Creating the Control Board for Sterte Bay

Now busy creating the main Control Board (or mimic board) for the Layout....

Having now agreed on the final name for our layout - Sterte Bay, we are preparing the final bit of electronics to ensure we can operate it. The schematic diagram was designed on MS Powerpoint and then sized onto 2 x A4 sheets. The 'box' is made from 3mm ply and as can be seen above, will be finished off with wooden edging. Before fitting the actual toggle switches and individual LED's, the whole printout was sprayed with matt sealant to help promote a longer life.
Besides the point control, there are switches for Initailising the whole board and also any scenery lighting we place. There are also LED's to show Board power and Track power.

Now the time consuming wiring and soldering of all the switches and a lot of LED's!!
The computer looking board above left is a CML Towermaster (DTM 30) which allows the whole control board to be hooked up to the layout with just two wires; 12v power and our Loconet bus.

 Above, the ribbon cables have now been soldered to each of the point switches, next are the LED's.

Preparing the Led's - Each Led has a positive and negative stem, (anode and cathode) when fitted on the control board it is difficult to identify especially if you want to cut down the length of the stems. The solution is to use some small wire sheath sections and slide these on the appropriate stems. The Led' can then be cut down and the tops bent over for easy soldering later.

Here are the stages for preparing the Led's... top right - sheath applied to stems, top left stems now bent over, centre bottom - the stems are cut down.

Original Led and finished cut down Led ready for mounting into board with bevels before soldering to ribbon cables. More to follow.....


Look out for the Sterte Bay layout at the forthcoming Poole Club exhibition on Nov 5th where we will show progress to date.

September Update

The layout is beginning to have that 'finished' look, even at this early stage - we have now fitted both the front valance and the backboards!

First the front facia...

Now with the backboards added, what a difference!

 

Thanks to the two Kevins for making this happen. Kevin L did a fantastic job of cutting, sanding down and painting the front facia and Kevin M arranged with one of his contacts to cut the five main backboards to size.

 

We can now work on the rear scenery and ground work and plan for it to run directly up to the backscene. We can also set about choosing any photographic backscenes to use across the whole layout. Getting the right scene and scale is the challenge for this. 

Keep watching!.......

August 2017 Update

Here is a snapshot of our progress on the new 00 layout as at August 2017

Work on board 1 - the Poole road bridge is secured in place with the viewing side Skytrex arches, thanks to Geoff for help on this. The station building is approx 75% complete. Richard is working on the platform passenger bridge which needs adapting as it is too high as it stands. Kevin L has done great work on the platforms, the main areas are almost complete now we need to work on the surface around the main station buldings and under the bridge area.

 Kerry's board 2 has now had the base layer of embankment grasses added and Kerry is near completing the mock Holes Bay shoreline. More detail is to be added like fencing and work on the footpath as well as considering the scenery in the middle trackwork area.

Steve Cope is developing board 3 with an area of railway ditritous, pools and piles of waste materials that was ofeten seen railside. He is also building the main signal box which will appear near the toilet roll soon! Contributions of old wheel sets, bits of rail and cable drums very welcome!

 Kevin M is working on board 4 and experimenting with different ground cover to establish a common scatter materails as well as bushes, trees etc. The front edge of this board as with board 3 will have a small embankment with groundcover.

Ted on baord 5 has moved on from the main factory buildings to start ground cover and walling near trackside.

Kevin with help has almost completed the "joining board" with two levels. Top level links the double mainline from board 5 to the sector plate and the lower level seen here is the branchline which will host DMU/EMU's etc this terminates at the lower right of the picture.

 The "rotating sector plate" which contains 10 storage tracks, is nearing completion with Kevin M, Ian, Ted and others all adding their help. Electrics are now been added and tested. Once comlpete we just have to build yet another! at the other end of the layout!!

More  work in August is planned to add the front facia boards and also the backscene boards - keep watching!

July 2017 Update

Making good and steady progress on some of the boards..
Ted on board 5 has now really got the impression we wanted of an industrial area before the mainline railway goes off scene, also the high embankment walling and tunnel to the branch line exit track. There are sidings at both sides of the mainline to service the industries.

Here is a closeup of the work Ted has done on the buildings.

The work on the station area continues, Kevin 3, Richard and Steve C have concentrated on the platforms and provisional area for the actual station building. Passenger bridges will be added and also later a goods yard with associated buildings. The town bridge parapet can be seen in the foreground.

This shot shows the view as we consider the placement of the detailed front of the bridge section. There are two mainline tracks between the platforms, a single DMU/EMU track this side of the platform and the line nearest is the goods track leading off scene to the quayside.

Watch out for further postings...

Early Summer Update June 2017

June proving a busy month on the Layout

We continue to own and work on our 5 main scenic boards as well as the two end boards that will contain the turnaround sections at each end of the main line.

We have started this month to concentrate on some of the scenic aspects on each board.

Ted, Kevin M, Geoff and Kerry all hard at work on the individual boards.

Ted is working on the tunnel entrance and the supporting embankment walls for the branch line as it enters the underground section and then eventually emerges on our turnaround board. Kevin meantime is taking a rest from mowing the embankment!

As our layout is based around the Poole area, we decided to add a nominal part of the shore of Holes Bay. This is been contructed by Kerry and includes a realistic rock shoreline with footpath and embankment which leads up to the sidings and mainline near the main station.

Kerry keeping a close eye on the detail including plans to replicate the mud banks at low tide!

Some of our model making needs to take place away from the club.......

Here Steve Copley is well busy on his workbench at home (for that read dining room table as his wife is out!). The main station building is a laser cut design and we intend to use some footbridges that need weathering down from the bright coloured originals.

Getting to grips with the key scenery...

Board 5 owner Ted has chosen to model our industrial scene at one end of the layout with some good quality detailed resin structures from Skytrex. 

 The main warehouse/factory building for the rear of the board will probably have at least one of the sidings going inside for loading/unloading.

On the front there will be a half relief building and as can be seen on the end board, we intend to build a structure over the twin tracks to join the two buildings, these typically carried pipes and electrical cables.

At the other end on board 1, Richard is busy doing a fist fit on the platform edging for our main station. The base building can be seen in the foreground - this is a laser cut model and will form, together with 3 platforms our through station. 

Here, the sweep of the mainlines in and out of the station can be seen clearly heading up through the other boards. Our test track in the background has its usual busy operators.

Kevin 3 is also helping on board 1 with our work to complete the platforms. Now the edging walls have been test fitted, Kevin is starting the work on the cross supports.

On board 4 Kevin 2 is statrting to add our grass sheeting on the embankment section, we will add the usual coloured scatter, bushes, trees etc to bring it to life.

New Year Update 2017

Into a New Year and forging ahead..


We continue to make progress since the exhibition...

The usual busy Tuesday night at the club and we are working on the main boards and also the link half circle to the selector board. The green surface in the foreground is the 3mm foam underlay for track on the link board.

Ted and Kevin M are both working on completion of the first of two rotating selector plate boards, these will be placed one at each end of the main layout. The rest of the club members are stood around chatting - as usual!

This view shows the selector board trackwork almost complete, again Ted and Kevin M are hard at it!
We have had great "technical" support on this part of the project from Ian, who given any challenge seems to come up trumps!- thanks from all of us Ian.
We are arranging a team meeting soon to agree the remaining priorites on the layout contruction - more on that in our next update.