● Our twice weekly sessions are back at the Club room. The latest sessions are listed here. We decided to stay on twice weekly sessions so we could prepare Quarry Halt for the Chesham Exhibition at the beginning of March. We built a lightweight frame with polythene around the layout so we could heat a smaller area.
● Quarry Halt had a successful outing to the Chesham Model Railway Society 50th anniversary exhibition on 2nd March. Pictures here.
● 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
We had another successful outing for the layout at Chesham on March 2nd 2025. We had been invited by the Chesham Model Railway Society to participare in their 50th Anniversay Exhibition. Pictures here.
We had had several further issues with the layout at the Amersham Heritage Day in September 2024, and it was decided that we would refurbish the layout for Chesham. This involved adding signals and starting the move to replacing point and signal operation by servo motors. The idea behind this 'automation' was to reduce the operational load at an exhibition. Signals that are controlled by the routes set by points, and returning to 'off' as the trains pass would save operators having to remember to operate them during bustle of an exhibition.
We decided to opt for modules from the the Model Electronic Railway Group, a society of like minded model railwayers who have delevoped a 'bus' system that enable quite complex operations on four wires laid around the baseboards. RogerPr and MikeB developed a system and got to grips with all the programming that is needed to make the whole system work.
Tim has spent several months making up signals to populate the layout based on advive from an ex-BR signalman. They are all servo controlled and are built on a brass base that carries the servo and can be 'plugged' into square holes in the baseboard. This avoids damage to them when we are transporting the layout to exhibitions. Each signal structure is then plugged into the controlling modules. Our new member PeterS improved the scenery where it had worn badly with help from additional trees fro RogerPr.There was a lot of work to do before the Chesham Exhibition and not everything has been updated.
Not all the 'automation' worked for the exhibition, but there were mostly behind the scenes issues which we don't think impacted on what the audience saw. Certainly we seemed to have been a popular layout to visit.
Chesham MRS should be pleased with the attendance as it never slackened throughout the day.
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.