AndrueC

I was examining one of my Maunsel coaches earlier this week in order to work out how to fit light bars. In the process I discovered that there are concertina extensions on the doors. I've had these coaches for several years and had never noticed them before. If you pull them out you can assemble a train with continuous corridors. It looks good stationary. But what I hadn't expected is that due to some strange alchemy they stay connected as the train runs. They don't appear to be magnetic and nor does there appear to be a spring. I only wish Dapol had added them to their more modern coaches.

That's not the point. The point is that it doesn't matter what I set CV 5 to be because the top speed is always the same.

Did I imply there'd be no more work on my layout? Well I'm sticking to that..just. I decided that my newly purchased 102t aggregate hoppers, nice though they are, really would benefit from having a load. My initial plan was to have them contain sand. My track has sand between ballast and grass so it seemed a reasonable commodity to be hauling around. Unfortunately I wasn't able to colour match on my first attempt. But..I decided to go ahead and complete the process as an experiment and it looked so good that I've run with it. So what was the process? The hopper wagons have internal 'baffles' which I thought slightly complicated things. I had this idea of cutting out some foam, sliding it underneath then putting a thin 'load layer' on top. But I couldn't find what seemed like the right kind of foam. Also it seemed like it'd be an irreversible process since the load would have to be glued in place. So instead I thought I'd try something really simple. There is a gap between the baffles and the top edge (you can just about see it in the above image). I reckoned I could slide a bit of card in there and have it rest on the baffles. So the process then became: Measure the load space - 70mm by 10mm. Test insert the card. Turns out that the front and rear slopes prevent the card sitting down so reduce the length to 69mm. Paint the card the desired colour - don't overdo the paint though as it'll make the card bend. Prepare some plaster (the kind used for casting). Reduce the water content slightly and replace with appropriate amount of the colour acrylic paint. Leave to dry. It'll take a lot longer than normal due to the paint. Break the plaster up and put into an old coffee grinder. Give it a few whizzes until the plaster has almost become a powder (for larger scales, stop sooner). Using a glue stick liberally coat the painted card with glue on the painted side. Place the card glue side down into the powder. (*)Using thumb and finger sprinkle a bit more stuff on the card until it looks good. Carefully spray the card/plaster with matt lacquer. Repeat from (*) until you're happy. You can then insert each card into the hopper. They go in best sideways to get them under one edge then they just click home. And the result? See for yourselves: The colour doesn't match that of my sand but I don't think I care. The train can be something being hauled into Wallarium rather than just around it. And I think it contrasts nicely with the grass and the colour of the hoppers themselves.

I have a Dapol N Scale Class 121. It has a Dapol Next 18 Imperium decoder fitted and the top speed is insane - I have to set the speed to no higher than 5 out of 28 on my NCE PowerCab to get a fairly realistic speed. Quite frankly it's too scary to run at step 28. So I've tried setting CV 2 to be 1 then CV 5 to be various values and CV 6 to be half CV5. Nothing I've done appears to make any difference. CV 29 has a value of 6. When I put the decoder in a different loco the speed is fine so presumably it's some kind of gearing issue in the 121 (it also has a noisy whine). Anyway I don't understand why nothing I do with the CVs is having any affect on speed so can anyone explain? Thanks.

I found time to have a bit of a play around. I think setting the value up to 255 does make them brighter but it was hard to be sure since the room with the layout was in full sun. But I could see the flicker with my eyes. Whether that's just because I was looking more closely or because of the different values I put in I don't know. I should have more time this week so will investigate further. I have other Class 68s on the layout so I can see if those also flicker. I can say that to my eye they don't.

Manufacturer 154, ver 4. So that's Dapol. My guess would be an Imperium Next 18. That makes sense since they make the loco but I can't see anything in the CV list that relates to light brightness unless 'dim value' is the one?

For what it's worth I've managed a reasonable effect in thin card in N scale by using a jeweller's cross-head screwdrive like a punch. You don't want to punch all the way through but a smart rap with the palm of the hand produces an effective rivet. Should work for larger scales as well.

