# Breaking the Laws of Physics...



## ralphbrades (Jan 3, 2008)

Yes -it is I... When I left MLS after being rudely harrased by Greg Eassion I told Dwight that I would return when I had finished building my layout.

Well I have and so I have.

One of the points of his argument was tha track had to be set on a gravel bed. I stated that I was not doing this. He stated that I was fighting the Laws of Physics by nailing it to wood battens. I stayed that I was not and now after over five years I have laid dual mainline track (over 112 yards each road), there are two loops, (55 yds and 56 yds respectively). 

Each yard of track is nailed to the roofing felt covered battens at each fourth sleeper. All the points (turnouts) are hand made in my kitchen on top of my cooker. The diamonds I had to buy from the manufacturer as I cannot cut to 15 minutes of arc with a hack saw...

So - there you are. My layout is "Gauge '3'" or 63.5mm to a scale of 17/32 to the foot. All trackwork is to the "Berne Loading" as I have both English and European locomotives and rolling stock. The Great Central Railway was also built to tje Berne Loading Gauge. Which it would have had to have been to link Manchester to Paris.

Regards

ralph


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## backyardRR (Aug 14, 2012)

Welcome back Ralph. I would love to see photos.


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## Great Western (Jan 2, 2008)

Welcome back Ralph. Glad you have soldiered on with your railway.


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## ferroequinologist (May 8, 2016)

Yes some images please, and is "gauge 3" 1:22 scale ? I would love to see some trains in this magnificent scale
Russell


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Welcome back Raylph

Greg "Eassion"


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## ralphbrades (Jan 3, 2008)

Yes, Gauge '3' is 1:22.6, although it is also known as 2.5" gauge. The difference is that Gauge '3' is the largest of the scenic scales whilst 2..5" is the smallest of the tractive scales. These are very commonly the same locomotive! So, what would you like to see? I open my railway to visitors four times a year and the rails have steam, diesel and electric locomotives running on them. Visitors to my railway have to send e-mails to me telling me that they are coming and I normally send them "the welcome pack" which consists of a descriptive text file, a map to find me, and a plan of the layout.

So as a virtual vistors... This is most of the text file
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*The Cabbage Patch Railway*​
*The Track:*

The track is Code 250 Bullhead with ABS sleepers. The rail is a combination of 3 feet lengths of Brass G3S rail with 3 and 6 feet lengths of Cliff Barker S/Steel. Rail to Rail spacing is 160mm (6.29 inches). Minimum curve radius is 3.0m (10 feet) and all curves are gauge widened. With the exception of the two loops of the Cross Lawn transitional curves, all other curves are tangential. The outer loop is 4.0m equivalent and the inner loop 3.5m equivalent. Moghul locos (1-C or 2-6-0) are the largest that can operate on the inner loop, Pacific, Baltic and Adriatic locos must use the outer loop. The track is not powered but does use Zero Volt Line train detection system. There must be a conductive wheel set that shorts the rails somewhere for the system to operate.

*The Points:*

These are all flange runner types at 4.5m and 3.0m radius and are motor operated. All of them are spring loaded to the normal direction of travel. The points motors are Cobolt Omega and thus move *slowly...

The Signals:*

These are 4 aspect colour (LED). The control between points, feathers and signals interlock to the mimic board by the station. The signals will show double yellow when approaching facing points that diverge. Flashing Purple indicate areas of wrong way working. Feathers have a Flashing Amber LED to attract attention.

*The Base Board:*

This will take the weight of two seated adults. It is “flat” although the garden is not. The low point is the back door of the house and the high point, (circa 1m), is at the rear of the Summer House.

Scale and Real World Distances:

The track is a scale 1 and ¼ mile or 110 yards long.

The inner loop length is 5/8 of a mile or 55 yards.

The outer loop is ¾ of a mile or 66yards long.

Brassica Station is 4 chains or 4 yards long.

Kjuk Station is 2 chains long or 2 yards.

The “Dragstrip” is ¼ mile long or 22 yards.

The “Great North Straight” is ½ mile long or 44 yards.

The track is built to the “Berne Loading Gauge”, this is 160mm between rails.

*The Mimic Board:*

There are seven routes that are pre-set into the Mimic Board. The points may be manually moved overriding the pre-sets. Please ensure that you have closed off one route before opening another and shut off all pre-sets before going to manual points movement.

These are named after parts of the garden;

D Drag Strip

Q Quince Tree

N Noctis Bush

Y Yarrows

W Wind Tunnel

X Cross the Lawn

G Greenhouse

The system is a modern copy of a 1920’s Westinghouse “TYPE L” and uses relays and semiconductor diode logic.

White LEDs show OUT routes (L>R).

Blue LEDs show RETURN routes. (R>L).

Purple LEDs show wrong way working routes.

