AsorA Bahn

[dunnyrail]

Yes that should be true and how to properly answer on a public forum without over sharing?
So for better or worse here goes.

I haven't mentioned it before because I don't like to talk about it much, but I was pretty badly hurt in a explosion at work many years ago.
The outcome of that is working with my hands and arms can be very difficult, often frustrating, always uncomfortable and way too often very painful.

A lot of the building of this railway whilst being very challenging, rewarding and incredibly satisfying to have done.
It just wasn't fun whilst I was doing it and for many days afterwards too.
I am very glad I pushed myself to do it thou as what has been done brings me a lot of joy now and hopefully will for a lot of years to come.

So working on the railway now is mainly just fun, rewarding, satisfying and challenging.
The challenges now aren't so demanding and I don't have to push my physical abilities so much to overcome them.
Hope that explains things, without writing a novel.

Sorry to hear about your past accident, but thanks for your honesty, that just makes your achievements all the more remarkable. A dedicated and motivated man can achieve a lot. Indeed your line will give you I am sure much joy over the future years, as to see it gives us. Just wish you were not an age away so I could come to see it and help operate to a schedule. Flown to Oz and NZ, never again and certainly not now in a Boeing twin engined jet. When I did those flights in 1987/8 it was all in Jumbo 4 engined jets.

 

[grizzmo]

Thanks I wasn't sure how much to share, not looking for a pity party.
As far as my injuries go, I count myself very lucky. Having spent a lot of time in and out of hospital, I met an awful lot of way way worse off people.
That gives you some real perspective, gratitude and motivation to do all you can.

Yes it is a shame its so far from here to everywhere just about. We could of had some good fun and I am sure very good chats too.
Having 2 operators, we could run the hourly service each way crossing midway. On my own I will just run 1 hour up and the next hour down, easier for 1 and I don't have nearly enough stock yet for more intensive operation anyway.

 

[grizzmo]

Ok lets leave the past in the past as best we can and get back to what's important, trains and Doggo of course.

Took the day off today.
The view of todays freight train, from my favorite seat.
The comets are very active today, we started with 4 now there are 6 maybe there will be a few more soon .


I had a helper today, getting a well deserved ear scratch for his efforts and yes he has a bed for out here kept in the workshop.


Got a little bit of work done this week, got some small rocks glued in around the bonsai yesterday. The bonsai can just lift out for maintenance.
Plus the grouting done in this bit today. So close to the end, but I run of grout. Oh well there's always next week.


A few dwarf pines, some baby tears and the bit of path from the platform in too, almost finished this corner. Not including signs, signals, catenary and ..... you get it
Next will be the tunnel entrance to neaten up and a fence to stop passengers on the platform from falling off the edge of the world.

 

[casey jones snr]

Nice to see Doggo getting a bit of fuss.

 

[dunnyrail]

Ok lets leave the past in the past as best we can and get back to what's important, trains and Doggo of course.
View attachment 352636
Took the day off today.
The view of todays freight train, from my favorite seat.
The comets are very active today, we started with 4 now there are 6 maybe there will be a few more soon .

View attachment 352637
I had a helper today, getting a well deserved ear scratch for his efforts and yes he has a bed for out here kept in the workshop.

View attachment 352638
Got a little bit of work done this week, got some small rocks glued in around the bonsai yesterday. The bonsai can just lift out for maintenance.
Plus the grouting done in this bit today. So close to the end, but I run of grout. Oh well there's always next week.

View attachment 352643
A few dwarf pines, some baby tears and the bit of path from the platform in too, almost finished this corner. Not including signs, signals, catenary and ..... you get it
Next will be the tunnel entrance to neaten up and a fence to stop passengers on the platform from falling off the edge of the world.

Lovely to see Dogo.

We had some issues with a tunnel mouth on the Ruschbahn. Andy in his wisdom had made it out of some old ply that was kicking about. Well I can guess you know what happened and who was detailed to fix it!

