Water Level Route Glad to hear you are back home.
Glad to hear you are back home.
Likewise. Always good to have the crew back on board.
Just need two or three back.
David
To the world you are someone. To someone you are the world
I cannot afford the luxury of a negative thought
That's good news, Dave. Hope you can keep us all informed on the garage progress.
What did you finally decide on the floor?
York1 John
Hi John,
I'm going to have the floor refinished with one of the modern epoxy replacements. Traditional epoxy tends to turn yellow over time. The newer stuff does not. I just have to choose a supplier and a colour.
I want to have everything else in the garage done before we tackle the floor. It will not be cheap. The closer I look at the floor, the worse I realize the condition is. It's going to require a fair bit of grinding to get down to a solid surface.
The steel plate that will be used to cover the extension cord that runs to the layout has arrived. It is much more substantial than I thought it would be so no worries about the cord getting damaged.
Cheers!!
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
In the process of cleaning out the garage we had to move the layout around a bit. It was more difficult than I had hoped it would be. The 4" casters aren't quite up to the task. I figure that even with the floor refinished it will still be reasonably hard to move. I looked at installing larger casters but they are really expensive.
I came up with a solution which will be economical and easy to install, and which should improve the rolling charactaristics considerably. I decided to simply add a second set of 4" casters to the base frames. That will double the contact surface, or, to put it a different way, it will cut the weight on each caster by half therein reducing the rolling resistance of each caster. Whether it will make a change overall has yet to be determined.
I'll have to wait a bit to see if my theory works. My nephew, who will be helping me build the yard benchwork, has just been exposed to Covid so if he gets sick it will be the better part of a month before he can do the work.
The layout and garage improvements are in a bit of a holding pattern right now. I'm waiting to get a quote for all the drywall and electrical work, and I'm waiting to make sure that our nephew is free of covid before I bring him back to help out.
In the mean time, I have found a local printer who can print the track plan 1:1 on 3' wide paper. They are surprisingly inexpensive. The only thing I have to do regarding that is to figure out how to convert the 3rd PlanIt drawings to a pdf. I have asked Eldorado Software (3rd PlanIt) for hints on how to do that, but if anyone here has the answer I would greatly appreciate your help.
Sounds good to me Dave. Glad ya finally made it home.
TF
hon30critter The layout and garage improvements are in a bit of a holding pattern right now. I'm waiting to get a quote for all the drywall and electrical work, and I'm waiting to make sure that our nephew is free of covid before I bring him back to help out. In the mean time, I have found a local printer who can print the track plan 1:1 on 3' wide paper. They are surprisingly inexpensive. The only thing I have to do regarding that is to figure out how to convert the 3rd PlanIt drawings to a pdf. I have asked Eldorado Software (3rd PlanIt) for hints on how to do that, but if anyone here has the answer I would greatly appreciate your help. Cheers!! Dave
https://groups.io/g/3rdplanit/topic/printing_to_pdf/31823586
Rich
Alton Junction
I have always found in our hobby that 1-1 layout templates except in small doses (once had a curved trestle that it helped with) did no good, to many varibles and being ever so slightly off on one area can affect the other end of the layout. Also sometimes things need to be adjusted for varius reasons.
rrebell I have always found in our hobby that 1-1 layout templates except in small doses (once had a curved trestle that it helped with) did no good, to many varibles and being ever so slightly off on one area can affect the other end of the layout. Also sometimes things need to be adjusted for varius reasons.
richhotrain rrebell I have always found in our hobby that 1-1 layout templates except in small doses (once had a curved trestle that it helped with) did no good, to many varibles and being ever so slightly off on one area can affect the other end of the layout. Also sometimes things need to be adjusted for varius reasons. Agreed, and I have always found the easiest method to be a pad of quadrille paper and a pencil to rough out the layout plan. Rich
Agreed, and I have always found the easiest method to be a pad of quadrille paper and a pencil to rough out the layout plan.