*The OHL System and Third rail:*

This is “supposed” to be a 1,500V DC & 660V DC from The Pierson Report “Electric Traction 1922”, however it is totally false and the power systems are not connected in any way. It is a combination of BTH and SSB systems. You may remove a 9 feet catenery length on a straight very easily -as it will unhook. Please ask for help on a curve as these have had to be made individually. Some of the “circuit contactor” boxes have been fitted with blue flickering LEDs as a realistic feature. They run off hidden AA batteries which last for about six hours. The Power House has a printed “Rotor Converter” for AC to DC power conversion and “Mercury Rectifiers” all with suitable flashing or flickering blue LEDs.

*Parking:*

The house is on a corner, parking space on the tarmac triangle is limited, (you may have find a space further away). It is up to you to cram as much and as many into your vehicle.

*Food and Drink:*

Tea, Coffee, Squash, plus Cakes and Biscuits. All home made and to old family recipes. If you have a fancy for fruit teas or speciality teas + coffees etc then please let me know and I will try and obtain them for you. If you need a special diet; [vegan, gluten free, halal, kosher], then again I will try to provide for you.

*About your Host:*

I am Deaf and going Blind. Please do not be insulted if I appear to ignore you. I lip read very well -but it can take me a couple of minutes to learn how you speak. There is a *Presence Button* to press on the front door, this is linked to the special flashing “door bell”.


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Over the years as it has been built the track has been used as a test track and demonstration area by a few of the local Gauge '3' manufacturers. One thing I have learned is to spray the track down with water after a "spirit burner" has run. There was a dribbler that ran before a coal burner and yes the trail of meths caught fire!!! My locos are either Battery electric, Gas fired steam, or IC using a marine glow plug engine.

Give me a couple of days to sort through the catalogue of shots. But as I said -tell me what you want to see.

regards

ralph


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## ferroequinologist (May 8, 2016)

Hi Ralph, sounds impressive and I am interested in steam so images you want to post of steam would be great as well as station or engine shed areas and do you have a track plan you can post as I am always interested in what track layout people use in the space available. I also do like overhead wire electric loco's especially older style ones.
Russell


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

I read some of the Cliff Barker site. Did you use code 180 or code 200? Did you use brass or stainless? Very interesting product line, and the nickel silver fishplates look fantastic.

Just wondering what components you used, and also if you run track power, he has some interesting suggestions for electrical conductivity between rail sections.










Greg


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## ralphbrades (Jan 3, 2008)

Greg Elmassian said:


> I read some of the Cliff Barker site. Did you use code 180 or code 200? Did you use brass or stainless? Very interesting product line, and the nickel silver fishplates look fantastic.
> 
> Just wondering what components you used, and also if you run track power, he has some interesting suggestions for electrical conductivity between rail sections.
> 
> ...


If you read the first paragraph of the Introduction Guide, you will see that I used code 250 rail. The rail used is a combination of brass and stainless steel in yard and 2 yard lengths. This is because the Gauge '3' Society rail was only supplied in brass. This supply dried up and Cliff Barker is now the only supplier of code 250 bullhead rail. The rest of the track is built from s/steel as supplied by him. He is also the Chairman of the Gauge '3' Society. I personally prefer to use brass rail for the production of points as it machines and Silver solders easier. At my latitudes using Tin solder is inadvisable as the -18°C winters cause the Tin to change allotrope and the joint crumbles away.

The track is unpowered. It is gauge '3' not gauge '1'. The Zero Volt system detects trains on a yard section of track. The current requirements of a G3 loco are far higher than those of a G1. The fishplates used are Acrylo Nitrile - non conductive. There are some "show" layouts using track power, (the 90 feet long Blackgangs being the most famous), but these rely on multiple AC PSU along its length. Most G3 locos pull around 120Watts so the consumption of an exhibition layout has to be in kilowatts... Hence on board battery and radio control dominate the G3 arena. The DELTANG radio control systems are the most common. I have built two TX23 controllers and most of my locos use the RX102 receiver boards. The only problem found (and it has happened to me) is the auto BIND function can latch to an already working transmitter on initial boot up. Typical ESCs are in the 20 ampere range. Some people are starting to experiment with 3 phase motors and LiPo bàttery packs. But at the moment I have only had one "demonstration tester" on my tracks at an open day.

Today I will probably start construction of the two points I have been asked to build. These will be 4500mm radius and yes they are Cliff Barker kits. Weather permitting, (the UV yesterday was less than 10minutes), I will nail down the sleepers to a piece of plywood and use plumbing weld to stick the chairs to the sleepers. I find using painting weld to be preferable to squirting MEK (methyl ethyl ketone) at the parts. The stainless steel rail is awaiting as is a bag of sleepers and a railrular of 4500mm radius to bend the outer curve from. 

