Let there be Light(s)

So building on my previous article on testing of LED strips and their light output and such, I finally ordered another few sets of the best one in Cool White as well as few sets of the same LEDs in Warm White.

Upon arrival, I found that time does not stand still and the new ones were now of a type 5730 whereas the old ones were 5630.  Close enough I reckon. So into my shed I went and setup my test rig to measure the amps, volts and lux for the strips.

If you are comparing the measurements with my last ones, you will note I have adjusted to give it per metre rather than per 50 centimetre. It makes it easier when working out how much I need to buy to cover say a 6 metre layout or such.

So I did two measurements of the Cool White LED strips.

Then I did two measurements of the Warm White LED strips.

I then fired up both strips side by side. So here is a strip of Cool White towards us and the Warm White away from us.

And here are the results. So the Cool White is definitely the go for producing the most light for each watt of power you supply it. The Warm white is not as efficient, as the LEDs are actually coloured somehow and this tint reduces the light output.

BUT, the Warm White does have a place. I do think I may very well use a strip of each for my lighting so that at times I can turn off the Cool White and be left with quite a nice warm light that would reflect an early morning or late afternoon glow for the layout. I wouldn't just use only the Warm White all the time - definitely need the brighter and whiter light form the Cool White.

The Cool White LEDs are at the top and the Warm White LEDs at the bottom.

We've Been Workin' on the Railroad

So a few updates from the last few weeks. While Dave and Kev and Phil have been working away on some electrics on the HO layout, Peter and I have been busy down near the ravine and Bus Driver Paul has been busy working on the gravel pit.

So now that the track exiting the fiddle yard is in and all the point-work settled down and not causing problems, Dave and I put the original mountains back in place and adjusted the tunnel portals to suit the new trackage. Over time we will fit it in properly, but for now a little at a time will do. Here is a photo of each side of the hills.

For a while now Peter has been slowly carving his mountains down at the ravine and to the right of it as the track splits and either goes around the mountain or up the helix. Now Pete hasn't spilt his ice cream on the mountain here, he has just painted on his No More Gaps and Paint mix.

Here are some more shots after it has dried and firmed into a nice coloured base for the mountain faces.

Oh and the molded mountains on the left of the ravine are now in place and Peter will soon start to colour them up.

Bus Driver has been busy and is building a nice quarry at the end of the middle peninsula. Here is a photo of his progress so far.

And here is some of the work I've been doing. Since the top deck has been dropped a tad, the left hand corner of the ravine area was a little tight. So I have scalloped out some of the mountain that exists between the inner and outer mainline tracks. This will allow us to see into the small yard a bit better.

I expect we will make an almost vertical mountain face at the end of the small yard in due course - I have only so far gotten a slab of foam loosely balanced in place so far.

So till next time - happy trains.

Want to See Something DIRTY?

I was lucky enough to get a run over at Mr Kennedy's place the other Friday. These are always a lot of fun and we even run some trains!

It's been a little while since I was last there, but he's been a busy boy with some scenery. One particular area he has made is one of those dirty ones you hear of, and it was REALLY dirty indeed - I even snickered a bit.

Now out at the edge of Centertown, Missouri, there is this dirty place John had heard of. Being an ex copper, he may even have frequented similar places over here in Australia - he wasn't saying. But he has decided to model this on his layout as a talking point, and it sure is a talking point if I may say so!

It is dirty indeed - a dirty little pond and there are even birds hangin' around it - not a stitch of clothing on them either. Mind you, I've never seen swans with clothes on...

Let There be Light

In my clubs old newsletter, “Semaphore” Volume 22 No. 9 back in September of 2013, I did an article on LED strip lighting for use with layouts. In it I had gone and done some measurements of light output, amperage and so on of a selection of LED strip lights. Well, it is time for an update as time marches on and new products emerge all the time. Since that time, a few new LED types have come onto the market and are worth considering and I have gotten some in so as to test. So here goes.

I grabbed my old test rig which had the 4 strips of LEDs on it and found I just had room enough to attach the 2 new strips I had bought. 

