No more dark territory on the D&H

After many years of planing, design, construction and installation, Im very happy to report that the last signal was installed on the layout yesterday.

Now the entire main line is under CTC (ABS for now) control via JMRI's Panel Pro.

While the single mast and dwarf signals have been installed for some time, the work needed to make specific D&H dual mast signals has taken some time due to the custom brass etching that needed to occur.

As the D&H has two types of dual mast signals, I felt that I needed to build both types to give a good representation of the signals used on the D&H.

Here are a few pictures of the new signals installed.

This signal is specific to the D&H and is a canterleaver type that us used for double track situations.
On the 1:1 scale D&H, each of the 6 search lights can display the aspect of Red / Yellow / Green.
In most cases these display speed and the status of the next 2 signals down the line.
As the legth of line between towns on my layout is short, I decided that I would reduce the total number of aspects that I wuld show and limit them down to just the top and middle search light being able to display Red / Yellow / Green. The bottom pair of search lights remain hard wired to show a red aspect.

One of the key reasons for doing this, apart from the limited need to show anything other than a Red on the bottom search light, is that the number of outputs on the electronics to drive the signals increases from 8 to 12 and therefore hits the funding for other projects on the railroad. Plus the issue of adding 2 more wires to the already very tight mast would be a challenge.

You may be thinking, those signals look rather tall. I am happy to report that they are built to scale from scale drwings provided to me by Dominic Bourgeois from the US who have been very helpfull in my quest to make these signals.

This second type of signal is the older design of the two that the D&H used on the railroad.
This signal says "D&H" as they were the only ones use use this type (I believe!)
Again, the bottom pair is search lights are hard wired to always display Red.

Now that these siganls are installed, I completed a count back to determine the number of signals. The total number of signals installed including dwarfs is 32.
The total number of driven search lights is 71. That then means that there are 142 separate outputs to drive the signals.  Then I also have some panels on the front of the layout to show
 occupancy of track that is hidden.

Well, thats the update for now. I will take a few more pictures of complete interlockings to show all the singals at some of the locations on the layout.

The D&H Comes Home!

Well, As you may have guessed from the last blog update. The railway room is now ready and its time for the D&H layout to come home.

Very soon after finishing painting the room I arranged to loan a tandem trailer from my good friend Vic.
The trailer had previously been used to tansport Rod and Vic's Thompson River Canyon Layout to exhibitions a few years ago. Now the Thompson River is firmly installed in Barrie's railway room, the poor old trailer was sitting now redundant.

After a number of emails to Vic and John C, it soom became apparent that the D&H would fit in the trailer and the move was on. So on the 7th I trecked out to Ringwood to pick up the trailer and then over to Oakligh where the layout has been in storage for more than 18 months at my fathers factory.

To say that the layout fit perfectly would be an understatement. There was about 10mm to spare on one side. The lenght of the trailer was perfect and the layout slid right in. It fit so snugly that I did not need to tie it down.

I then set off and headed for Wantirna for a operating session at Rod's as we were conducting the first test of his signaling project on the SFRSD. With the D&H in tow via Wantrina and the session now complete at Rod's I headed home to Sunbury.

At the crack of dawn, (well 8am ish after a bit of a sleep in) I backed the trailer up to the shed and proceeded to unload the D&H.

Before long she was up on her lanky legs and in position.

Afer a hour or so of re adding the small sections of rail between modules and giving the track a damn good clean, it was time to run trains.

U30C #709 and 2 other sister engines had the honour of runnig the first 20 car train around the layout.

With only 1 minor loose wire on a turnout the layout and the Panel Pro Panel worked perfectly as if it had never been in storage.!

Thanks to all the help I have received over the last 18 months in building the shed and painting it. It certainly has been appreciated.

Now the D&H is back up and running, and looking very small in the large room. Now it is time to plan for bigger and better things.

In the mean time, I will complete the signals for the layout so that the layout can take a brief trip to the Melbourne N scale convention in March 2013.

Stay tuned for updates on the build of the signals.

Regards
Brendan

Fourth and final shed update

Well, time is certainly moving along.. This will be the last update for the shed as it is now ready for the layout to move back in.

But before that happens, lets step back a few weeks..

Since the last update the top parts of the walls were installed and the screw holes and gaps plastered up.

As you can see, I have the 6mm MDF on the bottom parts of the wall, 3mm mdf on the top parts of the wall and 9mm C/D ply on the ceiling.

Next, was the paint.
After closely surveying friends railway rooms recently in terms of paint colour for the blue sky and the dark lower parts of the wall, I settled on the colours Barry Davies has used. (Nice one Barry).

I settled on a blue called British Paints "Levent" in a low sheen and a colour bond colour called "Monument" in a semi gloss for the lower sections of the walls.

