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An Epiphany


KH1

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Survived the Ally Pally show which turned out to be probably the busiest, most intense but also most interesting show yet. Also very well organised (thank you Nick), and for a big venue the staff were excellent which was a nice and welcome surprise. It has also led to somewhat of an epiphany.....

 

On both days I had to explain the operation of the layout to new operators (big thanks to Neil and Neil), and realised that although the basic premise is very simple (long steam hauled trains come in on one road. steam loco detaches and places itself on empties road via the middle road which is kept clear. Meanwhile petrol engines take loaded wagons split into two or three trains to other fiddle yard and return empties to be taken away by steam train) - it is surprisingly easy to cock it up! Everything relies on there being sufficient empties and fulls at the same time. There are times when you can get a really good rhythm going and all goes smoothly but a log jam is always just around the corner.

 

At this point I do realise that this blog has been going for ages now and although I have my faithful followers there are a lot of newer members who have no idea what I am going on about. For these I am planning a 'retrospective' soon with lots of pictures and a basic summary. On the subject of pictures, I never manage to take any myself at exhibitions and although half the world seems to be doing it for me I never get to see the results. So, on this occasion the only picture I have from the whole weekend is one Andy managed to snatch of me explaining some finer point of detail to a visitor during what was actually a quiet patch!

 

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Anyway, back to the point of this - in order to achieve my aim of always having plenty of stuff on scene and running for the visitors - I have to make things even simpler. Although it is nice to have a mixture of the different classes of wagons that were operated, as they all need different sized loads I am proposing to use just the D class wagons for shows. This means that I can use just my new 'whole wagon loads' which will speed things up massively. Secondly I will (semi) permanently couple wagons into pairs to make splitting the trains easier. And thirdly and very much connected, or as too often is the case disconnected - I have to get the couplings sorted out! This is an ongoing problem which at one point I thought I had sorted but seems to have gone into reverse.

 

I did apply a tip I picked up which involves a small smear of Copydex to the inside face of the coupling, which, when dried, helps to prevent the hook from lifting. Although it may do this if the hooks were seated properly, I found that it was preventing the hooks from seating and then when they were was preventing uncoupling when you needed to. All of this meant rather too much having to barge in front of people to check couplings which is a pain for everyone especially those with video cameras! On a slight aside here, I have nothing against people taking photos or videos - it shows that they are interested which is good - but if we cannot operate the layout they will have nothing to photograph! So unfortunately we do have to get in the way sometimes and as a p.s. to this tangential rant - it is always appreciated when permission is sort especially if flash is involved.

 

As an adjunct to my previous thoughts I realised that if I were to seek the panacea of auto uncoupling, I would only actually need three uncoupling points - one for the loco and then one between wagons 2 and 3 and then 4 and 5. If as occasionally happens I indulge in an eight wagon train (usually to wind up the other operator if they are slacking!), the last four could be pulled further along the siding later and over the magnet.

 

So where does this leave us? Do I persevere with the Zamzoodles possibly re-engineering the hooks where I think the problems originate and make them auto couple friendly or do I abandon completely and try something else completely? If the second option were to be adopted which ones bearing in mind that the wagon bogies have a hole at 10mm above the track level which cannot really be altered. Any other option would also have to be pretty robust and easily mounted.

 

Have a few months before the next show but am well aware of how little time this actually contains for playing trains.

 

On a slightly more positive note I now have some pretty concrete proof for the colour of shells corroborated by two sources, one of which is slightly unusual. Am not quite ready to go public on this yet but will do soon and I have a great title for the blog lined up!

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Kevin, When you mention auto coupling are you thinking chopper couplers or something more like Kadee?

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Couplings that will un-couple remotely so less 'HoG'. Am afraid that I really don't like Kadees - fine on other layouts, but not mine. A fuller explanation will follow in next coupling post but at the moment DGs look the favorite.

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Whole wagonloads are certainly easier, but shame to lose the variety. Minirakes are good and could include E-class with appropriate fixed loads?

 

But my experience is that as big an issue in keeping things moving is the owner/alleged operator who enjoys talking to visitors (no bad thing) at the expense of delivering the goods to the front (a bad thing) ;-)

 

Alex Jacksons are worth looking at - discrete, automatic and dirt cheap too. I've got some made up on a couple of wagons here for initial trials...

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