Glenmutchkin - Water Tanks

Tell us about your layout, where you put it, how you built it, how you operate it.
John Palmer
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Tracklaying

Postby John Palmer » Sun Dec 06, 2015 1:15 pm

Armchair Modeller wrote: Modellers' logic would have been to run all the roads directly off the turntable and avoid the need for any turnouts in the loco shed area. Presumably, the risk of snow and ice jamming the turntable in such an isolated site made that unrealistic in real life?

I recall that in a paper delivered to the Western Region Debating Society Mr W.N.Pellow pointed out that any failure of the turntable in a roundhouse style of shed locked all movements in and out of the shed. Significantly, the layout of the Kyle shed avoids that possibility by providing standage for at least one engine between the turntable and the tandem leading to the shed roads. If the table failed engines could still move on and off shed, though crews might then look forward to some tender-first working through bitter highland weather!

allanferguson
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Tracklaying

Postby allanferguson » Mon Dec 07, 2015 12:13 am

Some of us did a lot of thinking about this a while back, partly because of "Burntisland". We looked at a lot of photographs as well, which are virtually the only evidence. And believe it or not we concluded that we couldn't draw any firm conclusions! Some thoughts, however, seemed reasonably justifiable. 1 Full length timbers were never used. 2. Some of the "sleepers" were 12" or 14" wide. 3. Occasionally the intervals between chairs might be slightly longer than whatever was the "standard" plain line spacing. 4. Full length timbers were virtually always installed post grouping. 5. And finally remember the LNWR ganger quoted by Percy Keen "Well sir, when we gets a problem like this, we fudges it!" . (my own background is Caledonian, but there wasn't much visible difference from the NBR, and I suspect not much from the HR either

I admire your fortitude in tackling a task such as this and I particularly admire your decision to use rivets. Its not just the thought of marking, punching. and squeezing the rivets, or the soldering; it's the thought of getting several hundred half chairs to fit; ugh! But there's no denying it looks wonderful!

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Terry Bendall
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Tracklaying

Postby Terry Bendall » Mon Dec 07, 2015 8:40 am

A late response following a weekend away at the Manchester show with the Society stand. Yes a very interesting piece of trackwork and brilliantly modelled. Other pre-grouping companies used interlaced sleepers and this is what Barry Luck has done on his LBSC inspired Plumpton Green.

Mark Tatlow wrote: one other turntable that truly acted as a turnout;


Another well know example of the same practice was at Bembridge on the Isle of Wight where the turntable was at the end of the platform and used to access the run round loop. Done allegedly because of the cramped space.

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Mark Tatlow
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Tracklaying

Postby Mark Tatlow » Mon Dec 07, 2015 9:24 am

John Palmer wrote:I recall that in a paper delivered to the Western Region Debating Society Mr W.N.Pellow pointed out that any failure of the turntable in a roundhouse style of shed locked all movements in and out of the shed. Significantly, the layout of the Kyle shed avoids that possibility by providing standage for at least one engine between the turntable and the tandem leading to the shed roads. If the table failed engines could still move on and off shed, though crews might then look forward to some tender-first working through bitter highland weather!


Something a little like this did happen after the last war when the Kyle turntable was extended to accommodate the arrival of the Stanier Black 5s. During the period that the well was enlarged (which meant more of that pesky granite had to be removed - so it took some months), 2-6-4 tanks were used - I think it was the Fairburn ones, but it might have been Staniers. They continued to use the water and coal facilities that were just in front of the turntable (and are visible in the photograph).

Mind you, the enclosed cab of the 2-6-4 would be a bit cosier going backwards than the open cab of a victorian Skye Bogie! Brrrr!
Mark Tatlow

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Re: Glenmutchkin - Tracklaying

Postby Mark Tatlow » Mon Dec 07, 2015 9:33 am

John Palmer wrote: that leads me to wonder how you determined the sleeper positions, as I see some potential problems with the fitting of chairs to this formation were it to be reproduced full size.

