Let there be light

At the request of Mr Bond, tonight I'm having a chat about my foray into layout lighting.

One of the (many) positive things about having a play in diffenrent (and commercial) scale is that you get to have a crack at quite different things than you normally would ie the "nice to have" rather than the "need to have".

The positioning of my On30 layout was such that in the afternoons the sun shone from behind the layout and even the lone light in the room could not compete (oh, did I say there was only one light...)

A bit miserable at the back

The real problem is the inconsistance of light across the layout. So you need a lighting system and more importantly something to hang it off. And this perplexed me for a while. 

The answer (like the question) comes in 2 parts.

For the lighting system I went with commonly avaliable LED strip lights (5m with adhesive backing). There's a huge variety but I picked the simple-est (and the cheapest at just $10).

Hook it up to a 12V supply and you are away (in this case another power supply from the home electronic graveyard, which is also running the ambient sound).

The answer for the second part came out of a trip to Mitre 10. They (and Bunnings, but Mitre 10 is closer) stock a selection of aluminium shapes in various lengths. Now a key thing for a lighting setup is that it doesn't blind the operators. As my On30 layout is against the wall I decided that I could use an angled shape to avoid blinding my operators.

So, setting it up, how does it the first iteration look? The LED roll was stuck to the vertical face of the aluminiun angle.

Lighting, tick, more importantly no blinding light shining back. The supports are 2.4m apart. But with the main light out..

Its nowhere near ideal at the front of the layout as the direction is straight out from the support. So I ordered a second 5m roll. Meanwhile I started to ponder the necessity of having a middle support as there is not much weight in the aluminium angle. 4 pop rivets later....

Its unsupported over 4m and seems to be quite happy with this. And with a send LED strip added to the horizontal face we get a vast improvement in the lighting (without the room light)

 I'm very happy with the way its turned out. Its nice to be able to work on the layout with decent light and the support is very unobtrusive. 

The LED strip itself is also quite flexible.

The striop can be cut up into 3 LED sets which have their own resistor to run off 12V and can be soldered on the copper pads so there are a stack of potential uses.

Now, for lighting a freemo setup I would look at using a U shaped channel suspended down the middle of the module with an LED strip at the bottom of the channel. You might need to use a spacer to improve the light angle.

Venting - TrackGang Ventilated Z van - 3 - wheels and weathering

 DB Says: Step away from the paintbrush.

So the 'wheels and couplers' dilemma resolved itself fairly quickly. The one set of assembled Trackgang 'old style/passenger' bogies supplied, were indeed used on Z roadsiders on the old Limited expresses, but this is before my timeframe. I might save them for a future 50 foot passenger car. The kit had an ideal style of bogie for my era, but the frame has been assembled way too wide, so the wheels won't sit in there (bottom-right below). I might need to find someone who has low-temp soldering apparatus that can thin it down.

In the meantime, I borrowed the set of Arnold/Rapido coupler-equipped GraFar bogies that I own (stolen off a slightly bent UK wagon) and used these on one wagon, as the couplers have almost-long-enough reach. 

On the other wagon, I stole a spring loaded Arnold/Rapido coupler from one of my horrible 1991-cast Lc highsiders and body mounted it, sticking it out a little so it can couple to the other Z with its short-reach couplers. With the spring it should be OK on curves. At the other end I attached a body-mounted MicroTrains, which will couple to the locos. The bogies on this one were from Kato Japanese tankcars, and stolen off another old NZ120 wagon - this place is starting to look like South Auckland with all these wagons up on blocks...

Some truss rods were attached - bent brass ones on the side and plastic rod in the middle. I should complete the angled parts of the middle ones, but I'm not sure they can be easily seen...

As for a final review of the Trackgang kits, I'd say four out of five. If it had a 3d printed roof and pre-assembled bogies it would easily score ten out of five. If you see any of these floating around TradeMe, snap them up.

But then some bad things happened. I've been accused of over-weathering things before. And with good reason:

I did somewhat go to town here. Usually my weathering strategy is: eeeeaaaasy does it...  oh, that's a bit strong, I'll go back and.... Oooo, now it's worse. 

Urrk. Ugly closeups. And the other sides:

Bonus:

I found my old XC master from ten or so years ago in a box of goodies and thought I might as well turn it into a third XC wagon.

A use for some Trackgang bits I didn't use from the Z kits is seen below, as the plasticard top is super light:

The finished wagon is top-right on the ventilated wagons 'family pictures' above. 

