Izzy

Thanks, that's good to know. I was advised by several others to reduce the track voltage and is why I then got the Z21 to replace the PA2 with it's fixed 14.9v track output. Bob

Is that the decoder or for the three wire stay-alive packs to work with them? I have read that with the Accurscale Manor that voltage was needed before the fitted SA pack would switch on but didn't realise it applied to the ESU decoder as well. Good job I don't have any ESU chips as I've just reduced my track voltage to 12v for less risk of 16v tantalums going 'bang', which I've had happen a couple of times now. Bob

Thanks Rich, I think perhaps it's a combination of a different brown pastel colour to normal combined with light refraction that's maybe the issue. The Javis earth is actually like small slivers of wood and I've spent a while rubbing it down. When first done it looked like stubble in a cereal crop field, which would have been ideal if that's what I had wanted. It's now had a poster paint coat via the airbrush. Once the grass is on top not much will show probably. Maybe just at the side of the ballast edge. I'm not really intending to do anything with the switch bank. Maybe drop them out and give the mountboard surroundings a fresh coat of paint, but that's all. I have raised the bank in front and at the side of them to the same height and will probably add a few shrubs/bushes etc. on top. But as this is the viewing and operating side I don't want it too high. Trying to cover them over would raise it far too much. Bob

A bit of colour Having got the track ballasted I have now been able to give it some basic weathering and build up the surroundings to provide the scenic framing, what little there will be. Weathering was carried out using Rowney pastels which are dropped on by brushing the pastel stick with a hard brush and then working the powder in and around using both hard and soft brushes. I mostly used a couple of brown shades and black and vacuum around to remove any surplus powder at regular intervals. I’m not sure the result is quite right yet, but the bullhead nature of the track at least does show a bit better. I tend to switch between airbrush weathering and pastels depending on what I think might work best. Airbrushing is very directional, is great for doing large areas in a uniform manner, or sometimes really tiny spot scenes, powders messy in a different way but easier to do in small bits, a bit here, a bit there, whereas using the airbrush means doing more in one go because of the extra work of cleaning up each time you stop or change colour. Not being totally happy with it at present I will next go over it with the airbrush using Reeves poster paint. I like using this as it always dries to a matt finish. At present the track has a slight mauve tint in certain lighting conditions and I am baffled as to why. At other angles and after a bit more weathering it doesn't look too bad But it can’t stay like that and I’m hoping playing around with the airbrush and poster paint will sort it. I have also built up the edges using surplus mountboard and foamcore offcuts. The intention is to try and lay a basic grass layer and then add some other vegetation where I think it might suit. At the moment a layer of Javis earth mix has been laid down. I’ve never used this before but found it in my local craft/model shop and thought I’d give it a try as an under-layer. It seems to be coloured sawdust as best as I can tell now it’s out of the packet and it looks like I might have to airbrush over it with some poster paint to get a uniform appearance that appears to actually be earth. But it was cheap compared to WS products so can’t complain. Three different colour bags of Javis 2mm fibres were less than one WS. A boundary fence is also being considered. All this is being done on the basis if I don’t like it, I’ll try again with something else. Worst case rip it up and start again. Plans are also in hand for a couple of huts. One to be used as a general rest hut for engine men and track side workers, another as a track maintenance store. One will be a concrete LNER type D hut, a larger size than I made for Priory Road, the sizes for these varying depending on requirements, the other perhaps wooden or brick, we’ll see. Oh, and a toilet hut I think. I’m basing all this around the premise of the original layout plan, as much what is outside the area modelled having an influence as what is seen. So the low bank at the front is meant to represent one sitting between the main running lines and the exchange sidings. And the huts are meant not only for the sidings but those concerned with the main lines in respect to the track maintenance aspects. Bob

