Gartell light railway exhibition

There's no better place for a model railway exhibition than at a railway!

The Gartell Light Railway is a small narrow gauge system that runs along part of the old S&D trackbed and as a fan of the S&D I was more than happy to attend.

The layout's been stored away in the cold, damp garage for over two and a half months. It's wise to expect problems.

We arrived on a cold and wet Saturday morning and began setting up. Straight away it was noted that one of the rear boards, which stack on top of the front boards, with supports at each end, had a very prominent sag in it. A rethink on the stacking when at home is needed but thankfully once the board was fitted the correct way up, it eased itself back into shape and caused no issues.

The layout legs were challenging to fit, the pine timber has clearly expanded somewhat in the cold garage but eventually everything went together and it was quite pleasing to see not one single track short - the layout fired straight up, which was a huge relief.

The shuttle system, having recently been updated at home to an Arduino control was soon put through its paces, that is until a train on the outer loop struck the station signal, catching the live supply to the red LED, sending 12 volts down a feed controlled by the Arduino and rated at only 5 volts.

Thinking that I'd fried yet another Arduino, I carried a spare, un-programmed one just in case. Just a matter of hooking it up to the laptop, sending the sketch to it and plugging back in. Sadly I hadn't fully tested the laptop after installing Windows 10 and then discovered that although the USB port would power the device, I couldn't read from it or send the sketch until I'd updated the USB drivers, and with no internet or phone signal this wasn't possible. 

I soon realised however that the original device, when plugged into the laptop, appeared to be operating as the indicator lights within the unit still seemed to mimic one of the signals. So with nothing to lose, I plugged it back into the circuit board... Nothing.

It turns out that my little "modification" to lower the input voltage had actually lowered the voltage a little too much. Once all the other 12v accessories within the layout were in use, there wasn't enough power coming into the Arduino, so it shut down. After hooking the USB cable up to the laptop it came back to life, although not surprisingly the red signal in the main station didn't work. 

With that drama resolved, we settled down to a day of running. I took the opportunity of bringing along the Hornby VEP and bubble car, as well as the Bachmann class 25 diesel and the recent City of Liverpool restoration and the final of the four scrapheap locos - Dorchester Castle. The VEP finally works properly, running quite happily on the outer loop and even the upper loop. The class 25 was able to pull seven tinplate coaches, which is impressive. The bubble car also ran faultlessly on the straight shuttle section. This now has metal tinplate coach wheels fitted in the non-motorised bogie. The VEP has Bo-Bo driving wheels!

City of Liverpool also proved to be a strong and quiet runner as did Dorchester Castle. Both saw excessive use to make sure that they were properly run-in.

With Saturday's session over, we returned on Sunday to find no power. After replacing an extension lead there were still no lights on the control panel, no signals, just track power via the controllers. The 16v DC laptop power supply that's been happily powering the layout since it was built had failed, and I didn't have a replacement.

After a MacGuyver-ish attempt to create a rectifier circuit using four diodes which I hooked up to the transformer that powers the sidings, I also managed to fry this transformer so we resorted to borrowing a Duette controller to run the points and lights (thanks Steve!) and kept the points and turntable movements to a minimum. This meant not swapping locos as frequently as normal and Dorchester Castle spending almost the entire day on the inner loop, thankfully without issue.

The blue & grey EMU also made an appearance, I knew it was a sluggish runner but decided to give it a run anyway. Whilst it did initially run reasonably well, by Sunday afternoon it had had enough and slowed to a stop. I'll need to check the armature for damage but it will need a remag.

With another exhibition next weekend, the pressure's on to repair the control panel. Although I have a spare laptop charger, I've opted to replace all of the transformers within the control panel and use a chassis mounted transformer for lighting and accessories. The panel is still running with the remnants of the old Duettes and with ten exhibitions this year, and Warley next year, I think it's wise to update everything and keep a spare transformer just in case.

Hopefully the transformers will arrive before the weekend!

Yet again we were very well received, more requests to attend exhibitions etc.

A few pictures from the weekend:

Only two of the locomotives in this picture weren't painted by me! (Duchess of Montrose & LMS 2-6-4)

City of Liverpool on its maiden run, looking far better than I remembered!

Duchess of Abercorn, one of the scrapheap projects, also saw use this weekend.

Busy station!

The Hornby VEP is on the outer loop. Duchess of Abercorn is on the mail train and Dorchester Castle is paired with Bristol Castle. Dorchester Castle looked stunning and is without doubt my favourite restoration project.

On the other side of the main station, the only two Hornby models, both of which have caused major headaches to get them to run properly, are behaving and running nicely. The bubble car is about to depart.

Considering Hornby's current financial woes, it seemed only fair to promote them a bit!

Having tested it on the outer loop successfully, I experimented with the Bachmann class 25 on the upper loop. Although slowing on the tight reverse curves, it happily pulled seven tinplate coaches. In fact of all the locomotive combinations we tried on the top loop, this was by far the most reliable! 

The seven coaches can be seen, with the class 25 just disappearing through the back scenery.

Although there were several challenges, it was a very enjoyable weekend. We'll be back at Gartell in 2018!

Video footage to follow...