Hope this may be of some interest, as interlaced timbering of a tandem can be quite a problem.



Hmm, well that question is simple - I made it up!!

However, not without a tad of logic in that I knew that the Highland were impecunious and thus would go some way to avoid the need for the additional expenditure for full length and the wider width of crossing timbers. From them on, it was a question of merely squeezing them in!

I get the point that things were very crowded through the crossing and particularly the left hand (in my picture) crossing. Thus, I can see that using crossing sleepers at this point would be a possible compromise.

I am indebted to Allan for his posting too, as I was wondering what I would do with the information that you have provided as I am not sure I want to do another one!!
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John Palmer
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Tracklaying

Postby John Palmer » Mon Dec 07, 2015 12:27 pm

Allan, many thanks for posting your group’s collective wisdom about North British practice. Your conclusion that full length timbers were never used did take me by surprise, so I had another go at setting out my tandem using 9’ sleepers only. Here’s the problem, though: once you have set out the three crossings, where sleeper placement is dictated by the geometry of the block chairs, you are left with an area opposite the second crossing where there’s no room to fit the sleepers required for support of the stock rail of the other diverging road, other than by skewing sleepers from perpendicular to the line(s) of rails being supported. This was as far as I got:
Unsupported stock rail.jpg

On tender first working, I entirely agree about the Skye Bogie, though at the time I was probably thinking more of the unfortunate George Gourlay at Elliot Junction.
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allanferguson
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Tracklaying

Postby allanferguson » Mon Dec 07, 2015 9:58 pm

John

As I said, we don't presume to have the answers! Our ambition (perhaps I should say my ambition, as I have no remit to speak for the group) was to build something that worked (in the model) and which looked sufficiently right to the casual viewer. I can't lay my hands on any relevant templot printouts to suggest what we did, but I do recall one of our members, professionally involved, suggesting that in some cases sleepers were joined end to end, and they weren't always at right angles to the track they supported. We await someone to come along and tell us the Right Way.
Incidentally, complex layouts were relatively rare on the prototype, being always more expensive to build and maintain than simple turnouts or crossings. I think I'm right in saying that this is the only such complex piece at Kyle. This, of course, is why information on them is so hard to get.

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Mark Tatlow
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Tracklaying

Postby Mark Tatlow » Mon Dec 07, 2015 11:37 pm

Hi John,

I will annotate a photograph at the weekend, when I get some time, but if you go back to the original photographs you will see that there are three sets of sleepers interlaced at this point, so this rail is picked up?

There was also a single slip at Kyle, which I have reproduced on Glenmutchkin but to be fair I did chicken out of interlacing that too!
Mark Tatlow

mikewturner

Re: Glenmutchkin - Tracklaying

Postby mikewturner » Wed Jan 20, 2016 5:04 pm

Hi Mark

Does Portchullin join on to Glenmutchkin or is that approaching the end of its days?

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Mike

Mark Tatlow
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Tracklaying

Postby Mark Tatlow » Wed Jan 20, 2016 8:58 pm

Hi Mike

I doubt the two layouts will be connected up.

Portchullin only has a finite life left (although I am not sure what that life is). I do have in mind a replacement for it, similar but a junction and a lot better made - maybe a roundy roundy too. However, that is a little way down the line as 1 and half layouts in the house is already unpopular.........
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mikewturner

Re: Glenmutchkin - Tracklaying

Postby mikewturner » Sat Jan 23, 2016 8:24 am

Hi Mark

Thanks for the info.

A further query if I may but this time related to your interlaced Turnouts. I notice you appear to have used 9ft long 10in wide sleepers throughout in some cases whereas some of the drawings I have seen show longer 12in timbers at the toe end. I realise company practices differ and have read various articles on line about how interlacing was achieved and wondered if you had come across any definitive sources for Highland practice?

