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Harlequin

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Posts posted by Harlequin

  1. Hi "Olive" 😄,

     

    From your description it sounds like a very usable building.

     

    If you can insulate the cavity (take advice on whether that might cause damp problems) then you wouldn't need to insulate the walls internally. That would give you more room and make it easier to fix the layout to the walls.

     

    The garage door would need something semi-permanent built inside the opening to seal it up from drafts and insulate that end of the space.

     

    The roof structure needs to be insulated and the internal surface sealed to the internal wall leaf to stop drafts from blowing under the eaves and into the space.  BUT make sure that the roof timbers themselves are still ventilated and can "breath". Again take advice.

     

    A simple wood frame in-filled with insulation boards and covered in OSB on the floor will make that a bit warmer to stand on. It doesn't matter if the floor's not level because you will level the baseboards independently. When creating the floor frame you might want to allow for baseboard legs to extend right down to the concrete for good solid support.

     

  2. 6 hours ago, Holby Railway said:

    looks like im gonna selll up then

     

    nobody anywhere willing to help, thanks guys

     

    HCR is no more......

    It's less than 24 hours since you posted photos, way too soon to give up!

     

    Give it time and try to contact a local club, as advised.

     

    • Agree 2
  3. 1 hour ago, RikkiGTR said:

    I watched a few videos last night on how to install these and in one of them was a “myths busted” section. 
    The guy said there are no special wiring techniques needed for Peco Electrofrog points, they are ready to go out of the box provided you add insulated rail joiners. 
     

    Is this… true? Seems too good to be true and that usually means it isn’t. 
    I’m using Gaugemaster Prodigy Advanced DCC control. 

    It's true.

     

    You can modify them if you want the "Rolls-Royce version" that addresses some potential problems but it's not compulsory and out of the box they will work fine 99.9% of the time.

     

    • Like 2
  4. 2 hours ago, mikesndbs said:

     

    What you have done is very clever and I like how it looks, however the rear of the speaker should not be sealed. The sound from the rear of speakers is important. In hifi speakers it is both passed through baffles and ported to produce base. Constraining the cone also stops it moving properly. If you are happy with how it sounds that great but as an ex speaker producing company employee it's best to leave the back open.

    Thanks Mike,

    Most DCC speakers are supplied with sealed enclosures. Some have bass reflex ports passive radiators but they are still sealed. Have a look at YouChoos speaker catalogue, for example.

    In the Hifi world both sealed and ported speakers are used.

     

    • Like 1
    • Agree 1
  5. 9 hours ago, melmerby said:

    That is incorrect.

    If the enclosure is completely sealed it acts as a damper, restricting the cone movement, so loudspeakers in sealed enclosures are less efficient than those that are open and require more power to get the same sound level.

    However they can produce a cleaner more controlled sound.

    That's what the internet says about hifi speakers but empirically I think a sealed enclosure makes the sound louder when used with the typical miniature speaker we're using.

     

    • Agree 2
  6. 27 minutes ago, melmerby said:

    I've got one sound fitted (from new) loco and that is one too many.

    I've two other US diesels and I wont be converting them to sound.

    It is a US outline diesel (H0), with a decent size speaker (about 25mm) in the fuel tank

    The bell and horn sounds are OK. the engine note and dynamic braking sounds are a bit thin.

     

     

     

    I hope you're not condemning the whole idea on the strength of one loco!

     

    If the bass sounds are thin and weak but the higher frequencies are good then it's likely that the speaker is open to the air on both sides.

     

    Factory fitted sound is often not the best that can be achieved.

     

    The first factory sound-fitted loco I got sounded thin, unrealistic and disappointing. Since then I've learned how to install speakers for the best output. Decoders, speakers and sound projects have improved over the same period and I now have locos that make real rich deep sounds. OK, they still don't compare with the real thing but that smaller sound seems perhaps more "in scale".

     

    • Like 1
  7. The 2015 statement put out by TCS (referred to in many sources) seems to be unfindable online. My guess is that it has been removed as part of the settlement with Lais.

     

    The following page contains a very informative post by Stuart Baker who is an "industry insider", possibly even a TCS insider:

    https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/laisdcc-decoders-12509538

     

    That's the closest I can get to "the horse's mouth" at the moment.

     

    • Like 1
  8. There’s still a lot of room for improvement with in-loco sound generation.

     

    Speakers are improving all the time. The way they are mounted in the loco and the sound path out is gradually being recognised as important.

     

    Edit: You'd think most of that would be basic and well-understood by now but a well-respected manufacturer recently produced a sound-fitted loco with a plain sugar cube speaker, without a sealed enclosure at all, let alone of sufficient size to do anything useful and all that was buried in the centre of a tender with no air path out! It was noted as producing very poor sounds by many but amazingly other people applauded it for having "great sound". So it seems there's a long way to go in modellers understanding what good sounds actually are as well as all the purely technical improvements.

