Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Tell us about your layout, where you put it, how you built it, how you operate it.
Tony Wilkins
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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Tony Wilkins » Thu Jan 14, 2021 9:17 am

Since the last post, I have been progressively working my way through the outstanding faults and there were rather more than I had hoped for. I also found one that was totally unexpected whilst testing the two roads with a double header isolating circuit. Road 8 worked fine, but on selecting road 6 the loco set off without the controller being switched on. Tests revealed that there was 12volts DC on the track permanently. This could only be coming from the circuit board that did the switching for road 6 and so it proved. On inspecting the PCB nothing appeared amiss, but the meter showed a short allowing the relay supply to feed onto the rail, although a track had been cut. A further attack with a sharp blade cured the problem, a tiny whisker of copper must have been causing the problem.
I had made a list of jobs that required access to the underside of baseboards, but the above was not one of them.
Over the last couple of days, I have been working my way through them until yesterday evening I reached the bottom of the list. So now, in theory, I should be able to reassemble everything and all should function as intended.
However before I can do that, I have a couple of other jobs I wish to do. Whilst the boards were out, I took the opportunity to extend the goods yard head shunt, which needs access from the outside of the layout. This new section of track needs to be wired onto the existing track and I have an additional piece of track to lay on the first baseboard that needs to be installed on reassembly, which will also need to be wired in from underneath, so may as well do that while I am about it. So final testing will have to wait a day or two yet.
Regards
Tony.
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Terry Bendall
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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Terry Bendall » Thu Jan 14, 2021 9:28 am

Tony Wilkins wrote:A further attack with a sharp blade cured the problem, a tiny whisker of copper must have been causing the problem.


Many years ago I once spent about 2 hours trying to solve a circuit malfunctioning problem. A colleague then spotted exactly the same cause - a track that had not been cut right though. Nice to know that the experts sometimes have the same problems as those with less experience. :)

Terry Bendall

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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Tony Wilkins » Thu Jan 14, 2021 11:26 am

Hi Terry.
The worst example I have seen of this sort of thing occurred during the early days in my design career. We had a small batch of circuit boards etched but when populated with components and tested, one exhibited a most peculiar fault. There was a short between two adjacent tracks but all attempts to break it with scalpel blades failed. Holding the board, which was fiber glass, up to a strong light appeared to show a darker patch in the area of the apparent short. A small drill was used to make a row of holes and then enlarged into a slot between the two tracks, end of short. There must have been a rouge strand of copper embedded in the fiber glass board itself.
Regards
Tony.
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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby bécasse » Thu Jan 14, 2021 12:12 pm

Tony Wilkins wrote:The worst example I have seen of this sort of thing occurred during the early days in my design career. We had a small batch of circuit boards etched but when populated with components and tested, one exhibited a most peculiar fault. There was a short between two adjacent tracks but all attempts to break it with scalpel blades failed. Holding the board, which was fiber glass, up to a strong light appeared to show a darker patch in the area of the apparent short. A small drill was used to make a row of holes and then enlarged into a slot between the two tracks, end of short. There must have been a rouge strand of copper embedded in the fiber glass board itself.

Which just goes to reinforce the value of the old adage about "test, test and test again".
No matter what you are using copperclad board for, be it sleepers, mounting pick-ups, split frames or just plain circuit boards, it always pays to spend a few minutes with a meter checking that everything that should be electrically separate actually is, before you start soldering anything to it. And that applies even to proprietary tracked board, which can suffer from the engrained copper strand syndrome just as much as a self-etched board.

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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Simon_S » Thu Jan 14, 2021 3:43 pm

A trick I was taught is to short a large, charged capacitor across the unwanted short circuit, the theory being that the discharge current would vapourise the fault. It got me out of trouble once but try at your own risk :shock:

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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Tony Wilkins » Sat Jan 16, 2021 12:11 pm

Hi Simon. Yes, have used that trick in the past. A 10 amp power supply can also be quiet effective at blowing shorts but not with thin tracks around or these could vaporize as well. We tried both on that short to no avail.

