Scalefour Crewe was an excellent show in my opinion and feedback from my operators was that they all enjoyed themselves (thanks for your help guys).  Thanks to the show organisers for inviting us. The layout seemed well received and many people were kind enough to say nice things about it.  We seemed to be quite successful in holding people attention throughout the weekend.

As with any outing theres aways a period of reflection on how the show went. The layout seemed to fight us a little in the morning but settled down.  The main issue being the cassettes were causing a few problems.

There were 2 areas with the cassettes that need addressing.  Area A is that any stock that wasn’t on the rails would strike the edge of the end stop supports and bring the whole train to a halt.  It’s unrealistic to think that everything on a cassette will always be on the track 100% of the time as the cassettes are moved around.  Thats the point of them after all.

Area B is an easy fix.  Theres a bit of wire that holds the connecting rail (which is loose at the end) in line with the rail on the cassette and agains the guide rail.  These bits of wire were too straight meaning the joining rail could go the wrong side and all the stock would fall off.  A little more of an angle to the wire will solve that.

First approach to fix problem A was to shape the end supports so that stock doesn’t stop when it hits it.  A few trials showed this to be effective but it merely gets the stock past the ends and it still stays off the track.  Plan b was to make a re-railer from 30 thou plasticard so that any errant stock is pushed back on to the track. The advantage of this is that I don’t need to reshape the end supports at all as the stock is on the track as it runs off the cassette.  This is just a rough proof of concept of course but if I fit one to the end of every cassette, as wagons will need to run of their own cassette and through the loco cassette that gives 3 opportunities to re-rail any rogue wagons and if they are still off after all that then they deserve to go back in the box for attention back home!

Above is a little test video. The brake van is running along the edge of the cassette before the join.

Aside from the usual small stock of wagons that need attention either through failures or just a general refusal on their part to play nicely we had a few issues taking stuff in and out of the yard. There were also a few clunks when running through the slip which is a dead giveaway that something is not quite right somewhere.  So on returning home and when I had just 2 boards up, allowing me better access to the slip this has been investigated, tweaked and one of the check rails replaced.

A Bachmann brake van (straight wheel swap, no compensation) does the testing.