● Quarry Halt had another successful outing, this time at Amersham Heritage Day on 8th September. And parts of its electrics are being updated, see more detail here.
● And after that outing we are now doing a full refurbish of Quarry Halt ready for the Chesham Exhibition next March. To that end Peter has built a large 'tent' at one end of the club room enclosing the layout so we can continue to work on it in these colder months without having to heat the whole room.
● Sessions are twice weekly at the Club room. The latest sessions are listed here. We will go to one session a week in January 2025 until Spring.
● The AGM of the 11th September 2024 made the following decisions:
- Quarry Halt layout. As well as installing signals, dedicate sessions to the remedying of gremlins and keep a record of what has been done and how.
- Peter to cost a timber and plastic frame to erect over Quarry Halt so that work can be done in comfort with a fan heater in the winter period when we would not want to heat the whole Club premises. (Now Done)
- Cleaning and tidy-up day(s) to be arranged. (Now Done)
- Peter to investigate the opening of a savings account for our reserves.
- Peter to contact Excalibur Auctions to come and give an opinion of what Chester's items could fetch at auction. (Now Done)
- We need to have a discussion about the other layouts at the Club
Quarry Halt our 4mm exhibition layout was shown at Amersham Heritage Day on the 8th of September. It was in St Mary's Church from about 1pm (after morning service). Once again the crowds were three to four deep and they were queueing to get in to the church. Pictures here.
The platform starter signal suffered damage at the Bracknell show and needed the main arm replaced. So MikeB has built a whole new signal with improvements on the original Ratio kit model; finer details, improved ladder, metal arms and lighting in the lamps with miniature LEDs. We have also moved to servo control of the signal which means they now bounce! The arms can be set by push button but cleared by a sensor as trains pass the signal, a real help during busy exhibiting.
The advanced starter into the fiddle yard area has also been motorised as the manual operation was always very stiff.
The replacement platform starter signal prompted discussion about all the signalling on the layout and because of this we will be adding three additional signals to the approach side of the platform area. This means we will have to move on from the 'bicycle spoke' form of operation to reduce the burden on the operators. So a CBUS* system has been installed that will enable us to automate to a certain extent the control of the signals; for example the returning to danger after a train has passed and some route control.
We hope to have all of this working by the time of the Chesham Model Railway Club's 50th anniversary Exhibition on March 2nd 2025.
*CBUS is a layout control system using a shared bus design that saves on multi way cables and has a certain amount of computing logic available. It is not related to, or interworkable with DCC. It is promoted and supported by MERG.
On the '0' gauge layout (Dewhurst) work has resumed on replacing the backscene between the running lines and the storage yard along the whole length of the layout. New backboards have been constructed by PeterM and JohnB. They incorporate a roadway directly in front of the backscene and this allows one of the storage lines to run through under it. Following the track being relaid behind the new backboards, some electrical 'oddities' have been resolved and running should start soon!
On the '00' gauge layout we have had a lot of problems with the heights varying between the 'new' station baseboards. They seem to have shrunk vertically by over 2mm. It is probably due to the heat of summer but it has concerned Geoff who made them with Malcolm a few years ago. Interestingly during the lockdowns they didn't move much.
We could also be victims of our desire to lift the boards easily for maintenance (they are hinged along their long side). This means we cannot use dowels to lock boards together horizontally where they join; so they are free to expand and contract vertically. The unexpected result is this misalignment of the tracks across the join, despite being firmly soldered to PCB strips - in a lot of cases just one rail has become out of line, very puzzling.
More scenery has been completed with static grass fibres applied around the station platforms, the area to the right of the station and up behind the West Yard, where Geoff installed the coal staithes.
The branch line is now energised. It has also been tested and proved OK to be driven by DCC. There is a Gaugemaster Prodigy handset that plugs into the normal controller socket, so DCC is a bit crude at the moment! A simple remote control operates the points in the branch side of the station and provides on/off switches for the sections.
The development of the electronics for the layout stopped for a while because of the uncertainty of the club's future. However if it becomes more secure MikeB intends to provide two control panels, one for the goods yard together with the inside main line; and the other for the Branch and outer mainline. The stumbling blocks to finishing the control system stem from the requirement to be able to cross from mainlines to either the yard or the branch without having to change controller. It is this complexity of providing different controller supplies to each of the many sections in the two areas that is delaying the installation. However MikeB is hoping MERG's CBUS system will come to the rescue, partly by reducing the number of control wires to each baseboard and by providing some simple automation to the switching between controllers. In addition this CBUS system will provide point position indication on each control panel, and enough connections to have plenty of track sensors and uncouplers.
In the meantime MikeB has put together temporary control panels without any automation for the goods yard and the branch.