Venting - TrackGang Ventilated Z van - 2 - painting

DB was pondering with Mr Bätchelé de yong the other day: 

We came to the conclusion that the main obstacle of modelling progress is inertia: the tendency of objects at rest to stay at rest. The (positive) converse being that objects in motion tend to stay in motion.

I have a fear of soldering, and a fear of spray painting, among many other fears, so my Z class wagons have been stalled for more time than they have been moving forward. Yet after almost a week of over-thinking and worrying, I managed to prime the metal bodies with a can of Tamiya Surface Primer. Something I've never used before.

And by golly it's good. As this stuff contains chemicals known to cause cancer in the State of California (which is probably not what they mean, and besides, they even put this warning on cornflakes over there), I took it out into the garden and applied four or five very light coats instead of the usual one big lumpy one, which is always my default mode when spraying (cover, damn you, cover!). 

With the light sprays, the wagon bodies slowly turned grey and more importantly, all the detail was still visible and with no paint runs. Go me!

The stalks here were bits of dowel from the dollar shop used for Z scale bridge pylons the day before and the leftovers and offcuts were stuffed into a box. My, I think I'll save this Mighty Wagon Holding Apparatus for future sprayings.

Despite the natural desire for my moving objects to stay in motion, I allowed the primer a day to set and then put some white on the sides. This was a mix of some sort of Tamiya pure white acrylic, tinged with some grey/brown and some yellow/brown. This all came out a bit grey and dark for me so I applied (a lot) more white to the mix and overpainted. This was all done in vertical streaks to imbue a mild form of 'weathering' into the base, as the Zs that I saw were never ever white.

As an aside, I graduated from Humbrol enamels to Tamiya (and other) acrylics about 15 years ago. I liked how they set so quickly and could be thinned and cleaned up with relatively non-smelly water, isopropyl alcohol or thinner. They also seem to last longer without drying up in the tin. 

The one downside being that they have a very short working time, so if you're taking your time, they can start to blob up and peel off. A few years ago I discovered 'Tamiya Paint Retarder' and this is magic stuff, with a drop added to your mix giving you far more time to work. Yet it still sets quickly so you can still move onwards, ever in motion. My mixing trays are usually clear plastic covers from glue and the like (to the left here, with various shades of white to pick from)

As I wasn't sure where the roof join paint line would be, I overlapped the side colour onto the roof. This additional layer also helped fill any gaps between badly glued together parts. You might be able to make out some slightly different shades from the different layers. There is more brown in the ventilation grilles for example.

Then the roof was painted. I always remember this as a yellowy brown colour, but looking at the Cousins Brothers (Cuzzie Bro's) Pictorial Railways of New Zealand, it seems this was more of a chocolatey brown, so away I went. 

I was very careful doing the join with the white, and very uncareful around the roof ventilators, where a few holes needed to be blobbed up with paint. 

As a first step in weathering, I also added some Tamiya Panel Line Accent wash to the louvres (you can see this on the rearward wagon. More on weathering later, but for now, this thing needs trusses added underneath, and then decisions will need to be made on bogies and couplers. 

These will be in the '80s' train, and for ease of wagon mixing, this train will have the old style rapido couplers throughout (95% of my '80s' wagons do already). As these are the heaviest wagons I have, they will track nicely behind the locos, which have body-mounted Microtrains couplers.

I mentioned this earlier, but this is probably the nicest piece of NZ120 that you can't buy right now (as they don't seem available anymore from Trackgang). The sideframe detail just below the white body is great (see the first pic on the previous Z post), and the bodyside details sublime. Wrangling and fitting the roof was a pain, and I made my drilling mistakes with the roof vents (again, a one piece 3d printed roof would do wonders here). But these really are top shelf so far. 

The other side of the fence

 Over the last couple of months (as you will have noticed) I have not been doing a lot of modeling. Now normally this time of the year is a low modeling productivity time as we are all expected to do things outside, or at least be somewhere visible to the rest of our friends and family. But I currently have other distractions. 

Before you all say "oh no he's gone mad and headed off to another scale" Thats not quite the whole truth. I I  started off buying On30 stuff 15 years ago as it was cheap and reminded me of 19th centuy Baldwin equipment. I even built a layout after we brought a house and I had no space for Paekakariki. I nearly sold it last year. However it has proved very usefull to properly test a new cheap DCC system. And while doing this I have had an epiphany of sorts. 

