Orchard Wharf

[BenWeiner]

This evening I have put in some time on the artwork for the row of houses that runs behind the high level trackwork.

They're not quite right. I'm reconciling two different things: firstly, a plan that sets the width of each dwelling at 68mm (17ft) with photos of real houses near King's Cross which might not be quite the same width. Secondly, I'm scaling from bricks but I may not be applying quite the right scale or counting the bricks quite right, because all the courses are combinations of headers and stretchers and half bricks.

Architecture may be creative but bricklaying is a skill I can admire!

[BenWeiner]

By the way the door design is completely imaginary so it's really a placeholder. I didn't get photos of the doors of the real houses, which I think have all been converted back from shops and therefore don't have original ground floor features.

[BenWeiner]

Yesterday we took advantage of the excellent new air conditioning to do some work in the John Anning Hall at Keen House even though our usual work room was very cold due to a heating issue. We worked on two fronts: firstly the control panel needed its LEDs adding and a little correction to some earlier work on power feeds. Secondly, the feedback microswitches from turnout motors on board 2 needed to be connected up to the relevant CAN MIO boards. With the benefit of a decently long session we were able to move things along.

[jamespetts]

This was definitely worthwhile progress!

[BenWeiner]

Today, the wiring work was concentrated on the control panel. The control panel electronics are, as with the rest of the layout, provided by MERG CBUS modules. The job of the control panel is to accept control commands through switches and to show the status of operating items such as turnouts and signals using indicator lights. The panel design follows fairly loosely the way in which a full-sized signalling control panel is often laid out: the switches and lights are positioned on a diagram of the track layout as close to the actual location as they can be. So much for the operator's view. Internally, the switches and lights (which are single and multicolour LEDs) are connected up in a network of daisychains, each running from one of the inputs or outputs on one of three CANPAN modules. The CANPANs use a matrix system to scan across inputs and outputs. This enables 64 items to be  connected to each CANPAN (32 inputs and 32 outputs), using a much smaller number of connection pins.

The photo shows the underside of the panel fasica. Switches have all been connected. Today's work concentrated on connecting up the LEDs. We've got a good way into the first of the three CANPANs. The design requires almost all of the 32 possible LEDs in each CANPAN to be attached.

 

[BenWeiner]

There's also been activity over the last month or so on the scenic side. Visitors to our Open Day in early December could see mockups of the terrace of houses running along behind the high level line -- these form the backdrop across the centre of the layout. The facades of these buildings are a little uncertain, but we are getting there.

[jamespetts]

Definitely more worthwhile progress - I am very much looking forward to completing the panel wiring and seeing how these lovely looking houses progress!

[BenWeiner]

Bit of a gap, sorry, but here are some photos from last Saturday when we were looking at the buildings at the western end.

I think this gives a much better impression of the layout we're aiming for - not just bare boards or swags of cable!

 

[BenWeiner]

James has published a much nicer photo on Flickr:

 

 

[BenWeiner]

This weekend's work session allowed us to add in the inter-board connections from board 1 to board F0, which is an extension at the front of the layout and so connects in a slightly different way. We also fitted a couple more of the DCC power district cut-outs (DCOs for short) and made progress hooking up the DCC bus to the track droppers.

'Next time' I think I will want to figure out the electronics time budget before even considering a layout proposal on its possible operational or scenic interest -- but the wiring marathon will hopefully soon be over.

[jamespetts]

42 minutes ago, BenWeiner said:

This weekend's work session allowed us to add in the inter-board connections from board 1 to board F0, which is an extension at the front of the layout and so connects in a slightly different way. We also fitted a couple more of the DCC power district cut-outs (DCOs for short) and made progress hooking up the DCC bus to the track droppers.

'Next time' I think I will want to figure out the electronics time budget before even considering a layout proposal on its possible operational or scenic interest -- but the wiring marathon will hopefully soon be over.

 

Excellent! Good to see progress.

[BenWeiner]

This weekend we focused on mic building and electrics. But the eye-catching work was a first draft of the brewery building adjoining the pepper warehouse admin block. Photos below

[BenWeiner]

Tonight's Model Railway Club talk by Paul Isles from Accurascale was naturally of much interest. At LFoRM in March the company announced they would be producing an 00 scale model of a Great Eastern tank loco usually known by its nickname, 'buckjumper', or its LNER designations J67, J68 and J69. This would fit perfectly into Orchard Wharf's stocklist. Paul talked about what it's like to take a model loco development project through from viability studies to 'engineering sample', which is basically the stage that this model has reached. He brought the first engineering sample along, which gave a chance to take a look at the underside and speculate about converting it to EM.

[BenWeiner]

Part 2

The experience of Paul's talk was a bit special. It was great to learn how much care he, and by implication colleagues at Accurascale and other model railway manufacturers, put into their work. It was also really interesting to get insights into the necessary tradeoffs between complete fidelity to the prototype and the practicalities of manufacturing something that is robust and also a convincing reproduction.

In conversation afterwards Paul explained that he and colleagues at Accurascale are kit-building modellers themselves, and when working out the difficult details and marginal parts their knowledge of building and detailing plastic kits can be channelled into the design. On his engineering sample in unpainted pale grey plastic and bare metal the details stood out razor sharp and some of the plastic seemed daringly fine, but he'd already told us about running these models around on a track on the carpet and handling them to see what would actually stand up to real world usage.

