Up, Up and Awayyyyy

I do love a big lash-up.  So with that in mind, you do need your multiple locos in that lash-up to all be running pretty much the same speed and respond the same way.  To that end, I need to have a speed matching track.  One of the chaps at the club did one up, thanks Peter A, and at the club we can now match N scale, HO scale and HOn3½ locos with JMRI and the DCC++ system.  It is also handy for running in locos and testing a loco for proper operation.

Since I can't easily get 1200 x 2400 sheets of XPS foam, I got 4 sheets of 30 mm thick XPS foam from Bunnings at 600 x 1200 mm size. With 2 aligned this way and 2 aligned that way, they come out solid as a rock and at the 1200 x 1200 mm size I want.  I used Polyurethane glue that expands slighty, to glue it together. A pile of home made ballast, dirt and rock containers for weight, kept it all down and together for the few hours the glue took to set.

Next I laid down some cork and gave it a quick lick of grey paint to simulate ballast for now and once dry, glued down my dual guage track to cater for my Standard and Narrow gauge HO scale locos.  I just used large pins to hold the track down whilst my glue, 50/50 white glue/water, was dribbled over the track to hold it down sufficiently.

I decided to make a decent job of it and got some 12 x 65 mm and 18 x 65 mm pine timber to protect the edges and she will be good as gold and last me a loooooong time.  The pine does actually have a real purpose - somewhere for the Eye Screws to screw into.  The pine will get a second coat of white paint soon to make it look good as well.  With a 1200 x 1200 mm deck, I can get my HO track at about a 600 mm radius which is well and truely OK for the locos of all sizes.  At some stage soon, I will add an inner ring of cork and whack down some N scale track as well.

Now for somewhere to store it, as it is not small! Quite a while back I was going to only have a very small layout - a 4 x 8 foot one in fact.  To that end, my old man made a great gadget for me.  In the garage, yes my workshop was once a true garage for the car, dear 'ol Dad set it up so I could have a layout.  All you did was back the car out and winch down the layout from the ceiling :-)   The ceiling is very high and this allowed it all to fit, and even jumping I couldn't touch the layout when it was up and away.  So with a step ladder you climbed up and wound the boat winch on the ceiling and it lowered or raised a frame that held the 4 x 8 layout I was building at the time.  Over the years with the layout gone, the winch and frame just sat there out of the way - not now.  

I have made up a spreader frame out of 18 x 65 mm pine and with a pile of Eye Screws, the winch setup via the spreader, attaches (when needed) to the Speed Matching Track and I can drop it down at about the right location to hook up to the computer and do my testing and when not in use it is wound up and sits high up under the ceiling.  I even painted the bottom of the Speed Matching Track  unit, white, so that it blends into the ceiling.

Look, it seems to hover in the air...

So that is what I've been up to for the last 4-5 days now.  So let the speed matching begin.... well, that might be a tad later, but testing of locos is much better on this test rig.