Pete Waterman's "Making Tracks 3"

[RichB]

jet_noise said:

He's on tele tonight More4 21:00
Little Trains & Big Names with Pete Waterman

Watching a few of these, they're quite enjoyable because he allows the 'celeb' to chat about themselves so not all model railways. Anyone else watching?

[blueST]

RichB said:

jet_noise said:

He's on tele tonight More4 21:00
Little Trains & Big Names with Pete Waterman

Watching a few of these, they're quite enjoyable because he allows the 'celeb' to chat about themselves so not all model railways. Anyone else watching?

I’ve just watched the 1st one with Jules Holland so far. Enjoyed it.

[jet_noise]

blueST said:

RichB said:

jet_noise said:

He's on tele tonight More4 21:00
Little Trains & Big Names with Pete Waterman

Watching a few of these, they're quite enjoyable because he allows the 'celeb' to chat about themselves so not all model railways. Anyone else watching?

I’ve just watched the 1st one with Jules Holland so far. Enjoyed it.

I've watched the 1st two.

The more it can be made about the guest the better such shows are IMHO.
Pete's mildly gauche delivery works. Making Tracks filler might be avoided by a shorter program.

Which is not to say I don't enjoy those bits too
You're joking! Is that one of the Making Tracks team members who posts here?

[sgrimshaw]

RichB said:

atching a few of these, they're quite enjoyable because he allows the 'celeb' to chat about themselves so not all model railways. Anyone else watching?

Seen the first 3 .. enjoying

[48k]

jet_noise said:

You're joking! Is that one of the Making Tracks team members who posts here?

Yes Speedy11 is one of the Making Tracks team, but I'm not going to phil you in on who it is.

[jet_noise]

48k said:

jet_noise said:

You're joking! Is that one of the Making Tracks team members who posts here?

Yes Speedy11 is one of the Making Tracks team, but I'm not going to phil you in on who it is.

[Speedy11]

48k said:

jet_noise said:

You're joking! Is that one of the Making Tracks team members who posts here?

Yes Speedy11 is one of the Making Tracks team, but I'm not going to phil you in on who it is.

I don't know if you can tell but I don't particularly like being filmed The whole point of having Pete is for him to do all that sort of nonsense but I am glad people are enjoying it. Filming added quite a bit more work and took a lot of time last/this year but I am pleased with how it has been received. Its nice to have a show about the hobby which isn't making fun of it or being silly without being dull.

[48k]

Speedy11 said:

I don't know if you can tell but I don't particularly like being filmed .

I chuckled at the tiff in the previous video ."I'm many things but I'm not stupid" . Daves videos are nothing if not warts and all. I like the most recent one with Dave suggesting Chris has could orientate the RFID cards better because the wires are all sticking out of the top. "Wouldn't it be neater if the wires came out of the bottom?" *glare* *stony silence*

Joking aside it's great to see how much progress is being made on all the niggly little jobs that you have never had time to sort out until now. The issue with the track join from the fiddle yard wasn't obvious until this latest video but now it all makes sense. Chris has the departure boards working. The couplings stuff was interesting.

Really looking forward to seeing everything at 100% for Christmas.

[Collectingbrass]

Congratulations on the World Record chaps!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1wx31x1yljo

[Speedy11]

Collectingbrass said:

Congratulations on the World Record chaps!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1wx31x1yljo

Thanks

The whole of last week is a bit a of blur, I am well and truly fked. We only had 4 months to make over 100ft of scenery, which meant that there were a lot of problems on Thursday/Friday (including a missing baseboard which was never made). Then measuring of the layout for the record took over 8 hours which meant there was no time left to test layout with all the stock on. I got it running for the BBC breakfast Sat morning and as soon as the cameras stopped the whole thing went to poo. I tried everything and it wasn't really until 2pm Sat that it was running ok ish after that I just left it alone in fear of making it worse.

I think I have narrowed the problems down to either too many boosters, too few boosters, boosters too close together or the boosters too far apart. The layout isn't going to be put up again in its current form so no real way of checking.

The rest of the show was fantastic and after the crappy January (Hattons/Warley/Hornby product announcement) the hobby needed a positive news story.

Anyway as we are back at Chester Cathedral in 3 months in August our attention moves to that.

