Grouse101

Quick update on my running issues. A decoder reset seems to have worked. I've also removed the base keeper plate, cleaned out the big blobs of white grease and reapplied lubricant slightly less aggressively. However, it looks like the pipework that runs down the side of the boiler from the whistles is damaged at the bottom where it meets the running plate, probably my fault. I can't even work out where that pipework fits in :-(

Anyone else having issues with the DCC sound fitted version? Arrived today, put on test track and it lets out a whistle then nothing. After thinking it might be a connection issue and re-arranging my rolling road it randomly worked perfectly for about 15 minutes. I had to turn off off and go do something. When I turn it back on, same thing, whistle then silence and refused to move. I can hear a feint buzzing in the engine and I know the track has power, but it won't receive commands. I've tried two controllers. If I pick it up off the track and put it down again then it's whistle, but everything cuts out after about a second.

Will need a steady hand later. Just been sent this from Accurascale - https://accuras.reamaze.com/kb/class-55-deltic/how-to-attach-the-chain-between-locomotive-body-and-bogie Their customer service is very rapid.

Hi all, does anyone know how to reattach the chains? Does it look like I'm missing a bit? I can sort of hook it back onto the peg, but it doesn't look anything like the other 3 and it comes off again almost immediately. Apologies if this has already been asked, but there are 240+ pages and search isn't kicking up anything useful. Keen to get this chain back on because it's stopping me from running it.

As a quick update. I received a letter letting me know that Action Fraud and therefore presumably the police are doing absolutely nothing about this. They just let the debit/credit card companies deal with it and ultimately the cost gets passed back onto us via interest rates and account fees. So I suspect the person/persons behind this company may do this again. In fact, now I know you can just get away with it, I may change career...

This looked to be a legitimate business: - UK based company registered with companies house - professional website with genuine contact details that correspond to registration docs - Google business profile - facebook business page - small number of Google reviews (2 of which were 5*), not abnormally low for a small business - actual positive reviews from not that long ago from people I believe to be independent from the shop - confirmed as being registered distributers for some big brands - were still actively marketing products until recently - also on Ebay - professional order process and automated confirmation of orders - Videos on YouTube from people having bought from that shop in the past That's what makes this so interesting. It looks to have been a genuine attempt at doing legit business that has quite suddenly turned into a scam. I really want to know what's happened behind the scenes. They were manipulating the website last week by adding products and changing prices, I believe, to try and lure as many people in as possible with products that didn't exist at attractive prices. They've then suddenly disappeared. Did they do this in an attempt to bring cash into the business quickly in an attempt to save it, i.e. trading whilst insolvent? Or was this pure deception intended for personal financial gain, i.e. fraud? I'd like to know the outcome of this to see if what civil or criminal consequences there are for the director. What was the plan here? It's not like the company and those involved can just vanish. This wasn't some ficticious overseas entity that stole card details or took cash or bank transfers outside of the country. This is a registered legal entity with a director based in the UK taking using debit/credit/paypal and presumably a UK bank account, there will be consequences.

I'm not having much luck here. Just re-ordered one of the items from Hattons instead. They accepted my order 2 days ago before telling me today they didn't actually have it. At least they processed a refund.

I wouldn't expect a response. I've called multiple times, he never answers. I've left a voicemail with no response. I've sent two emails without response. He deleted his Facebook page whilst I was posting to it on Saturday and changed his Google listing to permanently closed. All products have now been deleted from his website. On the Dean Park facebook group there are posts saying that people are starting to report him to trading standards and action fraud, they're also submitting claims to their credit card providers. It's not looking good.

I'm following this with interest having made 2 reasonably large orders last week. Has it now been confirmed that products ordered will not be received? Has anyone actually had any contact with Adam Cann? Thanks

I only found this blog today whilst looking for inspiration and couldn't stop flicking through the 230 pages and over 10 years worth of fantastic work! I really hope that your recovery is going well now and that you're on the mend. All the best, Rob.

Before I sent mine back I was advised to try setting CV54 to 0 to allow the decoder to have another go at fixing this. It didn't work, it actually make it quite a bit worse with an added lurch at the start. I have now received a replacement and it's running perfectly. Having spoken to my retailer they said the slow speed stutter is a known problem, but they've probably had the usual about of returns of this model. So this isn't an issue with every one. Probably just the vocal, unlucky few on the forums desperate for help giving the impression that all these models have issues. I'm sure there are many quiet happy customers.