When I mentoned Orchard Wharf, Paul pointed out the rebate in the underside of the running board to allow for a bit of side play in the 00 front wheelset. P4 he felt was not going to fit, but there might just be room for EM. It was great to think that this possibility had been considered by the product manager! Of course for the remaining 98% of customers it'll never be of interest.

All in all an entertaining and enjoyable talk and a shot in the arm for our project. It's great to have someone from the trade come and invest some of their time out of hours to tell us about what they do and why. Especially if they are working on a model of such a nice locomotive.

[BenWeiner]

Just for change, here's one of our MERG DCC District Cutouts (DCOs), with a companion. There's one of these for each high and low level section on each board, and we have another one for the extension that adds a train reservoir at one end of the layout. Grand total 9 pieces. This one is now fully wired in which includes the unswitched DCC supply, the switched DCC output to the track, feedback and control connections to MIO CBUS cards and a buzzer that provides additional alert.

The DCOs limit the effect of a short circuit caused by a vehicle running onto the frog of a reversed turnout and so connecting the polarities. By breaking up the layout into zones in this way, the only area that will actually experience the short (and where all movement will cease) is the one where it happens (say, low level on board three). Trains running elsewhere will not be affected and will keep running.

One of yesterday's tasks was to connect up the feedback and control connections for the three DCOs on board four. We also discovered that all the rest of the feedback wiring remains to be installed on that board, so it's good that there are only three uncouplers and one turnout.

 

[jamespetts]

It is always good to make some electronic progress of an afternoon.

[BenWeiner]

Last Saturday was another big wiring day, with progress on DCC droppers and buses and more work on the finer points of board four, including its integrated control panel for the regulation of trains on and off the high level London end traverser. There was also some track fettling, which is what happens when people start looking at the track wistfully and imagining it with trains moving along it.

[jamespetts]

20 minutes ago, BenWeiner said:

Last Saturday was another big wiring day, with progress on DCC droppers and buses and more work on the finer points of board four, including its integrated control panel for the regulation of trains on and off the high level London end traverser. There was also some track fettling, which is what happens when people start looking at the track wistfully and imagining it with trains moving along it.

Track with trains moving along it is the best sort of track.

[BenWeiner]

Yesterday was spent wiring up the traverser control panel, connecting track power droppers and extending DCC buses.

Also, after a number of years of working on the electrics it came to me that it would be easy to make supports so that a layout board can be turned upside-down, allowing the underside to be worked on conveniently. So I made some.

They are bolted to the board ends with the same fixings that usually bolt each board to its neighbour. The whole thing can also be angled at about 45°, using the long side of the board. That won't be possible once there is scenery in place.

The supports made the work I was doing a lot easier. Shame it took so long to figure that out.

[jamespetts]

This is a cunning plan. I approve of cunning plans.

[BenWeiner]

Last Saturday was a DCC day. I connected up the low level power district on board 2. It's about 8 hours' work to do this, and that excludes fitting the track droppers. If others are interested there are still several power districts to do!

I used the new work stands to make life easier.

[BenWeiner]

Yesterday was another DCC day with three of us hard at work. It was a long day too with the last of us leaving after 8pm. Several more of the DCC board buses are now very close to complete. We don't have a lot to show for all this yet apart from a depleted stock of wire and heat shrink, but the time will come when it all pays off.

We had a brief visit from one of the people meeting elsewhere in Keen House, and from him we learned of the pick up goods services that operated from Willesden yard on the London Midland region across to Poplar Dock (originally Midland owned). We intend to take inspiration from this working for our schedule, redirecting it along our imaginary route to North Woolwich, and have been thinking about the motive power. Our visitor recalled that a class 24 diesel was used when he travelled on it during his training in the early 1960s. We would welcome more information for the period of the layout: early 1950s to late 1960s.

[BenWeiner]

Last Saturday was a solo working day. I continued on the bus wiring; in this session I was able to finish up the high level on board 2. I was also able to learn that somewhere it has a short. To trace this means unsoldering each of the feeders until the one or ones that are short circuiting are identified. Then all the track that's connected to each of the shorting feeders must be checked over and the source of the short discovered. A job for next time.

We won't be able to work this coming weekend due to the mini-exhibition, which reminds me to say: Visit the mini exhibition! 10 December, 11:00 to 16:00 at Keen House.

I've also put together a DCC wiring progress tracker; here is the position on 2 December 2023:

Board	High level feeders	Low level feeders	Traverser feeders	Through bus	Post-DCO bus	Frogs
F0	n/a	Not assessed	n/a	Not assessed	n/a	No
1	n/a	Yes	No	Yes	n/a	No
2	Yes	Yes	n/a	Yes	n/a	No
3	Yes	Yes	n/a	Partial	n/a	No
4	n/a	Yes	No	Yes	No	No
5	No	n/a	n/a	n/a	No	No

 

All boxes do not represent the same amount of work, but a rule of thumb is one box is one person-day! Will we make it in time for the Ally Pally show?

Ben

 

[jamespetts]

A short is less than ideal - rather than desoldering all the feeders, perhaps it would be more efficient to segment the bus and check in which half that it occurs, and keep doing that until we have narrowed it down to a single location?

[BenWeiner]

On 12/6/2023 at 9:59 AM, jamespetts said:

A short is less than ideal - rather than desoldering all the feeders,

I am referring to the intermediate wiring between the bus (the output side of the DCO) and the droppers. As those are connected in using tag strip, it seems easiest to remove each from its tags until we lose the short circuit. Bad luck if it is the last one, but it should be ten minutes' work to find any and all culprits.

Ben