Regards

Mike

billbedford

Re: Glenmutchkin - Tracklaying

Postby billbedford » Sat Jan 23, 2016 9:39 am

John Palmer wrote:Allan, many thanks for posting your group’s collective wisdom about North British practice. Your conclusion that full length timbers were never used did take me by surprise, so I had another go at setting out my tandem using 9’ sleepers only. Here’s the problem, though: once you have set out the three crossings, where sleeper placement is dictated by the geometry of the block chairs, you are left with an area opposite the second crossing where there’s no room to fit the sleepers required for support of the stock rail of the other diverging road, other than by skewing sleepers from perpendicular to the line(s) of rails being supported.


I think the answer to this puzzle is that the two outer roads were slippered normal and the sleepers for the middle road only started when there was room for them. To put it another way the 'A' sleepers for both the 1:7 and 1:10 crossings were on the outer roads.

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Re: Glenmutchkin - Tracklaying

Postby grovenor-2685 » Sat Jan 23, 2016 12:53 pm

The only problem with this plan , ie transferring the 5 sleepers indicated by John to the outer track, is that for that length there is no tie to hold the gauge of the centre track, all rails can be supported but there is some risk to the gauge holding, including for the check rail to the 1:10 crossing.
It would be interesting to see what they did in real life, but so far I have never seen a drawing of an interlaced 3 way or tandem.
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billbedford

Re: Glenmutchkin - Tracklaying

Postby billbedford » Sun Jan 24, 2016 11:45 am

Yes, but on some crossovers with standard timbering it was the practice to leave the crossing road with out it's own timbers:


LNER North Eastern Area Standard Railway Equipment Permanent Way Short Timbering For Crossover Roads 95R BS Rail-1.png
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Tracklaying

Postby Knuckles » Sun Jan 24, 2016 9:44 pm

Pretty cool. Makes sense as the rails are still supported. Visually it would make a good model simply as it is rare.
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A New Ending (and Beginning) for Portchullin

Postby Mark Tatlow » Fri Jul 29, 2016 6:57 am

Don’t worry, it is not as dramatic as all that, I have not burnt it or anything……………………oh hang on a minute, I have – well a bit of it anyway!

One of Portchullin’s quaint little foibles was it did occassionally like to derail trains as they left the fiddleyards; especially the fiddle yard representing Kyle. There were various reasons for this; including some proper cr*p woodwork on my part, the hand shunting that occurred every time a train was turned around, the effects on thermal expansion that was not catered for and, something that I had not seen until recently, a bit of a dogleg at the baseboard joint. Add to this the rather Heath Robinson approach to the legs for the fiddle yard boards, electrical connections and facia support and it was fundementally a b*ggers muddle. So something had to be done and, a mere 8 years after the layout’s first exhibition, it now has!

IMG_1423 compress.JPG

So with lots of thanks to Tim and Julian at the Electric Loft Ladder Company again, we have a new fiddle yard at the Kyle end and redesigned legs at the Inverness end. The design adopted is an adaptation of the sector plate that was in use before but with a refinement that it uses cassettes for the locations that the loco arrives and departs at. The idea being that these are both storage points at the end of the fiddle yard roads but also the means to move/turn the locos ready for their next duty. This is a development of the system used by Simon Bendall on his layout Elcot Road, but with a rotating sector plate rather than a traverser.

IMG_1427compress.JPG

Other halfway novel ideas are the use of the tray below the traverser as a storage tray for stock (and maybe tea!) and the projection of the sector plate beyond the end of the fixed board to make the ensemble smaller to transport. The facia also folds up rather niftily as well – photos of this will follow once I have taken them!

