Last updated: 22 May 2007
Welcome to my O gauge in the garden. Please send your comments and suggestions to john@jswalker.demon.co.uk
This is my current layout plan. Stock is stored on three hidden sidings at a low level in the railway room, under the 3mm model of Swanage. This proceeds into the garden through a hole in the wall. The garden is about 50' square. The main line is a double track circuit with a through station at the bottom of the garden and storage loops at the side. A third, relief, track starts from the station running clockwise to the first leg of the triangular junction. In effect that gives me two single track branches, and a slow line so that trains can overtake.
This view shows the baseboards for the main circuit with a station at the top (that is the bottom of the garden). So far the inner circuit, which will be the up main, has been laid together with the sidings in the house and one side of the triangular junction to the up main. I had hoped to complete the triangular junction in 2005 so that I can run out and back as well as in a circle but that is beginning to look like a bit too much of a challenge.
This view shows the junction. Eventually there will be 3 tracks across the lawn - up main, down main and down relief.
This is where the branch line actually diverges, to the left, from the main line around the triangle and into the house. The train is on the up main and belongs to my Dad. I don't have much in the way of finished stock, yet!
It is now 2006 and I am working on the final leg of the triangular junction. This view shows the junction from the house with the final leg on the left hand side.
The gaps in the ballast show the bell wire which is layed along each side of the track. It is soldered to each separate track length by bending into a U shape so that it remains continuous. Weights were used at intervals to hold the wire in position while the ballast sets. The gaps will be filled in when the ballast is dry.
The beginning of the bridge over the patio is just visible in the bottom left hand corner. The arch is based on Brunel's Thames Bridge at Maidenhead.
Go back to ContentsThis is the site for the station showing the up main platform road and facing the west. The nearest full turnout marks the start of the loop and the next turnout will lead into a carriage siding. The nearer half of the up platform will be signalled for running in both directions so that trains can arrive from and depart to the west.
The station plan draws on Bournemouth Central for inspiration. As drawn above, Up to London is to the left and Down to the West is to the right. There will be two platforms, one each side of the four tracks. They will be long enough for 11 coach trains.
An overbridge is planned at the left end of the station to hide the points which mark the start of "hidden sidings". The siding on the up side is for carriage storage. The idea is that GWR trains arrive from the West in the up platform. They are berthed in this siding and then depart westwards from the up platform, using the two crossovers to reach the down side.
Down SR trains arrive at the down platform where they can be split. An 11 coach train would be split into 6 coaches for Bournemouth and 5 for Swanage and Weymouth, as used to happen at Bournemouth Central. The 2 trains continue around the down main. Later the 5 coach train splits again having 2 coaches removed for Swanage, as used to happen at Wareham. The remaining 3 coaches proceed westwards on the down main. Then the pushpull reverses on to the through coaches and proceeds up the relief line and on to the branch.
In the Up direction the pushpull arrives at the west end of the up platform with through coaches attached. The through coaches are detached and the pushpull uses the crossovers to reach the down side. The 3 coach train arrives at the east end of the Up platform. The train reverses to attach the through coaches and continues its journey.
Later the 6 coach train arrives at the west end of the Up platform. Its engine runs round ready to attach the coaches to the rear of the 5 coach train which uses the crossover to arrive at the east end of the up platform. The 5 coaches are added and the engine changed.
I am planning to use an MOK rebuilt Merchant Navy for the London end of the journey and unrebuilt (Finney) and rebuilt (David Andrews) West Countries for the West. An engine shed is assumed at the up end of the station. In fact engines will proceed through the hidden sidings and use the triangle to turn. This will give lots of good excuses to use the whistle in the DCC sound decoders!
The photograph shows track before and after ballasting. The white strips are PVC screwed to the end of each board. Without these the adhesive seeps through the felt and glues the boards together!
Track is Peco bullhead. I started by pinning it to an L girder made up with two pieces of 4" x 2" rescued from the demolition of the roof of an old cottage. The wood was treated with dark brown Garden Timbercare from B&Q. However the surface of the wood dried out from the heat of the sun and cracked. Rain lay in the cracks and the wood started to rot. Also the rail expanded and shrunk with the heat sometimes moving in the chairs and sometimes not, leading to a lot of distortion in the track.
I now use 18mm WBP Brazil ply (from B&Q) on a 4"x2" frame. It is all well creosoted and then felted. So far I have tried Marley High Performance Underlay (Sand Finish) and Marley 14 Traditional Lightweight Felt (Sand Finish). The felt is glued to the ply with Wickes Bitumous Roofing Adhesive. A further layer of felt just under the sleepers is glued to this and track glued on top. Stone ballast (Bird Grit) is then used to kill the exposed adhesive. Ronseal Outdoor Clear Satin Varnish diluted 50/50 with White Spirit is dribbled on the ballast to hold it together using a pipette. Hopefully that will lead to a firm waterproof foundation. The rail will now move through the chairs without distorting the track. Time will tell how long this will last but my first piece of ballasted track has been down since 2001 with no ill effects.