Regards
Tony.
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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Tony Wilkins » Sat Jan 16, 2021 1:45 pm

FURTHER ADVENTURES WITH WIRING.

Well so much for the theory. Electricity knows better.
On reassembling all the baseboards, which I have to, to be able to test all the control panel, 3 faults still existed. One of which required dismantling the first three baseboards to get at. The cause was a point motor not feeding an output back to the control panel. This has been an intermittent fault from day one. I replaced the point motor, but I also managed to break one of the support legs in the process and had to re-glue this and leave overnight to set before I could reassemble everything and retest. The faults have been sorted now and the control panel functions as intended, but you may have surmised from the heading that this is not the end of the story.
On subsequently testing the faulty point motor it functioned perfectly, so I will probably risk reusing it but under a more accessible point just in case.
There is one major difference between the Fulgurex point motors as used on Green Street and the Cobalt point motors as used here. The Fulgurex units switch off at the end of their travel and I wired them such that the feedback changed polarity when the point motor switched off. This gave a positive indication that the motor had thrown. The Cobalt units work differently and the feedback output changes polarity immediately the applied voltage changes meaning that all you know is that you have instructed the point motor to operate and nothing more. I could have used the input tag to do that with full voltage rather than the half voltage of the feed back terminal 3 gives. The instructions are not specific as to the output characteristics and so I put a current limiting resistor in the line to protect the internal diodes from possible damage assuming a 6 Volt output. When I started trying to fault find I discovered the output voltage I was getting was nearer 3 with the current I was drawing. This meant there was already an internal resistor fitted the value of which is about 1K ohms. The instructions don't mention this fact only that it is diode based. This means that the maximum current it is possible to draw from this output is 6mA under short conditions and with a typical LED about 4mA. Had I know this I would not have used this output but the input tag instead, but as the circuit I have works I shall leave it alone except for some local LEDs on the front panel where I have already made this alteration in order to put 10mAs through them.
I must admit that when I first began testing the control panel and so many faults made their presence know, I found it somewhat demoralising. Where does one begin? However a logical approach and dealing with each fault in turn has triumphed and I am well pleased with it. Its simple layout compared to that of Green Street makes it a pleasure to operate.


Having won one battle the next was to fully test the storage yard track work, especially the up side, something I had not been able to do easily before now.
I sequentially selected each down road and tried a loco through them. The higher roads (8, 9 & 10) that I had been able to test with the test box worked fine but several faults appeared on some of the untested roads including a complete short on road 7. I have chased this down to one baseboard by disconnecting each baseboard in turn and testing with a meter.
The double header PCB mentioned above that had the short that fed 12 Volts onto road 6 now refuses to work at all, so that needs further investigation.
An identical circuit on road 8 works fine.
The up roads also have several faults mainly open circuits that I suspect are down to unsoldered joints that I missed when installing the wiring, but there could be other causes such as omissions.
There are also a number of bad rail joints that will need attention and the loco derailed twice. Not bad considering the shear amount of track involved.
Regards
Tony.
Last edited by Tony Wilkins on Fri May 12, 2023 9:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Tony Wilkins » Mon Jan 18, 2021 9:20 am

Well that's all sorted and what a wonderful array of faults they were. The non functioning double header circuit turned out to be caused by a dry solder joint in the control panel meaning there was no return path for the relay and was nothing to do with the PCB I corrected earlier. Fortunately for some reason, I choose to check the control panel end first.
The short on Down road 7 took some finding and I ended up progressively shortening the length of track with the short on until I was left with just one 60ft panel with the fault and even then the cause wasn't obvious. I finally found that a length of the bare common return wire was touching a dropper wire that came through the baseboard right next to a batten and promptly disappeared through a hole in the batten heading for the tag strip. Even when I had bent the return wire well away from the batten I could not see what it was touching as the exposed length was so short, but that cured it and then it was a matter of reconnecting all the wires I had unsoldered.
The other interesting fault was with Up roads 6 and 7 that were open circuit across a baseboard joint. Thinking about this when I should have been trying to sleep (as you do), it seemed odd that adjacent roads should exhibit the same fault and wondered if there were two wires swapped. I quick check with a meter the following morning showed this to be the case as 6 made with 7 and visa versa. This turned out to be me getting my white and grey wires confused. After all these years using the colour code the order of the grey and white wires are still the two I have to think about most.
The remaining faults were all caused by either not soldered or poorly soldered joints.
Regards
Tony.
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Serjt-Dave
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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Serjt-Dave » Mon Jan 18, 2021 10:06 am