So a bit of a re-jig, some soldering and I was ready. So I went into my shed and put up a bit of black cloth on the wall so as to not get too much reflection of light to ruin the measurements. I grabbed one of many cheap 12 volt 6 amp power packs I bought at the same time as the LEDs and plugged it in to only find no power coming out of it. Another was tried and the same result of no light. Strange. So I changed the plugs, power cord and extension lead all to no avail. So a third power pack was grabbed and voila, we had light. I then tested the power packs that weren’t working, and yep, they had just stopped working – dead as dodos. So in the bin with them – not as long life as a good decent power pack made for our conditions, that’s for sure. So here are all the LEDs aglow:

 This time I just set the light measuring gadget to about 50 cm away from the LED’s and took the one set of measurements for each LED type. I redid the tests to make sure that each reading was consistent as well. All strips were 50 cm long and were of the 600 LEDs per 5 metre roll sizing except the two new strips. The new strips were of the 50 cm aluminium backed type which are quite sturdy. These new types, and the old four, all contain the same number of LED’s per meter – 72. So for our tests here, there were 36 LED’s per strip. Oh, and all the LEDs were of the “Cool White” type as well. Here is a photo of the six types:

Test Results for 50 cm LED Strip (36 LEDs)
LED Type	mA per 50 cm	Voltage	Watts per 50 cm	Lux at 50 cm	Lux per Watt
7020	600	12.3	7.4	304	41
5630	470	12.3	5.8	445	77
5050	515	12.3	6.3	245	39
3528	170	12.3	2.1	124	59
5050 S	515	12.3	6.3	262	41
8520	645	12.3	7.9	432	54

Additional information: the 7020 and 8520 strips were of the solid aluminium backed type – nice and sturdy. The 5050 S type is a waterproof version and has silicon over it for that protection.

So we can see that the 5630 type LEDs strips are still a great bang per watt of input power. Now of course these are all “PK” measurements, so throw a bag of salt over your shoulder, but it gives you at least something to base your own voodoo guess on. Just a quick browse of eBay shows these selling at about 6-10 bucks per 5 metre strip.

And here is a closer shot of each of the strips lit up by themselves and merged into the one photo. It shows them better since they weren't fighting each other. The 7020 is at the top.

Digging Dirt and Dust

Well, last weekend after doing stuff at the club, I went looking for some more supplies for making ballast, as Dave and I had used up the meager supplies of suitable ballast I'd made a while back for sidings. We'd been testing it on some sidings on the HO layout and reckon it's not a bad ballast to use at all - and it's free (always a bonus). Here's a link to the club article where we show a bit of ballasting amongst other things.

http://rmcq.org.au/home/members-semaphore-rss/item/48-a-few-weeks-of-happenings

Anyway, so this ballast is slightly on the reddish side in colour and very dusty/dirty looking, so I reckon it is perfect for sidings that were ballasted quite a while ago. So more of this ballast will be required in the future, lots more.

So it off to my secret source - the bush. So it was off down Kremzow Rd near the club and to the very end of it and beyond. Right up until the road became a T intersection and I turned right onto Winn Rd, in the bush. I wont give away my exact location, but here is a photo of the sight which would then be found on the right hand side of the road. The red arrow points to where there is a gully that collects the runoff from the hillside and all the dirt and gravel as well. This pools in the gully and the water then runs off under the road and downhill further. If you wanted to find the spot, the photo is actually a pretty close rendition of what you'd see in Street View on Google Earth or Maps.

So I grabbed a 20 litre bucket and my small gardening trowel and a few sieves and into the gully I went. My spot is easy to find as it is not far from the road and is where all the gravel is.

The sieves were just so I could screen a handful of gravel to make sure it matched a sample I had with me from last time as I sort of wasn't 100% certain this was my source of this particular gravel - I have a few different gravels and sources. Once verified, I shoveled in about 15 litres of gravel and then hoofed it back uphill to the car and back to the club where I dropped it off to await next time.

Wednesday this week turned out to be "next time". So I spread myself out on the long workbench outside the club rooms and got myself sorted out ready for a dirty job. I had 2 and 4 litre  ice-cream containers, a pile of new Chinese food containers, all my sieves, a marker pen and my cup of coffee. I'll get to the marker pen later.

So you always start with the biggest sieve and work down. So I got the big rectangular one which I think is for frying Dim Sims and strained a couple of litres of gravel. So the raw material is on the far left, the leftovers that didn't go though on the left and the next pile in the middle.

So the left overs go into a container or two for use sometime in the future. You then repeat this process using the next strainer/sieve size down and so on. In the end I went through about 4 cups of coffee and seven or eight litres of raw gravel. I ended up with 7 grades of gravel. The 6 pictured below and the large stuff from that first Dim Sim sieve.

So from left to right, you have Dust, Z scale Ballast, N scale Ballast, HO scale Ballast, and a couple of larger sizes for scenery purposes. The Dust will make for great dirt roads I reckon.

And here is the HO Ballast in action.

See ya later fellas.