So muggins thought long and hard, solution was to put some protective plastic down on track and ballast, then spray wet the tunnel mouth ply and throw Postcrete at it (wearing neoprene protective gloves of course) another spray of water more Postcrete then leave for a few minutes to repeat the process till a natural ‘cut out of the rock’ tunnel emerged. Benefit of this process is that the concrete mouth will stay in place once the wood has rotted away. Thinking it out further from a build new perspective, some concrete mesh cut to a tunnel profile would make a stronger tunnel mouth using the same process, ply behind still. Seen here with the LLB train passing back to te garage after a days operation. The 2 mouths got the treatment.

 

[grizzmo]

Lovely to see Dogo.

We had some issues with a tunnel mouth on the Ruschbahn. Andy in his wisdom had made it out of some old ply that was kicking about. Well I can guess you know what happened and who was detailed to fix it!

So muggins thought long and hard, solution was to put some protective plastic down on track and ballast, then spray wet the tunnel mouth ply and throw Postcrete at it (wearing neoprene protective gloves of course) another spray of water more Postcrete then leave for a few minutes to repeat the process till a natural ‘cut out of the rock’ tunnel emerged. Benefit of this process is that the concrete mouth will stay in place once the wood has rotted away. Thinking it out further from a build new perspective, some concrete mesh cut to a tunnel profile would make a stronger tunnel mouth using the same process, ply behind still. Seen here with the LLB train passing back to te garage after a days operation. The 2 mouths got the treatment.
View attachment 352652

Looks great, shame the cladding was peeling off the viaduct. Otherwise there is some really great modeling there.
Sounds like I would maybe make a big mess trying that way. It does look good thou.
I was thinking of cutting a portal out of foam detailed like the retraining walls i have made. Cut to match the profile of the rockwork.
I still have a couple of rocks to cement in next to and above tunnel to make planting pockets for even more dwarf conifers.
I will give it some more thought before I proceed, thanks for the info.

 

[dunnyrail]

Looks great, shame the cladding was peeling off the viaduct. Otherwise there is some really great modeling there.
Sounds like I would maybe make a big mess trying that way. It does look good thou.
I was thinking of cutting a portal out of foam detailed like the retraining walls i have made. Cut to match the profile of the rockwork.
I still have a couple of rocks to cement in next to and above tunnel to make planting pockets for even more dwarf conifers.
I will give it some more thought before I proceed, thanks for the info.

Indeed tis a shame about the stonework, was Plastic Sheet stonework that did not last the test of time. The pic was taken within a year or so of Andy’s sad demise and closure of the Ruschbahn. Was likely on my list of fix jobs, would probably have got a similar treatment as the Tunnels but with just a splash of external PVA and one throw of sifted postcrete. Though with the benefit of knowledge your methods, had the Ruschbahn still been in existence we would likely have gone that way.

 

[grizzmo]

Lovely to see Dogo.

We had some issues with a tunnel mouth on the Ruschbahn. Andy in his wisdom had made it out of some old ply that was kicking about. Well I can guess you know what happened and who was detailed to fix it!

So muggins thought long and hard, solution was to put some protective plastic down on track and ballast, then spray wet the tunnel mouth ply and throw Postcrete at it (wearing neoprene protective gloves of course) another spray of water more Postcrete then leave for a few minutes to repeat the process till a natural ‘cut out of the rock’ tunnel emerged. Benefit of this process is that the concrete mouth will stay in place once the wood has rotted away. Thinking it out further from a build new perspective, some concrete mesh cut to a tunnel profile would make a stronger tunnel mouth using the same process, ply behind still. Seen here with the LLB train passing back to te garage after a days operation. The 2 mouths got the treatment.
View attachment 352652

Looking at that picture again, I really like the catenary wires. The finer gauge droppers joining upper and lower wires looks great and very prototypical to my eyes.
Also I am guessing being soldered at the bottom only would make installation easier.
There seems to be a good tension on the catenary. Looking forward to learning how you tensioned them and allowed for expansion/contraction. How long a sections you worked with. Not having tried I was guessing 3-4m lengths might be manageable and not have too many joins? No idea till I tried thou. Plus how you joined sections of wires and branched off at junctions. Don't want much do I.
I think I have a workable installation plan formulated.
I have watched the Ruschbahn video's on youtube many times looking at the fine overhead system. Gives me something useful to do when I can't do other stuff.