Good question. I'll need to put them on my programming track to find out as they were all bought DCC Fitted. Guess that'll be a job for next week - I also want to get my Bubble car on the PT to investigate its outrageous top speed. I wonder if I should get them onto the PT (it's in my yard) using the Hand of Dog or by moving them there by rail...? 😁

I haven't adjusted them at all - didn't know I could. If that means they could be adjusted brighter by removing the strobing then that's something I'd like to investigate. I have several Class 68s and their lights all appear too dim to me.

If you look on the video below the headlight on the blue Class 68 (pulling the aggregate hoppers) are strobing. It's not visible to the naked eye but I was wonder if this was a known issue and if there was anything I could change on my phone or perhaps the decoder to avoid it?

Working on a public footpath. So I had a sudden desire to build more fences. Well..desire is the wrong word but it had to be done. There was already a crude path along Beekle's Bluff as demonstrated by Fred earlier in this tome. But I decided that as the swan song for this winter's work on the layout I'd finish the path off. It needs fencing but only two strands this time since it's only humans being guided. It also needed some trees adding. I decided for the trees I'd use seafoam. I've had some of this kicking around for a while and in fact had used it a couple of years ago to reasonable effect. But this time I did a bit more to it. Firstly I sprayed it brown then I sprayed on diluted PVA and sprinkled some fine scatter on it. The result is actually quite impressive. One branch in particular has come out as an awesome tree however it's a bit too large. I mean, sure, trees on model railways are often too short but at 240mm high this is excessive. That would be 355m tall! I also added some bushes of various kinds. Creating gorse bushes is very easy. Just plonk down some coarse scatter then dribble a few flakes of yellow very, very fine scatter on top. Red also works but obviously not as gorse. Purple very fine scatter along the ground works as heather. I did try some fine white scatter from another kit but that didn't work at all for some reason. It was almost like a powder that just blurred into a single mess. Here are some views of the path, ending with a picnic area: And finally a video of trains passing including (if you wait long enough) an overhead view of a passenger train (Miss Behaviour) passing a goods train side-by-side through the cutting.

Also worth noting that by default the PowerCab only supports two locos on the stack. You can configure this up to six locos however. You also need to be aware that the PowerCab doesn't initialise all locos on the Recall stack when powered on. Nor indeed does it initialise the last loco used. It remembers the state of the last loco though so if the first thing you do is increase the throttle it should also set the lights and sound to be as you last requested as well. However at power on locos and accessories will be at whatever their default is. Some decoders will remember how they were last set and act accordingly, others don't. Eg; I have a Class 43 and when powered on the lights will be off even though they were on when powered off. All my other locos remember how their lights were last set and display accordingly. It's worth noting however that if I Select a loco that has its lights on at power on and then increase the throttle the lights will go out because the PowerCab starts off with 'no lights' as its default. My sound enabled Class 68 never remembers that it last ran with sound either. So whether I get sound initially depends on how the PowerCab is set when I send the first command.

All my Streamline code 80 turnouts cause a solitary bogey to derail if not set to straight ahead. A four wheel wagon is fine. The problem seems to be that something as light as a bogey 'picks' the frog V. It doesn't cause any problems when the bogey is attached to a coach nor with any other rolling stock other than occasionally causing my solitary 4-6-2 to derail presumably the front bogey it being light but it happens so rarely that I haven't tried to investigate it.

I just love the way that an unweighted bogey can't be used to test them. Strangely I thought it was fine on my first layout which used Settrack.

For what it's worth there are two ways to implement the bus. The way I did it is to have two bus wires running under the layout. Then wires are soldered to the rails and dropped down (we call them droppers) and connected to the bus wires using Scotchlok connectors. The problem with this is that it's easy and can lead to haphazard wiring. A better way is to use something like these or these. Here you have the bus wire connected to two of the terminals then the droppers connected to the remaining ones. So instead of a continuous run of bus wire you 'daisy chain' the terminals together. This encourages planning and more careful wiring. Both of these also allow you to make/unmake connections which could be good for fault finding. Tidy well planned wiring is a must for exhibition layouts. For those that won't ever leave your own home..it's nice to have. I was able to wire my layout up quickly and can add new things with little thought. But if I ever need to trace where something is getting its power from that can be a real pain.