I was so busy I only managed to get two photos of the layout and the last is from Mike

Edited by Speedy11 on Tuesday 30th April 16:52

[jet_noise]

+1 congrats. Speedy+team (and Pete!).
And thanks for the (entertaining) report. I'm getting mixed messages on the running issues, have you looked at boosters? But seriously an extraordinary achievement. The pressure must have been high!

Does the missing baseboard mean there's a gap somewhere, how did you manage without it?

[Speedy11]

jet_noise said:

+1 congrats. Speedy+team (and Pete!).
And thanks for the (entertaining) report. I'm getting mixed messages on the running issues, have you looked at boosters? But seriously an extraordinary achievement. The pressure must have been high!

Does the missing baseboard mean there's a gap somewhere, how did you manage without it?

The board had never been made so there was an 8ft gap, I purposefully took a board from Milton Keynes as a spare which we butchered Thursday evening to fill the gap. It came about as some of the boards had been missed numbered back at Pete's a few weeks ago so when we counted all the boards we thought we had made enough.

I took down with us a main base station (plus a spare) and an additional 4 boosters, to give a total of 21amps of power mainly to remove the problem of inrush current which plagued us at GETS last year.

To give an example of the inrush an Accurascale mk2 coach draws 50ma for a few seconds before dropping down to less than 1ma so a rake can need upto 0.8 amps, we had at least 4 rakes so that is over 3 amps just on coach lighting.

One of the boosters died as soon as I plugged it in so we lost one on Thursday but I wasn't too worried at that point as it still left a lot of head room. However there were instability problems with the boosters and I just couldn't get them talk together happily for more than a few minutes at a time. I tried everything and at 2pm Sat I'm not quite sure what I did but I got it stable enough for us to run without stoppages. I have a few ideas to try and if I could now spend just half a day with the full layout I could sort the problems with the boosters, but that is not going to happen.

I just ran out of time before we got the NEC to test anything (I was still making buildings and fitting signals the day before we left for the show) so I had to trust other peoples work which I paid for on Thursday/Friday. In reality we needed another 3 months but where is the fun in that .

[48k]

Astonishing. It's just astonishing, there are no other words for it.

Many many congratulations to the Railnuts and thanks Speedy11 again for taking the time to share some insights. Some very unique challenges to overcome operating a layout at that scale (pardon the pun) and fascinating to hear about.

It's difficult to really comprehend how big the layout is until you sit in on a cab ride:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IinMiL9giQE

And all the time remind yourself - this is a portable layout that packs down in to cases and goes in to vans.

A well deserved World Record.

[droopsnoot]

A Facebook post says that the railway is back at Chester Cathedral starting today, and until the end of August.

[mac96]

Yes, it is back at the Cathedral from today.
Impressive achievement, especially as working from the off .

[Speedy11]

We were indeed back this year. Originally were not going back this year as an art exhibition had instead been booked and there was also a royal wedding that happened earlier in the year which meant we could only run for 4 instead of our usual 6/7weeks/ It was only confirmed that they could accommodate us after Christmas so didn't leave any time too plan the what we were going to do. After the NEC we rushed to try and get Watford as its own layout which would work with our standard 64ft setup. Once we setup in the Cathedral though the layout ran great for all 4 weeks and the turnout from the public was fantastic. Ignoring the all the churchy stuff it is just a lovely place to play trains. We are in a position to let the public play with it and it is great to see people of all ages young to old having a go. A big thanks goes out to all that helped including the volunteers who turn up to drive the layout everyday I sometimes give them a bit of stick but we couldn't do it without them. We are already booked to go back again next year which will hopefully give us a little more time to get things ready.

Now our attention turns towards The Great Electric Train show next month at Milton Keynes. Because of the time constraints we had to make do with only having the station on 2ft wide baseboards. Which after last years layout of Milton Keynes was a retrograde step. So whilst Pete and I were sitting and watching trains go by we decided that we should try and make it wider. The plan is to get the rest of the Overground platforms in, main station building to the front of the layout and then carry on with the flats to the rear. I am aiming to get as much done as possible before GETS, I have started on the main building today but haven't got very far yet.



All being well it should be ready to make in the next week or so.




I don't get much time at the Cathedral to stop and take many pics but here are a few.


The night before opening.


The Dean Tim Stratford learning to drive.


Flats slowly being built over the 4 weeks we were there, still lots to do to them plus build another 2 blocks.


After the NEC it looks quite small.


If anyone from here manages to visit GETS this year do say hello.