NZR modelers are model makers. Its simply who we are and where we have come from, given that there is no RTR. That means assembling a sizable number of locomotives and rolling stock takes a lot of modeling time. Then on top of that there's building a layout to run it on which really isn't trivial either, both in terms of work and time (though hand laying your own track is never going to set any records).

I'll contrast this with US modelers. Now I will be the first to admit that I have less interest in US railways than I do in the tax codes of Bohemia in the 15th century (though the armies are another matter entirely). However one thing that they do do extremely well is building layouts that operate like the real thing, quite unlike anything else on the planet. And I think its something NZR modelers really miss out on. 

I think that the big issue is that for most of the stations in New zealand between the main centers, theres not much difference in design. "n" Passing loops where "n" is a number betwen 1 and 6, a goods shed on the  furtherest passing loop from the station building, if n is >4 an option for an engine shed and/or possibly a way and works yard at an end. Oh, sorry, and options for either being straight or on a curve. if there4 is an industry its something to do with agriculture. You really have to go out of your way to find something outside these options (ports being an obvious exception). Whats really missing is the "play value" and by this I mean not just letting trains run, but stopping to do some shunting along the way. For this you need rolling stock that runs well, track thats layed flat and a coupler other than the standard NZR( if you want to go "hands free").

 Junctions are a bit more interesting but you start to hit size issues in the larger scales (as with the larger "n" stations) not just with length but with width as well.

Right, I'm going to post this now as I've been adding to this for a month and I should draw a line and throw it out to the peanut gallery for comment.

Venting - TrackGang Ventilated Z van.

DB says.

Just looking behind the curtain at the blog now, there seem to be half a dozen little partially-finished posts of works in progress. I've also been distracted by life, and models in 5 separate scales, but many of those half-finished bits are mine. And I swore I'd never become a rubber-gauger...

So in the face of that, why not start another post on something completely different.  

I've always loved Z ventilated vans. These were the long 50 foot white 3-door wooden ones with louvres, rather than the non-ventilated ones that were usually red oxide, or in the 70s/80s sporting various colours carrying parcels on our passenger trains).

They were quite popular at Studholme in the old days I'm told, carrying strawberries and other produce away. I recently read in a book of local history that they were usually marshalled next to the van at the back, so the guard could enjoy the smells!

Imagine my thrill when a pair of Trackgang examples came up on Trademe. 

Now, if you've been reading MD for more than 10 years, I know what you're thinking, as I've had pretty mixed opinions of Pat Eade's old Trackside kits, but I came into this with an open mind, but with a bar that was set fairly low way back then.

First impressions: Wow. the castings are impressive. Incredibly well detailed, clean, crisp straight lines, thin walled to keep the weight down. - far better than anything I've seen in NZ120 with the exception of the laser cut Batchelor Sheep Wagons. Certainly far more impressive than 3d printing seems capable of at the moment (there's a challenge thrown down!) 

As for the bogies, one set was assembled (bonus! as these have always been a pain for me to do). They have pinpoint bearings! More on the bogies later when we get to them, but for now, let's start making things. 

A quick whiz with a file cleaned up a few of the edges on the sides and ends, and things were straightened out and flattened after being in a mailing bag. But there was actually almost no flash to speak of. Just in case I wasn't clear, these are some really impressive parts in my fingers.

The only fiddling I did was to remove the coupler pockets with a Dremel drum, as I'll probably fit either MicroTrains or old Rapido ones. TBD.

You may remember from many earlier postings that I can't solder my way out of a balloon, so these were assembled with some random brand of super glue gel and strengthened with Araldite epoxy. 

I've never used gel super glue before, and it was certainly more forgiving than the usual stuff, but the faster acting stuff is probably better, as just when you think you have this sorted it collapses in a heap as the glue hasn't decided to set yet. Problem solved with a few tins of paint to keep things more or less square. Look at the detail. Superb.

Oddly, I read the instructions, before doing the opposite. I stuck an end onto a side, then put in the floor, then the other end and side. And I'm glad I did it this way, because the roof required quite a lot of thinning to fit in the supplied recesses.

Then it was time for the secret weapon to add some glue fillets inside to bolster the superglue:

Here is the roof going on. It required a fair bit of fling and bending to get it flat (well, "flat" to match the "almost-flat" metal box I had made). I drilled out the vent holes as suggested, but used a drill bit that was a little big. Which is silly, because I have the right sized one on my bench.  

