what are people doing on their layout right now

[Kris]

More done to the layout. The final 2 scenic boards have been wired and tested. I have also started adding the scenic base (in the form of foam) to 2 of the boards. This will be covered with a filler to create a hard shell. The combination of the foam and filler gives a strong yet light board and also allows for the solid fixing of trees etc.

[Platy767]

The Tomix train set got some testing and while it worked reliably and smoothly with the diseasels there were issues with Mr Cranky, the Sonic J50. He certainly didn't like points and crossovers directly connected to a curve.

Amazingly, there was a piece of scrap framed 9mm ply about the size required to put a little space before the points, so it got added along with a 140mm straight extension between the right side curves and the points. Mr Cranky, who is very fussy, particularly running bunker first, is now smooth into and through the points.




Mark

[EtchedPixels]

Swearing a lot at some old track.

I had a space, a plan and a piece of board plus a pile of old Fleischmann piccolo track (Set track type stuff but not quite so set-track as Peco). Having assembled it all and started testing I've discovered all the double slip crossings I cunningly used to make the fiddle yard extra effective don't actually power route.

Going to have to do some rearranging.

[Newportnobby]

Laying track to fit the plan of 'Bletchford'

https://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?msg=879204

Another small revision today to avoid a batten just where a point was required. I looked at moving the batten but would have had to dismantle too much so I just moved the point so as to be able to fit underboard point motors

[Platy767]

I started to consider starting some decoration of the train set and began wielding the PVA bottle. A little too enthusiastically unfortunately. I got glue in a couple of Tomix points, and even after some frantic (comical) attempts the clean up, it looked like there was a single gummed up failure.

Thinking, "I can't make it any worse" I unpinned etc and lifted the point. If nothing else, there would be pictures of the switching going on inside, no details of which had I been able to find.

Picture of the underside:



5 screws out and cover off:


Point motor removed to give access to the actuator:


I carefully removed the actuator and the 2 contacts, recovered and replaced one of the 2 little coil springs, and cleaned the gum off the actuator and point motor as best I could.

Put all the gubbins back together and it worked!

Happy days.
Mark

[Bealman]

Well done, son.  

[EtchedPixels]

Fiddle yard relaid without the double slips and running much more happily. Fettled a few bits of track and it's running most stuff fine. Some of the lightweight steam stuff with leading bogies isn't happy as the old Piccolo points are a bit too bouncy for them but there is enough stock that is happy to run from 1920s to about 2020.