I just recently discovered that Harder & Steenbeck are now owned by Iwata. Down the years I've acquired a few different airbrushes. Badger 200 (inherited from my son when he left home to make his way in the world), a couple of different sized Paasche single action bottom cups with a range of interchangable needles, and in more recent times a little gravity feed double action Iwata Neo along with a cheaper clone like one that came with the Expo tools compressor I also bought to use instead of the very heavy duty Aztec studio compressor (up to 80psi) I find is now just too heavy (15Kg ) to easily lug around. After nearly 40 years it's earned it's keep. There is no doubt the Iwata looks and feels much superior in the quality stakes than the others, but then it's much newer. The clone works okay-ish. Both are 0.3mm needle size so not for big jobs and large area coverage. Where they score with their gravity feed is the ability just to load a single brushful of paint for small touch-up jobs and weathering. However perhaps the most useful acquisition in recent years has been the Iwata cleaning/spray-out jar. That you can also hang the airbrush off it helps make it so useful, both while spraying, and with cleaning between colours or when finished. Everything contained so there is little or no mess. Wouldn't be without mine now. Bob

I got my Z21 just recently at a good price from: https://www.scograil.co.uk/ No handset with them though, that has to be obtained separately. I use a large Android phone as a dedicated throttle. Cheaply bought from Currys. The Z21 app is rather good for use with sound fitted locos but there are several handsets that will work with it if you prefer a rotary dial. The Roco WiFi Maus would be my preferred choice. https://www.coastaldcc.co.uk/ have them in stock (same unit as Scograil but separate business) Bob

Yes, in the past I have always designed terminus layouts so that the fiddle was just for arriving and departing trains. All the action apart from that taking place in full view. But.... when it gets to the stage that there just isn't the space to do that, then compromise is neccesary, even if it means that things don't always depict real life. For to my mind any layout is better than no layout. I wrote an article many years ago, late 80's - Calculating Layouts (Your Model Railway) - about designing layouts in which the opening paragraphs described the situation of lofts and odd spaces no longer offering space, and which is even more present today thanks to modern house design where garages no longer exist even with larger 4/5 bed properties, just hard standing since few cars will now fit anyway. It might not seem so just at the present time but I believe that Hornby's decision to pursue TT120 could prove a clever move in the decades to come if they can keep it and themselves going. Bob

Hand uncoupling – with a magnet Exchange Yard Sidings is proving to be interesting in that it has prompted me to try several new ideas concerning it’s construction and use. Firstly it was the track, then the point tie-bars, now it’s how I uncouple the DG’s. Those using DG’s usually use magnets with which to achieve uncoupling. Either electro magnets buried in the track or under-baseboard permanent ones moved in and out of position by one means or another. I’ve tried both methods with different 2mm layouts I have built in the past. Both worked but had drawbacks I wasn’t keen on, either in the amount of hardware required to make them work, or the unrealistic way stock had to be moved around to accomplish it. And of course these methods can’t be used in a fiddle yard. So with more recent layouts I’ve resorted to uncoupling by hand using a piece of wire on a handle to lift the loops thus allowing the stock to be parted, which can be done anywhere I want on the layout including the fiddle, so very flexible in that respect. But it isn’t particularly easy to do and as I get older with my eyesight and hand co-ordination becoming less than it use to be I’ve looked for easier ways of doing it. Recently I read about people using steel loops and waving magnets around to attract them upwards. I think this was in 4mm, not sure, but it sounded quite a good idea. My reservations were concerned with whether the stock was heavy enough to resist being pulled upwards and off the track by the strength of the magnet. But it did sound simpler and perhaps easier to achieve. There was only one way to find out, try it using one of the 6x6mm cylindrical neodymium magnets I had. With a pack of DG’s from the 2mm shops you get a coil of 30swg PB wire and a coil of 29swg steel wire. I’ve always made the loops out of the PB so had plenty of the steel coils with which to make steel ones. These only had to be simple loops with no tail but a gap to allow them to be fitted into the pivots. So a rectangle with a slot in one end. I marked a pair of snipe pliers where the right length for the sides and ends were and then bent some up I then removed the PB loops and fitted the replacement steel ones. I tried a couple of the Farish depressed centre PCA’s I had first. Using a round 6x6mm neodymium glued on the end of a coffee stirrer I waved it around the ends and the loops rose upwards and came down on top of the latches just as is meant to happen. I found if you got the magnet too close the wagons would indeed be drawn towards the magnet but with a few goes I began to see the basic concept would work. So I converted some more wagons to steel loops. A few 12t vans. These are plastic bodies on etched underframes. Here the metal underframes made it even more important that the magnet was kept at distance otherwise the vans just literally flew onto the magnet. But with more practice I found that it could work quite well. So I have spent the last few days bending up sets of steel loops and fitting them to all my stock. I still have quite a way to go. About 40 wagons have been converted so far, with about the same again along with all the coaching stock. I think I might have to get some more steel wire to be able to make enough loops. The question seems to be which runs out first, the steel wire or stock to convert. But it is proving much easier to use. And nice and simple. I like that, keeping things simple. In other news the basic ballasting has been completed and the bridge now glued into position. Testing of the track with locos and wagons has been undertaken during the job to ensure it all carried on working as it should. That points didn’t get jammed up with either ballast or glue. Using the Woodland Scenics scenic cement glue does mean it’s a slow job. This is because it’s very runny, like water, and thus not very strong. It takes a few doses to fully harden off the ballast, and it must be left overnight/24hrs to let each dose properly dry out. It doesn’t fully harden off until it does. So I have had plenty of time to bend up all those steel loops …….. There is a bit more ballasting to do, odd bits where it hasn’t taken properly, and then I can give it a basic coat of weathering to try and make it look less stark. This will lower the contrast and bring out the details a bit more – I hope. The basics for the point levers have also been fitted. These won’t be made and added until later to prevent them getting caught and damaged/pulled about. Been there etc……. Bob