The vents come three to a sprue (right side here of the pic below, seen both attached to the sprue and clipped off) and the little tails poke through the holes. Clever enough. Arguably the roof-plus-vents would be a nice 3d printed addition here to eliminate this relatively fiddly step. My clumsy fingers and failing eyesight proved the super glue gel's claim that your fingers wouldn't be instantly stuck to things to be only partially correct. Not instantly...  A 3d printed piece would also reduce overall weight and move the centre of gravity lower. I did consider using some bent plasticard, but that would have left me with one nice edge, one terribly rough fettled one, and vents all over the place.

More to come. 

Light at the end of the tunnel.

 Last night at 10 pm, No 1's front headlight sparked into life and the new DCC system went live.

Like anything electronic here at La Casa Dandruff, things fought all the way to the end. When we left our story last time, I was cursing the creators of Ubuntu to a short walk off a very high plank. This also forced me back into the arms of the devil ie Windows....

Creating the Windows 10 boot USB gave problems with the file size which required the third suggested solution of those I tried (after the first 2). The install itself went fine, as did installing Java and JMRI. The computer picked up the DCC-Ex and I could then set it up under JMRI.

I purchased my Arduino and motor shield with DCC-Ex pre loaded for $65 from JT electronics in Hawks bay. They also do quite a few other electronic dodads.

The final install started with me having to get wires into the small tag board, and doing some trimming as I had folded the wires over to make them stronger which didn't fit. I then got no life from the track (including trying to induce a short). Worried that I had "bricked" the Arduino I dragged everything back into the living room to download the DCC-Ex program to see if it would read. Firing up JMRI, I then discovered that I had not turned the track power on in JMRI.

Back to the train room, plug it all back in and again no life from the power pack. However I noticed all the other lights on the outputs were lit. I then swaped the powerpack for a 30 year one from a Mac aquired back when I worked at Victoria university (which has also been the power supply for the Paekakariki loco depot). Firing up old reliable and pushing the light button for the front light on No 3 and theres life.......

The sign of success

 At this point I had a play for 10 minutes... And that will waste soo much time in the future.

To finsh this section (since its not an On30 blog) does anyone have any questions on the DCC-Ex setup? Its a bit complex online but in real life its very simple.

A cautionary tale.

 In past days when the earth was younger groups of humns roamed the globe. And when they met they would swap stories late at night round a fire pit of horrors they had seen...

Last post we had an introduction to the DCC-Ex system. This runs on an Atduino mini computer with another module (called a motor shield) to power the track. The unit itself is quite small and both bits can be had very cheaply from Aliexpress.

The computer (the DCC brains of the outfit is underneath, and the module on top is the motor shield with the connections to the real world at the top right. 

So, next up was the connection to the throttles and ther stuff, a Laptop running the JMRI solftware. This is a free, powerful program which lets you control almost everyting on your DCC layout, from tinnkering with decoders right through to controling the layout. So out I dug a 15 year old laptop from the old elctronics collection that every household now has. It fired up and while it ran a bit hot and a bit slow, I figured that if I got rid of windows and ran a freeware Linux system It would be fine.

If you don't understand some of the terms in the following story, do not worry its perfectly normal and you can just switch off till the end.

The lunix system I shose is called Lubuntu. It is a stripped out version of Ubuntu (a well known open source version of Linux) for use on older low spec laptops. To install it you first need to download a file for the operating system and then creaty a boot USB stick to transfer it onto the target laptop. all good at this point, and I fired up the laptop. The operating system was installed overwriting the previous windows system (there is an option to run it as a trial to see if you like it but I didn't need that). I then needed to download some updates. Hmm, why is connecting to the WiFi blanked out? A 10 minute hunt reveals I need to conect my phone and turn it into a hotspot. Right, the update loads and the laptop now conncest to the WiFi. 

Next, I need to have Java to run JMRI. What version do I have loaded? Hmmm, none...15 minutes sorting how to do this and getting it sorted. Then download JMRI and extract it to install it. Hmm, how the hell do I fire it up, there doesn't seem to have an icons on the desktop. Maybe I've installed it wrong. delette and try again. Repeat 3 times. Re-read the documentation and discover I have to create my own launcher icons (WTF). Then theres configuring the USB ports. And I can't set up JMRI with DCC-Ex unless i know which port is which...

Talking to Drew today, doing this under Windows is a piece of cake. Everything just goes from A to B to C and it just works. Bastard.

So the end of the story is this.

Don't try this in Linux.

You have been warned...