So the old fiddle yard has been consigned to history and literally went up in a puff of smoke (Tim and Julian have a big furnace to heat their factory). The new fiddle yard has not yet been tested but will very shortly get its chance to prove if it is a good’n. Portchullin will be out at the Barnstaple MRC’s show in Bear Street, Barnstaple – you can find details here. If you are in North Devon at the weekend, stop by and say hello on Saturday? It is in Christchurch, Bear Street
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Terry Bendall
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Tracklaying

Postby Terry Bendall » Sat Jul 30, 2016 8:01 am

About time you had some decent woodworking Mark! :D :D Nice to see someone else trying our ideas. A small point that I noticed is that there is not much ply above the surface of the sector plate on the far side. There may well be a reason for this but without some sort of "wall" around the sector plate or traverser there is a risk of stock being knocked off and possibly falling onto the floor.

Is the lead the source of power for the roads on the sector plate and if so does this mean that all the roads are powered up at the same time? On our traversers we have a socket for each road which means that power is only fed to the one that you are using. Mind you it has been known for the plug to be put in the wrong socket ... . :)

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Re: Glenmutchkin - Control Freak

Postby Mark Tatlow » Sun Oct 30, 2016 12:58 pm

I have been back onto the layout of late, with a view to get the first wheel turning on it before too long. That means attacking the electrickery things, beginning with the control panel.

I made a start on this by drawing up a diagrammatic representation in MS Paint and then using this to get one of the online firms (Vistaprint) to print me up a poster board to form the basis of the control panel. I am not sure I chose the right material as it turned up on a light weight foam board and I had to mount a sheet of aluminium behind for it to be stiff enough to be useable. But it did look pretty smart I thought………….

IMG_2391cropped.jpg


The control panel deals with all of the signals and turnouts that the cabin will have controlled, with local ground frames (which will be located on the boards locally) to be used to control the goods yard and the MPD. The latter will be arranged such that it can be located either to the front or the rear, to allow some flexibility in operation.

I have got to the point where the full extent of switches have been wired in and I am just completing the jumper leads. I took a lot of care to plan the wiring prior to any construction – despite the locos being DCC controlled, there are an awful lot of wires. This is because I have stuck with traditional control for the turnouts and signals. There is further complication as a result of the desire to incorporate some bells and even a block instruments (well maybe, at the moment it is just the wires!). So in all, there are 90 odd wires doing something or another on the layout.

IMG_2393 cropped 2.JPG


Somewhat in contrast to Portchullin, I have sought to keep the wiring as tidy as possible; everything is neatly collour coded and even labelled (to be fair it was labelled on Portchullin, but in a non colourfast ink………..!). I am hoping that this will make the wiring easier to debug at the start of the matter and repair if it does get damaged.

I am proposing to use a variety of connectors between boards and to the control panel, including this rather nifty varient of the D-sub range that is wired directly onot a cheeseblock wireless connector. Available to a variety of types from ebay including from here http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/D-SUB-Header- ... gzukVPUaoA

IMG_2392cropped.jpg
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Control Freak

Postby Armchair Modeller » Sun Oct 30, 2016 1:34 pm

That all looks very neat :thumb

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Re: Glenmutchkin - Control Freak

Postby Terry Bendall » Wed Nov 02, 2016 8:15 am

My take on control panels is similar. I draw the diagram using a CAD package including marking the position of the holes for the switches, then print it our and get it laminated at the local copy shop. The surface of the panel is made from 3mm plywood and the laminated diagram is fixed in place using double sided tape. Care needs to be taken to make sure that the panel material is not too thick otherwise the threaded parts of the switches will be too short. It is better to mark the position of the holes and drill them before fixing the diagram in place.

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JFS
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Control Freak

Postby JFS » Wed Nov 02, 2016 9:24 am

Mark Tatlow wrote:I am proposing to use a variety of connectors between boards and to the control panel, including this rather nifty varient of the D-sub range that is wired directly onot a cheeseblock wireless connector.



