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[dkightley]

Nice video of The Bridge at its last outing.....

[gbtrains]

Hi Dough

that looks to be running smothly now.
When is the Bridge next out in around the Yorkshire region?
Graham

[rail450]

Hi Dough,

which glue and which ballast are you using to get realistic looking track beds ?

BR,

Siegfried

[dkightley]

Hi Seigfried

There's no special trickery involved here.....just the simple fact that if you feed just the right amount of visual information, then the human brain has this feature that it automatically adds a level of detail to what it recognises.....and things look a lot better than they really are!

Believe it or not, I painted a strip of 3-ply wood with brownish acrylic paint and then simply superglued the track on top when the paint was dry.

The end result then gets mixed up amongst the large number of other "low resolution" finishes.....giving the viewer the impression of there being a high level of detail! You just have to then discourage the use of macro lenses!!!


And on the bridge structure itself, the sections of flexitrack simply slot into shallow matt black painted "T" section slots in the top surface of the girder elements.

[dkightley]

Having been so busy involved in other things, I've been neglecting the forum....and haven't said anything about The Bridge being invited to the Spalding MRC show over last weekend.

The show was quite busy...and there were many visitors that hadn't seen T gauge before....but also a lot of visitors who'd seen the layout before...and were enquiring about my next project!!

One outcome from this show is that the layout has got to have some TLC before its next outing. Track joints are getting very worn and loose, etc, and the signals all need replacing...as does the temporary wiring I did when I fitted the DCC boxes. I had a fault develop at one end of the layout that prevented me using the automation...and I had to run trains manually.

[gbtrains]

Hi Dough

Well your layout has been out alot and T-guage is still new for building layouts up and then packing them back down so I think that it has done very well on the wear and tear.

Hope you can still hav the singal lights all repaired as this really wows the audiance with how small it all is.

Regards
Graham

[dkightley]

With three weeks to go to the next outing, I thought I'd better get the layout out of storage and look at the issues I identified last time out!

Assembled the electrics and checked the track sensors.....all worked after a few tweaks of some of the sensitivity pots. Signals checked and one signal completely missing!!! All other signals in working order.

Placed an order with TGauge.com for replacement flexitrack and track joiners. I'm going to swap out all the loose straight sections for nice & straight new ones. The old track will come in useful on the Saltash layout for behind the scenes areas.

[dkightley]

Having had deep thoughts, I've come to a decision that this year, 2019, may be the last season I will be accepting invitations to take The Bridge out to shows.

This year will see the layout at four shows...and the layout will have made it to England, Scotland and Wales...which is not bad. And the total number of shows will be 24...which is pretty good. This retirement (which may even be semi-retirement) is to allow me to concentrate on getting The Bridges at Saltash finished and ready for what might be an equally long run of shows

The Bridge will be stored away in an "almost ready to run" state. I will resist totally the urge to "rob" it of bits so it can be brought back into service some day in the future if needed.

But there's four shows to go......so lets not get sentimental yet!!

[dkightley]

With a double weekend of shows coming up in around 4 to 5 weeks, I'm having to step back from Saltash....and get one or two running issues resolved on The Bridge....

I've been having issues getting more than one train running at a time under script control under CBUS. The script works perfect for one train.....but I've designed the script so it can be run two or three times together with each script running one train....and the signalling logic keeping them running in sync. But....for some unknown reason, the DCC throttle control in the second and subsequent script fails to register the power unit.

I'm also limited by the number of DCC trains I have available. I have the two existing DMUs...a 158 two-car set and a 170 three car set. I need to get a couple of extra running sets installed with DCC boards.....and what I get running will depend on how things pan out.

[gbtrains]

Hi Doug

Good luck with getting your DCC chips in and wiring them.
I have not gone down that route yet as I am very new to DCC concept.

Great that the layout is still running very well as you have done quite a lot of exhibitions with it.

regards
Graham