     

    And, yes, you can break the laws of physics in this case! There’s a technique called “psycho-acoustics“ which makes the brain fill in the missing low frequencies to some degree. It could easily be applied to sound decoders but I’m not aware that anyone has done so yet.

     

    • Agree 1
  9. 17 hours ago, 57xx said:

     

    If they are anything like the Iron Minks, they should come off pretty easily, only a light bit of glue was used on the mink I have, I found it easy to remove for repainting.

     

    @RapidoCorbs The off white roof colour looks to have come out nicely, a good evolution from the pure white used on the iron minks and toads. 

     

    16 hours ago, Gilbert said:

    I've had a gentle (ish) push with just fingers and they are a friction fit with pegs locating into mountings in the body moulding

    and yes the roof colour is very good...

    Chris

     

    Yep I agree. The roof colour of this batch of vans is spot on. Nicely done, Rapido.

     

    • Like 2
  10. 2 hours ago, mikesndbs said:

     

    Hi, that would only fix one LED and the wires are very delicate. It would also be a material change to the model thus invalidating the warranty. My suggested approach is completely removable. and one resistor fixes both LEDs and coach lights. Hope this helps

    One resistor in each blue wire would be a very easy change - fit-and-forget.

     

    Many folks are already doing other things that would affect the warranty so for them, this would be a more direct, more reliable solution.

     

    • Like 1
    • Agree 3
  11. 6 hours ago, Chrisjh said:

    Many thanks Gents very useful, my apologies I was referring to the sound decoder manufacturers, as I have noted there is in some small cases, quite a difference comparing for example the DCC Sound decoder used in Asscurascale (ESU) - which are great and the other DCC Sound manufacturers. So I was just wondering if anyone had produced a spreadsheet listing the Functions by DCC Sound decoders for ease of reference. Many thanks Chris

     

    It's still not entirely clear what you're asking, Chris.

     

    Decoder manufacturers just provide the ability to map any F key to any sound and to one of an array of "Auxiliary outputs" that can be connected to lights and other devices. They don't prescribe what sounds or lights should be activated by what function key.

     

    Loco manufacturers use the Auxiliary outputs to activate features on the loco however they see fit. There is a standard for directional lights, which loco makers stick to if the loco has such lights but no other outputs have standardised uses.

     

    Sound project designers configure the function keys of a particular type of decoder to map to their sounds and lights for particular locos. There is no agreed standard between them about what function keys should be mapped to what sort of sounds (and it would be very difficult to do), except that F1 almost always turns the overall sound on and off.

     

    So the number of permutations is enormous and there isn't enough common ground in this area to be able to condense the information in any useful way.

     

    • Like 1
  12. Doesn't the outer circuit also have to cross the river or gully?

     

    Have you thought about the level of the FY? Is the gradient down to it shallow enough for the trains you want to run? How will you reach it when things go wrong?

     

    Every train leaving the FY runs anti-clockwise. So if you want anything to run clockwise it has to stop, reverse and crossover. That may or may not be prototypically correct and is a problem for loco-hauled trains.

     

  13. Newquay is currently "re-branding" itself "Love NQY"...

    https://lovenqy.co.uk/

     

    They seem to be trying to go up-market: Business Improvement District manager Mark Warren said: "People need to look at Newquay in a different light because we've really moved on."

     

    So no more shops selling fluorescent plastic tat and no more inebriated stag and hen parties. 😆

     

    • Interesting/Thought-provoking 6
  14. 2 hours ago, GWR1890-1908 said:

    I corresponded to Kernow re the black doors on the fully lined model, and they  confirmed that B&W photos had been used as a colour reference for this version. Given that it is well known by all branches of historical modelling that you CANNOT use this method to determine colour because of ,if nothing else, the type of film used then ( we all know about orange lining being almost invisible, and in photos of WW1 aircraft, yellow appears BLACK), I was very surprised.  Also, the prize monogram was not applied to all stock, and was very short lived. Given John Lewis book on GWR SRM's, I could not understand how such an error could be made. I pointed this out to Kernow, and also the fact that all other livery options had body colour on the doors, so why should that one be different? It was noted for future production. Given that the models were delayed at one point to ensure the liveries were correct, it is also a head scratcher. Despite this relatively minor concern, the model is exceptional. I have only test run mine as the layout is bare baseboards, but it appears to be trouble free. We are lucky that someone has taken the plunge with such a subject. Could we be lucky enough for them to tackle a Dean loco next?

     

    Lewis says that 'it seems' the prize monogram was used on SRMs 61-72 and 73-80 when first built.

     

    So the fully lined, chocolate and cream No. 61 is probably historically correct (black doors excepted) and an interesting variation for the modeller - although, as you say, it was short lived in that livery.

     

    • Like 1
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