WARNING: I tried using Ronseal Matt Varnish and white spirit on my indoor 3mm track but the plastic chairs came away from the plywood sleepers. When I read the small print on the tin of varnish it said "Do not use on plastic type materials"! So, on my 3mm layout I now use Rustin's Shellac Sanding Sealer diluted with methylated spirits. However I have seen no ill effects outside so I have continued there with the varnish and white spirit.
I have built a pergola over part of the station area to protect it from the gunge that falls from overhanging fir trees. This gunge forms a nasty green deposit which is more of a problem than sun and rain.
I had a lot of problems with voltage drop. At one point I measured a 5 volt drop around the garden, enough for a train standing on a theoretically dead section, with common return to both rails, to move. I now use lighting ring main cable as a main bus beneath the baseboards with spurs to the boards and every length of rail using bell wire. This seems to solve the problem.
After much head scratching about how to wire the layout I took the plunge and bought into ZTC Controls DCC system. Currently I have a ZTC511 Master Controller, three ZTC622 Handheld Controllers and a ZTC550 booster.
The ZTC511 and power booster live indoors. Each circuit is divided into two power districts with the breaks between the station loops and the "hidden" sidings and between the legs of the triangular junction. This limits the length of the track busses to half a circuit with two laid clockwise and two anticlockwise. All four are currently connected to the ZTC511. Separate boosters will be installed if more power is required. The indoor section as far as the triangle is a separate power district connected to the ZTC550 booster to provide automatic polarity reversal. The outside power districts can be totally disconnected when not required.
The inner track circuit and the triangle were completed in 2006. Attention is now focussed on completing the electrics and point motors for easy running of trains out, round and round and back.
I had been using a regulated DC power supply from Maplins (part no. XM21X) to power my ZTC511 without any problems. This was recommended on DCCUK as a precaution against power surges although I can't really tell if it had any effect.
Initially I installed the booster using the ZTC560 transfomer but this caused train speeds to surge when they moved from the ZTC511 powered section to the booster powered section. I guess this is because the DC power supply is rated at 13.8V which is lower than the ZTC560 at 16VAC nominal. There does not seem to be any way to reduce the voltage from the ZTC560 using the booster so I switched the ZTC560 to power the ZTC511 and used the regulated DC power supply on the booster. I use the ZTC511 default voltage setting of 14V which brings it to about the same as the booster and the problem with the surge seems to have gone away.
I guess I will use matching DC voltage regulators for any future boosters.
A word of CAUTION. The DC connections to the power terminal block on the ZTC511 are the opposite way round to those on the ZTC550. Also, I had to cut the small clips off the terminal block to fit through the case of the ZTC550.
I have started to install the DCC control bus in the garden. The photographs show twin sockets for the controllers in the lower box. The upper box houses a 25 pin D connector for remote control of points and signals (more on that some other time). The right hand photograph shows the covers on to protect from the weather.
I bought a 500ft reel of cable from Rapid Electronics reference:
02-0544 Twisted 2 pair data cable with overall screen - Type 1
This may be over specified but it seems to work, the reel should last out my lifetime and it is not much more expensive than buying shorter lengths by the metre. The cable runs in heavy duty hose pipe from Wickes which is bright yellow, hence easy to see. It runs on the ground under the baseboards and won't be visible once the plants have grown up to baseboard height.
After some discussion on the DCCUK mailing list I opted for 8 way mini DIN chassis sockets from Maplin (part no.JX12N). It remains to be seen how well they will weather but at least my ZTC controllers will plug directly into the sockets. The sockets are mounted in cast aluminium boxes from Maplin. So far I have only used the 50mm square boxes. Two sockets will fit in one of these with a piece of Veroboard to solder all the connections together. The most difficult part is soldering wires to the sockets but only four connections are required. I find it helpful to feed a short piece of brass tube over the pins to hold the wires in place before soldering. I used heat shrink tubing to keep the wires apart. A brass screw holds the metal box to the woodwork and I used a solder tag to connect the screw to the drain wire in the cable.
I used an external junction box from Wickes to protect the sockets from the weather. I cut the back to fit over the aluminium box and drilled holes in the corners to screw it to the woodwork. The boxes are quite robust once they have been screwed to the woodwork.
Lenz web site includes a description of XBUS. ZTC's web site includes pages on Adaptor Lead for Connecting Lenz LH100 Hand Controller to ZTC-511 and Adapter Lead for Connecting ZTC-550 to Lenz LZ100. These pages include pin outs for the X-Bus and booster cable. From this information and a study of the ZTC Adaptor (part ZTC308) I guessed the ZTC pin outs to be:
I used one twisted pair for A and B and another for M and L. The cables are connected 1-1, 2-2, 3-3 and 8-8 with no crossed wires.
