We make base boards
We can literally make any type of baseboard at any shape or size, get in touch if you’d like us to help.
Base Boards
Here are some recent examples of our base boards. Of course please feel free to contact us for a quote.
St Pancras, the story so far and why…
Our poster shown at Sandown Model Expo, the background and why… apart from that it is probably the largest airfix type model ever 3D printing does offer some great advantages like quick prototyping, one off models and repetitiveness!
The 2013 Model Engineer Exhibition At Sandown Park
We’ll be showing off a project we have been working on for some time at RLab (Reading Hackspace) and the 3d printed St Pancras we are prototyping.
Really looking forward to this… and here is some preview pictures…
Infrared beam breakers
Today I made some super cool circuit with sets of custom built (by me), very cheap infrared beam breakers and servo based points for automated shunting.
the basic principal being that with the infrared I know where the train is (or should be) and then I can open and close sets of points in a pattern to get the train to where I penultimate want it.
And if it doesn’t get there after a timely fashion then it beeps to let me know – it may have derailed…
Pic to follow…
DCC Encoding
So after the success of putting together a DCC Decoder, I decided to have a go at encoding.
I think it would be really fab if you could control or “shunt” multiple trains with perhaps infrared detection for example.
It’s also a far cheaper solution than some of the units out there at £80-90 up to the thousands, it won’t be as robust as some of these units, but it should have some additional features, and I like the idea of plugging it into the iPad interface I’ve already started on, so I could get locomotive control, turn building lights on and off and change the track points all wirelessly and for a small amount of money.
But boy this is different ball game to the decoding and I’ve spent hours and hours and just don’t seem to have any joy at all. I’ll persevere and I’ll hook up the decoder I made as well so I can decode the signals going through the rails… I’ll keep you posted as I’m determined to crack this one!
Custom DCC Decoding
So getting back into model railways is a little more difficult that the simple set up I had as a kid, its come a long way and instead of a simple 12v circuit we now have Digital Command Control (DCC). It runs on an 18v AC current and each locomotive, point or accessory can be controlled via binary signals sent though the rails.
This means you can control multiple devices on a single track instead of a train running round in the direction of the DC circuit.
To decode these signals, people purchase what are known as “Accessory Decoders” and they are really expensive, the ones I found could control 4 devices for about £40.
Step in an evening or two coding and I have a Accessory decoder for about £18 that can control around 15 devices or “accessories”. I cant wait to get this fully hooked up, I managed to get some building lights turning on and off as well as point changing from a mainstream DCC Controller.
More to come 🙂
AG Model Engineering 