I’m currently experimenting with steel formed loops with no tail …. and operated by hand by waving a 6x6mm neodymium magnet above/around them. Nice and simple, and seems to work! Bob

Generally most DG users set the couplings hard up against the underside of the wagon bufferbeams. Whatever that measurement turns out to be, I'm not sure what it actually is. But you can set any height you want if you aren't intending to couple your stock to that of others, say on a group layout or whatever, when of course the same height is needed. I actually set mine at the height required to fit on the top of coach and diesel loco bogies, which is about 1mm lower than normal. Bob

That seems like a good idea John. What I did do was to layer them so they were plain both sides, put the half etch on the inside which can then be flooded with solder. I thought that would make them stronger. But leaving one side as long as possible and cutting the other to suit is something I haven't tried to date as it depends on the lenghts needed but could well be better still when it can be done. Bob

If you watch the video's of Ian's layout in action you will see a shunter is used to release locos. This adds I think to these kind of minimum space layouts set as secondary terminus affairs in increasing the play value where the owner just hasn't the real estate to build a larger layout with a loop. There are many others such as myself in this situation at times. I find using the fiddle as the other half of the run round is also very useful when that design can be employed as with the layouts shown here. All these ideas are 'needs must when the devil drives' kind of thing. Bob

Hunslet - new coupling rods Having used the loco to test the build of Exchange Yard Sidings it’s had quite a bit of running. Now that the layout is up and running I have taken the opportunity to further refine it in that I have made replacement coupling rods. This is the one aspect of it that has stood out for me as being rather overscale during all the testing. I made up some using the cut & shut method from the J94 rods on the 3-205 etch for Farish locos. They look a bit better size wise. Making these meant that new crankpins were also required. The originals are shouldered 14ba bolts so I took some 14ba countersunk screws and filed them down to remove the head and thread and leave the main shank at 0.5mm with just 2mm thread to go into the wheel. Once screwed in they were retained with some cryno. Retaining washers were cut from some 1mm OD/0.5mm ID Albion alloy brass tube. I decided to paint them yellow thinking that Blue Circle might have thought that a good idea after seeing BR start doing that with it’s shunters and that it would go well with their colour scheme. Now all I have to do it weather it, perhaps using the airbrush, I’m not sure at the moment. Here’s a shot with a couple of cement wagons I am fitting with simple steel loops for the DG’s. This is an experiment to see if uncoupling by waving a magnet over them will prove workable. Tests so far indicate it is, but until the ballasting of Exchange Yard Sidings is done and the track is usable again I won’t really know.