If you want the whole layout live just connect the siding rails to your controller outputs (following the same 'polarity' as you did the main power connection). Turnouts can be a little more complex as per my other reply. But for your layout as shown here I think five pairs of connections should be enough but if in doubt add more. A lot of us make a point of connecting each section of track to the bus just to ensure electrical connectivity. For turnouts the fixed outer rails need power. The frog..as per my other post ;)

What scale are you modelling in and what kind of turnouts are you using? For N scale Peco 'insulfrog' turnouts are as I described and can be installed as-is out of the box with no special treatment. For Peco electrofrog you need to isolate the frog connection but otherwise installed and used as-is. Ideally for electrofrog you'd power the frogs separately.

Your controller should have two output wires. At a minimum you pick a section of track and attach one output to each rail. For a small and simple layout that should suffice but possible improvements: * Your turnouts are probably power switching. That means whichever route is not selected loses power. That's not a problem for DCC but means that any locos parked in sidings will lose power so their lights will go out and sound will stop if the turnout is set against them. It isn't necessary for DCC so... * On larger layouts it's not wise to trust fishplates to carry power. More complex layouts will have a separate 'bus' and each section of track and each turnout will be fed power from that bus.

And if they get caught they feel sheepish.

Yeah I could get behind the idea of a Class 185. I could retire my whiny and 700mph (scale speed) class 121.

I occasionally bemoan not having stickers on wires or controllers to indicate what turnout they relate to. The trouble is that by the time I've traced the wires back from the turnout and found the controller and fixed the problem there is just not enough left in the tank for me to bother attaching a sticker. Rinse and repeat 😁

Perhaps worth noting for anyone who reads this thread that the above modifications aren't needed for Peco N Scale Insulfrog turnouts.

I've had a similar issue recently on a couple of my turnouts. In my case (N scale for what it's worth) I don't think the back to backs were wrong but rather the turnout motor wasn't quite throwing far enough. One of the switch blades was therefore not being pulled tight against the stock rail. It left just enough free play (and it really wasn't much even by N scale standards) for the opposite switch blade to touch the inside of the wheel. A quick test for this is to use a small screwdriver to push the blades fully across thus ensuring a proper sized flangeway between the inactive switchblade and its stock rail. Given the absence of turnout motors here I'd assume the over centre spring is still in place in which case this is unlikely to be the cause but I'd thought I'd mention it.

An update. I've been a bit remiss of late so I'd better bring things up to date. I've got rid of the bridge. Some comments here convinced me that it really wasn't working so I've replaced it with a couple of at-grade crossings and a farm track. It definitely looks better: Clearly that fencing needs redoing (think I've mentioned that in a prior post) but otherwise I like it. The gates were from Scale Model Scenery. The crossings were from me - maybe I'll do a post on them in a bit. I found another turnout that needed its throw adjusting which is curious. Again I've had to set it to 'slightly too far' but it's solved that problem. I also found another motor whose linkage was fouling some of my rolling stock so I remounted that one lower down. On the subject of turnouts I've programmed some macros on my controller - an NCE PowerCab - now. Each of the four sidings in the two yards has a macro to set the turnouts at either end so eight in all. Unfortunately I'd forgotten that PowerCab macros can only control accessories. I'd hoped to have also selected the loco and switched on lights etc. but sadly it can't do that. Another reason to keep thinking about replacing the controller. In more exciting news my Trans Pennine Express Class 68 finally arrived! The Wallarium fleet is now complete! To celebrate here's a gratuitous photo of four trains. Although it's only a single image I can assure that it is possible to run four trains at the same time on Wallarium and it only comes to approx 0.6 amps even with one of them being sound enabled (the TPE Class 68). Speaking of being sound enabled: The engine sound is a bit meh but there's nowt wrong with her horn 😀 Out of desperation one rainy day (has there been any other kind in the last few months?) I tackled a job I'd been putting off for a while. I bought a cheap load of N scale figures last year and have been dreading painting them. Much to my surprise it turns out that with a set of magic hands it's an easy job. They aren't as detailed as those you can buy but they are plenty good enough. The orange overalled workers are now in place to supplement the existing workforce but the rest will have to wait until I've rebuilt my station platforms. I've also been constructing trees. That will probably be the subject of a future post but for now here's the upgraded corner (note - no bridge any longer!):

Finally! My sound enabled Class 68 TPE arrived today.