Midsomer Norton South (TT layout)

[DuTTchy]

I also find it quite mesmerizing to watch slow running trains even if they run on a very small end to end layout.

Last year i built a DCC-EX commandstation in a nice enclosure, see picture above from a month ago.

Thought it was better to leave that one intact and build another one for the EX-rail experiments.

These command stations are not that expensive, for the price of 2 TT wagons you can easily build one.

 

Here's the new setup, an Arduino Mega + Arduino Motor Shield Rev3 and a PCA9685 servo module.

This servo module can operate 16 servos and needs a seperate 5v dv power supply.

So we need 3 different voltages:

7 to 9v dc for the Arduino Mega

12v dc for the Arduino Motor Shield

5v dc for the servo module

There is no wifi board present at the moment, don't need it for now.

The 3 switches are there for testing things in EX-Rail, the 2 white wires are the sensor inputs.

 

A well know servo setup to operate the turnout, used some 20x20mm pvc angle for this.

 

Had 2 sets of infrared sensors laying around so i used them for the test layout.

 

The basic commands in EX-Rail are not to difficult. 

Step one in this setup was to start the sequence by pressing the yellow button, this will close the turnout and starts the loco.

After passing the sensor the loco stops and the turnout is thrown. Now the other loco starts and so on.

 

If there is any interest i could start a seperate thread on DCC-EX and EX-Rail to keep it seperated from the build of the Midsomer Norton layout.
 

[DuTTchy]

Hi,

Not much to report about the building activities.

For the IngIenook puzzle i needed some cards to shuffle for the wagons.

Grabbed some pictures (just for private use 😇) from the Hornby website, resized them and send it to an online photo print service.

The photos are more or less scaled 1:1.

 

A finished puzzle with the photos trimmed to a smaller size.

All Easi-Fit couplings work perfectly now but it took some time finetuning them.

More than half of the wagons have droopy / sagging couplers and this doesn't go well with the Dapol Easi-Fit couplings.

Here's an example (the worst one) of such a coupler with the trip pin hanging to low.

When passing a turnout this can derail the wagon or even damage the fragile kinematic coupling.

 

Fixed this by sliding a thin piece of paper under the coupling.

For the photo i used a too large white piece of paper, this will be replaced by a smaller black one 😉.

The coupling is levelled now and the trip pin is floating a few tenths of a millimeter above the tracks.

 

Another issue was that not all buffers are mounted at the same depth.

Checked all wagons and some of them needed some adjustment by pushing it deeper in the socket.

After some trial and error i came to this result:

When pushing the wagons a very tiny gap should be left between the buffers, now the coupling claws can move freely and uncouple without problems.

 

Buffer distance (pushing).

 

And the small gap when pulling the wagons.

 

Now i'm off, have to do lots of shunting this afternoon 😊.