I think as soon as you add 'sound' into the equation that alters how well many systems/handsets work with it. Yes, many can handle up to the 28 functions now, even though a few locos are already in excess of that, but it's more about how they cope that becomes the issue. Multile button pressing just to set/use a higher function number becomes a real pain. You may only want to use a few of them, but you can't sort them to suit, no adjustment of any kind. This leads you to discover, as I have, that is really only glass screen systems of one type or another that suit. I have now adopted a Z21 after 14 years of a Prodigy PA2. Used with a cheap large android smart phone as the throttle (£59) it's been a revelation as to the way it can be set to suit the individual user. Choose what sound functions you want, in the order you want them, and how they operate, latching/non-latching etc. Give them names. No having to use a crib sheet or remember Fn numbers for each individual loco. More costly. Yes. But worth it? Without doubt. Yet actually the new Z21 and the phone cost no more than I paid for my PA2 system. If you don't use sound then it's a different matter in many respects but the fact remains that many systems just don't have the adjustments, even basic ones, that the better European ones do. In this regard it might be that the new system coming from Bachmann might give many modellers what they need. Until it arrives no one will really know but it might be worth hanging on to find out. Bob

A few problems I think with a thread like this that relates to the building of something it’s important to mention any issues and problems that are encountered so the impression isn’t given that it’s always plain sailing. Otherwise those hitting similar difficulties get discouraged by thinking it’s just their lack of skill or such like whereas in my experience everybody has aspects that don’t go well at times. Mostly the trick is in overcoming them in one way or another, by fair means or foul as they say….. After finishing the track I then went to paint the sleepers with back poster paint. Just to give them a basic colour before ballasting. Usually in the larger scales I’ve just done this with a brush by hand. A watered down wash to soak in to the ply sleepers. Then paint the chairs and rails later along with giving everything weathering via various tones etc. However for some reason the poster paint didn’t really work at all well, the ply didn’t want to absorb the paint. So since I also intended to give the metal bufferstops a coat I thought perhaps the best thing to do was to get out the airbrush. A while back I obtained a little double action Iwata Neo for my 2mm work and also got a small compressor from Expo tools that came with a cheap double action airbrush. This has a larger built-in gravity cup so I thought it would be best to use this for the job, able to hold a larger volume of thinned down poster paint given the area coverage needed. It is still only a small 0.3mm needle job but okay for this scale. Any greater area and I be wanting to get out one of my larger needle Paasche single action bottom cup airbrushes. This is one of those horses for courses situations where you need different airbrushes relative to the size of the work involved. I also have a bigger and heavier (15Kg) Aztec silent air compressor to use with them that can deliver the amount of air they need at the correct pressure & volume but given that with age I now struggle to lug it around I rarely use it or the older airbrushes. But they are there if I really need them. They have given good service over the 40 odd years I’ve had them so investing in good equipment is never a waste. The advantage of airbrushing the poster paint is that it went on as a thin coat and covered much better, but also coated the chairs/rail. To be honest although some modellers like to paint the chairs and sides of the rails in a red rust colour in reality they are usually much darker so I thought that with subsequent weathering it would probably look okay. Lighter tones of brake and cement dust that would provide contrast and thus help bring out some detail. Most track apart from some main lines seems to take on the mantle of various shades of brown, an overall brownish hue thanks to the seeping of the creosote out of the sleepers along with the general dust and dirt blown around. Well, until concrete sleeper days where it now stays much cleaner in the sense weathering is more gradual and mostly just atmospheric elements alongside brake dust and oil stains etc. After the painting I left it a couple of days to let it all bed in. This is when the problems started to appear. Having cleaned the top of the rails after airbrushing to remove most of the excess paint before it dried I went over them with a Peco rubber – it’s all I ever use although others seem dead set against them – and then plugged in the DCC system to check it all. It immediately shut down with a short circuit warning as soon as the track power was engaged. After checking it all I came to the conclusion that one of the bufferstops must be the culprit. As they are metal etchings the actual bufferbeam must either be wood, as it was with one, or they need isolating from the uprights. I do this by using thin layers of plasticard between them. Having glued them into place I had to break off all three before I found the one where this insulation had not worked for some reason. I had used Evergreen 5thou so tried again using 10thou, which then seems to have worked. That it had broken down on both legs seems weird. I use EMA liquid poly to glue the plasticard in place. It’s a different formulation to either pure butanone or Slater Mek Pak, both of which I also have, and produces a really strong joint with jobs like this. More horses for courses. Having sorted this issue I then found another. Putting the loco on the track to test it all it started jumping/jerking at the toe of the points. I looked at the track and then could see the problem. The rails joints were not aligned.??? What was going on. It took me quite a while to discover the cause. Now when I originally laid the sleepers on the templates I had no intention that they would remain permanently on them. So I just used two thin strips of d/s tape to locate them in place. A strip under where each rail would be. Just to hold the sleepers in place while the track was built. Had I meant to leave them on then I would have used a full width strip of d/s tape. The issue was that while it is almost impossible to pull the sleepers upwards, the tape will allow them to be pushed sideways a bit. And this was what was happening. It was all the fault of the Hacked servos. The brass sprung wire used to absorb the excess travel needed over the movement of the tie-bars means they are always exerting pressure on the blades. This is good in the sense it means they are always firmly located up against the stock rail, but when the sleepers can be pushed sideways ….. So I manually set the servos to the mid-point of the tie-bar travel, waited until the track joints moved back into allignment, and then flooded high viscocity cryno around the first few sleepers either side of the track joints to hopefully lock them to the baseboard. After leaving it a day, and then setting the servos back to applying the pressure it all seems to have worked out. No more movement. I wanted this sorted before ballasting because I didn’t want to rely on the ballasting holding them firmly in place just in case this didn’t happen when it would be much harder to correct if that needed removing first. I am pleased with the tie-bars. Not only do they work well they look decent too. With all that sorted I can now move on to the ballasting. This is a job I don’t enjoy at all. It takes a long time and never seems to work in exactly the same way or look quite the same each time even though I use the same ballast, Woodland scenics extra fine grey, and the same glue, their scenic cement, which I apply with a pippette. However it should, hopefully, start to make the track look a bit better. Bob