They look quite useful - thanks for the tip Mark. Just one small issue might be that - especially for DCC - the current load under a "near short" condition might be a bit high for the internal conductors which appear to be quite thin tracks on the PCB. It might be a good idea to parallel three or four of the pins for such a situation, or at least, to provide a fuse of a lower capacity than the rating of the connectors. Otherwise, if one of them should "blow", the whole job will stop and finding the fault will be a right b*gg*r!

Keep up the good work!

Cheers,

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Winander
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Control Freak

Postby Winander » Wed Nov 02, 2016 11:53 am

The spec on the sellers pages states the pins are rated at 1 amp. Isn't that, as Howard suspected, on the low side?

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Re: Glenmutchkin - Control Freak

Postby grovenor-2685 » Wed Nov 02, 2016 1:17 pm

One Amp is plenty for points and signals as Mark is using it. There is no need for the DCC power to be fed from the control panel.
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JFS
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Control Freak

Postby JFS » Wed Nov 02, 2016 7:08 pm

grovenor-2685 wrote:There is no need for the DCC power to be fed from the control panel.


I was rather thinking of people who might want to use these for inter-baseboard connections - specifically the terminations at each end of baseboards.

To quote Mark:- "I am proposing to use a variety of connectors between boards..."

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Mark Tatlow
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Re: Glenmutchkin - Control Freak

Postby Mark Tatlow » Sat Feb 04, 2017 10:28 pm

I promised a number of people that I would be making sure that the layour had at least the main elements wired up over christmas, so that it could at last run. But then it was a bit wet and cold so I did not fancy it out in the summerhouse so I applied rule no 1 – its my trainset!

Instead, I stayed at the bench and made a pair of the signals that still remain to be made for Glenmutchkin. The signalling plan has developed very slightly since I originally showed it back here and is shown below (actually this is the artwork for the control panel facia).

Control Panel Legend v 2.1.gif


The signals that I built were those that control the main loop prior to the shed link – levelrs 27 & 28 – and then the outer starter (that covers both the main loop and the main line) – levers 23, 24, 25 & 26. Only a pair of two doll signals, I thought, they shouldn’t take more than a day or two? Phew, well that wasn’t right; the more you look at the prototypes, the more you find there is to model!

Having created much of my own etchings and castings for MacKenzie & Holland signals I have obviously made good use of these. In this case, the small brackets, arms, ladders and castings.

dsc0569compress.jpg


Both of the signals have used the small brackets to create smallish landings. The smaller of the two signals has only one arm per doll, the larger two. The dolls and the posts are made up of square brass section which is filed to a taper – a certain amount of elbow grease is needed to acheive this! The posts are then sandwiched between some transom beams that also clasp the doll post – this is all soldered with a high melt solder to stop it ungumming later.

IMG_3063 cropped.JPG

IMG_3061cropped.JPG


The brackets are then offered up from below, with scrap etch forming the bearing plates to pick up the transomes. In the etch I also included smaller brackets to pick up the free end of the landing, along with the landing itself. This gets you to the stage shown above.

But this is not the half of it on a signal, there are the finials, lamp brackets, lamps, cross stays, access steps, access ladders, pivot plates, handrails, operating cams, safety hoops and ladder still to do………..

IMG_3100 cropped.JPG

IMG_3092.JPG


In a departure from my previous practise, I made the main ladders detachable (they will be held with the wire that can be seen in the pictures being turned over in secret pockets. I am also going to paint this prior to the final assembly; which will mean some touching uo of the painting later but I hope will make it easier.

IMG_3080 cropped.JPG

IMG_3085 cropped.JPG

And of course, I had to sign them with these rather nice custom name plaques from NBR 4mm Developments.

IMG_3089 cropped.JPG

This is the first time that I have used the brackets in signal making and I was pretty chuffed with how they have come out. This is where things presently stand and we head for the paint shops tomorrow…….

IMG_3106 rotate.JPG

IMG_3097 cropped.JPG
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Last edited by Mark Tatlow on Sat Feb 04, 2017 11:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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