Wednesday 19th November 2025

Progress 'normalising' the diamond crossover.

The first job was to cut away the insulating material in the two frogs, which a disc cutter in the right hands made short work of. Various pieces of NS rail  laid upside-down were trialled to fill the gap and create the new frog. These will be filed down to the correct shape in due course.

Insulation removed (left) and frog rebuilt (right).

New frog - Various pieces of NS rail were trialled upside-down to fill the gap. These then have to be filed down to the correct height and shape as per RHS.

Geoff had worked out that we only required one more wire between the boards and the control panel to complete the new switch wiring. Fortunately, the 20-way socket on the board had a single spare pin and with the help of a record drawing/schedule, it was relatively easy to add the wire.

The rewiring of the crossover is to suit the future switching arrangement designed by Geoff. A three position rotary switch on the control panel will enable:

Position 1. Diagonal right to left track route.

Position 2. Middle, straight through running on both front and rear tracks. 

Position 3. Diagonal left to right track route.

Wednesday 12th November 2025

Today, we started to modify Johns points, which started with a discussion about the problems and the solutions.

Issues:

1. Modification: The solid metal tie bar is silver soldered to the blade rails, which might be difficult to separate, but we need the blades for rebuilding the point.

2. Operation: The blades are not electrically separated and are also linked to the frog as a single unit. Dismantle blade/frog unit retaining blades for re-use.

3. Bond diamond cross-over frog rails together. 

The main operating issue is that when switching john's points, a short circuit usually occurs, which manifests itself as a track power outage and meaning any moving loco stops momentarily. Although there is now a 50/50 mix of old and new points on John's two original boards, operators have to learn to ensure loco's are stationary before changing points in this location. This is not a major issue at present, but if we decide to try operating with a DCC system, there would be a much longer delay to normal power while the controller resets itself, which would not be desirable.

John's configuration

'Normal' configuration on all other boards

Cutting the blades unit to allow for its removal and 
to form the electrical separation required.

Unsoldering the solid tie bar for reusing the blades.

The cleaned-up point ready for reassembly.

The blades were soldered to pivot pins in the new sleeper tie bar. 
These reduce the stress on the printed circuit board as the blades move.

The other issue to resolve is the diamond crossing frog rail gaps. The two frogs on the diamond have insulation inserted between the rails, whereas the 'normal' arrangement is for the rails to be bonded. The insulation will be cut out and the frog rails soldered together.

Wednesday 5th November 2025

Another quiet session this week. Stephen had discovered a rake of 3 x 2-plank wagons with stone loads in a box in his workshop. It transpired that they were from the most recent 3D printed chassis set that Geoff produced. We had Geoff's three in operation at the last show and could have had a whole train of them. The loads will need to be stained first.

On an allied subject, Stephen noticed the semi-transparent box with the tea-stained blocks in looked a bit odd. On opening, black mould was growing on the blocks! They will be thoroughly dried and the mould sanded off, or the other way around.

Finally, we got around to discussing what we should do next on Wednesdays. Whilst options generally were not limited, something for the layout should come first. Another board/diorama? The estate quarry? A single board (for now?). We threw a few ideas around. Maybe too soon? 

On a tangent, Geoff had offered to explain DCC to Stephen in detail, and use the layout as the testing area. However, the main station, and Johns pointwork in particular, had a John-ism that ruled this out. The tie bars were made of solid metal (un-gapped) and were silver-soldered to the blades, which caused momentary short circuits as the points were changed. This caused a minor break in the power supply and paused any loco that was moving at the time. The 'temporary' solution was to keep all loco's stationary when changing the station points. There was also a diamond crossing with insulated frogs, which caused a problem. Both of these issues had ready solutions, which will be tackled in the forthcoming weeks.