Sevenoaks - Summer Update

[tjf4375]

5 hours ago, shanks522 said:

Just seen your latest YouTube video, very nice. With your networkers, have you used the original motor bogies?? 
 

Graham. 

Thanks Graham. Yes I did - both units have power cars using the original motor bogies, but at both ends. I would quite like to do a complete transplant of the running gear for both sets though, as the original motor bogies are so woefully gutless, and I really don't like traction tyres! It's low on the priority list for now though, as I want to move back to doing some scenic work, and hopefully finishing the refurbished CEP as well.

[shanks522]

Cheers, re-furnished CEP, now you’re talking! Look forward to it. I’ve got a 4 car networker to finish myself and im thinking of using power bogies from a Bachmann 150, hopefully more powerful. 
 

Graham 

[tjf4375]

Cheers Graham. I will try and post pics of the progress with the CEP as I go. I started it many years ago, and the one coach I finished has been sitting in the siding on the layout, waiting for the other coaches to join it! :)

 

I'll be interested to see what results you get using the Class 150 power bogies, are they the correct wheel diameter? It certainly would be nice to have smoother running networkers!

 

[tjf4375]

Happy New Year to all, and hope you had a relaxing and peaceful break!

 

I accidentally added my last update to the Electrostar thread, so thought I'd add it here too, as it's more general to the layout!

Just a very quick update for now. With a couple of stock projects out of the way, I'm hoping to turn my attention back to the scenic side of things for a while. Having said that, there is a new addition to the fleet which has been in the works for a while - 73201, which many of you will be familiar with, is GBRf's rail blue liveried 73, and named 'Broadlands'. As it seems to feature quite a lot in their diagrams I thought it would be a nice addition to the fleet. Although I really like the current 'railroad plus' versions of the 73 from Hornby, they don't come in this rail blue livery, so I was persuaded to bite the bullet and buy one of the Dapol models. The first one I bought was from the initial release, and aside from the awful 'purple' shade of blue, it was also a non-runner. So that went back, and I bought a brand new one from Rails of Sheffield. With a superb set of transfers from Railtec, I've renumbered and applied a bit of light weathering, and here she is ready for service! 

 

On the scenic side of things, I've been working a lot on the north end of the station, beyond the bridge, where the junction is. I'd like to be adding some vegetation to the area where the mainlines divide, but I've realised that anything I do here will have to wait until that big BT building is completed at the back! So I've finally started to tackle it. Thankfully there is a planning application online, so I was able to find some drawings. And it is a huge structure. I've contracted it slightly to fit in to the space I have, but even then it is enormous. I've decided to build up the main structure using MDF floor plates, and threaded rods to keep everything aligned. Once that's all fixed in, I'll be attaching more detailed facade panels to the front and sides, and there will be lighting as well. A couple of pics attached of early progress.

 

As always, thanks for looking and any feedback or comments welcome!

[tjf4375]

Hi all - firstly Happy New Year to everyone and hope you're all keeping well (and warm!)

 

Having said I was going to look at more scenery related things, I did also start looking at my Bratchell Class 319, which has been sadly taking back stage since I bought it many years ago. I've now transferred the layout over to DCC, and of course there are a number of locos and units that will need the 'conversion' treatment! The 319 is certainly one of them, but it also needs some additional pickups. While that was being done, I thought it would be nice to try and add some lights, and improve the look of the cab fronts. The Bratchell kits are lovely and I don't wish to detract from that at all, but as I was adding lighting, I thought this might be a good project for some brass etching as well. The following pics hopefully give an idea of the progress so far - if you have one of these units, I do have some spare sets of etchings for the cab fronts and would be happy to send them to you for a modest price!

 

This is the cabs as they looked originally


A bit scary - after drilling out and removing the cab front


Some dremelling later, it's looking slightly less scary....



A drawing of the cab front and engraved lines was prepared, and sent off for etching



Much earlier than expected, the etchings arrived!

 

And thankfully they fitted well on the original moulding


After a bit of filling, here's a cab front ready for its final colours



The warning yellow is applied first


And then a shade of purple that, for some reason, was really difficult to colour match. It's still not perfect, but to me it looks close enough :)

 

After that a bit of weathering using the Tamiya panel like washes, to bring out the lines, and then any excess was wiped off using a cotton bud/q-tip and a tiny amount of t-cut.



