LG Update!

For many reasons I have not been doing anything with the layout for a while, as some of you will know I have been doing things like getting married and building a 20ft railway shed! As LG has been invited to SWING 2019 and it is hoped to show it at Burton, I have realised that it is time to get stuck in.
My 2 main goals for this month are;
1. To complete the widening of the boards, for scenic space
2. To update the point control, wiring and control panel.
The rear of the boards are being extended by about 4 inches, to allow the scenery to fade into the back boards and wings This will allow space for some low relief houses and some trees.
I have decided to give servo point control a try, as it seems more gentle for the old hand soldered points, to this end I have acquired a MERG servo controller and some cheap servo's. I think it will prove to be a cheaper way of point control than some of the alternatives.
The wiring needs to be made suitable for both DC and DCC use and the control panel also.

Firstly it is with great sadness that I heard that Roy Thurston, the builder of Lansdowne Green passed away on June 18th 2017. I only met him the once, although I had several telephone conversations and email exchanges with him. He was one of the very early members of the 7mmNGA (member number 14!) and a true Gentleman. Since I had promised to keep him up to date with the renovation of Lansdowne Green I am sorry that I did not manage to get it fully restored. I hope to be able to invite his family to the first working outing of the layout, once it is ready to show Work on the layout has been on a back burner as the exhibition season has been taking much of my time. However, with a huge amount of help from Chris we have replace some of the baseboard timbers, which were cracking due to age, and started to extend the board backwards to make the back scene fit in better. We have also managed to finish the modular change over board, which allows Lansdowne to be connected to Slindon, Chris's modular board The most recent achievement has been to make new transport and storage boards to allow the module to be moved around with less likelihood of damage!
Current on-going work includes a second modular interface board to allow connection to Pallingham Quay, my original Slindon module. Pallingham had a short spell as a Gn15 layout, but was built to the specifications of Slindon, so reverting to 0:16.5 will be simply a matter of adding the correct scenery! On Lansdowne Green itself I am continuing with the rearwards extension to give the back-scene more space I will review the leg supports once the board is fitted with back-scene and sidewalls, as the current legs may not be stable enough for the extended board.

 Now that the better weather is with us I have started to build the boards which will allow us to connect Lansdowne Green

to Slindon Vale;

As Lansdowne Green was designed to be viewed from both sides, whereas the Slindon Vale concept sees each module as an individual scene, with a back-scene and a theatre front, we had to decide which side of Lansdowne was to be the front! We agreed that the track should leave the baseboard at the back, making it easier to hide the crossing join.. 

A couple of sessions with Chris Davies as well as some time spent at Southbourne Men's Shed have finished the board and a set of lightweight legs for it.

Did some work this weekend!

Stupidly I took no pictures this weekend! We had a group Pratt and Tickle session in the workshops of the Southbourne Men's Shed, where we worked on Doug's new layout for the Narr-O show on April 22 in Merston. Lansdown Green had quite a bit done to iot, the legs were shortened to fit the height of the Slindon Vale modules and height adjusters were fitted. I also cut ply for the back scene and the side walls, planning to try and fit them at the Bacon and Bash session to be held at Pagham Church Hall on 25 March.

Just an Update!

Not a huge amount to add today, after a couple of bad months health wise,but just to keep the flow going;
Lansdowne green is going to a Group 'Pratt and Tickle' session this weekend at Southbourne Men's Shed, where both Doug and I are members, to enable me to start on the construction of both extensions and side and back walls. I have been working through the wiring with my trusty (Ex MoD) AVO 8 mk5   an old but utterly reliable measuring device! (Not unlike some of our club

members, old but reliable!) I have also managed to blow and vacuum off a lot of the signs of age from the boards leaving a much nicer look altogether. I'm not sure if the difference is clear on these photo's, but it's easy to see  'in the flesh' so to speak!