Not to hijack Daves's thread but I also agree. Having helped put track down from a computer-generated plan, it needed just as much fine-tuning as a pencil and paper plan would have. I have done both, I enjoy messing around with the computer-generated layout plans, however, give me a pencil, graph paper and kitchen table any day over the computer in the office.
I bought this giant pad of graph paper for $7.00 at Staples. Each square is 1" and represents 1' of the room.
My thinking is that if my plan was on the computer I would reference that as I laid down the track just as I would with the graph paper. I am however one of those people who can easily do things in their head from building plans to math equations so that may make a difference.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
BATMAN richhotrain rrebell I have always found in our hobby that 1-1 layout templates except in small doses (once had a curved trestle that it helped with) did no good, to many varibles and being ever so slightly off on one area can affect the other end of the layout. Also sometimes things need to be adjusted for varius reasons. Agreed, and I have always found the easiest method to be a pad of quadrille paper and a pencil to rough out the layout plan. Rich Not to hijack Daves's thread but I also agree. Having helped put track down from a computer-generated plan, it needed just as much fine-tuning as a pencil and paper plan would have. I have done both, I enjoy messing around with the computer-generated layout plans, however, give me a pencil, graph paper and kitchen table any day over the computer in the office. I bought this giant pad of graph paper for $7.00 at Staples. Each square is 1" and represents 1' of the room. My thinking is that if my plan was on the computer I would reference that as I laid down the track just as I would with the graph paper. I am however one of those people who can easily do things in their head from building plans to math equations so that may make a difference.
I'm in agreement as well. Computer generated or laid out manually, you either like what you see from the starting point, or ya don't. With anything, some changes and tweaks always come later.
Hi guys,
Thanks for all the suggestions!
A few points:
I printed my first track 1:1 plan for this layout on 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of paper and taped them all together. As has been said, things did not line up perfectly but they were close enough that the track plan wasn't badly affected. They were accurate enough that the track could be laid following the printouts.
When I was working on my old club's layout I plotted the three points of each turnout and the track positions on a smaller grid and it was fairly easy to transfer those positions to the actual layout using x-y coordinates. 3rd Planit made it easy to plot the positions for each piece of track.
My reason for using the large printouts is that I am trying to follow Peter Lloyd-Lee's method for laying track on large layouts. He uses 3' wide printouts x however long is needed and it seems to work well for him.
I'll let you know which way I decide to go. Right now, plotting the points seems to be the most economical but it is time consuming.
richhotrainDave, click on the link below which will take you to a groups.io thread. One poster refers to an earlier link that he had posted. Further down in the thread, that link is included in a subsequent post. No guarantee that it will provide your answer, but give it a try.
Hi Rich,
I was able to figure out how to get the layout plan printed as a pdf., but what I haven't figured out is how to get that information onto a memory stick so I can take it to the printer. I'll keep trying. If I can do that I'll get the track plan printed simply because it will be a whole lot easier to transfer the plan to the layout. I'll use wallpaper paste to glue it down.
hon30critter richhotrain Dave, click on the link below which will take you to a groups.io thread. One poster refers to an earlier link that he had posted. Further down in the thread, that link is included in a subsequent post. No guarantee that it will provide your answer, but give it a try. Hi Rich, I was able to figure out how to get the layout plan printed as a pdf., but what I haven't figured out is how to get that information onto a memory stick so I can take it to the printer. I'll keep trying. Cheers!! Dave
richhotrain Dave, click on the link below which will take you to a groups.io thread. One poster refers to an earlier link that he had posted. Further down in the thread, that link is included in a subsequent post. No guarantee that it will provide your answer, but give it a try.
I was able to figure out how to get the layout plan printed as a pdf., but what I haven't figured out is how to get that information onto a memory stick so I can take it to the printer. I'll keep trying.
Thanks Rich. I'm such a dinosaur that the thought never occurred to me!
What I did to make sure the plan worked in 1-1 is I got old cheap brass secional track and laid out the curves on the layout and just set my turnouts where needed and used straight peices too to start the long runs like in sidings etc. This worked out great and didn't take to many peices as i did one section at a time, of course it was not 100% on but got me very close and I could verify clearances for sidings to make sure the could hold what was needed. I used a sharpy to mark the centerline of the track for laying of the cork. This method kept me in the ball park of what was needed and helped me modify what needed to be. Used this on the trestle also but there I got a large peice of paper and just spray painted the track and used it as a template for the curve.