Over the weekend, we had previously planned for friends to come over from Ballarat and stay for the weekend. Little did they know, that a shed inspection meant hanging onto the end of a paint roller for the reainder of the day.. Thanks to Liz, Bill, Mary and Al for your help. Also to Sam and Lochie for getting in and helping with the shirting boards also. Michelle kept the food and drink coming..

The ceiling is also painted light blue. The long term plan is to expand the layout and create isles with valance's above the layout. The valance will be painted "monument" along with the ceiling along the walkways. This will then frame the layout nicely. The blue on the inside of the valance will help reflect the light down on the layout.

The walls and ceiling received 3 coats of undercoat in order to cover the MDF and the ply and then 3 coats of blue on the walls. Then 2 coats of the black on the lower sections.

Here is a shot where we are halfway through the painting.. Blue is done..

Once the black was completed, I installed the lights around the outside of the room.

Here is the final panorama shot of the room.

Now the layout can come out of storage and into the room..!

During the last week or so, there has been a huge range of outsiude temp's. We ranged from 18 to 40 degrees. Considering I installed R5 and R6 bats in the ceiling and R2.5 in the walls, the room only reached 25 degrees in the hottest part of the day.. Nery nice.. It was cooler than in the house..!

Stay tuned for the next update.

Third shed update

Just a quick update re the progress of the shed.

As mentioned last time the ceiling battens were up.

I have since installed the lower section of the walls (the 6mm MDF) with insulation between the MDF and and the exterior of the shed.

Today, Rod, John F and John C came to help raise the ceiling.
There were 15 sheets of 2400mm x 1200mm x 9mm play waiting for us.

Fortunately I was able to loan a friends plaster lifter. This made the job so much easier than lifting with brooms or climbing ladders.

Once we got stuck into it, the progress was swift.

The plaster lifter was working over time.
Along the way we installed the R6 and R5 insulation on top of the plywood.
The railway room should be nice and snug in the winter and cool in the summer.

Here is the finished result.

Nice work guys.. Thanks for the help.

Next for the top parts of the walls so the layout can come home.

Stay tunned for the next installment.

Second shed update

Just a quick update re the progress of the shed.

All timber for the walls and ceiling is now procured.
I plan on using 6mm MDF on the lower section of the walls and 3mm on the upper section.

The 3mm will be curved in each corner to stop the sharpe edge look.

I will be using 9mm CD ply on the ceiling.

I will also be adding insulation in the walls and ceiling as I go.

I have now installed the ceiling battens at 600mm centres over the entire roof space.
As there is a 3m gap between roof trusses I have also added extra support from the roof battens to the ceiling battens just for a bit of extra safety.

Here are a few pictures of the ceiling battens.

Now to find time to do the install.. 

Stay tunned for the next update.

Move in time getting closer

The work on preparing the shed is progressing well. The car port is now up and the 5m long roller door is now out of the shed.

I have now installed the dividing wall between the railway room and the workshop. Of the 10.5m long shed I kept 3m of the front of the shed for a workshop.

Here are a few pictures of the progress of the build on the dividing wall.

Then I lined the wall with 6mm mdf

Then I installed workshop shelving to store all the workshop stuff and other bits and pieces.

Then the workshop work bench was installed and put into service quickly for those other jobs..

As the roof on the shed is a truss roof, I plan to line the shed and put in a false ceiling in the railway room. I plan to use the open end above the workbench to store long items such as timber etc.

Now that the workshop is done, I can now start looking at lining the shed and start work planning the upgrade of the D&H......

Here is a preliminary floor plan for the 7.5m x 6m room..

Time for more Signals to be built.

The layout is still in storage while I prepare the shed for its home coming.
Other tasks like assembling the car port is needed to be completed in order to move the 5m long roller door from inside the shed before I can line the walls of the shed and clean it out.

I decided it was time to tackle the build of my D&H specific dual mast signals in preparation for the Melbourne N Scale Convention in 2013.

Here is what I aim to build.

I have been working with a good friend Vic Fitzpartick to develop the relevant brass parts in order to build the signals I need.

Fortunately the top part of each of the signals with the search lights on them uses the same part as the single mast units that I have already built for the layout with a few minor changes.

So this week I set out to built one of each of the signals to make sure that the test etchings we did a while ago have all the parts needed and go together as expected.

Here is the work bench.

I made myself a jig to hold each of the 3 search lights in position while I add the other parts such as the top and middle walk ways as well as solder the common leg of the LED to the mast etc.

Here is a pic of the work in progress of the cantilever signal that I have been working on.

The other signal (being the same as the black signal in the picture at the top of this post) I built but the size of the foot walk is not right, so a small change is needed in the drawings for the etching. So will get onto that next time.

In the mean time, I have been making the top sections with the search lights while I wait for more etchings.

I have completed 4 top sections so far. Only another 16 to go for the layout.

So thats the progress for now.

Stay tuned for the next update..