Floating Shelf Budget Model Railway Challenge - Part 3 - The Chinese Fat Controllers Arrive

The continuing escapades of building a model railway which fits on a 60cm floating shelf.

Once the track was laid the urge to play with the layout was strong, but I needed power and control.

As is the Budget Model Railway way this comes in the shape of a PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) motor controller from eBay.  I found a bevy of them on AliExpress for a mere £2 each.  They come with a potentiometer to control the speed of the loco and a 3 way rocker switch to control the loco's direction (forward - off - back).

Everything is prewired and you just need to screw the wires into the terminal blocks.  This is where the fun begins as there were no instructions on whihc wire goes where.  The circuit board has some gobledigook on it both in Chinese characters and electronic symbols (which might as well have been Chinese).  Fortunately just a brief googleing brings up a photo of a very similar circuit which explains where all the wires go.

Power from a 12v DC phone charger wallwart (or similar) is screwed into the Positive and Negative terminals at the top of the board.  The connection to the track is screwed into M1 / M2.  The four wires from the rocker switch connect to the terminal block on the left and finally the potentiometer is plugged into the white JST connector.  Easy peasy.

First Running

The initial runs on the track were a whole lot of troubleshooting as usual.  I wired my track feed to the middle "mainline" which meant I had a dead section of track with the topmost fiddle line when the points were switched to the top siding.  This was rectified by adding a second set of power lines.  The routing for this is a little bit sketchy and snakes out of the layout and off the front of the shelf.  This is most unacceptable for a display layout and I will resolve this later.  

Having played with the layout for some hours, I also want to add in a couple of on/off isolating switches, this will mean that if I want to I can isolate a loco on either of the fiddle lines and bring another loco out unimpeded.  This will create a go around.  Currently the loco can only pick up on the left and move to the right, a second loco which operates from right to left will dramatically improve operational potential and allow me to stage rakes on the fiddle yard.

YouTube Shorts

Around this time I also discovered the joys of unedited YouTube shorts.  This has enabled me to make lots of videos of both this layout and my Coffee Table Layout Upper Carrom.  Frankly this has been quite addictive and I should probably check myself into the Betty Ford Clinic.

Obligatory Running Video

 

N Gauge Model Railway - Episode 14 - More Lights, Cobblestones and a Retaining Wall

This week I mostly added more lights to the layout.  I started up a little production line making the small circuit boards to distribute the power to each of the buildings and soldering in all the streetlights.

I also finished the remodelling of the cobblestone yard in front of Woods Brothers in the South West corner of the layout.  

Funky Foam to the Rescue

I had tried a couple of different techniques to get a decent looking cobbled area but finally hit on this top tip.

Once you have created your template of the area you wish to cover with cobblestones, transfer the shape to 1mm cardboard or similar.  Glue a sheet of Funky Foam (1mm XPS foam) which you can get in Hobby Craft (12 sheets for £4) and then trim to your card.

Take a pyrograve pen or soldering Iron with a knife blade tip and carve your lines into the foam.  This produces pretty good looking cobblestone sets. 

After some painting and weathering using the sponging method, I'm really pleased with how they look.  Uniform enough but also random enough to pass muster.

As is customary I actually started this blog post at the beginning of May but got massively sidetracked by the 60cm Floating Shelf Layout Challenge.  I even made an instructional video on How to Make Cheap and Easy Cobblestones whilst this blog post was languishing in developmental Hell. 

Building a Retaining Wall 

I then needed to sort out the horrible mess I had made of the curved section of track which forms Loop C, specifically tying this into the layout yet providing necessary seperation between track and cobbled area.  This was simply a section of 2mm thick ABS foam Board jammed in the gap and then I ran a pencil atop a wagon to replicate the rise of the track onto the wall.  

A strip of foam board makes excellent capstones and this was all painted with a range of browns and greys just like the walls of the Palethorpes Sausage Factory building I made a few weeks ago.  The gap between the track and the wall was then filled with my go-to gap filler Poundland Polyfilla although this remains to be painted and foliage added.  

Finally I cut half of the branches off one of my chinese plastic tress and clued in to a traingle of foamboard before jamming it in the gap between the long workshop and the derelict warehouse.

Obligatory Running Video

I also received a long awaited depressed center wagon from eBay which now serves as the official Carrom Track Inspection Camera Car for making driver's eye videos.  Enjoy...