General.
Rochwood is a "00" gauge layout
which was originally started as a "Garage" layout by one
of the club members who has now moved to the South Coast. He left
the project to the club and it has since been greatly extended to
become 20 ft. by 10.5 ft. in size.
The layout depicts late steam and early
diesel at a fictitious location somewhere in the Midlands.
Track Plan The layout
is a double track round and round with both the inner and outer
tracks having 7 storage tracks at the rear.
Each of the storage tracks can hold 2 trains which would allow a
total of 28 trains to be held ready for running.
At the front of the layout is the mainline station which as well as
the through lines has 2 loop platforms with tracks leading to Engine
Shed and Goods Yards
Electric's
And Control
Track selection for the storage sidings is done by a single
press of a push to make switch sending current from a large
capacitor through a diode matrix to the correct point combination
for the required siding.
Home made electric uncouplers are used in the goods yards and will
work with any brand of tension lock coupling but they were
specifically built to operate with the Bachmann ones.
3 home made control units are employed (simple power transistor and
potentiometer), one for each of the main lines and another for the
loops and goods yards. Control of the station loop platforms depends
on the position of the points so that if the route is such that a
train is to run into or be driven out of a loop then control of that
track is passed from the goods controller to the main line.
This is done with auxiliary switches under the points leading to
the loop platforms.
(See below for a description of the DCC
option now included on the layout)
Future Plans
Much work has been done over the last couple
of months with the conversion of the bay platforms into full
runaround and passing loops. This has reached the stage where all
the track has been laid and the electrics have been part installed
to allow testing of the changes.
So far it looks as though the changes will
allow much more operating potential with the dropping of and
collection of goods trains on the inner circuit and loco changes to
take place on the outer one. The scenics to compliment these changes
are now under way along with an additional connecting cable from the
control panel to the boards affected by the changes.
Thought are
also turning to perhaps installing a turntable on the layout but
that will mean a massive alteration to the track plan at the left of
the front section. If this is done it will probable be after our
next exhibition.
Rochwood goes digital. (4th October
2008)
Having
purchased the DCC master, booster, and control units for our new
layout ( Lostwood Bridge ) it seemed very feasibly that we could use
the same items to make Rochwood controllable by DCC. To this end the
DCC items have been made into a self contained unit that can be
plugged into either layout.
After fitting 5 pin Din sockets to the
control panels of Rochwood and making these as the standard
connection for both layouts, test were then carried out on Rochwood
to see if it all worked.
So successful were these tests that it is
very likely that we will be using DCC control on the layout at both
the forthcoming exhibition at Hazel Grove and at our own 2009
exhibition at Heywood civic.
No changes were needed to the layout to make
DCC work. It is simply a matter of setting the DC direction switches
on the control panels to "Centre Off" and then inserting
in the 5 pin Din plugs.
So now the whole layout or just each section
can be run by either DCC or conventional DC.
The only slight drawback is that the storage
sidings are still power fed through the points which means that
trains stored there do not have power at all times causing things
like lights etc. to turn off when another siding is selected.
However it is only a matter of pressing F0 in the controller to
bring them back on and indeed when they come back on its a positive
indication that the points have been set correctly. |
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