Cliff Barker has a couple of YouTubes on points production and loco testing. I have a Kingscale 4MT which he shows testing. 

Regards

Ralph


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## ralphbrades (Jan 3, 2008)

Having thought about this for a bit... The easiest method would be to install a gallery viewer and let you sit and look to your hearts content. No, I didn't do any pointswork the burn time was down to 7 minutes. Just enough to walk to the greenhouse and then get back inside - fast.

All but one of the steam locos that are regulars on the track are made by Kingscale. These are mix of 14xx, 4MT, and Brittanias (both gas and coal fired). The odd one out is a "Venture" locomotive made from a kit of parts. This one has been made into an LNWR "Cauliflower" - you can produce three different locos from the same kit. Whilst the normal method used to raise steam is a centrfugal smoke stack fan. This one uses a variation on the up draught carburettor using an airbrush pump and is started on a diet of slices of paraffin and meths soaked old parquet tiles before coal peanuts are fed to the firebox. It looks really strange but is awesomely efficient.

Regards

ralph


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Don't know a lot about Gauge 3 locos, but would love to hear more. When you say 120 watts on a loco (which I understand) I'm curious are they AC or DC and what is the "conventional voltage"? 120 watts at 24 volts would be 5 amps, which is half of what my larger trains run.

Again, only curiosity, and also interested to hear about your steam locos. If this derails your thread too much, I understand.

BTW, a gallery would be great, we all love pictures.

Greg


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## ralphbrades (Jan 3, 2008)

The voltage used by the battery loco depends mostly on the builder. Most of the builders use 12 Volts DC or 14.4 Volts DC. This is a Sealed Lead acid or a set of NiMh "C" cells. I do know that Blackgangs uses 17V DC from a collection of PC ATX psus. I don't know of any external supplied AC to trackwork. Most of my locos use 12V DC fed from a bank of 12Ah batteries. I don't know of anyone using 24V DC as ESCs for that high a voltage are somewhat expensive. All of my ESCs are fan cooled as mostly the motors are pulling about 2.5amperes each. Normally a loco will have one or more motors per axle.

120 watts would be a small shunter 0-4-0 or 0-4-2 at most. My "Peak" aka Class 46 loco which is 1-C0-C0-1 has two motors per axle a central battery pack and two 20 ampere ESCs (one at each end), fed from a common RX102h receiver.

On the EE-1 each of the motors is wired with 30 ampere rated cable and fused at 20 amperes. There is a lot of difference between G1 and G3 than a simple multiplication of 1.35.

I am test building a diesel loco (-C-) this has two motors powering the central axle. The other test constructor is using a single motpr and feed back is is that it is way too under prowered. This is a re cut from a Gauge 1 set of plans. We did have to explain that you did need chassis frames made from 3mm steel plate and that you really did need roller bearing! The "little loco" weighs in at 6Kg...

Yes your locos might pull 250W+. But a G1 loco is a large model, a G3 loco is a small locomotive. As I said above, Gauge '3' is the largest of the scenic scales (i.e. pull scale carriages and wagons), 2.5" locos are the smallest of the tractive scales, (i.e.pull people). They are normally the same locomotive.

Consider what would have to be done to one of your Aristocraft locos to enable it to pull you. 

As I am a registered Boiler tester for the "Southern Federation of Model makers" Where would you like me to start?

Regards

Ralph


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## Nick Jr (Jan 2, 2008)

Ralph, glad you are back, keep posting. Some things haven't changed. Stay Well


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## ralphbrades (Jan 3, 2008)

Well having downloaded and installed the software into my domain name. Here is how to view the albums. Until I am sure the DNS has fully propagated -you have to do it the old fashioned way.






Gallery







c3820543.myzen.co.uk





There three albums daisy chain from the first.

regards

ralph


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

The gallery works well, great way to share photos.

I gather the ability to use gel cells (sealed lead acid) is because G3 will have more interior volume than G1. I know several people that like them for the traction the weight affords.

I'm surprised you need fan cooling on only 2.5 amps, but as you say 120 watts. Aren't all the ESC's PWM? I would think the heat output would be minimal using modern FETs.

Greg


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## ralphbrades (Jan 3, 2008)

No, Each Motor is pulling 2.5amperes. Thus on a 2-D0-2 with eight motors the draw is 20 amperes on a typical 12 volt feed. 

But this is not all of it... I2R rears its ugly head.

The heating effect is the SQUARE of the current used. Although in the above an Aristocraft loco pulls 240 Watts the heating effect is 100 (10x10) on a 24volt feed, the same G3 loco the system has a heating effect of 400 (20x20) on a 12 volt feed.

Hence forced cooling on the ESC.

I normally use Mktronics VIPER range as they are almost indestructable and the fitting of To22 heat sinks is simple. Then a 40mm 12volt fan completes the installation.

