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Motor driven turntable

Make your own trees

Rocks and water

Stow away your layout

Most railroaders are struggeling the problem to get proper contact to the tracks specially on turnouts and dirty sections. This is applicable specially on tha smaller scales (N and Z). To late I have experienced that a perfection of the initial track installations on the layout is extremely important. 
By excluding insulfrog turnouts the problem will be less.
What can I  do to a layout with lots of landscaping and a fixed track? - It is out of question to redo all track installations.

The answer is:   
Extend the contact surface between the loco and the track by an electrical connection to the adjacent wagon with its own power from the track or tandem coupled locos.
I will here give an example of such interconnection without fixed wires using a "Scharfenberg" coupling kit from the German company Imotec .
The Scharfenberg coupling looks very nice and is tailored for some german commuter trains but is possible to install to other locos without major modifications. The Scharfenberg couplings are fixed to the chassis and will not follow any boggie movements. That may be a problem in some narrow curves.  An advantage is the self locking and that it works at decoupling tracks. 

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All locos will not fit to the Scharfenberg couple above an will need an alternate solution. After som experimental tries I found a working solution for my trains keeping the standard couplingpocket with modifications just to the hook. The couplinghook is modified to carry a 2-pin microconnector (se picture). A rough solution - but it works nice. Very easy to return to original shape witout remodifying - just replace the hook back to standard.

       Material:

       -  Couplinghooks - Spareparts for most rolling stuff from
          vendor.
       -  Micro pinconnector from electronic shops
       -  Insulated transformer wire 0,15 mm
       -  Resistor 2 kohm

       Instructions:

          1.Remove the couplinghooks from the pockets on the
             loco and the adjacent wagon and keep those.
   
          2. Modify the new hook (see picture) by cutting the
              entire hook keeping the flat surface and drill two
              holes to fit the backside of the pin connector.
              Solder the thin wire to the pins befor attaching the
              connector to the hooksurface.

          3. Cut and bend the connector pins as shown in the
              drawing and pictures.
 
          4. Install the new couplinghooks in the pockets of the
              loco and adjacent wagon.

          5. The thin wires are carefully soldered to the
              wheelconnections in the loco boggie.

          6. Turn one wheelpair at the wagon boggie to get
              left/right track power to each wheelpair. 
              Install a resistor loose bent to the wheelaxis and
              solder the thin wires to each end of the resistor
              (se pictures below)

       Bend the pins                          Secure coupling

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Trams on a N-scale layout is an interresting complement. The choice of trams in N-scale is limited since Arnold has disappeared as an own company. Hopefully the new owner will come up with the production of trams. I had good luck and found two Duwag trams. Tramcatenaries is a part of a town with running trams. If you just use catenarys for the scene and not electrical you don`t have to buy expencive stuff. I decided to build from scratch to a very low cost.

          Material:

       -  Copperwire 0,8 mm (single wire)
       -  Copperwire 0,5 mm (single wire)
       -  Round toothpicks, diam. 2 mm alt. brassrod / tube.

          Instructions:

       -  Cut the tip and round off one end of the toothpick.
       -  Drill two 0,8 mm holes in the toothpick for stays and bows
       -  Cut and bend the copperwire as shown in the picture.
       -  Install the stays and bows in the holes and solder the
          together.
       -  The post is painted with Humbrol "green 30" or desired colour.
       -  The total size is: height 60 mm and width 52 mm - can of
          course be at variable size.
       -  Single side version can be made by same method.

       -  If this catenary is to be electrified the stability of the post has
          to be better - use brassrod or tube. Even copperwires have
          to be of higher dimensions.
        

   The final result

Trams in the City

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The presupposition to this project was to bring down the costs for signals as many of them are to be used. Even if I should try to find swedish signals I will get lost. The final result using this method will be close to the original.