Before Cleaning

It has been decided to make some concessions to progress, and replace the 40 year old H&M solenoids with R/C servos. just as soon as we can find a suitable controller for them. I also want to make a new control panel, as that will not be in the public eye, and rewire the layout to enable DCC OR DC running, to fit in with the rest of the Slindon Vale concept.

After Cleaning

The investigation of the wiring has shown that several places where a break is needed there is none, (after points being the main problem) and in a couple of instances there is no feed to the track where there should be. All minor stuff which will be easily remedied as soon as things are re wired.

Anyway the asylum is calling, so I'd better get back before Matron ups my medications to keep me from wandering off!

Plans and plottings

Well quite a lot, and there again nothing has happened since the last post! I took LG to a practical session at the home of our area group secretary, Richard Rundle. We set the boards up, and were pleased to find that they are only a couple of inches higher than our own system (The Slindon Valley Light Railway), so height will be a simple fix. Chris Davies, the 'Lord High Everything Else' of the Southdowns Area Group 7mm NGA designed the modular parameters for Slindon and he agreed that the only challenge was going to be getting from the track exit of LG, just a couple of inches from the back of the board, to the Slindon standard, in the centre of the board. It was decided, over several mugs of hot beverages, supplied by Richards long suffering wife, and general expert on Resturants, Wendy, the we would manufacture 2 adapter boards, hidden from public view, to;
 a) change from side to centre track crossing,
and b). to enable the use of Peco code 75 to code 100 adapter tracks, as LG is code 70 and the Peco flexi 0;16.5 track is code 100.

I favour a 90 deg turn on at least one board, to enable us to set up a longer run, in a shorter space! The other major work will be to include wings and a back scene, to make it, like the other Slindon modules, a self contained section of layout, connected electrically and physically, but not visually.

The final change would have to be the present very Welsh appearance to a more Sussex one! Much of the scenery needs refreshing anyway, so would you after so many years on inactivity! The buildings will be repainted to represent Sussex Sandstone, the slate roofs can remain. Some of the walls can also become sandstone, the others will either need to become flint or hedges, again both fairly simple tasks! I plan on doing some re wiring as I prefer individual control of each point, rather that one click changes points in a set route. The latter makes it hard to tell if all the points changed, so the former is a little more work, but it allows for not seeing a point, but hearing the "thunk" of the H&M solenoid. We also decided to add a couple of inches to the back, to allow the construction of a roadway, to break up the flat appearance of the board.
All in all there is not a huge amount to do, apart from the obvious, to get LG running with our own modules. One last question is, do we keep the name, Lansdowne Green, or do we go for a genuine place in the right area. Since the railway IS fictional, I'm inclined to go with keeping the name as is, and just adding the place on the map, to a location that fits the scenario.
Finnaly, this weekend just gone saw us going to ExpoNG, at Swanley, where I met up with 2 of the original Cottesmore guys, Laurence Murray and Geoff Thorne, and took custody of the board joining template and the scenery template. These allow lining up modules to Cottesmore standards, and will be a great help in building the connector boards.

 Slindon Vale photo's courtesy of Chris Davies
Cottesmore templates courtesy of Laurence Murray Worton Court Blog.

The Green has its first outing!

Southbourne Men's Shed had an open day and Macmillan coffee morning today, and Lansdowne Green was there! I tried all afternoon yesterday to get it running, but sadly, as well as the mains unit not playing ball, the points on one board would only move in one direction, and the power to the track was also not 100%.so it was decided, rather than having a poorly functioning layout on show, we would simply set it up as a static "work in progress"

 Rather than mess around with the legs, which I need to add to for the second half of the baseboard, I set up on a couple of tables. I intend to make a back scene and wings, as per Slindon Vale (Second layout down on this link), which will, I hope,improve the overall effect.
The layout, and the add on board, were received with much interest, and may people commented on the quality of the modelling on display! Although there were fewer visitors than we might have hoped for, the coffee morning raised over £100 for Macmillan!

So all in all the layout is easy toput up, take down and transport, and once the electrics are sorted I can start to see just what stock will run on the code 70 track!
Watch this space!