Motors with built in fans are common, especially those running 7.2volt "race packs". You are correct that Lead acid have a useful weight advantage - but you run into the problem of recharging a cell that might not fit in an upright position the Hydrogen vent is at the top.. As the plates are at the bottom of the cell the centre of gravity of the loco has to be calculated to within 100 gramme centimetres. 

It is not uncommon for a loco to be placed across two sets of bathroom scales and steel shot in bags moved around inside it. I did the same thing with left over "mosaic tiles" from the bathroom to balance up my Krokodil. Except I stuck them there with impact adhesive.

Regards

Ralph


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

One small note: motors are not pure resistive, so in your calculations above, your comparison appears to keep the resistance of the motor constant between different voltages, which is not the case. Motors are weird.

But I do see why you are fan cooling. Have you actually measured a 20 amp draw from the battery? That is pretty darn high, but of course the proof is in the pudding. 

I know you mentioned 24v escs are harder to come by, but at that amperage, your wire gauge must be pretty large.

Again, I've seen very few G3 installs, and also don't know the "hobby standard" weights of cars, etc.

Love to see an install in your gallery.

Greg


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## ralphbrades (Jan 3, 2008)

Yes I did simplify the maths... One for ease of meaning and secondly this android kbd lacks the correct symbols. Have I personally measured a 20 Ampere draw - the answer is yes - but only when pulling demonstration loads of say 20 wagons. As you state above this would only be twice the draw of one of your Aristocraft locos. I have a "smiley" Univeral AVO type 7 (1960's) which handles such ancient requirements, my modern Fluke would have been blown to pieces.

A common method of easing the drag is "independantly rotating wheels". This uses a fixed axle and dual bearing located in the boss of the wheel. Thus it is possible to rotate the wheels in opposing directions.

This helps remove the additional frictional loss during cornering. Gauge widening on the curves is also common, this is normally +1mm.

Curves in G3 are very tight. If we use the cheats rule that one yard is one chain then the curves reveal themselves to be real flange screamers. My curves are from 3.0m to 4.1m. This equates to 3.27 chains and 4.48 chains. The tightest curve on BR was 8 chains...

How we measure and state wire gauge is different... Here the diameter and number of conductors is used. But most people use what we call 2.5mm "trailer cable" for coupling a seven pole connector to the trafficators on the rear of a (say) a towed caravan. This takes 30 amperes with ease, is cheap and has the correct colour codes. This heavy duty cable is normally used simply for connecting the battery to the ESC and the DPDT isolation switch. From the ESC to the motors simple 5 ampere rated "red+black" twin cable can be used.

So, a G3 installation is of higher current than a G1 installation because the available ESCs and batteries limit the voltages that can be used. G1MRA states a 24volt track feed which is all well and good but this equipment is external and can use ambiant cooling. Twice the power requirements of an Aristocraft loco have to be crammed onto a G3 loco. 

I am a little busy at the moment but this evening after I return on the train home from St Pancras International I will create an album of wiring for you to examine and compare.

Regards

Ralph


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## ralphbrades (Jan 3, 2008)

Well after a 93minute dash from StPI to Derby Midland, I am sorry but nothing will replace the feel of 125mph in a class 43 InterCity...

Anyway I have uploaded a few albums. Let me know if there is anything that you need expanding.

Having dumped a wagon on a set of kitchen scales an RCH23 wagon weighs in at 1.45Kg. a Toad at 1.75Kg. Hefting an LMS 3rd class carriage - I would guess at around the 3Kg mark. There some manufactures of G3 rolling stock but more I would say are made by their owners. I have over 25 RCH23 wagons and at least 6 coaches. This would (to me) be a ruinous waste of my money. I prefer to enjoy building them myself.

I made a set of the infamous pink ICI salt wagons, only to have them "claimed" by a small girl to have her unicorn sit in and be pulled around the track...

Regards

Ralph


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## ralphbrades (Jan 3, 2008)

I have dumped a load of photos into the gallery. As I have said, have a look and tell me what you to see -or ask questions about?

regards

ralph


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Great stuff Ralph, thank you very much, will try to enjoy them this evening. Looks like a nice learning experience for me.

Greg


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## ralphbrades (Jan 3, 2008)

I will finish the gallery dump probably towards to end of this month. If anyone is contemplating G3 then you are advised to study "The Gauge '3' Wiki" . Start at "Route 1" by the time you have finished "Route 5" you will be ready to tackle the individual topics in part 2. The authors admit that it is a bit of a "grab bag" of things, photos and subjects.

But like the G1MRA " Technical Manuals" its main task is to provoke thought, provide ideas and facts and "show how to do it"...

www.Gauge3.info/wiki

The Gauge '3' Society is here

gauge3.org.uk

Regards

Ralph


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