And here they are - the next steps are the orange cantrail lines, and of course the lighting and wipers. One of the couplings has gone missing during the process, so I hope to replace both with a more detailed 'knuckle' coupling. Any thoughts or suggestions are very welcome!

 

Kind regards,

Tim

 

 

Edited January 18, 2023 by tjf4375

[WCML100]

16 hours ago, tjf4375 said:

Hi all - firstly Happy New Year to everyone and hope you're all keeping well (and warm!)

 

Having said I was going to look at more scenery related things, I did also start looking at my Bratchell Class 319, which has been sadly taking back stage since I bought it many years ago. I've now transferred the layout over to DCC, and of course there are a number of locos and units that will need the 'conversion' treatment! The 319 is certainly one of them, but it also needs some additional pickups. While that was being done, I thought it would be nice to try and add some lights, and improve the look of the cab fronts. The Bratchell kits are lovely and I don't wish to detract from that at all, but as I was adding lighting, I thought this might be a good project for some brass etching as well. The following pics hopefully give an idea of the progress so far - if you have one of these units, I do have some spare sets of etchings for the cab fronts and would be happy to send them to you for a modest price!

 

This is the cabs as they looked originally


A bit scary - after drilling out and removing the cab front


Some dremelling later, it's looking slightly less scary....



A drawing of the cab front and engraved lines was prepared, and sent off for etching



Much earlier than expected, the etchings arrived!

 

And thankfully they fitted well on the original moulding


After a bit of filling, here's a cab front ready for its final colours



The warning yellow is applied first


And then a shade of purple that, for some reason, was really difficult to colour match. It's still not perfect, but to me it looks close enough :)

 

After that a bit of weathering using the Tamiya panel like washes, to bring out the lines, and then any excess was wiped off using a cotton bud/q-tip and a tiny amount of t-cut.



And here they are - the next steps are the orange cantrail lines, and of course the lighting and wipers. One of the couplings has gone missing during the process, so I hope to replace both with a more detailed 'knuckle' coupling. Any thoughts or suggestions are very welcome!

 

Kind regards,

Tim

 

 

that is a massive improvement, great work mate!

[JackB95]

Wow, that etch looks fantastic! And well done for making it fit so beautifully! Not a fan of the 319s, but chorrrrr that's gorgeous.

[tjf4375]

20 minutes ago, JackB95 said:

Wow, that etch looks fantastic! And well done for making it fit so beautifully! Not a fan of the 319s, but chorrrrr that's gorgeous.

Thanks! 😂 Yeh I must admit as units go they're not especially exciting, but I did feel I needed one on the layout :)  Thanks for the kind comments!

[Nick C]

Apparently the trick with them was to go for the seating bays under the pantograph, as they had more legroom...

[tjf4375]

10 hours ago, Nick C said:

Apparently the trick with them was to go for the seating bays under the pantograph, as they had more legroom...

But possibly less headroom 😂

[tjf4375]

Hi all - hope everyone's keeping well and managing the freezing temps!

 

Just a quick update - I've been working a bit more on the BT building over the last few days, and the shell/floor plates are in place now and ready for the more detailed elevations to be added. It's looking like quite an imposing structure - and if nothing else it's rather a nice ambient lamp! 

 

Welcome any comments and feedback as always.

[tjf4375]

Happy Sunday to everyone, and hope you've had a fun and relaxing weekend!

 

Just a quick update for today on the various things that are going on.

BT building
Firstly the BT building continues to take shape, I am yet to add the lighting and install the top floor, and the reason for that was because I managed to chop the threaded rod locators too short! 😂 Having got some thread connectors I think I'm back on track now, and I also have some mirror coated styrene to attach to the back end of the building, which I hope will help to reflect some of the light back towards the lineside elevation.

Trackwork changes/improvements to the Otford branch
While working on the BT building I did spend a lot of time looking at the trajectory of the Otford branch line, and realised that I could improve this slightly by extending the baseboards back a bit. It was a heck of a faff, and I'm not convinced it was actually worth doing in the end, but it has resulted in the line diverging a little bit more decisively, and a more realistic space between the branches. It now also means that trains on this branch will trundle along almost parallel with the BT building as they arrive and depart, rather than curving off immediately towards the fiddle yard as they did before. The trackwork was an absolute pain in the wotsit, and very fiddly due to the restricted access, so I won't be making any more trackwork amendments now!

