Rhad Valley was purchased as a restoration project and gets its name from the fact that it only cost £100 – Rhad literally means “cheap” in Welsh.
The layout has a lot of potential, however it also needs a lot of work doing to it. Unfortunately over time, the scenics have become damaged; all but the church has signs of heavy wear and tear, and the material used for the construction of the hill has split – it’s unlikely that this can be repaired without being noticable, wo will likely need to be replaced as well.
As for the layout itself, the trackwork is in good condition and doesn’t need any work doing to the topside of the baseboard. Underneath the hood though, the layout has been wired for DC operation and includes a number of isolated sections which will need to be altered for DCC where the whole track will be live.
Investigating the points it is apparent that the switchblades are not carrying power over to the live frogs, and it doesn’t seem to matter how much cleaning is being done, it makes them unreliable at best.
The plan
We have to start somewhere and I think that getting the layout operational is the highest priority, with the scenics being the least – once we have trains running reliably, then we can fettle with the scenics as much as we like!
- Remove all remnants of the old wiring
- Rewire all track to be live with a DCC bus
- Rewire all the solenoid point motors to a relay board (instead of SPDT switches)
- Make all of the frogs live with Frog Juicers
- Add in Arduino DDC control with DCC-Ex command station
- Scenic stuff
So, a relatively short list, but each item when thought about properly is going to take some time. Watch this space for updates!
