I am making my first ever layout i am trying to make harcourt street line im doing harcourt, viaduct at mill town nine arches, dundrum station and foxrock station.

[james1994]

3 minutes ago, Georgeconna said:

Lattice is the design of the post, the one from Dapol is a solid wooden post. Lattice was Metal as per the piccy below.

 

 

This one from dapol also would be good 

3 minutes ago, james1994 said:

This one from dapol also would be good 

Only bummer with signal is its upper quadrant 

[james1994]

Would anyone know if the motorised signal I got from dapol would work with a z21 signal decoder. I'm trying find out if it has momentary switching in the z 21 signal decoder so works with the dapol motorised signal.

 

I haven't bought the decoder yet.

Edited May 16, 2024 by james1994

[Sven-E]

On 16/5/2024 at 4:14 PM, james1994 said:

Would anyone know if the motorised signal I got from dapol would work with a z21 signal decoder. I'm trying find out if it has momentary switching in the z 21 signal decoder so works with the dapol motorised signal.

Don't know about that decoder. The problem with the Dapol semaphores is the momentary switching as you mention. There are some fixes for this.

MERG has a replacement PCB that changes the operation so you can use a toggle switch. You need to be a MERG member for this and capable of soldering SMD components. I have converted two of these signals so I can testify that it is not too hard to build.

I have seen a kit that uses a toggle switch as input and does the momentary connection for the signal when the switch changes. I think this was from Heathcode, but I am not sure. Problem here is that the unit can get out of sync with the switch.

Dave Fenton of Megapoints produced a Youtube video where he replaced the motor part of the semaphore with a servo. Then he could control the semaphore from his servo controlers and get a nice bounce effect.

[james1994]

Update restructured baseboard and still working on the layout it has been slow process but i will get there. working on dun laoghaire in south dublin model railway club ive got better knowlege of layouts and building now. everything is going as good as it can. i am gaining skills i didnt have when i first posted here. point motors are the next thing to go into the dundrum part of the layout. it is easy enough station to model i want the track perfect before any scenery is put in. it is taking bit time to do the layout but its mostly cause when i started out didnt really know what i was doing now i do. once point motors are in i will put put pictures up of it working.

 

will work on brass model kits as well to start off with wickam inspection car then next to a plough van cie then on the coaches and last the locos as the locos are easily the most complex.

[derek]

Welcome back James

[LNERW1]

On 29/4/2023 at 3:49 PM, Kevin Sweeney said:

The Harcourt Street station house was 362 feet long by 138 feet wide. In OO this building would have a footprint of 1.448 metres by .552 metres. That would be a tight enough squeeze in the space available. In OO it would need 2 metres to accommodate the full width of the station. You could half that with N scale, but there is no Irish rolling stock available in that scale.

Starting a modelling career by scratch building a big station like Harcourt Street would be incredibly ambitious, a bit like learning to fly in a fighter jet rather than a Cessna. Dundrum or Foxrock would be a more realistic project to learn the craft and a better fit for the space available.

If you want to try card modelling for making buildings, Scalescenes have some free download kits. I started my modelling career with the free Scalescenes coal office. I spent several years building Scalescenes kits before I moved on to scratch building. As a scratch builder i have developed many techniques of my own, but my basic method is still based on the Scalescenes method.

R024 Weighbridge/Coal Office - Scalescenes

I know you are anxious to get cracking and do some great modelling, but realistically you are at the beginning of a very long road, you face many steep learning curves in the years ahead. I love modelling because it is such a contrast from the instant gratification and speed of the modern world. All progress in modelling comes from slow, diligent, application, there are no quick wins. You can build a model of Harcourt Street, all that stand between you and that goal is acquiring the technical and artistic skills to do it. But that will take time. In my early years modelling I was always in a rush to see a finished product and would cut corners to speed things up, time has taught me the virtue of patience.

I would also endorse Flying Snails suggestion to check out the Chandwell Youtube channel. Michael at Chanwell is the man who sets the standards I aspire to achieving.

For some practical tips on surveying a building you want to model, check out the second half of this classic BBC Model World video.

 

 

 

That's such a lovely snapshot of the early 70s- or at least I assume that's the time period we're talking! Everything down to the half-hearted hi-vis jacket worn by the wonderful gentleman presenting. And a lovely layout to boot. Thanks for posting this clip.