Hi Dave. Are you using Windows? If yes, you should be able to "print" a PDF file. Go in your track design software, click on the print function, but before clicking on PRINT, you need to change your printer (your default printer should appear somewhere on the print window). Change your printer to "Microsoft print to PDF". Select that, and when you click PRINT, it should ask you where to save the PDF file.
Anyway, that's how it works on my computer.
Simon
He has figured out how to "print" a PDF file. What he needs to figure it out is how to move the PDF file to a memory stick.
You just save the file somewhere on your drive, and use "file explorer" to copy the file on a USB stick. The complicated part is getting the PDF file.
Hi gang,
I'm back in the hospital. Last Thursday night I started to feel lousy again. Extreme weakness, loss of balance, foggy brain.....I called an ambulance early on Friday morning.
I thought it was low sodium again but that wasn't the case. The doctors believe that the symptoms were indicative of toxins built up in my body and brain thanks to my liver not working properly.
It is now Sunday afternoon and I am feeling better but not quite 100%. Hopefully I will be out tomorrow.
Continued thoughts and prayers.
Well the good news is the liver can regenerate, as long as you get rid of what damaged it. There were medicines to help it along at one time but don't know if they are still used. Hope you feel better, these things keep cropping up as we age, don't I know that.
Dave. Our Thoughts & Prayers for a speedy recovery.
David & Dawn
Most of you know that I am prone to suffering disasters. Well, I may have done myself one better!!
I was having some trouble with my computer so I decided to reset it. I chose the option that would save all my files but guess what - it didn't! It saved all the files but the vast majority are now empty. That includes 90% of my model railroad files.
I will take the hard drive to a computer shop to see if they can undo my stupidity.
The good part is that I have spent so much time refining the plans that I know most of them by heart.
Dianne is back on Wednesday so at least I have that to look forward to.
Not as bad as I thought.
The reset removed some software like 3rd PlanIt. I managed to reinstall 3rd PlanIt and voila!, the missing file contents were right there where the should have been! One problem solved.
The reset removed a bunch of other programs as well so I will have to find them on the internet and download them again.
Whew!!!
So how you been feeling?
Hi rrebell,
Thanks for asking. I am feeling much better than I was when I left the hospital. I felt well enough today to drive to our grandson's 1st birthday party in Barrie. I only stayed for an hour or so. By the time I got home I was exhausted. I'm going to have to do some strengthening exercises for legs. Right now they are pretty weak.
Next step with the layout is to have the drywall/lighting contractor in to do a final quote. I haven't a clue how much that will be. I have set a pretty high budget so I don't think I'm going to suffer from sticker shock.
While I'm waiting for the contractor's quote I'm going to do an inventory of the supplies I already have on hand for the layout. I have a couple dozen spools of wire, some of which may be useful, some not. I have a ton of wall warts but I suspect that half of them are not the right voltage. I'm not even sure if I want to use wall warts at all. They seem like a messy solution. I have a large 12v power supply which is capable of 20 amps but it is actually 10 - 2 amp fused supplies in one unit. That, along with suitable step down circuits, would make for a very clean installation and I can get whatever voltages I need from it.
One thing I need to determine is how many volts I am going to run the tortoises on. I have a lot of LEDs in series with the motors and only 12 volts may make the tortoises run pretty slow. I may invest in a small 16 or 18v power supply.
Your opinions on my power supply plans would be greatly appreciated.
I just bought 10 - 100' spools of 20 ga. solid wire in various colours from Digi-Key. Good thing the shipping was free!!!
I decided to buy two power supplies for the tortoises, one 15v and one 18v. The reason for the two different voltages is that some of the tortoise circuits have more LEDs in series than the others. I'm hoping that the different voltages will compensate for the different numbers of LEDs which should make the tortoises themselves operate at about the same speed. At least, that's the theory!