The Backyard & Southern Railroad (BS RR)

A place for the discussion of garden railways and any garden style/scale portable and/or indoor layouts
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philipy
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Post by philipy » Mon May 25, 2015 6:30 am

Dwayne:111104 wrote: She figured me to be a goofy, gun loving, model railroading, slow speaking, redneck Okie.  :)
I guess you should add "web-footed" to that list? I was just looking at the news of your floods, on the BBC, it looks pretty grim "The National Weather Service says Oklahoma City already has a new monthly rainfall record for May - at 18.19 inches.". I know you commented about the rain yesterday, I hope you are basically ok?
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Post by Keith S » Mon May 25, 2015 6:57 am

I'm interested to hear your opinions about garden railways Dwayne, because I have noticed the same thing. American garden railways are often like a big "train set" that doesn't interest me because in real life you never see that much action in such a small space. The UK ones seem to be a lot more "garden" and a lot less "railway" and that makes them seem more realistic. I guess it's because of the landscaping.

The only way my wife would ever let me put rails in the garden is because I have showed her pictures of UK garden railways and that has allayed her fears somewhat about having to entertain her friends in a giant train-set. You can imagine perhaps that UK wives are more supportive of garden railways than American ones are. Obviously that's a generalization, google the "Winnegance and Quebec" railway to see a stunning American garden railway.

Oddly, I have nothing to say about Canadian garden railways because I have never seen one! I'm sure they must be out there but I couldn't tell you whether it's more common to follow American or British practice because I only know about them from magazines. My Dad is from England but he builds models of Canadian prototype trains on an indoor layout. I thought I had skipped the "model train" gene until I was almost fourty and saw a youtube video of a Roundhouse live steam engine in an English garden and fell in love with the idea! I've had my Dad over to see my steam engine but I don't gather he thinks much of little Billy and its parochial little four-wheeled wagons!

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Dwayne
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Post by Dwayne » Mon May 25, 2015 1:32 pm

Peter, I had considered adding mortar but opted not to do so. The ballast doesn't get washed away, just more or less displaced a bit by the bigger rain drops. When things dry out I use a small whisk broom to sweep it all back into place along the rails. At the same time some dirt gets mixed in which seems to firm it up a bit and helps it from wandering. Since the ballast had just been added that day I actually welcomed the rainfall as it settles everything. Another thing that keeps all in place is the growth of the grass. I'm not a fan of grass and over the four years I've owned this place have been in the process of reducing it's coverage and replacing with flower beds and groundcovers.

Philip, lots of rain over in my neck of the prairie. Unusual to say the least. Fortunately I live on a high area so flooding is a non-issue. I'm okay but with weeks of continual rainfall, going outside means subjecting yourself to hummingbird sized mosquitoes. Haven't seen so many of those critters since taking a brief sojourn to Canada after I married the wife unit ten years ago. During a normal year I might only be attacked by a half dozen or so during our spring season.

Keith, there are a few Canadians hanging out on the SE Lounge. It's actually hosted by a Canuck who lives in the Kitchener-Cambridge area of Ontario. Not sure where you are located up there but when I moved to Sudbury the winter weather, blackflies, mosquitoes and frost heave pretty much kept me from even thinking about an outdoor layout.

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Keith S
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Post by Keith S » Mon May 25, 2015 2:35 pm

I live in the very far north, In the Northwest territories. IF there was a garden railway in Edmonton, it would be the closest one and about a fifteen-hour road trip. :(

It's too cold outside in the winter for butane to vaporize, so the railway when it is built will only be a summer pursuit.

The good news is, if I use wooden sleepers like you have done, it will take decades for them to rot!

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Dwayne
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Post by Dwayne » Mon May 25, 2015 3:36 pm

You are a bit north. I've got a niece and nephew in Edmonton. That's as far north as I've gotten over the years. Going up there during the winter is a b*tch. My mother lives in Victoria and my oldest brother is in Chemainus. Beautiful place but a bit soggy for me. If I ever were to return to Canada I'd take up residence somewhere in southern BC where the climate is more on the dry side.

But as I have told my wife, Oklahoma is my home until I keel over. Not many people want to live here and as a result it's not all that crowded. The weather is fairly temperate, winters aren't all that bad though on occasion the white stuff does make an appearance from time to time. Tornadoes definitely are a way of life for us and make things interesting.  :)

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Dwayne
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Post by Dwayne » Mon May 25, 2015 10:28 pm

In spite of a steady rainfall this afternoon, the BS trackgang of me pushed on with the laying of track. My persistence paid off when the final section was jockeyed into position and the last four rail joiners were slid into place completing the Backyard & Southern Railroads mainline loop.

Eschewing the time honored tradition of hammering in a final "golden spike", a much more down to earth praxis was observed with a toast of recent vint of Fireball whiskey. Management, quite impressed by their sole employee's persistence of seventeen days of intense labor including scouting out a worthy location, surveying the area and prepping terra firma and installing approximately one-hundred 1:1 actual feet of 1:13.7 scale two-foot narrow gauge, graciously gave the entire bottle of Fireball to it's valued employee and the following day off to sleep it off if necessary.

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Gralyn
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Post by Gralyn » Mon May 25, 2015 10:39 pm

Congratulations. Can't wait to see the first trains run.
Regards Graham.

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Dwayne
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Post by Dwayne » Mon May 25, 2015 11:04 pm

A few more views of the completed mainline...