I think the pump would have driven me nuts if you can hear it on the footplate. Just finished a 30 minute run in and it's still hesitating. You're right, it's too expensive not to be perfect and I'll be looking to return for a replacement. I think I told myself that I could live with it because I really like it and I don't want the hassle of a return.

Hi All, Couple of questions for 94xx owners: 1) for those with the sound fitted version. Is the "chirping" noise with ever rotation meant to be there? It goes when I turn sound off, so I assume it's intentional, but I find the squeaking quite annoying. It's like there's an angry sparrow in the cab. 2) has anyone had wheels that hesitate very briefly once during rotation when at slow speed. The motor overcomes it, but I wondered if this was a common issue and if there was a known fix? I'm currently giving it a very long run in to see if that solves it. The pause is hardly noticable and disppears completely once the first few speed steps are out of the way. I think I could live with it if it doesn't go away. Regarding slow speed control, I wasn't impressed at first, but after activating the "shunting mode" function I'm much happier and can go slower than I'd ever need. Thanks

Glad Charlie's fixed it. Has given me a bit more confidence to give it a go, especially since I can easily get the gradient to 1.5% by using straight sections between each half of the helix.

Reading this with interest. Designing a new layout for a larger space. I want a significant amount of staging for 8ft+ trains. I'm considering a helix to allow staging below the boards, but I've had bad experiences with gradients before. I can get the gradient down to 1.1% by running three loops around part of the layout which drops the staging down by 50cm, but it involves 90m of track (double track), of which I think only 7m could be incorporated into the scenic layout which seems crazy.

Thanks all, I only had to go back to post 171 to find where to fit the part and good news on the spares.

I'm sure this has been discussed, but there's 176 pages to go through... would anyone know the answers to these questions: 1) Does Hattons provide spare parts. I've just opened my new 66 and I think one of the small pipes from near the steps (for sand?) is missing. I tried to contact them on chat, but they closed the chat window so have emailed, but I'm getting a bit stressed about this tiny detail. 2) Whilst searching for the missing pipe in the box I discovered the piece below. Does anyone know where it's come from? I'm starting to realise that these model are very fragile. Thanks

Just stumbled across this whilst reseaching Cadbury wagons. Any update on the layout?

Thanks Steve. I've had the same experience with membrane before, the type that feels more like fabric breaks down very quickly. This time we've used a woven plastic type material which was more expensive and it seems to be holding up better. Wish the developers had done a proper job in the first place, but they're just in it to make a quick profit and disappear.

Using JMRI you can control locomotives via apps on your phone such as Engine Driver. In theory you don't even need to be near you layout, you could control them from anywhere.

One of my biggest gripes with model trains when I was a kid was that you could really only run one train on one track at one time (I didn't know about blocks or isolating sections at the time and probably couldn't have been bothered with them even if I had). Not very realistic in my opinion. Trying to run two trains through one controller usually ended in disaster and even if you had separate tracks and controllers, flicking the wrong set of points could result in some expected behavior. When I discovered that DCC was readily available at a reasobale price I knew it was something I had to implement. I've always been pretty good with computers and technology so when I read that I could build a DCC base station and control trains via the computer for significantly cheaper than buying an off the shelf digital controller I was sold! I opted to build a DCC++ base station (https://github.com/DccPlusPlus/BaseStation/wiki/What-is-DCC--Plus-Plus) using a generic Arduino clone from Amazon with a generic motor shield plonked on top (I'd never heard of Arduino before and I don't know how, it's amazing! I now use three on the layout to control everything, more on that later). The code to upload into the board is available free from the genius that designed the base station (what a amazing guy). Total cost was probably around £20. Tornado is DCC ready so I purchased my first decoder and wired it all up. Nothing happened. My brother was visiting at the time and, as he's pretty handy with computers, I'd got him involved with it. After a few hours of messing about with settings and connections I think he was ready to pack his bags and head home. The main issue we had was that the only power supply available to us was one I'd mutilated for a project many years ago and I suspected this was part of the issue. I eventually bit the bullet and chopped the end off my brand new Hornby power supply to expose the wires and hooked them up. HAZZAH! Lights appeared on the motor shield and Tornado took her first trip under digital control. I started off using the DCC++ graphical user interface which was developed alongside the base station, which I don't think is supported any more. Then I discovered JMRI. I now use this to control all my locomotives, points/turnouts, sensors, signals and whatever else I can attache a servo to. More on JMRI later as I'm still getting it set up. DCC++ and JMRI is such a powerful (and cheap!) combination if you're prepared to put the time into understanding it and setting it up. I Digital