[Galteemore]

The bearded gent is Bob Symes, an Austrian aristocrat who fled the Nazis and had a remarkable life. His WW2 service for instance - courtesy of Wikipedia…

After gaining the required letter of recommendation, due to his ability to speak German, French, Arabic and English, Symes was commissioned as a Lieutenant into the Royal Navy, operating Motor Torpedo Boats (MTBs) in the Mediterranean while based in Alexandria.[2][3] Quickly rising to command his own boat, he broke anti-torpedo measures in a raid on Tripoli.[2][3] After rising to the rank of Lieutenant Commander, he took part in protecting the landings that led to the liberation of Crete.[2][3]

[Kevin Sweeney]

7 minutes ago, Galteemore said:

The bearded gent is Bob Symes, an Austrian aristocrat who fled the Nazis and had a remarkable life. His WW2 service for instance - courtesy of Wikipedia…

After gaining the required letter of recommendation, due to his ability to speak German, French, Arabic and English, Symes was commissioned as a Lieutenant into the Royal Navy, operating Motor Torpedo Boats (MTBs) in the Mediterranean while based in Alexandria.[2][3] Quickly rising to command his own boat, he broke anti-torpedo measures in a raid on Tripoli.[2][3] After rising to the rank of Lieutenant Commander, he took part in protecting the landings that led to the liberation of Crete.[2][3]

A wonderful TV presenter, the personification of old school charm, a real action hero and a perfect gentleman. I have wonderful memories of watching him on BBC in my childhood, I think it was him who first stirred my interest in model making. Quite the contrast to the kind of zany morons that dominate todays media landscape.

[Mayner]

1 hour ago, LNERW1 said:

That's such a lovely snapshot of the early 70s- or at least I assume that's the time period we're talking! Everything down to the half-hearted hi-vis jacket worn by the wonderful gentleman presenting. 

The half-hearted hi-vis jacket takes me back to the mid 80s working for an Irish owned groundwork company on a Tesco construction site in London, possibly Wates as main contractor. At the time H&S was pretty much a top-down thing the main contractors managers wore hard hats and possibly hi-vis, safety gear (apart from boots (your own) pretty unknown for the contractors men (very few female construction workers then) till an edict went out that we had to wear high vis, it was mid winter and for several weeks I customarily wore an army surplus coat as my cloak of invisibility over my half-hearted hi vis jacket and no one form management said a word.

Anyway Bob Symes was an excellent presenter and a highly creative modeller who brought a sense of adventure to the hobby , I think he was involved in the building of diesel-electric powered Gauge 1 Class 47 a loco and possibly a diesel-hydraulic powered Class 35 or Hymek diesel. There was a series of articles on the building of the Class 47 with wonderful graphic (possibly hand drawn) illustrations in Model Railways magazine in the Mid-Late 70s, yeah those were the times!

[NorthWallDocker]

James, I once knew very well the places you wish to represent in miniature.  So I'm rooting for you.

You probably already considered the hard reality that, as much as the real places fascinate us, we cannot reproduce them in miniature.  We sometimes, though, can represent those places with the most iconic features.  

Thinking about the area you're describing, to me, the most memorable features are the Milltown bridge and the valley below.  The distance between, say, Milltown and Dundrum is not necessarily a memorable feature.  

Iain Rice wrote many inspiring, insightful books about representing the real world in miniature.  Before him, an American named John Armstrong wrote about model railway design.  You might want to spend time immersing yourself in them, if you haven't already.  I'm doing the same.

You probably are already thinking this, but "selective compression" of a real place into a representative miniature design is what allows us to make something recognizable. 

You'll also want to think about what you really want your end goal to "feel like."  Do you want to run model trains from one end to the other, recreating Harcourt Street Station to Foxrock (or Dundrum)?  Or might you want to represent the feeling of the railway line, perhaps by having an around-the-room set of relatively narrow modular layout sections (perhaps 12 inches to 18 inches deep), where the train leaves Harcourt Street Station, crosses Milltown bridge and the river valley, then pulls into Dundrum, then perhaps circles back past your terminus?

I look forward to your creative exploration.

[minister_for_hardship]

8 hours ago, LNERW1 said:

the half-hearted hi-vis jacket 

IE had those up to the 1990s aka The Bra.