issue was the manner in which I built it, with minimal bracing over the top of the entrances. This has lead to it breaking its back and despite several attempts at repair, these have never been long lasting. So it is time to do it properly to allow its reincarnation on Glenmutchkin.

IMG_1282 (1).JPG


The key to the repair was to introduce a metal skeleton frame inside the model to strengthen it - particularly across the rail doors. This is something I now tend to do at the outset with any largish building I build to contain warping. The frame is invisible from the exterior - the view above shows the frame that I made with the first side attached.
IMG_1283 (3).JPG


The frame was made with some 3mm square and oblong section brass, with gusset plates - there was a fair amount of metal so it got close to blacksmithing at one stage.

Once the frame was inserted, the model was given an overhaul to repair the other dinks and marks that it has acquired over the years. There were a fair few, as can be seen.
IMG_1809 (2).JPG


I also to the opportunity to install gutters and downpipes; something I had been meaning to do since I was 17...……a bit of a shameful shortfall, given I am a chartered building surveyor!
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I am pleased with the results and the model is now much more robust so it should do at least another 36 shows! Whether its owner can will be kept under review!

My goods shed is based on the Orbach drawings of the shed at Garve (the August 1952 edition of the Model Railway News). The prototype was swept away in the 1970s and whilst there are a pair of the smaller sheds still remaining (notably at Brora), there are no longer any of the standard Highland Goods sheds left. The last to go was in Golspie about two years ago and I did manage to both photograph and measure it before it went. Here are some views of it before it was demolished:

_DSC0307.JPG


_DSC0304.JPG
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Mark Tatlow

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Re: Glenmutchkin - Putting a Backbone into a Goods Shed

Postby Mark Tatlow » Tue Nov 05, 2019 8:20 pm

Back in November 2015 in this thread, I posted about the troubles that I had with the Chatham Turntable drive; Andrew Bluett Duncan was encountering similar issues - mentioned here viewtopic.php?f=26&t=5427&hilit=turntable&start=25

I am most of the way through solving my problems, but not without a fair amount of heartbreak! Details will follow (including of problems that I had not realised were apparent back in 2015!). However, I now have a pair of related questions.

These are what was the likely time it took to revolve a hand driven turntable (in reality) through 180 degrees and what is a sensible time for one to rotate the same degree on a model railway?

Watching a few videos suggests that the answer to question one is somewhere between 1'50" and 3'0" and it is quite clear that the start was rather faster than the finish! This seems rather too long to me when you see the turntable in the model form.

What do people think?

I would also be interested in hearing how Andrew got on with his turntable drive?
Mark Tatlow

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Re: Glenmutchkin - Turntable Troubles Reprise

Postby Armchair Modeller » Wed Nov 06, 2019 10:11 am

Work out the circumference of your turntable and base the speed of rotation on the walking pace of the man pushing the turntable?

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Guy Rixon
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Turntable Troubles Reprise

Postby Guy Rixon » Wed Nov 06, 2019 1:12 pm

Armchair Modeller wrote:Work out the circumference of your turntable and base the speed of rotation on the walking pace of the man pushing the turntable?

Yes. I suspect that tangental speed was even slower than that, but walking pace is an upper limit for a model; anything faster looks wrong. I've seen films of full-size, powered turntables that do go faster and they look implausible, like somebody speeded up the video.

How does one stop a human-powered turntable? Is it stopped in position by an almighty latch, like a wagon turntable? Or do the crew have to get in front of the pushing bars to brake it?


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Re: Glenmutchkin - Turntable Troubles Reprise

Postby Mark Tatlow » Sun Feb 09, 2020 1:29 pm

Part of the concept of the back-story for Glenmutchkin is that it is at the end of a long line so that locos need to be serviced and it was also at the foot of a steep gradient, so trains need to be banked out of the station. All this is creates a lot of thirsty locomotives that would have needed servicing and attention – so it will have a busy motive power depot.

The Highland Railway’s water tanks tended to be of a similar style with a tank made of sectional components and rounded head, base and corners. There is nothing available from any of the manufacturers so it was obvious these need to be scratchbuilt.

There remains one tank of this type still in situ, at Altnabreac and in addition to this, there are drawings from Eddie Bellis of the Kyle’s water tower plus that at Garve by Henry Orbach. I have elected to build a pair – one of Kyle and one of Altnabreac (the latter being the smaller).

