kevindickerson

What Dapol have done with the circuit board is to by-pass the circuitry handling the logic level output, and ran a parallel feed to pin 17, by cutting the feed from pin 17 (which on some is Aux 5 and can double up for the SUSI). The internal lighting can then be switched via Aux 3 on an MTC decoder. At a guess TCS doesn't have the SUSI connection and therefore this problem doesn't show up. The reasoning for putting this by-pass in is to allow the internal lighting to be powered on a DC layout and hence needed that circuit bypassed. Nb. Pin 17 when including the index as pin 11, or the 16th physical pin. Regrads Kevin

Picked up a nice little booklet from the Ipswich Transport Museum this weekend on the Branch, it has some useful information about what ran on the line, along with specials. The Transport has an archive resource so that might something worth while deleving into. Regards Kevin

Andi, Having had another look at the signalling diagram (#16 from LNERGE) with your ex-colleague, it should be possible to get from the Down platform to the Up platform at the Felixstowe end without going past the section signal. However he can not ever remember propelling back from the Down to the Up platform (this was quite a few years back) but certainly remembers the fly shunting. It could be that although there is no signal for running from the Ipswich end straight into the Up platform doesn't mean that it didn't happen and that this would be one of those things listed in the local sectional appendix. Given that the signalman would of known that he was receiving a local goods, he could of purposefully held it at the home signal, then routed it into the Up platform. Regards Kevin

Andi, I was speaking with one of your ex-colleagues over the weekend who use to do the Derby Road Trip working. I didn't ask how the trains got to the sidings from the Ipswich End, but from the description he gave me for the run-round operation after shunting into the scrap yard; I would imagine it would come straight into the up platform the wrong way; otherwise to use the run round loop would require the issuing of a token to Trimley and a long round trip to give it up! Now to get the loco from the Felixstowe end of the train to the Ipswich end after shunting the scrap wagons required some fly shunting. So the driver (normally a on a 47) would accelerate like hell towards the two sidings, then after a signal was given by the shunter he would put the brakes on, but still with the throttle open. This would cause the wagons to buffer up and the shunter could then unhook them using his pole all while still on the move; the driver would then accelerate away from the wagons, once the loco had cleared the point the shunter would throw it and the wagons would run into the siding parallel to the one the loco was in. Hence it was then possible to get to the Ipswich end of the train. He didn't give me the date for when this was being done, but a guess it would be around the mid-eighties. Regards Kevin

Tim, The issue around this is that decoders such as the Bachmann 36-553 isn't manufactured by Bachmann and as such still has its original manufacturers identification configured into it. The definition for the 36-553 is in Decoder Pro, however it is under the original manufacture ESU. What you have to remember is that JMRI is open source with "no paid programmers or support" it is all done by people willing to give up their time freely to help others. So at times it can take a little while for some decoder definitions to appear into the software, plus given that there is quite a majority of users in the US that provide support help and decoder definitions, some of the European decoder definitions can take a little while to appear. Regards Kevin