Could it simply be that a connection somewhere in the wiring for the program track has broken? I’ve only ever used POM with my PA2. No danger of programming other than the chosen loco as you have to input the address to make changes. You could try using it, might show whether the issue lies just with the program output somewhere along the line. Bob

So, lower voltage, higher amps. Certainly doesn’t match the specs but as it also doesn’t have the Gaugemaster label on it as previously the guess has to be it’s the nearest spec they could obtain, well MRC as that’s where they originate from. That’s all I can think. That they were not available for a couple of years on top of that alongside Gaugemaster developing their own systems which are supposed to be arriving sometime soon - along with other makers new offerings, just adds to the mix on widely differing specs versus availability of parts. But, if you bought it specifically for the rated voltage output, as you did, I’d be asking for a full refund and looking elsewhere. For the cost there are now better specified alternatives with adjustable features, such as the Z21. Or, get an older secondhand one. I often think of disposing of mine now instead of keeping it as backup so there should be some around. Bob

Does the PSU you have state the 3.5amp output or is that different too? Something doesn't seem right/acceptable whatever. Bob

My 14 year old Advance2 has always given 15v, well measured with my basic MM at 14.9v but close enough. Funnily enough I have just moved on to a Z21 to be able to set the voltage to what I want, 12v in my case. But here’s the rub, the specs say it can be adjusted between 12- 24v @ 3amp. However the supplied PSU in this case is 20v @2.5amp. And the specs say the output voltage will be 1v less than the input, so the range is just 12-19v @2.5amp. Hmm…. So it seems in recent times they all use whatever PSU’s they can obtain, perhaps because of the ongoing supply issues with electronic and other parts. I can understand that but it still doesn’t seem right, that they don’t highlight the changed specs when it will have a material impact for some users. Fortunately it doesn’t affect what I wanted it for, but I would be extremely annoyed if it had and would be looking for a full refund. Makes you feel kind of cheated. Bob

