In August 2021 I posted my plans for a Free-mo lift gate that I called No Duck Mo V2.0.
In the fall of 2024 a dedicated model railroader in Chilliwack, British Columbia began building two of these using my 2021 plans. He has made very good progress. There were a couple of small errors in my plans for V2.0 that he pointed out to me so I have updated the plans and named them No Duck Mo V2.1.
Here is a link to download the plans:
I was contacted by a young man named Lucas who has earned his Railroading merit badge in Boy Scouts. I understand that he used my Blog to help him in this achievement.
Congratulations, Lucas. I am very pleased that I was able to be of some assistance.
Lucas also suggested that people in the hobby might want to check out another website that contains a lot of useful information, including links. Check it out here: Model Railroads & Freight Cars
As my woodworking workshop is located at my main home in Regina, SK but the switching layout is to be built for the den in my two-bedroom condo in West Kelowna, BC, my design must allow me to make components in my workshop and assemble them to make sure that the design works. I will then dismantle and carefully label all components and then take them with me to BC where I will assemble everything.
In Part 4 I shared drawings of the components of the end guides that will be attached to the walls at each end of the layout, using components that are easy to assemble, disassemble and then travel with. The layout top which is to be 11 feet long and 28 inches wide is a bit more complicated - because of its size. I shall cut all the wood at home but will wait and purchase the rigid foam insulating board in Kelowna to cut down on the quantity of materials I will need to transport. The foam board can be easily cut with an Olfa knife or box cutter.
These drawings show my intended design:
Following are additional details regarding the design of the end guides in which the 2 inch nylon garage door rollers will travel:
In Part 1 I said that one of my criteria for this switching layout is that, when stored, it must not occupy a lot of floor space. I have come up with a plan that will occupy an area along one of the 11 foot walls in the den and, when stored, will protrude into the room a distance of no further than 15 inches.
In the following drawing, the various colours depict:
This is a short video showing how the layout will be raised and lowered:
I have devised the following track plan for my switching layout:
Length = 10 ft. 11 3/4 in.
Width = 28 in.
HO Scale.
Turnouts (hand made):
On November 11, 2021 I wrote about my prostate issue and the need to have 33 radiation treatments. Those treatments ended on December 20, 2021 so Christmas 2021 was extra special for me. Roughly 2/3 of the way through my treatments I became quite fatigued and had very little motivation to do much in the way of model railroading, or anything else for that matter.
In the second week of January my wife and I drove to West Kelowna, British Columbia, to spend a couple of months in the two-bedroom condominium that we purchased in autumn 2021. As I have been preoccupied with obtaining and assembling furniture and going on a lot of long walks to enjoy the scenery and the (relatively) mild winter weather I decided to take a break from the blog.
The fatigue from my radiation treatments resolved itself by the end of January and I feel great. We return home to Saskatchewan in mid-March at which time I must have a PSA test and then a consultation with the radiation oncologist. This will be the "moment of truth" as to whether the radiation treatments were successful.
Our condo in West Kelowna has two bedrooms plus a den. The den is just over 3.4 by 2.1 metres (11 by 7 feet) in size and has no window.
After being away from my model railroading hobby for some time I put my mind to how I could build a model railroad in the den, while at the same time not permanently occupying much of the room and rendering it useless for any other purpose. I concluded that a shelf-style switching layout would be fun to try. I have never before built a switching layout.
Following are my criteria for this switching layout:
I decided to take on the challenge of creating my own track system to create animation. You will note that this uses the concepts used by the Magnorail system referred to in Part 1 but is not an attempt to replicate the Magnorail system. As I don't have access to any Magnorail parts I designed my own parts, several of which appear to be quite different. I also don't know the dimensions of any of the Magnorail parts so I came up with my own dimensions.