It sounds like the testing and fault find was even harder than building all the track and controls in the first place. LOL. I'm glad you've got it all sorted. It never ceases to amaze me that a slither of a strand of wire that's gone astray can screw everything up big time but when you deliberately try and solder a wire into place it don't want to know. Hey ho that's life I suppose.

Keep Safe

Dave

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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Andrew Bluett-Duncan » Mon Jan 18, 2021 1:24 pm

Hello Tony

I'm beginning to sound a bit sycophantic when I say again how impressed I am by your persistence / dogged determination to find all these faults, but I do find your approach very impressive. And I suppose I'm rather fearing a similar slew of problems with Yeovil when I do eventually get it to that testing state.

But what you've consistently said is that you just work your way through the problems in a methodical and logical manner and you dont appear to be overwhelmed by them. I must take a leaf out of your book when it comes to it!

Thanks again for sharing this build with us, it's a great read.
Kind regards
Andrew

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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Terry Bendall » Tue Jan 19, 2021 9:54 am

Andrew Bluett-Duncan wrote:And I suppose I'm rather fearing a similar slew of problems with Yeovil when I do eventually get it to that testing state


The extent of the problems might depend on the complexity of the wiring. :) I think one of the learning points is the importance of learning about what is going on and then trying to understand it - which is a different skill. It is quite comment to read descriptions in magazines of layouts built where there is a comment " I don't understand wiring so X did it." All very well when X is around to fix any problems but if not ... . :(

Terry Bendall

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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Tony Wilkins » Sat Jan 23, 2021 10:49 pm

Hi Andrew.
Your wiring should be somewhat simpler than mine, so hopefully you won't encounter as many problems as I did. Part of the reason I did was because the usual method of working is to wire up an area and fully test it before moving on to the next bit. I wasn't able to do that as the full control system was missing and that of course couldn't be tested properly without the layout. Catch 22. So when it was all finally put together the accumulation of errors presented themselves in rapid succession.

One job I had been putting off despite building it with the rest of the track for this baseboard was laying the piece of track that will join the sidings to the Loco cassettes. There were two main reasons for not doing so. Firstly, to avoid potential damage to the end of this over length section of track and secondly, I had yet to finalise the design of the interface between the track and the Loco cassettes and this is still the case. However, I did wish to lay the track and wire it up whilst I had the baseboard out. I therefore laid this section. The control panel visible underneath, which is where it will live.
DSCF1149.jpg

The projecting rail ends needed protection
DSCF1150.jpg

so I found a scrap piece of wood and marked and drilled two holes for the rails to fit in,
DSCF1152.jpg

which was then securely screwed to the baseboard.
DSCF1154.jpg

I could then wire up this section of track safe in the knowledge that it was not going to get caught by woolly sleeves etc. by accident and I did need to wire this section of track up as the local controller feeds into the layout here and I wanted to be able to test this out as it also gave me the ability to test a large part of the UP side of the yard. The wood block also acts as a stop for any loco that strays too near the end of the headshunt.