 

[dunnyrail]

Looking at that picture again, I really like the catenary wires. The finer gauge droppers joining upper and lower wires looks great and very prototypical to my eyes.
Also I am guessing being soldered at the bottom only would make installation easier.
There seems to be a good tension on the catenary. Looking forward to learning how you tensioned them and allowed for expansion/contraction. How long a sections you worked with. Not having tried I was guessing 3-4m lengths might be manageable and not have too many joins? No idea till I tried thou. Plus how you joined sections of wires and branched off at junctions. Don't want much do I.
I think I have a workable installation plan formulated.
I have watched the Ruschbahn video's on youtube many times looking at the fine overhead system. Gives me something useful to do when I can't do other stuff.

Oh much to go at there!
First a plan of how it was going to be done was created and poured over for many hours.

I made the lengths of wire as long as reasonably possible, on the main station the full length of that station no joints. Lots of bendy R1 curves will be tricky for you. That was from the yard by the viaduct to the tunnel the other end of the station. Luckily the plan for the station was quite precise with 2 wires the full lrpength the outer 2 ending at conveniently located poles.

Joins where we had curves involved ‘pull off’ sections where a shorter wire would have a new or existing pole to pass between. Note LGB pans cope happily with one wire over the other.

Tensioning was done with fence tensioners but this not the beast, I wanted to use hidden wires over a wheel at the ends with tins of weights to give a dynamic wire tension so that heat or cold would not make a difference, this rejected by the owner. The wire was in full sun all day in the summer and odd problems ensued, but nothing catastrofic.

I have tried to give an idea how the system works below, the main wires are in red with mostly track below except where the odd cross wires (dotted) which mostly represent crossovers though in some cases link wires. At the bottom you can see how flexibility has been allowed by the small loop going over a cross wire and soldered to the contact wire. Sortybtis a bit messy, my house in uproar at the moment with the loft entered for a replacement set of roof tiles, Rushchbahn Manual cant be found! I have tried to represent the main station by the lake as well as I can remember.

 

[grizzmo]

Oh much to go at there!
First a plan of how it was going to be done was created and poured over for many hours.

I made the lengths of wire as long as reasonably possible, on the main station the full length of that station no joints. Lots of bendy R1 curves will be tricky for you. That was from the yard by the viaduct to the tunnel the other end of the station. Luckily the plan for the station was quite precise with 2 wires the full lrpength the outer 2 ending at conveniently located poles.

Joins where we had curves involved ‘pull off’ sections where a shorter wire would have a new or existing pole to pass between. Note LGB pans cope happily with one wire over the other.

Tensioning was done with fence tensioners but this not the beast, I wanted to use hidden wires over a wheel at the ends with tins of weights to give a dynamic wire tension so that heat or cold would not make a difference, this rejected by the owner. The wire was in full sun all day in the summer and odd problems ensued, but nothing catastrofic.

I have tried to give an idea how the system works below, the main wires are in red with mostly track below except where the odd cross wires (dotted) which mostly represent crossovers though in some cases link wires. At the bottom you can see how flexibility has been allowed by the small loop going over a cross wire and soldered to the contact wire. Sortybtis a bit messy, my house in uproar at the moment with the loft entered for a replacement set of roof tiles, Rushchbahn Manual cant be found! I have tried to represent the main station by the lake as well as I can remember.
View attachment 352706

Excellent, thanks very much I appreciate it.