Oh thanks for sharing that and the shot. It looks really good, just the kind of result I am hoping to end up with, something that looks real in that there is a sense of purpose to it all. Seeing it makes me even more pleased I added the extra siding as I went along. It makes it all seem 'right'. Bob

Finished – basically With more chairs to hand I have now been able to complete the trackwork. They are now various shades of brown rather than black as before. I thought it might make them easier to see and handle but in practice it didn’t really make much difference. The chairs come in a sprue and must thus be cut out of it. They come in packs of 12 sprues which have 1 checkrail chair, 2 slide chairs, and eight plain chairs in each. Rather than have lots of sprues around with just odd unused chairs in them, which would also take up quite a bit of space, I have always cut all the chairs out and stored them in the plastic containers 35mm roll film used to come in, one tub for each chair type. It’s a boring job cutting them all out but saves time later on when building track. To make fitting them on the rail as easy as possible I chamfer all the edges of the foot of the rail. Hold and push the rail into them and then use tweezers to push them along the rail It’s important of course to get the chairs all the same way around, the inside jaws on the inside etc. This can often be tricky to see. The slide chairs come with an inside jaw that must be cut off, sliced off with a scalpel. This is so that if you want you can use them as plain chairs by cutting off the excess length as the number of slide chairs you might need could be far less than the number of plain chairs. Threading lots of chairs on rail is another quite tedious and repetitive job but one that brings the reward of the final look of the trackwork. You might have seen that I mark where the different chairs go on the point templates so they get threaded on in the right order and correct numbers. I have also made and fitted the bufferstops which are a mix of GC and LMS/BR designs and made from the excellent etches available from shop 1. The GC has a wooden beam the others rail built. The idea was to try and make the layout as non-region specific as far as possible so it wouldn’t matter what stock was used. Mainly it will be BR blue era diesels not generally seen around East Anglia such as class 20 & 24 although it doesn’t matter in the wider sense as it’s just a little home layout cum test track. As with the rest of the track half chairs have been glued in place where functional chairs were not used, the bufferstops being soldered to the rail first and the half chairs fitted around them. Having added in the extra siding I re-built the switch panel to suit. I’m pleased I made this alteration as it seems to make it look more like sets of sidings you often see in shots of them. There is a bit more balance to the overall scene and I am pleased with how it looks. As such the layout is finished in respect of being up and running. It has an overall length of 50” and width of 7”. The idea is that the fiddle board will sit in a recess in the layout cover for easy and simple storage in the minimum of space. The next job will be to paint the track before laying the ballast. This will be done using black poster paint to represent the creosote new timbers were given. Weathering with airbrush and by hand will be undertaken once the (grey) ballast has fully dried out to try and represent the cement and coal dust that would undoubtedly be around the area. As I’m not much good at scenery it might be a while before I finish the layout off scenic wise. At present I really don’t know how I might try and do it anyway, whether to add a low bank along the rear with a few taller bushes or just leave it at grass of different lengths with some boundary fencing alongside a few huts for various purposes. There will be a small grassy bank at the front, as you can sometimes see between main running lines and groups of sidings. I marvel at the effects others are able to achieve which mostly seem to elude me so I don’t want to rush it. That it is useable for it’s purpose of a workbench test track means it’s already serving one of it’s main aims so there is no hurry. I can also play trains with it as the exchange sidings and try and visualise how I want to finish it. Another aim is to be able to use it as a photo backdrop for locos and stock so I want to keep it fairly open. Layout Cost While I thought about all this it occurred to me that it might be an interesting exercise to try and estimate how much this little layout has cost to make. This is an aspect not often mentioned in layout builds but could help illustrate that trying your hand at something like this in 2mm/2FS needn’t cost the earth. I say ‘has cost’ but in truth most of what I used I had to hand and only needed some more chairs to complete it. Of course all the bits were bought at some stage or were left overs from other projects so often costs are relative and hard to quantify. Therefore I’ve tried to cost it from the basis of having to buy in everything from scratch. The main basics anyway. So: The baseboard/fiddle were made using two sheets of A1 size mountboard and one of 5mm foamcore. Another A1 foamcore will probably be used in making the cover I shall give it. These sheets are currently around £3 each at the Range (mountboard) and Hobbycraft (foamcore). Add in a 250ml bottle of tacky glue, about £2.50. Total = £14.50. With the visible track I used about 800 chairs so around - £16. Easitrac was used in the fiddle, about £10. 20×500mm lengths of code 40 bullhead are £15. A guestimate for the amount of 1/32” ply I used for cutting the sleepers comes out at around the £10 mark. The cork was one roll from a pack of 5 from eBay. Say another £10, it’s not cheap these days. 4 x bufferstops are £8.80. Total = £68.80 For the Electrics the hacked servos cost around £6 to produce, £2 each servo and switch, 1 x SPDT & 1 x DPDT. The Vellmann power supply/voltage regulator kit was £8. Wiring cost around £10. Total = £42 This gives a basic total of £125.30. Not too bad is it? Building the track the way I have is very cost effective compared with using the available kits if perhaps a little more time consuming to produce and with not the same level of detail in regard to the chairs where the kits display the different types. However it was just as quick as making soldered track using etched chairplates, perhaps quicker. I’m pleased I have now found a way to build track this way in 2mm, plastic chairs on ply sleepers, that seems stable and secure when laid. While I have no plans to build another 2mm layout as it stands at the moment if I were to do so I think that this is the way the track would be made. I do wish I had discovered this method before making Priory Road. Whether I could have produced the single-slip and obtuse crossing in the same way is moot, but while PR’s soldered track looks okay I do often think it could be better, soldered track does rather look like, well, soldered track. One cost I have not taken into account is jigs. I don’t use and have never used any in track making in any scale, all forming and planing/filing of crossing V’s/point blades being done by hand. If you had to buy these, and weren’t as plastic track adverse as I am then the kits would be far easier and cheaper. It’s all swings and roundabouts isn’t it? Bob