While the baseboards were out I also took the opportunity to secure a batten to the wall. I am perhaps getting a little ahead of myself here, but the control panel will ultimately be mounted on runners so it can be stowed under the layout when not in use but pulled out for operation. The runners will be fixed to the bottom of the control panel and also to a 4 by 2 foot half inch thick sheet of MDF, but to prevent any possibility of the whole lot tipping forward when extended, the back edge of the MDF board will be held down by this batten. You can see the edge of it under the power socket.
DSCF1156.jpg


With the testing complete, thoughts turned to the next job meaning the scenic half of the layout and the next sections of track to be dealt with. I had been proceeding toward the lifting sections as this was where the next batch of pointwork needed to be laid. However it was then I began to remember that I also needed to build some of it including one turnout that was flatbottom. There was also quite a bit of plain track needed, mostly for now bullhead to fill a few gaps.
So that has been keeping me occupied for the last few days. 6 plain track panels have been added to this board
DSCF1160.jpg

and all the track with stained timbering added to this one as much of this work has been infilling gaps.
DSCF1157.jpg

However the new turnout is the main item of interest.
DSCF1158.jpg

The first Flatbottom turnout I have built since I built a B-6 for Green Street as an experiment nearly 40 years ago.
In those days little information was available regarding Flatbottom pointwork, so I used a Bullhead B-6 template knowing full well that the geometry was subtly different. However it worked.
Much has changed and one of my biggest regrets in retrospect was using B-6 turnouts for the entry trackwork for Green Street together with 1 in 6 slips to match. In truth they were the best that would fit the baseboard length I had chosen, so I accepted the compromise. Brimsdown is different as it follows as best I can what was actually there and thus full length turnouts were used and this is a SC-8. The challenge was trying to remember what I did all those years ago and I have to admit I failed miserably, so it was a relearning exercise.
Bullhead turnouts are pretty much second nature to me now, but Flatbottom turnouts are a different ball game altogether. You can forget all the filing jigs for a start as the foot prevents their use, so it is back to first principles and basic tools. Even the crossing vee angle jig requires a different approach. Since I am modelling the mid 60s, much of the Flatbottom rail laid throughout the Lea valley line from the mid 1950s was to BS 109 section and BS 110A was only just beginning to appear. Colin Graig's kits are far too recent and have a different geometry which isn't covered by Templot either. (That's if you can obtain any.)
Thus it was going to be a DIY job. My first attempt at a crossing vee was less than successful, so was scraped and a second one attempted learning lessons from how not to make the first one. The end result was acceptable and a close up of the crossing area is shown below. If I am to write a step by step construction guide for my method of building a Flatbottom turnout, I need to be confident that I have a method that works first.
I still have a further 3 Flatbottom turnouts and a single slip to build for one area toward the other end of the layout, so they will make good material to record the process.
DSCF1159.jpg

The reddish hues look a bit like rust, but are in fact a trick of the light. I waited for a sunny day to take these pictures, but the down side is that the red ceiling blinds in the conservatory are reflecting off the rail surfaces creating this effect.
Regards
Tony.
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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Terry Bendall » Sun Jan 24, 2021 9:52 am

Tony Wilkins wrote:I had yet to finalise the design of the interface between the track and the Loco cassettes and this is still the case.


I wrote about my design for loco cassettes and how to join them to fiddle yard tracks in Scalefour news 176 and available on here at
file:///C:/Users/LCS/Downloads/s4news176.pdf . For this design the aluminium angle that forms the "rails" of the cassette is notched to fit over the end of the rails on the traverser. An alternative method that I have used is to have a short length of convention track which then abuts to two short piece of aluminium angle. The are connected to the cassette with folded over pieces of brass sheet.

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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Philip Hall » Sun Jan 24, 2021 12:52 pm

Tony,

It look like your flat bottomed rails are still soldered to rivets. Are these shallower rivets or the standard kind? It also looks like you have moved over to steel rail for the FB or is that an illusion? I thought you were firmly wedded to NS.

Philip
Last edited by Philip Hall on Sun Jan 24, 2021 3:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Tony Wilkins » Sun Jan 24, 2021 2:44 pm

Terry Bendall wrote:
Tony Wilkins wrote:I had yet to finalise the design of the interface between the track and the Loco cassettes and this is still the case.