I ordered a high-torque 12 volt DC motor from Amazon. The output shaft turns at 5 RPM. I then designed and 3D printed a drive mechanism to sit on top of the motor. Here are pictures of the drive mechanism:
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| motor mounted to underside of drive mechanism |
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| top side view |
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| with drive gears mounted (note hole the closest gear fits over the "D" gear shaft so it doesn't slip) |
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| same as above but with retainers pressed into holes |
Next I created 3D printed chain components which connect to each other and which have holes to fit round rare-earth magnets in a couple of places to move boats:
The track components look like this - each track piece is screwed to a sub-floor which which will reside underneath the styrene sheet "pond":
Here is a picture of the completed track, with the drive mechanism in place:
Here is a picture of the subfloor mounted underneath the pond cutout in the Free-mo module:
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| The subfloor is mounted with wingnuts to make it easy to remove the subfloor with the track in case adjustments or repairs are ever needed in the future. The motor is wired to a bridge rectifier which takes DCC current from the accessory buss running under the Free-mo module. |
Here is a top-side view of the styrene sheet. The beaver dam will be built to disguise the front edge:
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Here is a short video showing the boat moving (the rough brown circle painted on the surface is where the beaver lodge will be built):
I will not be sharing the design details or the STL 3D printer files, either for no cost or for a price
Next up......doing the scenery.
I am fascinated with animation on a model railroad, whether it be building interior lighting that occasionally turns on and off or motion. Done well, animation brings the model railroad to life and enhances the animation already provided by the movement of rolling stock.
I have a complete Free-mo module built but the scenery has not been completed, aside from the track being ballasted. My vision for this two-part module is as follows:
If you have not experience with the coding of the programming language for Arduino microcomputers this is not the blog entry where you will learn about it. However, if you have been following along and would like to see the code I developed, please feel free to copy the following Arduino sketch and upload it to your own Arduino. However, as your model railroad will almost certainly have a different track configuration you will need to modify the coding as necessary to suit your particular situation. I would be pleased to help anyone who has a question. You can email me at rupertsinsights@gmail.com.
Here is my code:
As alluded to in Part 2 of 4 of this series of posts, I used an Arduino Pro Mini to handle the detection of trains and activation of the flashing crossing lights. On September 21, 2021 I discussed a handy tool for drawing wiring diagrams for Arduino circuits. Following is such a wiring diagram showing the wiring of my crossing light circuit on a breadboard. A breadboard is a device into which various electronic components can be plugged without the need to solder the components. This allows for the inevitable tinkering that is required in the design and testing of a circuit. Once one is satisfied with the circuit, a more permanent circuit can be created by soldering the various components together to create the final circuit.
The above diagram shows an Arduino UNO in the circuit. I used an Arduino Pro Mini in my final circuit because it is much smaller (width is about the size of a quarter-dollar coin) and cheaper but it has the same terminals and processing capacity as the UNO.
Note that the photoresistors are wired in series in pairs labelled 1 through 5. Following is a sketch showing which sensors on my model railroad correspond to those in the wiring diagram:
You will note that each pair of photoresistors are those that are physically closest to one another. While the lighting of my layout is fairly uniform, there are likely subtle differences in lighting that are not easily detectable with the naked eye (or even an eye with its clothes on!). As described in Part 2 of 4 in this series, photoresistors are linear devices that vary their amount of resistance to electrical current depending on how much light does or does not fall on them. I wanted the amount of light falling on each pair of photoresistors to be as consistent as possible because the Arduino detects the presence of rolling stock by comparing the amount of current running through each pair of photoresistors when fully lit against the amount of current when shaded by rolling stock.
Please note that I have not always been consistent with my terminology. My use of the words "sensor" and "photoresistor" mean the same thing.
In Part 4 of 4 of this series I will share the Arduino C++ code used to operate this circuit. I used the above breadboard configuration as I tinkered with the logic to make the crossing lights flash as I wanted them to. Once I was satisfied that the circuit behaved as I wanted it to, I recreated the circuit by soldering components to a PC board that is configured the same way as a breadboard. The following are two photos of the final product taken from two sides.
The green, yellow, orange, red and brown wires are those that go to the photoresistor pairs.
The blue, purple, grey, white and black wires all go from the positive side of the circuit to the photoresistor pairs.
The black and red wires (on the left in the first photo and on the right in the second photo) are from the 12 volt DC accessory buss under my layout. The little silver device is an L7805 voltage regulator which converts the 12 volts DC to the 5 volts DC which the Arduino needs to operate. In the first schematic of this blog post, the graphic shows a USB cord that supplies the 5 volts DC coming from the USB port of a computer. This voltage regulator takes the place of the USB cord. Following is a diagram from the Internet showing how to wire such a voltage regulator:
The following sketch illustrates my track plan (not to scale):
The vertical brown strip depicts the road that passes over two level crossings. The Main Line (also referred to as Track 1) and the Branch Line (also referred to as Track 2) connect via the turnouts located to the East of the roadway. There are 6 possible directions of travel of rolling stock (see yellow arrows in the sketch below):