Class 319
Work continues with upgrading my Bratchell models 319, and steady progress is being made. The lights are installed in one of the leading coaches, and I have wired up the 'train-o-matic' function decoder, with a lot of help and thanks to Sven at Tram Fabriek. I'm now adding the final decorative touches to the cab front before reassembling and testing. The next stage will be to get the other end to the same stage, and then of course adding the decoder to the motor coach, and some additional pickups. I've been using the DCC concepts pickup wipers, which are easy to install, but by default they do apply quite a lot of friction to the wheels and need a bit of bending inwards. The wheels are still not free-running, but hopefully under power, and with some added weight in the coaches, they should be fine.

Dapol disappointment
I recently decided to add a Dapol Class 73 to the fleet, and I have to say my thoughts on it are now very mixed. The model itself is beautiful, especially now they're using the correct shade of blue and yellow. However, there are a lot of very fine detail parts to the under frame which keep pinging off, and this makes it very difficult to remove the body for decoder installation without breaking anything. As you might have seen in one of my previous posts, I bought a BR blue (small logo) version and have renumbered this to model GBRf's 'Broadlands', with some wonderful decals from Railtech transfers. The model had been running fairly well in DC mode, but after I installed a Dapol Imperium 3 decoder, things weren't so good. It was extremely jittery, and stalled regularly on points and on straight runs. I looked into this and found this to be a common problem with these, and apparently it's caused by the defective pickup design Dapol has used. I've now sent it back to Rails of Sheffield for some maintenance work under the warranty, so hopefully they'll be able to resolve the issue and it will be back on the layout soon. If not, I think I will be looking to install a 'stay alive' to try and improve things.

Anyway that's the news from Sevenoaks, thanks as always for following! :)
 

[tjf4375]

Hi all. Hope everyone's had an enjoyable and relaxing weekend!

 

Between other things I've been battling away with the 319 project for the last few days, and that has given me a real headache so far. I bought 2 Train-o-matic function decoders from Tram Frabriek, and I have to say that Sven at TramF has been absolutely superb in answering my many questions. I can't fault his customer service, or his endless patience. Unfortunately despite this, I've not been able to get the function decoders working. The first hurdle was a track power issue - my DCC controller wasn't seeing the decoder at all, and I soon realised this was because despite having fitted wiper contacts to both bogies, the wheel sets were 'blackened' and were therefore not conducting anything. So I had to take them apart and remove the blackening. That done, the DCC system did see the decoder, but after that I was unable to do anything with it. Being a novice with DCC I can't make head nor tail of the instructions, and the guidance on mapping functions and addressing is absolutely baffling. This is almost certainly my lack of experience, rather than anything to do with the product. I'd really appreciate any guidance from anyone who's undertaken a similar thing.

Feeling a bit defeated, I needed to see some return for my efforts over the weekend, so in desperation (and also to check that the LEDs actually worked) I hooked up a 9v battery to a DPDT switch, and hey presto, they work! And that in itself was a relief, because they're glued in place and would have been a pain to get out.

Anyway enough rambling, sorry. Here's a couple of pics. Aside from the lighting issue, I'm quite pleased with how the cab front is looking overall, except the cantrail stripe which for some reason has disintegrated when the lacquer was applied 😂

[WCML100]

That 319 is seriously impressive! The etched front really makes all the difference! 

[Pete the Elaner]

Your 319 looks great & you've done a tidy job of the light install.

As for fiddling with CVs, Function mapping by changing CVs is something I have never done, but I have seen instructions for it. It doesn't look too easy.

What DCC system do you have? If you can connect it to JMRI, that will make things a lot easier.

[dj_crisp]

The 319 is looking great!

 

I have a love/hate relationship with DCC but would have given up if it wasn't for JMRI decoder pro which makes programming so much easier. That's free so worth downloading to have a look. You'll need an interface for a pc with a programming track and for that I use a sprog. You may not need one depending on your system but they're well worth the money imo.

 

And I still find using a loco chassis to program function decoders works more reliablely. 

[tjf4375]

5 hours ago, WCML100 said:

That 319 is seriously impressive! The etched front really makes all the difference! 

Thanks mate, really appreciate that! I'm pleased with how it's turned out, just wish the lighting wasn't such a pain in the wotsit!

[tjf4375]

2 hours ago, Pete the Elaner said:

Your 319 looks great & you've done a tidy job of the light install.

As for fiddling with CVs, Function mapping by changing CVs is something I have never done, but I have seen instructions for it. It doesn't look too easy.

What DCC system do you have? If you can connect it to JMRI, that will make things a lot easier.