I wrote about my design for loco cassettes and how to join them to fiddle yard tracks in Scalefour news 176 and available on here at
file:///C:/Users/LCS/Downloads/s4news176.pdf . For this design the aluminium angle that forms the "rails" of the cassette is notched to fit over the end of the rails on the traverser. An alternative method that I have used is to have a short length of convention track which then abuts to two short piece of aluminium angle. The are connected to the cassette with folded over pieces of brass sheet.

Terry Bendall


Hi Terry.
S4news 176 duly downloaded and stored for future reference. I shall certainly seriously consider something similar.
Tony.
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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Tony Wilkins » Sun Jan 24, 2021 3:47 pm

Philip Hall wrote:Tony,

It look like your flat bottomed rails are still soldered to rivets. Are these shallower rivets or the standard kind? It also looks like you have moved over to steel rail or is that an illusion? I thought you were firmly wedded to NS.

Philip

Hi Philip.
It is all Hi/Ni rail, I can assure you with all the associated shortcomings, some of which have already been debated in other threads. It is labelled as BS110A rail but doesn't bare that much similarity to any BS110A profile rail that I have come across, the main one being that the rail head is somewhat under nourished. The top profile being more rounded than the bullhead rail makes the visual difference even more obvious where they meet.
You are to an extent preempting the intended next posting where I discuss the minefield of differing rail heights and track base thicknesses and trying to match them together. One of the issues I had with the Flatbottom B-6 on Green Street was the step in the rail where it met the Bullhead track either side of it. The rail I was then using was the Peco code 82 Flatbottom N/S rail, which was a good profile, but tended to suffer from a curve in the vertical plain, so the lengths for use had to be carefully selected. I still have a quantity of it but then I standardised on the Hi/Ni rail. I got round the height difference problem by building up the last few solder joint thickness under the end of the Bullhead sections. The difference is small but noticeable.

To answer your first question, yes the rail is still soldered to rivets but these are made of copper and came in a collection of track building material I acquired some while ago. I think they were originally supplied by the EM gauge society. Over the years, the thickness of the head of the brass rivets seems to have increased by several thou to the extent that the difference between the copper and brass ones is about 6 thou. The difference between Bullhead rail at code 75 and Flatbottom rail at code 82 is therefore 7 thou so Flatbottom rail on copper rivets damn near matches Bullhead rail on brass rivets at the running surface. If consistently building track with one rail section and track base, this does not present a problem, but with the hodge podge assortment that I need to use to achieve what I am trying to replicate it most certainly is. This is the reason for the shear and the 0.8mm PCB sleepers to use with Colin Craig's etched baseplates for my Flatbottomed plain track, which needs to match the conventional ply and rivet track around it. This will be a job for the not to distant future.
Regards
Tony.
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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Terry Bendall » Mon Jan 25, 2021 8:47 am

Tony Wilkins wrote:You are to an extent preempting the intended next posting where I discuss the minefield of differing rail heights and track base thicknesses and trying to match them together.


As mentioned briefly a little while back. viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7339&p=81633#p81633

My experiences with FB track joining BH track has been limited to joining the Colin Craig FB version to Exactoscale BH. I cannot remember checking but I think the height was either the same or not enough for me to worry about.

Terry Bendall

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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Tony Wilkins » Tue Jan 26, 2021 9:03 am

Terry Bendall wrote:My experiences with FB track joining BH track has been limited to joining the Colin Craig FB version to Exactoscale BH. I cannot remember checking but I think the height was either the same or not enough for me to worry about.

Terry Bendall


Hi Terry.
I am sure that is how Colin intended his track components to be used, but as I am using 0.8mm ply and rivet BH track, mixed with Colin's BR1 Baseplates and Exactoscale concrete FB trackbase, my situation is somewhat more complex. I will post a picture shortly showing the situation I am trying to replicate.
The data referred to in the link is useful and similar to some of my findings, although I measured everything in thous.

