Mid-Year Update

The layout has been  progressing well. All the track is now laid.  The station sidings and relief road over near the access ramp are in and working.
The goods shed is installed sans some finer detail which can come later.
Testing has been in place to determine if radio/battery was necessary for the layout to operate to the electrical reliability standard I insist on. Result has been the removal of radio from all but one loco (only used as a banker for the access ramp). This loco has a current draw in excess of my systems capacity so it was not a hard decision to make.
I am currently using powdered graphite as a contact improver and it is working fine so far. Needed a little more than I use indoors for success. Trains seem to run fine even when the rails are covered in a heavy dew.

The track power v radio/battery decision just boils down to swapping some occasional loco wheel cleaning for charging batteries.The track has to be cleaned outdoors anyway. Given I like to just let the trains run, track power proved to be the best choice for me at the moment.
When I can use my DCC throttles, with a radio adaptor that allows me to use the decoder and batteries of my choice and comes with onboard charging from the track so the battery is more of an extended stay alive they will have won me.... no stalls/ failures to start AND no plugging locos into battery chargers and waiting, bliss!

Once the platform, station building and loading bank are built I might be able to concentrate on more rolling stock.

Thankfully I discovered that Urethane and the Australian sun are not good bedfellows before investing too much in rolling stock  made from that material. A warped set of coaches followed a previous experience with Gauge One wagons sagging. Back to wood and card for me until I move back indoors permanently.

Looking back, I could have agonised over having track that looked like NSWGR practice, building pointwork that matched only one wheel standard and counted rivets.  I would be a very long way from having an operating model railway if I had followed that path. Soon the layout will be 'complete' although  it can never be 'finished'.
Hindsight is wonderful; perhaps I could have avoided the 'flat board technology' look by gluing a 75mm layer of  styrofoam on top of the Villaboard sheet before laying the track. I think that would have provided enough glued surface to keep the foam from heading off into the neighbour's in a gale.

This is the last of the layouts on my list to build. It covers the 'O gauge layout big enough to run anything NSWGR' and the 'outdoor layout' in one swoop. When it comes time to abandon this layout and if  I am still able to build an indoor layout it is hard to say if I would continue with 7mm scale. Perhaps it will be time for a complete change of direction. An Sn3.5 layout running a variety of favourite trains or a British OO one would allow me more opportunities for doing the scenery and structures I enjoy building.... also my friends can once again bring their faulty HO equipment for me to diagnose the problem. :>)

regards
 Bob Comerford

The End of the Beginning

The layout has reached ‘The end of the beginning’ if I can misquote Churchill.

The loops are running, the access ramp and staging tracks have been installed and the pointwork  can be remotely controlled from the shed. This last item I felt was very necessary to recover trains in the event of a sudden shower.

Lighting has been installed to watch the trains at night as they pass by the garage window and near the crossing and ramp access to identify when trains are clear of points.

 

There now remains the scenicing and structures to be built. Locomotives and other rolling stock to be made. Some extra sidings are planned next to satisfy those who like to shuffle wagons about and perhaps some working signals.

The layout can accommodate British Fine and NMRA wheel standards and may be able to accommodate AMRA if it is insulated.  There is the capacity to run one dc consist as well as DCC. Battery electric will also be welcome ( I have two of my own under way).

Regards

 Bob

Train Time at last

Finally the baseboard has been finished and two circuits laid.
Thanks are due to Dale Dawson, Rohan Fergusson and Steve  Jewell. 
Track is Peco code 124 with a few lengths of code 143 and some Atlas to make up the shortfall until I get some more packs of bullhead. Out in the real world of course the rail height matters little ( just fabricate some soldered matching sections). I chose to go the bullhead route because there was little in the way of experience I could call on in regards to use of the flat bottom under our conditions. The rail fixings are more substantial with the bullhead track.

Here is a shot of  my railmotor passing a steam hauled suburban set. The carriages are not my own work, they are some Ron Fox kits I assembled. I will have to take care not to use them when it is hot. My experiences with urethane in gauge one had wagons sagging with the heat.

A long way to go but at least the trains are now running. I might even squeeze another circuit in one day for use by those with clockwork and 3 rail. It might have to be stud contact given my aversion to solid third...... but then again it's outside so maybe I could live with it.
Already I see things I would do different. Halve the size of the layout to start.

AustO

I have decided for the time being to only publish major changes on this blog.
To make connection with others easier I have started a new Yahoo group.
It is called "AustO"
While it initially assists two of us to keep in contact it is there for all to use who model Australian prototype in O scale, 1:48, 1:45, 1:43.5.............. you chose
3-rail, clockwork or DCC.... you chose
2foot, Cape, Stephenson or Irish gauges.... all are equal in my eye
Come along and show us your wares.... we'll take the rough and the smooth.
Bob

Chain drive

With what appears to be the world supply of POM chain drive components used for O gauge models having gone up the spout  I have been on the search for something to replace them.
I purchased some gears and chain from Technobots in the UK thanks to a suggestion by a member of  The Guild. While not up to the standard of the originals, beggars can't be.... well you know!

Here is the result of my ideas in this test bogie. Some deliberate and not so deliberate horrors introduced for the purposes of seeing how imperfection effects operation (I'm good at imperfection) . :>)
Two types of pickup being used... my usual wire method and flat brass strip ala some commercial offerings.

 

 

I have yet to add a tensioner for the chain.

Testing will commence when we have a layout to run it on.

Ventilating

Despite being rather one handed at the moment I decided to push the steel carriage project along a bit.
I was rather short of ventilators for the roof of the MHO and in keeping with the minimum cost idea of this O gauge layout I searched around the house for something suitable.
After ceasing to be part of the music scene some years ago I had stored away a large collection of guitar strings which I discovered recently had rusted away quite nicely ( note for next life.... store them in oil). After inserting a suitable nail in one of the brass turnings that are attached at one end of each string I decided this would do to represent a mushroom ventilator.

4

And so it came to pass that the MHO was ventilated.

p.s.

Santa heard my plea and arrived early with some wireless upgrades to my Digitrax UT4's and a duplex radio interface. Bliss!!

Track

While most of my experience with O gauge has been using my own handmade track from recycled code 100 rail I decided that this time a more robust section was required. I deliberated on which flextrack to purchase for quite sometime. In the end the availability locally of the Peco code 124BH and the known fact that Peco track holds up fairly well in the Australian sun convinced me that was the best option.
I also purchased some rail section from Slaters. This is advertised as code 125BH. While it was principally purchased for other structural uses apart from trackwork I was curious how it was meant to be joined.
Members of the GOG who replied to my question had filed down the base to fit Peco joiners as used for the Peco track.
By chance I remembered some Atlas joiner for code 100 were stored away with a few lengths of track.
The Atlas joiners were a near perfect fit.

Here is shown a join, while 3 Atlas joiners are at the rear of a Peco SL10