7mm King Street Goods

[Barnaby]

Yes ditto to that Chris.

Beaming I was on Saturday when I demo-ed my 85A Hunslet for the grandkids aged 8 & 5.  It has had rudimentary 1st stage weathering but they said it looked rusty and could we paint it new to make it look fresh. 

I AM THE RUST KING whooo hoo!

 

Best

[81A Oldoak]

Barnaby,

Weathering is a tricky business. Here is my 85A Hunslet, since sold,  before and after the dirt merchant got his hands on it. My green Hudswell Clarke is rather dirty, but my black respray will be relatively lightly weathered. I plan to name my red Hudswell Clarke after SWMBO (the brass fret with Hudswell Clarke contain plates with the names of the Ixion partners'  wives), but she has consented  on condition that it stays clean and is only allowed to work passenger trains. She does not share my enthusiasm for the grime and gloom of the South Wales Valleys.

 

Regards,

 

Chris

[Barnaby]

Well the 1st one is a classy chassis while the 2nd one is a dirty girl, me thinks I prefer the dirty girl.    

[Barnaby]

Returning back onto shed is my Fowler now resplendent with red rods and blacked wheels fitted out with DCC & sound, thanks EDM Paul.

Only had it out of box to view but I'll be giving it a test drive later in the week.

 

Pretty in RED.

 

Edited July 18, 2014 by Barnaby

[pauliebanger]

Barnaby,

Weathering is a tricky business. Here is my 85A Hunslet, since sold,  before and after the dirt merchant got his hands on it. My green Hudswell Clarke is rather dirty, but my black respray will be relatively lightly weathered. I plan to name my red Hudswell Clarke after SWMBO (the brass fret with Hudswell Clarke contain plates with the names of the Ixion partners'  wives), but she has consented  on condition that it stays clean and is only allowed to work passenger trains. She does not share my enthusiasm for the grime and gloom of the South Wales Valleys.

 

Regards,

 

Chris

 

What attracted you to a girl called Asbestos? Or is that an Aussie girl's name? Lol

 

Paul

Edited July 16, 2014 by pauliebanger

[railwayrod]

The progress is looking good and I am sure that before long it will start to look even better. It is surprising how even a small amount of scenery brings a layout to life. When Ramchester was first started the room looked bare and the baseboards looked nothing like a railway . Once the track went down and a bit of track painting and ballasting took place it transformed it. Now the scenery is almost complete with just the little details to put in and I have to say it now looks superb. Just keep steadily working away at it and it wont be long before your layout springs to life.

 

I am enjoying your thread so keep up the good work.

 

Railwayrod

[puddlejumper]

Barnaby,

Weathering is a tricky business. Here is my 85A Hunslet, since sold,  before and after the dirt merchant got his hands on it. My green Hudswell Clarke is rather dirty, but my black respray will be relatively lightly weathered. I plan to name my red Hudswell Clarke after SWMBO (the brass fret with Hudswell Clarke contain plates with the names of the Ixion partners'  wives), but she has consented  on condition that it stays clean and is only allowed to work passenger trains. She does not share my enthusiasm for the grime and gloom of the South Wales Valleys.

 

Regards,

 

Chris

Hi Chris

I notice on the guild website you mention that the 85A model was fitted with sound, any chance you could let us know which chip you used and how you did it???

Doug

[81A Oldoak]

Hi Chris

I notice on the guild website you mention that the 85A model was fitted with sound, any chance you could let us know which chip you used and how you did it???

Doug

Doug,

Unfortunately, I have no photographs of the installation. However, I used the South West Digital/ESU Loksound Ivatt/BR Class 2MT medium-sized decoder and a 25mm diameter speaker. The speaker fitted comfortably in the boiler after I had removed some lead ballast and I drilled a few holes in the underside of the saddle-tank to allow for the egress of the sound. The decoder lay flat on a little tray between the frames underneath the boiler btween the leading and centre axles.  

 

I hope this description is clear.

 

Regards,

[puddlejumper]

Hi Chris

That's really helpful and makes perfect sense, much obliged

Apologies for hijacking the thread

Doug

[Barnaby]

Yes useful to me too Doug as I have my 85A Hunslet to get chipped as well.   

Martin of "Templot" lives just a short distance away and is a friend he guided me through making a Resistance soldering unit some years back, cracking unit it is still gets regular use and is very effective.   We wound our own transformers courtesy of RS parts and Martins maths.  I think about 6 of us made them under his weekly tutelage taking about 4 sessions to complete.

 

 

Cheers

[Barnaby]

Another problem which I have mentioned in another post that I need to think about is how to get electrical contact and alignment to my fiddle yard cassettes.

 

I am intending to use cassettes and to use bulldog clips to both align and make the electrical connections.  My difficulty is that I need to maximise the fiddle yard length which will make it awkward to fit the bulldogs at the yard exit.  There just not being enough space available to get access without the hand of God appearing.

 

 One way to overcome the problem of not having enough space at the layout entrance to attach the bulldog clips is to put them on flying leads from the layout track end and connect them to the rear end of the cassette.  Colour coding of the bulldogs to the track should avoid any direction problems.  Some simple conductive plates fixed to the cassette sides will allow for the bulldogs to attach.   A wooden guide to push the cassette sideways up against should sort out the alignment needs.

 I'll knock something up tomorrow to test out my ideas.  I feel a hot day in my workroom with fans on full waft is coming.

 

 

Regards

[Barnaby]

I've got the basic cassettes made but something occurred to me while I was playing with their build. 

