Cantabrigian

I recently tried to start up my Bachman Class 25 which has an ESU Locksound v4 decoder. All the sounds work as normal, but when I apply throttle, the address (06 in this case) just starts flashing on the screen , and the loco no longer moves. It had been running fine , and all other locos are functional. So I assume the issue is with this specific loco. Does anyone know what the flashing display signifies? Thank you

Thank you for all the input. Just received my Vallejo “brown leather” acrylic and airbrushed a sample of track . Looks like an acceptable base colour for general weathered look. Will need some other colours to break up the monotone. May use pan pastels . Time to experiment. Cheers

I see lot of votes for Railmatch sleeper grime and Roof dirt, but I can’t get those in Canada. Anyone know the equivalents in Vallejo paints, or another brand available on this side of the pond? Cheers

I’m about to install my SL90 in my DCC layout and decided to make sure there were no shorting issues with it. All my higher end locos run fine, but my Railroad Range 9f Evening Star shorts out every time. I think it’s because there is so much side to side play on the wheels. I tried extending the frogs with nail varnish as one person recommended, but no improvement. I don’t think the issue is at the 2 main frogs , but elsewhere in the intricate tight spacings. I wanted to avoid cutting the feeds and adding an electro frog switch per the PECO instructions since all my points are manual. Any other options? Don’t want to retire the 9f . Took me weeks to squeeze a Hornby sound decoder into it, so don’t want to give up on it now.

For what it’s worth, I’ve had 3 locos running with Loksound decoders for several years with no issues. This week I finally managed to fit a TTS decoder into a Hornby Railroad 9F. All seemed fine for several days, but yesterday, with no warning, the 9F , which was idling in a siding, suddenly took off at full speed and required swift “hand of God” intervention to prevent a major collision. I have a Sprogg 3 controller. Seems unlikely that this was a coincidence, and that more likely the TTS is less tolerant of noise. I do have it set to the default 03 address. I assumed that was ok since my other 3 locos have different addresses.

Arrghh. After wrecking my first gaugemaster backscenes using wallpaper paste, I resorted to re-purchasing them and going with spray adhesive. Lots of problems with delaminating edges, and now one 3 ft section has decided to bubble up a week later. Tried to iron it flat (made it 10 X worse) . Tried to steam it flat (made it 20X worse). Had to walk away and have a beer. This hobby is supposed to be fun, right? :-(

Thanks Rob. Yes the motor housing in the tender is not quite right for the vertical mounting of the speaker, but some surgery will work. The boiler area is very narrow so the TTS decoder looks to be a close fit. Might have to adjust the side exit speaker wires Not sure if the decoder might fit vertically on its long side. Need to get out the calipers. But plan A is to find a way to keep the decoder in the loco Peter

Has anyone successfully fitted TTS in the Hornby Railroad Evening Star yet. Mine is in pieces awaiting a decision on how to proceed. in my version the tender has pickups and the moulded housing for a tender drive ( when I first saw it I thought it was a speaker housing, but alas no) If I Dremel off the existing strand-offs for the DCC plug in the loco, and hardwire the TTS decoder, it might fit, leaving me with just the speaker wires to run to the tender. Don’t really want all those extra decoder wires running across to the tender. Thoughts anyone?