018 HR Water tower Kyle of Lochalsh engine shed 11-05-63 (John Boyes)ARPT 001.jpg

Kyle’s water tank from the early post steam era. Photograph with permission from Armstrong Railway Photographic Trust, JM Boyes collection.
Starting with the tanks, I laminated a series of strips of plasticard to the right height and then used a belt sander to put the chamfer on these before then making them up into a box.

IMG_5290 (2).JPG

As with most of my stone buildings, I use Wills random stone plastic sheets; now available from Peco. On far too many occasions I see this used with panels butted against each other; either on corners or even worse on the flat. Unless the stones are toothed into each other, this screams as being incorrect even to a layman. Therefore, it is best to form corners either from a sheet cut vertically and then chamfer the inside faces so that the coursing is retained for its full length even on the cut face.

This means that courses line up from side to front without any silly jumps, as can be seen below. This technique can not be used in all examples and sometimes it is necessary to actually tooth panels into each other by cutting corresponding dog teeth into adjacent panels.

IMG_5326 (2).JPG

I find that the mortar courses on Wills sheets are a bit too deep and because lots of others use it its pattern is a little too obvious; so it looses its realism (or maybe I am just so sad that I can tell a material by its stone coursing!!). I get over this by part filling the mortar courses with a plastic filler – which is basically dissolved plastic in a solvent carrier (lovely and smely!). This tends to distort the sheets as it is only applied to one side so I first laminate the sheet to some thick (1.5 or 2mm plasticard). Due to the volumes of solvent to be sloshed around in constructing buildings in this manner, it is important to allow for the solvent to escape – regretfully I have a number of coach roofs which many years later have mushy sections where the solvent has been trapped and has distorted the plastic in its efforts to cut through it and escape! I thus drill regular holes or slots in the backing plasticard, which you can see here:

IMG_5297 (2).JPG

Whilst the desire to mask the coursing pattern on the Wills sheet might seem a fair amount of bother given the need to reinforce the walls with an inner laimanate, I think the effect is worth the effort. A blast of grey primer shows that the coursing and texture of the stone is retained but equaly it does not look like everyone else’s!

IMG_5332 (2).JPG

The use of the laminations does give the advantage that slots for window frames and doors can be created. These allow an etching to be slid in, either from below or behind. They can be slid out again for painting and make this aspect a breeze to do.

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And this is where they have got to; the guts of both done but with a chunk of detailing and some basework still to be done.

IMG_5338 (2).JPG

But lets sign this post off with a fine HC Casserley picture of a Superheated Goods using the MPD as a headshunt in the 1952. This photograph is used with permission and is now part of Colin Brack’s collection. He has a substantial on line collection of photographs (including the JM Boyes collection) with a good proportion of them being of the Highland’s system – you can loose many an hour in his flickr site – this being a link to his Dingwall & Skye album. https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishswis ... 2664/page1

1952-04-22 HR Kyle of Lochalsh, 57955 HC Casserley img606 (3).jpg
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Andrew Bluett-Duncan
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Putting a Backbone into a Goods Shed

Postby Andrew Bluett-Duncan » Sun Feb 09, 2020 10:51 pm

Mark Tatlow wrote:Back in November 2015 in this thread, I posted about the troubles that I had with the Chatham Turntable drive; Andrew Bluett Duncan was encountering similar issues - mentioned here viewtopic.php?f=26&t=5427&hilit=turntable&start=25

I am most of the way through solving my problems, but not without a fair amount of heartbreak! Details will follow (including of problems that I had not realised were apparent back in 2015!). However, I now have a pair of related questions.


I would also be interested in hearing how Andrew got on with his turntable drive?


Hello Mark
I’m afraid there are no further developments as I’ve been building the layout ever since and haven’t had an opportunity to use it in anger. Looking back at my post it looks like I got it going and stopping ok, but in one direction only. Not the end of the world but not really very satisfactory. By the look of my progress at some point this year I’ll be in a position to have it as a working part of the layout and that will be the real test.

Do I gather though that you’ve made some significant progress with yours? If so I’d be most interested to hear more.

Kind regards
Andrew.

Mark Tatlow
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Putting a Backbone into a Goods Shed

Postby Mark Tatlow » Sun Feb 09, 2020 11:06 pm

Andrew Bluett-Duncan wrote:
Do I gather though that you’ve made some significant progress with yours? If so I’d be most interested to hear more.
.