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Maple
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Post by Maple » Tue May 26, 2015 9:44 am

Looks brilliant, and i love the home made track :)
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Post by LnBmad » Tue May 26, 2015 12:58 pm

great work, the whisky is well deserved after that effort!
If it can be made full scale it can be made 16mm

My line: http://gardenrails.myfreeforum.org/about7200.html

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Dwayne
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Post by Dwayne » Tue May 26, 2015 5:33 pm

Here's a short, poor quality video of my stripped down Davenport critter running along the rails of the BS. Temporary power comes from 4-AA batteries with a simple on/off switch. Still mulling over the technical aspect of the RailBoss radio control installation. L:

Click here to view video

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Dwayne
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Post by Dwayne » Tue May 26, 2015 5:44 pm

I got to wondering how long the 4 AA batteries would last so I let the critter do it's thing. After 45 minutes it was still going without much slow down. It takes the lokie about 3 minutes to make a complete circuit at what I would estimate would be a scale speed of 4-5mph.

The RailBoss requires a minimum of 7v input per tech data. Looks like I'll have to make a run to the local RC shop to see what they have in the way of LiPo batteries as I don't think I can fit 8 AA batteries anywhere in this critter once the RC components are mounted. My knowledge of anything electrical is woefully inadequate thus I'm on a learning curve with this radio control stuff. :|

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Dwayne
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Post by Dwayne » Tue Jun 09, 2015 1:13 pm

Been working on the Bachmann Davenport the past few days...

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Dwayne
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Post by Dwayne » Tue Jun 09, 2015 1:49 pm

Before upsizing to 7/8n2 and after...

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Andrew
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Post by Andrew » Thu Jun 11, 2015 5:12 pm

Very nice! The track's looking great too...

All the best,

Andrew.

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Dwayne
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Post by Dwayne » Thu Jun 11, 2015 9:19 pm

Thank you Andrew. Time spent on the BS has slowed now that I'm once again gainfully employed.

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Dwayne
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Post by Dwayne » Mon Jun 15, 2015 3:15 am

Finally got around to installing the entire RailBoss radio control system. And since it works I must've done it correctly. :)

Under the hood sans the 2S Li-po battery...

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... and with the battery in place...

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Post by ge_rik » Tue Jun 16, 2015 7:15 am

Just been catching up with the development of your railway. Really interesting to see how the trackwork was laid and now the first run on it of your Davenport-mod. I'll certainly be following future developments with interest.

Your track making looks similar to Greg Hunter's approach on the Sandstone & Termite -

http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/satr/track.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egPggh9 ... e=youtu.be

- though your pointwork looks a bit more sophisticated.

Rik
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Dwayne
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Post by Dwayne » Mon Jun 22, 2015 1:05 am

Ran the Davenport around the BS for a couple of hours. One change I'm in the process of making is to use velcro to attach the receiver to the cab ceiling instead of the fixed holder I originally intended to use. That option didn't allow for easy access for the connectors to the receiver pins. Anyways, that's the reason the receiver is sorta just hanging in the cab for the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIF1jYNW6j0

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Dwayne
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Post by Dwayne » Mon Jul 27, 2015 4:36 am

An update:

After completing the installation of the RailBoss system into the Davenport a glitch reared it's head. Seems that anytime the engine was running forward at 80% throttle or greater (I'm using a Spektrum DX5e TX) it would soon come to an abrupt stop. The cure was to throttle down to 0%, give the ESC a chance to reboot and then resume running. The proplem only occurred when going forward. Reverse could be ran at full throttle with no problem.

Needless to say, this glitch was annoying me to no end. I finally decided to try something else. I ordered a ProBoat ESC with forward & reverse for the sum of $42USD. Since I have no desire for sound, lights and other doodads, seemed like a cost effective way of having a radio controlled engine.

Once it arrived, I quickly removed the RailBoss system and temporarily installed the new ESC. In spite of my care in hooking everything properly, I was dismayed when the system wouldn't function. No forward, no reverse.

I tested the throttle position of the RX using a test servo and it functioned. So the throttle did work but I wasn't having much success in figuring out what I was doing wrong when the ESC was hooked to the throttle position on the RX.

After taking a break for a couple of hours I went online to see how good my Googlefoo was in finding a solution. I came across a few RC forums where others were having this same issue. No real solutions to questions posed by others. There was one comment though that gave me an idea.

One feature of the RailBoss is that the left stick is the throttle, the right stick is the forward/reverse function. With the RailBoss, the throttle is at 0% when the stick is pulled all the way back. All the way forward is 100% throttle.

With this in mind for the ProBoat ESC, I set the left stick at dead center which turns out to be 0% throttle and turned on the TX followed by the RX. After link up of the two, I pushed the stick forward. Viola! Forward movement. Back to center stopped the engine. Pulling back on the stick put the engine in reverse. Again, back to center to stop. The right stick no longer has a function.

Success after a frustrating afternoon of fooling with the system!

So now I'll tuck the new ProBoat ESC into the engine and shelve the RailBoss for the moment. I also ordered a couple of LiFe batteries to see how they compare to the LiPo I've been using.

I had high hopes for the RailBoss system but it turned out to be a disappointment. Unfortunately it costs twice as much and lacks the waterproof feature of the ProBoat ESC.

Will post pics of the new setup and give a report on it's functionality soon.

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