I honestly thought that my layout would be something that would keep me busy for a few weeks at most, I'd recreate the Hornby track mat, get a couple of trains and happily run them occasionally. However, two things happened shortly after I'd purchased the Tornado Express that made me think that I might want to do a bit more: 1) The real Tornado visited the Severn Valley Railway and we went to see it. Such an impressive sight in real life! We spent some time in the museum and I started to catch the bug. 2) I got talking to a delivery man about local history. He asked if I was aware that my house was built on a railway line. I explained that he was mistaken and that the Harborne branch line actually ran a short walk from the house. He said that he was aware of that, but our house was actually built on the Cape Hill Brewery spur that connected the Mitchells & Butlers brewery to the branch line. He was spot on! My interest in the Harborne branch line and local railway history grew massively from that point. That's when I thought it would be far more enjoyable to try and model that rather than just copy the Hornby plan. But this would be a much more ambitious project...

It was a freezing cold, rainy day in late 2019. My girlfriend and I were putting down a membrane in the front garden to stop the weeds coming through the bark chippings. I'd been dragging her out in the garden against her will to do things like this for months and it must have been around this time that she realised if she ever wanted to be able to feel her fingers again and have nails free from mud then she'd need to find me an alternative indoor hobby. It was shortly after this that we visited Cannock Chase with the intention of going for a run, but we'd left it rather late, the sun was setting and it was raining. Instead of running we eat scones in the heritage railway cafe and had a look around the station. There's a little model shop at one end and we had a look around, this was when she said, "would you like a train set for Christmas?". This implied consent sparked something. Model trains have run in the family. My granddad had a layout that he built for my dad and uncle. I don't remember it, but apparently it used to fold out from the wall and sounded very impressive. My Dad still has most of the engines and wagons. My Dad wasn't as passionate about modelling or trains as granddad, but over the years he built up quite an impressive Hornby collection and a selection of track. I remember setting it up in my bedroom when I was a kid and being told to be very careful with the boxes and polystyrene. We didn't have enough space to have something permanently out or properly modelled, but I'd got my hands on a Hornby track plan book and picked out the coolest looking layout with an elevated section. It must have taken him ages, but Dad got all the track and pinned it to a plain 8ft x 4th sheet of MDF for me that would live up against my wall when not in use (I even insisted he use foam ballast). But for the last 20ish years I'd not thought about trains and everything had sat in my parent's house gathering dust. Around the same time I was given some Argos vouchers from work and they were doing a 20% off Hornby. It was fate! I purchased the Tornado Express set. A lot had changed in 20 years in the world of model railways, the track wasn't steel anymore, the points had changed design, DCC was now a thing. It came with the standard 6ft x 4ft track mat, so my initial plan was to recreate this. Off I went to Wickes to pick up some boards and set about building a base in the garage, buying up the expansion sets whilst the 20% discount was still on. But it didn't stop there...

Thanks, all really useful. The incline from Harborne to M&B (1 in 66 in reality) is challengingly steep. I introduced the slight curves to reduce the gradient and the raised level is the lowest I could get away with. In testing smaller engines made it up with wagons without issue (and unrealistically some of the bigger more powerful stuff). There's only space for a handful of wagons or 2 short carriages so only smallish locos will be going up there. Considering gaugemaster power track just to be safe. Frustratingly my compounds are too light over the driving wheels and my black 5 is too heavy in all the wrong places to pull anything even up the slightest incline.

Thanks Paul, really appreciate the reply. Thanks for the insight into the operations. Having M&B sidings served from the Harborne side solves one of my problems. Do you know if passenger services and wagons would ever be mixed on the same service? I think I might be too far in to change the turntable position now. I wanted to put in the turntable that the original station had (see photo) which was pretty small, without a turntable the run around loop meant that the platform would be really short. Then my Dad gifted me a massive Hornby electric turntable which I could convert to DCC, would just about fit in the space and was big enough to turn all my locos (hence the addition of the mainline connection). I'm afraid given the space my tiny loco engine shed is representing Monument Lane. I suppose I could have moved the turntable to be in the centre of the layout behind New Street, but I wanted to keep some space to model a small city centre. Otherwise it'd just be track everywhere. I've attached the JMRI layout and a couple of photos of the turntable area which give a better idea of how the layout is in reality, cramped! The curved passing loops on the right of the JMRI layout are hidden under the M&B sidings and Rotton Park. Starting to regret putting those in really, as nice as it is to have a small goods train appear out of a tunnel that it didn't just go into they do seem to be the cause of a few derailments that aren't easy to access.