Built procedure

1. 3 pcs of 1,8 mm LED`s are temporary soldered (anode) against the tracks of a VERO experiment board , pitch 2,54 mm. 
   Be careful by soldering, small solder iron, quickly not to hot. Then cut cathode legs short.
   

2. Cut 1 mm single copperwire to be used as post soldered to the 3 cathode legs. be carefull to keep the pitch 2,54 mm to fit the holes in the table.
   Cut the anode legs from the VERO board. Solder thin (0,15 mm) isolated transformer wire to each anode
   

3. Use Plaststruct or Evergreen styrene material (0,5 x 3,2 mm) to build the signaltables. Use the pitch of 2,54 mm on the VERO board as a jigg to drill the LED holes in the styrene material. High precision work!  Cut the styrene to proper length and round off the corners to a smooth shape.
   

4. The table is painted black with white edges. Glue the LED package to the table and use a small VERO board as bottomstand.
   

5. Solder the post (common cathode) and each anode wire to the standboard and also solder connectionwires to the VEROboard.
   

6. Fix the thin wires from the LED`s tight to the post and paint the post dark green (Humbrol 114). Paint the backside of the LED`s and table dark grey so the light will not be seen back of the signal. The wires from the vero board stand are conncted to the electroncics controlling the signals.
   (via 3 Kohm for 12 Volts)
   

I started to build headsignals controlled by the PC-software influenced by the feedback from train movements and routes. The signals are connected to  NMRAF5 DCC-decoders capable of controlling  8 individual Leds.   See  "Stationary decoder NMRAF5" 

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Motor and gearbox
The motor with an integrated gearbox is mounted on a plate made of 1,5 mm Aluminum. This Al-plate have an important function also to secure the end of the bridge axis for a proper and smooth rotation of the worm gear. To ensure exact fitness  - bend the plate first and then measure carefully and drill the wholes.
Mount the motor to the Al-plate and adjust the two gearwheels to meet in a 90 degree angel with the bridge axis fitted into the whole in the Al-plate (See picture below). Mark the wholes from the Al-plate to the bottom of the turntable and drill two wholes. The motor plate is mounted with two countersinked M3 screws in the turntable.

The rotation speed of the bridge is depending on the motor supply voltage and the gearbox ratio. I have counted on a maximum angle speed of 12 degrees / second (  2 turns / minute)  with a 12 V DC supply and a gearbox ratio of 1:20  from a motor speed of 40 turns/minute.

The bridge controlled from an analogue pulsed trottle "Gaugemaster" with above parameters gives a smooth rotation to various speeds stops to tracks by exact precision. The turntable can alternative be connected to a fixed DC voltage (12V) with a fwd-stop-rev switch In this case preferable with a gearbox with higher ratio to be able to stop by precision. The suggested motor is avaliable with a broad choice of different gearboxes.

The tracks adjacent to the bridge track is supplied through a standard turn switch to stop locomotives to run down into the turntable when its not positioned.

PECO standard turntable   NB-5
N-scale wheels
4 mm brass axis
Motor with gearbox
Gear wheel (straight)
Gear wheel (worm)
Lockring
AL-plate 1,5 mm
Turn switch

Motor mounted underneath the turntablewith
 90 degree gear wheels.
Observe the whole in the Al-plate
 to secure the bridge axis.       

With this method you can fast and easily make your own trees. Make sure you have an AWG14-16 multi wire cable, Woodland Scenics "Foliage" FC57 and 59, enamel paint and hairspray.
Cut the cable in various lengths and keep 20 mm of isolation. Tailor the branches from the wires and glue pieces of the Woodland material and strew with various materials from Faller. Use hairspray to to fix the materials. Paint the trunk and let dry.
Do one step a time for all trees in massproduction and tailor the trees for individual shapes.

Lakes and other areas of water are painted on the layout base with a mixed color suitable for open sea or narrow canals.The surface is then covered by a curled transparent plastic sheet from Faller. The result is fantastic from  this simple method. Take a look on the pictures below.

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