Thanks Pete, much appreciated :) Yeh I must admit I wasn't really prepared for how complex this all is - I thought it would just be a case of addressing the decoder and then the functions would work. I have got a standard 8 pin decoder so will have a go with that on the other end coach and see how I get on. 

My system is NCE powercab. I've been looking at JMRI, and also iTrain, but to be honest having only just moved over to DCC, it all seems a bit like running before I could walk. I don't really want to get too bogged down with computer control or editing CVs at this stage, I was hoping it wouldn't be quite so involved!

[tjf4375]

1 hour ago, dj_crisp said:

The 319 is looking great!

 

I have a love/hate relationship with DCC but would have given up if it wasn't for JMRI decoder pro which makes programming so much easier. That's free so worth downloading to have a look. You'll need an interface for a pc with a programming track and for that I use a sprog. You may not need one depending on your system but they're well worth the money imo.

 

And I still find using a loco chassis to program function decoders works more reliablely. 

Useful advice there, many thanks! Love hate is certainly how I would sum up my experience so far. Out of the box, I love it, but when it comes to tinkering with anything, it just seems like a nightmare getting things to work.

A couple of people have mentioned JMRI so I will give that a go - being able to see on screen what's going on as you're making changes does seem like a very good idea. The thing I've found difficult (and this might be an NCE thing) is I just can't tell whether it's actually made the changes or not.

[dj_crisp]

2 hours ago, tjf4375 said:

Useful advice there, many thanks! Love hate is certainly how I would sum up my experience so far. Out of the box, I love it, but when it comes to tinkering with anything, it just seems like a nightmare getting things to work.

A couple of people have mentioned JMRI so I will give that a go - being able to see on screen what's going on as you're making changes does seem like a very good idea. The thing I've found difficult (and this might be an NCE thing) is I just can't tell whether it's actually made the changes or not.

 

Decoder Pro will help ;)

 

It's open source so there's always someone who's helpfully updated decoder files to make cvs way more accessible... especially altering things like speed curves etc. And really easy to duplicate locos.

 

Most mainstream decoders are listed but if yours isn't there's bound to be a similar one you can use.

 

I'm sure like me you won't change your controllers... just you'll never use them for anything other than playing trains :)

 

[tjf4375]

I'll take a look at it thanks :) I wasn't really planning on hooking up a computer to the layout for a long while though, so this all seems to be getting rather more complicated than I hoped.

[Pete the Elaner]

4 hours ago, tjf4375 said:

I'll take a look at it thanks :) I wasn't really planning on hooking up a computer to the layout for a long while though, so this all seems to be getting rather more complicated than I hoped.

 

Don't be frightened of JMRI. It makes things much easier. You don't need to remember any CV numbers because everything is represented in plain English. I rarely change settings with the handset
You will need a USB adapter board (which I believe are in short supply right now). DecoderPro is 1 of the 3 components of JMRI, which runs on Windows, Mac or Linux. It is a good way to back up your CV settings too.

[SRman]

A side benefit of JMRI software is that you can create extra throttles on screen, and are not limited to the Power Cab's number of throttles limit - I once tried a Power Cab attached to the JMRI software on computer with eight virtual throttles - Power Cab is limited to two or three extra physical cabs, depending on the version.

As everyone else has said, you don't need to know the CVs when changing settings on Decoder Pro, and adjusting which functions do what is as easy as ticking or unticking a series of checkboxes on screen.

 

[tjf4375]

Hi all, hope everyone's keeping well.

 

Going to post a new update, I was surprised to see how much time has passed since the last one (nearly 6 weeks)! Anyway work has been progressing on the BT building, otherwise known as 160 London Road, which is situated on the north side of the London Road bridge, at the north end of the station.

 

It's an imposing structure - I didn't actually appreciate how large it was when I started out, but as it's such a prominent feature of the station scene, there was no way I could leave it out. It's far from completed and still needs roof panels and side elevations, but the tricky bit, being the glazed panels for the trackside elevation, is done and I'm quite pleased with how it's turned out. 

There are some video clips which I'll link to in a future post - hoped to have those ready this evening but my video editing software decided it doesn't want to work anymore 😒

Comments, questions and feedback welcome as always!

Edit: here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV9P55XQrgw&ab_channel=Sevenoaks-OO

Edited March 26, 2023 by tjf4375

[WCML100]

That is very impressive. Provides a perfect backdrop and really sets the location! Top work!