WedSatWedSat

Nope, it's not a wedding of satellites, but my antics at the club over the last 2 Wednesdays and Saturdays.

So on Wednesday the ninth, it was to start with some soldering. I now needed to complete the track work of the two small passing loops and siding. So I got the tools ready to wire the track into place. So drills were needed to get the wires from the top of the layout to underneath it. There of course was the wire, which in this case we use the solid core wire sold by Bunnings as bell wire or detonator wire. It comes in a figure eight configuration with one wire being white and the other white with a red stripe.

Now I clean the rail where I will solder the wires. I use a Dremel rotary tool with a rotary wire brush and run it against the side webbing of the rail. This cleans it up nicely and saves me having to use flux on the rails. Next I get the electric drill out and near the rails that are to get a dropper wire soldered to them, we drill a hole through the layout deck with a 2-3 mm drill. 

Next we part the figure eight wires for about the last 50-60 mm and strip about 5 mm of insulation from the end of each wire. Now we crawl under the layout and feed the wires up through the holes we just drilled. Of course we need to make sure we keep to the standard set for the layout for wiring of tracks. In our case we have made it that the outer rail will have the white wire with red stripe on it and the inner rail will have the plain white wire. So up goes the wires and then I can crawl out from under the layout.

In the meantime our trusty soldering iron has been warming up. Now I grab it carefully and tin the rail at the webbing we cleaned earlier. I also tin the ends of the wire that we exposed earlier as well. Temporarily we push aside the soldering iron as we bend the wire so it sits up close to the track and is as hidden as we can get. Normally once the rail is painted and the ballast goes down, you will not see the wire and solder join, which is just as we like it. So once bent we hold the wire against the rail and with a quick tap of the soldering iron melt the solder and the wire is electrically and mechanically secured.

So between the above heavy work and drinking copious amounts of coffee, the morning disappeared fast. So it was now time for running of trains. So I got to test my work. So I setup a train of box cars with a caboose and a small shunter to haul it all.  With the new siding and also passing loop, I was able to haul a long train into the loop and push back the caboose and excess wagons into the siding. The remaining wagons with loco then fitted into the passing loop where the loco left the wagons and was able to run around them to be able to push them into the sidings off to the right.

 

The Saturday saw the club's annual Xmas bash and Modelling Competition. As usual it was a good day and some good modelling to look at. For pics of the models, head over to Craigs blog for a squiz - http://ca55ino.blogspot.com.au/

Not in the comp, but I reckon well worthy of it was some first runs off of Johnny J's new molds he made of an Aussi loco. Yummy I reckon!

Also not part of the comp is ther stuff Dave is working on. He brought in to show off, his new circuit boards he's been making that will marry up with the displays for the points controls as well as control the points with servos.

Now on the following Wednesday, it was time for me to fill in the gaps and holes and lay on some earthly structure around the trackage I've laid. So it was out with my trusty ice-cream container and mixed up some No More Gaps and brown paint to act as the base to hold the Vermiculite. This then makes my structural "putty' with which to sculpt the scenery.

So the two passing loops got some attention to fix what I had to strip away to lay the track.

With some left over I was able to add a bit to the helix area on the bottom deck.

There was just enough time before train running time, for me to brush some 50/50 white glue and water mix on the sculptured areas and sprinkle a good coating of fine dirt on it.

Again I think we did a bit too much coffee and talking, as that was about it for work on the day - running trains came next. Me, I got into installing decoders in my Via Rail locos I'd been meaning to do for ages. That will be part of an article some other time.

So Saturday, yesterday, I took my spray painting gear down to the club. It was time to paint up some track that has been worked on over the last twelve months since I last painted the place. So again I used Tamiya Acrylic paints. I used Tamiya XF53 - Neutral Grey and XF64 - Red Brown, mixed 50/50 and then added about 50% thinners to the lot for my mix. It is what I used before for the yard and sidings and that was the main work for the day.

I also did some spare sleepers for sliding in on the big bridge Peter is working on. You can also see where the track laid while I painted it for the bridge as well - foam goes over the top of this area, so no probs with my mess.

So the wye got a lick of paint, as did the stock yard siding.

While I was painting, Peter A was at it puttying up the sides of the ravine with similar putty mix I use - ie No More Gaps and Vermiculite.

The River as been irking me for a while now ever since I painted it sky blue with left over skyboard paint just to cover up the scratches and markings on it. So with a bit of blue and green poster paint - I roughly fixed it - lots better now for the next 1-2 years until someone does something permanently for it.

Now back to my rum and coke - CYA.