Maybe; but I want to test it for a bit longer before I go into print on it!!

……….so watch this space but don't hold your breadth for when!!
Mark Tatlow

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Re: Glenmutchkin - Water Tanks

Postby Mark Tatlow » Mon Mar 30, 2020 9:26 pm

One of my pet hates on model railways are buildings that float a fraction above the ground because they have been plonked in situ, not bedded in. For me, it completely destroys the illusion and I can get quite wound up about it when I see it (…..and it is pretty common, so this is fairly often!).

Occasionally, I actually do attach the building to the baseboard and “scenic in” the ground around them but more normally I construct a base into which the building sits. This gets embedded permanently and then the building sits into a slot that is formed into it. I have also seen the building being built in two parts, with the base being affixed to the ground and the building slotted onto them. Peter Bond did this for me with the signal cabins for Portchullin. This is the base for the larger water tank:

IMG_5874 (2).JPG


The large water tank is more prominent as it is located closer to the baseboard edge and is to the rear of the main focus of the MPD area, the trackwork between the shed and the turntable. It is also adjacent to the coaling bank and as a result I decided to make this now and as part of the base for the water tank. The rather prominent hole in the coal bank will be the subject of a future post, as there is something a bit different planned for this!

IMG_5873 (2).JPG


The smaller of the water tanks is designed to mask a baseboard joint in a rockface/embankment. The base (below) will thus be split into two halves when it is fitted, each sitting on adjacent boards – a neat way of not having the San Andreas fault line running through a rock face!

IMG_5889.JPG


I have also started the painting of these, which had a fairly characteristic design with the border in a red/brown and a cream central panel. It is important to recreate this and as it is fairly eye catching, errors will be instantly visible.

IMG_5885 (2).JPG


The straight edges weren’t too difficult to achieve with masking tape; initially the horizontals and then the verticals a day later. Peeling back the masking tape was a thrill to see if it worked!

IMG_5806 (2).JPG


The scrolls at the corner was a concern throughout the construction of the water tanks but I did hit on an idea I think is rather nifty. I sprayed the same red/brown on some transfer paper (thanks Chris!) and once it was dry, used a domestic hole punch to create disks of transfer. I then cut them into segments that were a bit bigger than a quarter of the disk. They were then applied as a transfer to each corner.

IMG_5911 (2).JPG


Actually, it was pretty easy once I got going – I definitely spent longer thinking about it than I did doing it! I am pretty pleased with the outcome, much neater than my hand could manage!

IMG_5909 (2).JPG
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Water Tanks

Postby Terry Bendall » Tue Mar 31, 2020 8:21 am

Mark Tatlow wrote: I am pretty pleased with the outcome, much neater than my hand could manage!


A neat idea which could probably be used in other applications. If you used the "hole" a concave corner could be created.

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Re: Glenmutchkin - Water Tanks

Postby Paul Willis » Tue Mar 31, 2020 8:48 am

Terry Bendall wrote:
Mark Tatlow wrote: I am pretty pleased with the outcome, much neater than my hand could manage!


A neat idea which could probably be used in other applications. If you used the "hole" a concave corner could be created.


Cue the mental image of Terry, scrabbling under his workbench with a penlight, trying to find a dropped hole...

;-)
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essdee
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Water Tanks

Postby essdee » Tue Mar 31, 2020 9:58 am

Err... but wouldn't the hole float upwards to the ceiling?! Or, thinking about it more, just hover invisibly in front of you? Discuss.......
(Hat, etc...................)

Lovely stuff Mark; and memories of over 50 years ago, trying to line a Festiniog (as was then) 'Prince' from the GEM kit; first the wider red lining with the corner scrolls - 'easy peasy'. Then the thinner black inside it, and those d----ed scrolls. All in gloss enamel on gloss enamel, not yet fully hardened.

Happy modelling! Here, today, we have a cab and bunker to assemble.

Steve

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Re: Glenmutchkin - Water Tanks

Postby Will L » Tue Mar 31, 2020 12:05 pm

Flymo748 wrote:Cue the mental image of Terry, scrabbling under his workbench with a penlight, trying to find a dropped hole...

Could puzzle the GCG a bit too.


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