Leeds Central Model - Lincoln (Newark) show 25/26 Feb

[Atlantic 3279]

DON'T MISS YOUR CHANCE FOLKS, EXHIBITION TOMORROW AND SUNDAY.

[Manxman1831]

Hopefully heading to Peterborough next Sunday. Working this weekend.

[Mercator II]

Will be there tomorrow, looking forward to it, what are the door opening times again?

Good luck to all the team on Leeds Central

Brian

[60800]

I'll make meself known if I can get there

[60129 GUY MANNERING]

Had the pleasure of seeing Leeds Central today in all its glory. Its up to the standard of John's other layout Trentham Junction which has appeared in BRM and the Model Rail DVD Creative Modelling. I also had the pleasure of meeting our very own "Atlantic 3279" and there's more, he was kind enough to show three of us a completed A2/3 and a work in progress A2/2. Plus a new projec t that he is busy with. I have to say the A2/3 60512 "Steady Aim" looked fantastic as a finished job and it is a credit to Graham's fine workmanship that we all agreed you could not tell it was not one complete new plastic moulding from Bachmann.Met a couple of guys from RM Web and really sorry but,neglected to speak to Redgate Models from there.Also had a good long Talk with the gent who was doing a demonstration.Superb "O" Gauge builder, most impressive.All in all a good friendly little show,that I enjoyed.

[60800]

I'll have piccies to post later

[60800]

Sorry the photo quality is awful, my head is just.... bleugh. Nurse, get the pills!

Anyway, a few good-ish'uns ; http://2509-silverlink.deviantart.com/gallery/37644919

[Atlantic 3279]

I'll see if I have any decent images to post tomorrow. Must relax tonight and recover from running a layout with various teething troubles, using a control system well out of my comfort zone. If my ultra-compact "pocket" camera did a decent job for once, indoors, before zero hour on saturday morning, we may have something to see.
Anyway, Leeds Central now has a provisional invitation to somewhere a little more prestigious in about eighteen months, so there's an incentive to iron out the problems in its operation .

[Mercator II]

Well I had a plesant morning on Saturday, a good show, good layouts and bacon butties!!

thanks to 'Atlantic' for the behind the scenes look of Leeds Central, had plenty of fun looking at it, even better once you got rid of those 'weissels' and brought those lovely A4s on scene

Great news about the invite, John must be happy, and you have 18 months to re-wire it into DC!!!

I hope that for Caistorail it was a success

Brian

[Atlantic 3279]

John and I wish to say a big thank-you to all of those who took the trouble to visit Leeds Central at the Caistor show and to pass comment on the layout. Our thanks are also due to the various members and associates of Caistor club who put in so much time and effort to host the show. My ridiculously compact camera, despite its unrealistically short optical system and dodgy indoor exposure / glare exclusion abilities, hasn't made too disastrous a job of the photography, although I'm not claiming any great ability or success on my part regarding the composition and execution of the shots! I am NOT a trained photographer and I'm not "artistic" (I might almost say thank goodness for that latter point, as lots of odd characteristics seem to accompany great artistic ability and I'm odd enough as it is......)
In only one case have I taken the trouble to black out some of the background in the picture as it provided just too gaudy a distraction from what should be the subject of the image.
Obviously, there is still a fair amount of work that could, or ought to be done to improve the layout and its operation, but the first showing could have been worse.
Thanks again to all who took the trouble to come.




















So much for the "please do not touch" signs, the best we could do when we discovered that no barriers were provided. The "maulers", the plain-clumsy or the baggy-clothing brigade had managed to bust the splitting signal at the front of the layout, near the signal box, well before the middle of the first day. Razor wire along the front, energised at 240V next time perhaps

[davidwest]

Wish I could have seen it Graeme - looks quite impressive.

Will look forward to future opportunities.

[Atlantic 3279]

Two more pictures of Leeds Central in its usual lair. I hope the medicine man who took the pictures doesn't object to them finding their way onto here:

[Atlantic 3279]

A Concrete Mixer for Leeds Central

John has been getting irritated by derailments of his Hornby L1's pony truck with its unreliable "digital steering" system, i.e. the wheels appear only ever to be either dead ahead or steering at about 35 degrees right or left, which doesn't work well at common crossings, point blade tips or notchy rail joints at transitions into curves!

I've had a go at turning the truck into something more conventional, and I hope, reliable.

On releasing the front screw for the outer main chassis bottom plate, which sits a handy 26mm behind the pony axle, a usefully long thread emerged. I decided I could use this as a new pivot poiunt for the pony truck. In order to get the screw to tighten up but to retain a free-swinging truck, I dropped a 5.5mm length of 1/16" brass rod into the hole, allowing the screw to engage on its threads and tighten up "bottomed out" with its head still slightly proud of the plate.

I made a pivot-eye for a revised pony truck from a piece of 0.015" brass drilled 2mm, and kept narrow enough to avouid fouling the mounts for the brake shoes as it swings to the sides.
I also drilled into the rear of the chunky sections of the pony truck frame so that I could deeply insert some pieces of 0.7 mm wire. I superglued these into the holes, bent them to a "convergent" shape tight against the base of the original truck, cranked their ends to put the pivot plate at a lower level, and then soldered on the pivot plate, maintaining the 26 mm axle swing radius. For extra strength I epoxied the wires to the original base of the truck.

I then trimmed away the original pivot arrangements by cutting off the front of the outer keeper plate, plus the two pivot pins that this exposes, and I scraped down the level of the land on which those two pins had stood so as to give more room for the pony truck to rise when necesssary. With careful angling of the wires I was able to set the pony truck with freedom for its wheels to rise and fall up to about 1.5mm either way. Plenty of side swing is still available.

I can see no reason why this won't work, as it is so conventional, but owing to John's adoption of dark-arts electricity I can't test run the loco on good honest juice. I hope it works as it's a bit difficult to put it back as it was now!

[manna]

G'Day Gents

Strange how these L1's work or don't work, I've had mine for more than 2 years now and is regularly used on 18-20 inch curves, and is as good as gold, but I think you've got it sussed now Atlantic.

manna

[Atlantic 3279]

I suspect that the rather sharp steering angle that the original truck suddenly adopts is more suitable for trainset style curves than it is for the easier, more fluid curves of Peco Streamline. Perhaps this also exposes the limitations of Peco's "universal fine" compromise, as in the end you cannot accommodate a broad spread of flange thicknesses and BTB measurements, which inevitably requires fairly large crossing gaps and generous openings of point blades, and at the same time accurately control the behaviour of wheelsests through shallow-angle crossings and the toe of the point!

I imagine the ex-factory L1 might also just about behave on track with gentle curves if the crossing and check rail geometry was tightly controlled to match the exact profile of the L1 wheels and all notchy rail joints were eliminated.