Regards
Tony.
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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Tony Wilkins » Tue Jan 26, 2021 1:50 pm

Thus far, I have been concentrating on the North end of the scenic part as this is where most of the remaining pointwork and the more complicated baseboards are. However moving briefly to the South end of the layout where there is an expanse of plain track to model.
Brimsdown023.jpg

This picture is taken from the far end of the Down loop to Brimsdown station.
Although undated, I would place it at mid 1967 to early 1968.
From left to right, the Down Loop or Down Slow is traditional Bullhead coming off a Flatbottom turnout in the Down Main, which promptly changes to concrete sleepers with Pandrol fixings after the turnout.
The Up Main is Flatbottom rail on timber sleepers with BR1 baseplates and Elastic spike fixings.
The Loop line drops relative to the running lines and so the cork underlay on my layout changes from 3mm to 1.5mm thickness with a sanded down transition at the exit from the storage yard and at the exit end near the station.
There are other interesting details in this picture. The flashing headlights fitted to the loco were a short lived experiment to aid train visibility from April / May 1966.
There is a device next to the rail connected to a length of rodding just behind the leading bogie of the loco. I would guess this was a detonator placer, can anyone confirm this or otherwise.
The 12th and 13th sleeper of the concrete based track are timber sleepers with what appears to be an expansion joint. This is curious as the subsequent track is still jointed and remained so for several years. These special expansion joints were normally used at the boundary between jointed track and a length of continuous welded track.
Incidentally, the Loop was lifted some time during 1968 as part of the electrification scheme.
We now come to the compromises between what was reality and the model.
Viewed as in the picture, the tracks curve gently to the left. The tracks on my version curve rather more tightly the opposite way so trying to compare can be confusing.
Be that as it may, here is the begining my version given the available space, Loop on the outside.
DSCF1161.jpg

The three tracks are to the right of this board and the entry turnout shown in the above picture is effectively to the left in the storage yard. In reality replaced with a scissors crossover. The split is the boundary of the storage yard i.e. where the scenery nominally starts.
A different view of same looking in the opposite direction to the top picture, toward the storage yard.
DSCF1162.jpg

Detail from right to left.
Loop is all ply and rivet so no problem. I decided some time ago that all curved Bullhead track would be ply and rivet rather than flexitrack to avoid any gauging problems, so what happens, Exactoscale bring out a gauge widened version of their flexitrack, which I seriously considered enough to obtain sufficient to do this section of track, but the height difference would need to be addressed and I reverted to plan A.
The Down Main. This section changes from ply and rivet to concrete sleepers with the greater thickness of track base. I expected the difference in total track depth to be about 0.8mm, but on assembling a short section of the concrete track, discovered the actual difference to be nearer 0.5mm. I had hoped to use a cork base of 2.2mm or 3/32", but this would plainly not work, so sort a source of 2.5mm thick cork sheet instead. This is currently on order. I am now building up a stock of pre-curved 60' panels of concrete base track ready. Yes, I know the concrete sleepers are marked Costain rather than Dowmac, but beggars can't be choosers. It is either that or use the C&L ones with Peco Pandrol clips glued on, but that would produce vertical rail. For the length I need life is too short.
The inner track will be BR1 baseplates and hence the need for the 0.8mm PCB for the sleepers, to match the ply and rivet track.
At present, I am unsure if I have enough BR1 etches to do all the track I want, so this track will be left till last as I shall be building and laying the FB track from the North end working South, the aim being to concentrate on the Down direction to achieve one complete circuit first.
Regards
Tony.
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Martin Wynne
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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Martin Wynne » Tue Jan 26, 2021 3:20 pm

Tony Wilkins wrote:The 12th and 13th sleeper of the concrete based track are timber sleepers with what appears to be an expansion joint. This is curious as the subsequent track is still jointed and remained so for several years

Hi Tony,

Is there any culvert, drain, pipe, etc., under the track near this location?

Sometimes the construction depth over such culverts can be quite shallow, causing a needed expansion joint to be moved to what seems an unusual position.