 

If my loco drives into the fiddle yard cassette with my DCC controller set for convention drive when I turn the cassette to bring the train out again the forward convention will be reversed.  How do people overcome this, just remember which way the controller was last set, change the controller set up every time a train cassette is reversed.  I suppose one option would be to only reverse the wagons or coaches then connect up the loco to exit tender first.  I would need some loco sized cassettes to make that work.

I think I would prefer to turn the whole train with the less handling being the better option.

 

What is the popular choice to over come this problem if it is a problem?

 

 

Regards

Edited July 22, 2014 by Barnaby

[raymw]

Hi Barnaby - with dcc you are driving the loco, so forward and reverse refers to the loco, not to left/right of the track.

 

Best wishes,

 

Ray

[puddlejumper]

As Ray says, turning the loco has no effect in DCC land. Forward is always forward......

Doug

[Barnaby]

Thanks Gents clever aint it this DCC stuff.  As you can probably tell it is only very early days yet for me with DCC.

 

Regards

[Barnaby]

Back a few posts I made reference to my RSU that Martin Wynne [ of 85A & Templot fame] had guided several of us through building one.  As I had need of it the other day I took some pics of it 3 in all.

RSU96 complete with air foot switch and banana plug and sockets to change the power out to the rod.

 One of the best things I have made for helping out with my modelling.

 

Regards

Edited July 24, 2014 by Barnaby

[puddlejumper]

Impressive stuff building your own, I have to say mine is a London Road Models one & is probably my favourite piece of kit, it's fantastic for all those awkward overlay and laminating jobs but you do need to think about the build sequence

[HeavyDuty]

Back a few posts I made reference to my RSU that Martin Wynne [ of 85A & Templot fame] had guided several of us through building one.  As I had need of it the other day I took some pics of it 3 in all.

RSU96 complete with air foot switch and banana plug and sockets to change the power out to the rod.

 One of the best things I have made for helping out with my modelling.

 

Regards

 

Was the build process posted anywhere on the web?  I would very much like an RSU but would prefer building one myself.

[Barnaby]

No Ken I don't think so, it was a good 6 years ago possibly longer. Without Martin's guidance we would never had completed it.

Martin issued parts at our weekly build sessions which we installed at that time. It required us to to wind our transformer with multiple tappings using parts obtained from Radio Spares here in the uk. Not a difficult thing to build, and we did it all from individual parts starting with drilling the blank box to take the sockets, switches, leads and neon power light. But without out Martin it would never have happened.

 

Regards

[HeavyDuty]

Thanks, Barnaby - I have a description of how to build one using a surplus PC power supply somewhere, I'm trying to avoid buying a commercial RSU. I build radio kits for recreation, so an RSU should be an easy project if I'm following instructions.

[Barnaby]

Oh joy got my Ixion Fowler returned from EDM fully fitted and chipped for sound and drive. Bit of a hiatus with the Lenz unit requiring me to amongst other things reset the LZH 100 unit.

Wasn't helped by my manuals being for an older version of the software but eventually found my software version on the Lenz USA page.  Also found a useful flow chart from which I got the how to do for the reset, see bottom left of attached page.  

 

I wouldn't have been able to sort this but for the help from the RM posters who all stuck with me through my poor Lenz understanding.  It's been a bit of a steep learning curve but I think I'm getting it.

 

My Fowler looks, sounds and drives the business.

Thanks Ixion and thanks EDM what a fantastic model and upgrade you have produced.

 

LH 100 3.6 and LHZ 100 3.6      link >>

http://www.lenzusa.com/1newsite1/Manuals.html

Edited July 30, 2014 by Barnaby

[Barnaby]

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10203150867425202&l=1954389764173295244

Not sure how I loaded the other vids but this one is refusing to let me post it here, had to off load it from FB.

 

 

Regards

Edited July 30, 2014 by Barnaby

[Barnaby]

Morning, I'm in a confident mood today.

In my eagerness to play trains I was out early morn into my hobby room and fired up Ixion Fowler but ... ... ... disaster. Instead of waiting for the start donkey to prime the main diesel engine I hit the move off button and whoops all sound and movement quit immediately.

 

Armed with my new knowledge of Lenz and my flow chart I decided a reset was needed again.

Selected 0000 then press 4 button 25 times unplug and wait 5 mins then switch back on and TA DAAAR all is well again.

That's a real confidence boost in that I can recover a situation from an apparent terminal situation.

Yamas

Edited July 31, 2014 by Barnaby

[81A Oldoak]

Morning, I'm in a confident mood today.

In my eagerness to play trains I was out early morn into my hobby room and fired up Ixion Fowler but ... ... ... disaster. Instead of waiting for the start donkey to prime the main diesel engine I hit the move off button and whoops all sound and movement quit immediately.

 

Armed with my new knowledge of Lenz and my flow chart I decided a reset was needed again.

Selected 0000 then press 4 button 25 times unplug and wait 5 mins then switch back on and TA DAAAR all is well again.

That's a real confidence boost in that I can recover a situation from an apparent terminal situation.

Yamas

I had a problem with my DCC-fitted Fowler. I kept entering the factory default code of 0003, but nothing would happen. So I took the loco to Railex at Aylesbury back in May hoping that Paul Martin, proprietor of EDM Models who fitted the DCC, might be able to diagnose and fix the problem. At the end of the day he presented me with my Fowler in full working number. Apparantly, I had somehow changed the loco code to 0004. Doh!

[pauliebanger]

Mark,

 

Well done for sorting that out.

 

I allowed for this sort of impatience when I created the sound project. Lol

 

If you are in a hurry, press F5 (latched) before engaging F1. This will cut out the start-up routine entirely; the engine will be running in 'Light Engine' idle. (release F5 to switch back to 'Heavy Train' mode before driving off if you have something on the hook).

 

Time to study the 'User Notes' again?

 

Kind regards.

 

Paul