There is a newish thread here concerning DCC sound fitted locos on DC, with several remarks that their performance is generally quite poor. Very slow speeds and low sound levels. I wonder if this is not the case with LB simply because you use heavy duty O gauge DC controllers that can give these locos the current levels they need on DC which other OO specific DC systems with lower amperage rates cannot. This might explain why Hornby have gone down this route. To prevent users expressing dissatisfaction at the poor performance on DC when they are quite satisfactory on DCC. Bob

Will the G6 be able to cope with the radius of set track curves and points? They look fairly tight. Zimo MX600’s are available from YouChoos @£25 atm. All you really need. As Nigel says just cut off the plug and surplus wires. Best motor control of any decoder brand and able to be tuned if needed exactly to meet coreless needs. Bob

I think perhaps consideration also has to be given to how each coupling type works because this affects where the magnets need to be, and how it will all work. While it is correct to say they can use magnets some need electromagnets while how they actually achieve uncoupling varies not only between the differing types but also how each type may be configured. Different actions if they are delayed compared to non-delay. To give an example the DG’s need to be run over a magnet and are uncoupled once past it. Unless they are single ended you can’t part them over a magnet. There is no other action required. However, if you want to break a rake of wagons in a siding then they all have to be pulled out to where the magnet is, and then pushed back again. The SW’s by contrast need either to be stopped over it if they are non-delayed, (and it needs to be long enough to cover both droppers being pulled down), or for the delayed version the ‘soft shoe shuffle’ used whereby the wagons perform the stop/reverse/carry on ritual. Non of this looks particularly prototypical. A lot of faffing around. So you need to make a choice of coupling depending on how you want to operate a layout. I use both DG’s and SW’s in different scales but, and I know this may seem daft, uncouple by hand exactly where I want to part stock. This is still far easier than trying to use 3-link couplings and also avoids all the hassle with permanent or electro-magnets. Bob

If the lights remain on that would indicate some problem with either the motor itself, or the power getting to it from the decoder. Some Bachmann diesels have the connection between the pcb and motor tags as sprung fingers, a bit like pickups on wheel backs, and these don’t always prove reliable. I have a policy of soldering these now in my N gauge ones to overcome the issue. Bob