There was an incident near Bromsgrove 10 years ago where an expansion joint had been installed over a culvert just below the ballast. The track stress caused the culvert to partially collapse, and large quantities of ballast fell into it. The conclusion was that the expansion joint should have been installed further away. More info:

https://85a.co.uk/forum/view_topic.php? ... orum_id=11

cheers,

Martin.
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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby grovenor-2685 » Tue Jan 26, 2021 9:19 pm

Interesting report that, a litany of incompetence.
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Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Tony Wilkins » Fri Jan 29, 2021 1:12 pm

Hi Martin.
That is an interesting possibility as the natural water courses in this area flow from left to right as viewed in the picture, toward the river Lea. There was a large allotment to the left of the railway. Unfortunately, none of the detail maps I have of the area go quite that far south and the NLS maps for London don't go quite that far north as yet, or didn't the last time I looked, so I can't say definitively one way or the other.
Regards
Tony.
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Martin Wynne
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Joined: Mon May 14, 2012 4:27 pm

Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Martin Wynne » Fri Jan 29, 2021 1:58 pm

Hi Tony,

I don't know if this is the right location, but the OS 10K map shows evidence of watercourses nearby:

brimsdown_watercourse.png


My purple rings. Watercourses are plotted from infra-red aerial photos, so only water visible above ground gets plotted.

The local highway authority for the area will have much more detailed larger-scale OS maps -- a tip is to search their website for locations of winter grit bins, and zoom in as far as it will go.

cheers,

Martin.
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Tony Wilkins
Posts: 814
Joined: Tue Mar 20, 2012 3:57 pm

Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Tony Wilkins » Sat Jan 30, 2021 3:39 pm

Hi Martin.
That is the area I am modelling but is too far north for the picture, which was taken from Duck Lees lane crossing footbridge about half a mile south.
The maps I have of Brimsdown station and environs show several water courses many of which have been both diverted and culverted since the mid 60's.
I think the middle circle you highlight was actually a pump house that lifted water from low level drains into a higher level drainage channel. The manhole covers in front of the building allowing access. The natural water table is not that deep in this area
Brimsdown scene014.jpg

This building does feature in some of the pictures I have.
Regards
Tony.
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Inspiration from the past. Dreams for the future.

Tony Wilkins
Posts: 814
Joined: Tue Mar 20, 2012 3:57 pm

Re: Brimsdown-The last grand project.

Postby Tony Wilkins » Sat Jan 30, 2021 4:26 pm

Tony Wilkins wrote:
The inner track will be BR1 baseplates and hence the need for the 0.8mm PCB for the sleepers, to match the ply and rivet track.
At present, I am unsure if I have enough BR1 etches to do all the track I want, so this track will be left till last as I shall be building and laying the FB track from the North end working South, the aim being to concentrate on the Down direction to achieve one complete circuit first.

Tony.


Having stated this, what do I then do? Start on the inner track from the Southern end as this, I decided, would make a good test piece for the BR1 track assembly, mainly because as this will be under a road bridge, any short comings will be less obvious. First I went back to making some 0.8mm thick PCB sleepers and cut a small batch. These were a bit variable and I will have to refine my methods to produce a more consistent product. This I will come back to in due course.
Colin Craig's Flatbottom BR1 baseplates are definitely a new form of insanity, but with practice and experimentation, a reasonable (acceptable ?) rate of production can be achieved. It is still going to take me several hours work to produce enough baseplates to assemble a scale 60' panel and I estimate I shall eventually need the equivalent of about 40.
So here is the first length of soldered Flatbottom track off the assembly line. Two days modelling time went into that, but I was at the beginning of the learning curve.
DSCF1163.jpg

A close up of the better end.
DSCF1164.jpg

I must say it certainly looks the part. It will though, have to be painted before it can be laid.
The other thing I was concerned about, and one reason why I so wanted to build a length, was to discover whether there would be any height difference when matched up with my existing track. I am happy to report that there isn't.
Here is the bag containing the rest of the sleepers from this batch.
DSCF1165.jpg

So I now know I can achieve what I want to do, it's just going to be a long slow process.
At least currently, time is not so much the issue, my sanity maybe.
The things we do for our hobby!
Regards
Tony.
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