The control bus was installed in August 2004 and is still working in May 2007. There is no sign of corrosion in the socket boxes, so far!
I originally purchased 3 Soundtraxx GWR decoders from ZTC Controls but now I favour the more recent ESU LokSound decoders from South West Digital. I have fitted the ESU decoders to my Finney 61XX and to my David Andrews SR/BR U class 2-6-0. I also have ZTC216B, ZTC225, TCS and ESU LokPilot decoders.
I built an enclosure in plastic card around the motor and gearbox in my 61XX. This includes a "tray" on which the ZTC470 and suppressors sit. The pickups are mounted on the side of the enclosure. The speaker is enclosed under the tray and points down to the track between the frames. I have used a ZTC196 oval speaker.
The first picture shows the sound decoder on top of the plastic card enclosure. The circuits to the left include the ZTC filter kit and resistors for the 1.5V bulbs in the decoder function circuits. The pickups can be seen on the PCB mounted on the side of the enclosure.
In the second picture the enclosure has been tipped back to show the speaker pointing down between the frames. The enclosure rests between the frames. I intended to add a bracket to the chassis spacer so that it can be screwed down firmly but this installation has now been replaced by the ESU LokSound decoder..
I still have a Soundtraxx decoder and cam fitted to my Finney 47XX. The cam is shown below.
It consists of a brass collar fitted with a grub screw. A plastic sleeve, from plastic tube, is glued on to the collar and 4 self adhesive copper strips fixed to the sleeve. A piece of double sided PCB is soldered to the adjacent chassis stretcher. The PCB is gapped with a phosphor bronze wiper soldered each side of the gap. The PCB is wired to the Soundtraxx decoder. Three washers made from the next size of plastic tube are fixed to the sleeve using plastic solvent. These keep the wipers away from each other.
The principle seems to be working and this method of construction is much cheaper than using etched PCB discs. I am having a bit of trouble with one of the strips which seems to give me a double chuff when running slowly. That might just be a bit of solvent on the copper strip. I had intended to make another cam for my 61xx with slightly wider strips to give longer chuffs at slow speed but that has been superceded by the ESU decoders which have better electronic control of the synchronisation of chuffs to wheel revolutions.
As delivered my ESU LokSound GWR 2 cylinder decoders from South West Digital have 12 function assignments. However the ZTC511 only supports 8 functions so some compromise was necessary.
First I needed to find out which SWD sound is in each sound slot.
For example, as delivered F3 is allocated to the Medium Whistle. This is set by CV161 and CV164 which both contained 3 so sound slot 3 contains that sound.
This was repeated for all the function assignments
To reallocate the Medium Whistle (sound slot 3) to F2 change CV155 and CV158 to 3.
Here are all the changes I made. I arrived at them by considering the use of the ZTC 622 handheld with its need to shift for F4-F7 and double key for F8. As far as possible I have reassigned the functions on my other decoders to match these. I may need to make further changes when I introduce lights, smoke and possibly uncoupling but that will wait for another day.
F0 Acceleration/deceleration on/off
CV142 = 1
CV143 = 0 no sound slot
CV145 = 1
CV146 = 0 no sound slot
F1 Short whistle
CV149 = 2
CV152 = 2
F2 Medium whistle
CV155 = 3
CV158 = 3
F3 Long whistle
CV161 = 4
CV164 = 4
F4 Shovelling coal
CV167 = 5
CV170 = 5
F5 safety valve
CV173 = 6
CV176 = 6
F6 Cylinder drain
CV179 = 8
CV182 = 8
F7 Boiler drain
CV185 = 7
CV188 = 7
F8 Sound on/off
CV190 = 4
CV191 = 0
CV193 = 4
CV194 = 0
Terrier through the Hebes (70 KB JPEG image)
A half complete, but runnable, Vulcan Terrier double-headed with a visiting LNWR Coal Tank in etched brass livery, but otherwise complete. The leading coach, a Lima Mk 1 in WR livery, is just visible.
A close-up of the Terrier - courtesy Jim Bladen and his Olympus G-400 (150 KB JPEG image)
The indoor track visible in the close-up photos is constructed from C&L plastic sleepers and chairs, rail and underlay glued to a conventional 2"x1" frame supporting a 3/4" chipboard base.
Two Peco GWR vans and a mineral wagon - courtesy Jim Bladen and his Olympus G-400 (156 KB JPEG image)
American scene (55 KB JPEG image). Viewed at the same spot but from a different angle to the Terrier.
A close-up of the GP9 - courtesy Jim Bladen and his Olympus G-400 (129 KB JPEG image). This is a Red Caboose GP-9 in Southern Pacific "Black Widow" livery. Its train consists of 3 Intermountain box cars. These were impulse purchases on business trips to the US.