Now that Steinrücken is a running layout, the opportunity to play trains is not to be missed. Pending a circuit diagram for an occupancy detector I've been promised, proper wiring is slighly held up, but then it'll be easier to wire when the layout is dismantled. As I'm moving house later this month that would be the sensible time to seperate all the boards and wire in the comfort of a chair with the baseboards on end.

Having some inexplicable urge to do things with a soldering iron, I decided to DCC fit some older models which were not DCC ready- two Bimdzf²⁶⁹s and a 628/928 DMU. At this point I've retained the factory lighting, but light bleed is such that I'm going to have to do a better job with some home made LED boards eventually.

The upper headlight of the triangle should not have light showing at the same time as tail lights! Not that the DCC ready models are any better...

This loco caused me some consternation on another problem...

I had run the loco round light before putting a train on the layout to ensure everything was working and that there were no obstructions. All was fine. Adding a short (five coach) push-pull InterRegio rake, as it entered one helix there was a short and the DCC system stopped everything. I spent ages looking at the track on the helice, trying to work out what the problem was, and indeed went to bed without having solved it. However, this morning, a bit fresher, the somewhat obvious thought of checking the train occurred to me. The Roco 112s/143s have pickups bearing onto the tops of the wheel flanges, rather than the back of the wheels...

On one bogie they were bent upwards, so as the loco negotiated the particularly rough joint between the final baseboard and the "Binz" helix (the only joint without alignment dowels), the pickups contacted the cast metal chassis. I hadn't had this when testing light engine simply as I had the loco facing the other direction. Fish Finger Sandwiches!

As far as push pull rakes go, because my intention is to run fixed formation, the driving trailer shares the address with the locomotive rather than needing to be set up as a consist. I'm not even sure if the cheap Hornby decoders I use as function only decoders support consisting.