AndrueC

Received my email notification from Royal Mail and Revolution now. Unfortunately I'm not in tomorrow so had to reschedule for Monday. Nothing from Kernow yet so I reckon the coaches will be first to arrive.

I've got a sound-fitted Felix on pre-order with Kernow. Although it's now showing as temporarily out of stock so I'm not sure what to make of that.

I got the dispatched notification last Friday, heard nothing since. Dapol/Kernow are still in with a chance of winning this race.

So the race is on, lol? Still no sign of my MK5a coaches so perhaps the loco will get here first after all.

Signalling my intentions.. So as promised I've made a couple of videos showing the operation of signals at Wallarium. Neither are prototypical. They serve two purposes: They look attractive (or at least interesting) They tell the operator how the turnouts are currently set (or at least what their motor controllers think they are set to). The first video is of Doorway Interchange. This is the more complex of the two junctions. That's because it's a double slip and has four configurations: Both lines straight ahead (green on all lights). One line crossing to the other one (green on the crossing line, red on the other one since the turnouts are set against that line). Both lines crossing (red on both lines because neither route is valid - I didn't bother to demonstrate this). The run went reasonably well apart from a stall near the end. All the turnout frogs are juiced. so probably just unused track needing a clean. The second video is of Wilf's Junction. Signalling for this simpler because it's a diamond crossing. The turnouts are wired up such that only two routes are possible: Both lines straight through (outer signals green, inner LEDs red). Both lines cross (outer signals red, inner LEDs green). Running didn't go quite so smoothly on this video. I don't run the junction in crossover very often - only when I want to run trains around both the other loops in a kind of figure of eight. I also haven't juiced the frogs yet. I also discovered after the video that a couple of the turnouts don't always move when they should. So basically I need to revisit the junction and do a bit of adjusting (*). Still - it gives me something to do this afternoon and Wilf's Junction is nowhere complete anyway. (*)Right now I have an image of my Dad looking at me with raised eyebrows 🙂.

Oops. I meant BRM subscription then, lol.

We have two or three in their 20s/30s and there's a couple of young lads come along with their dads but otherwise, yes, it's all grey hair and sarcasm.

I bet finding the pieces for the empty rail was tricky. Looking for 'a bit of reddish brown on dirty white' couldn't have been easy. Reminds of a Jigsaw I once did of Llandudno Promenade. It was great fun right up until I got to The Great Orme in the background. Looking for 'a bit of green, maybe black on dirty white' got old quite fast. And it represented about a quarter of the image.

I've never looked at any of that though. No interest frankly. When the new edition comes out I scan through it but frankly I consider the most value of my subscription is not having adverts on this website. From my perspective reading anything sequentially other than a novel is 'old fashioned'. I'd read RM a bit more thoroughly if the digital reader rendered it more like a web page but that incurs additional editorial expense that I wouldn't expect for the current subscription. This isn't a dig at RM it's just not how I want to consume 'written media'. At age 57 I didn't grow up with the World Wide Web but as a computer programmer I did watch it evolve and embraced it. I haven't read a newspaper or watched the news on TV for decades for similar reasons. I expect to be able to jump around, following links to additional information and compare and contrasting different sources. But it takes all sorts. I even know a couple of guys who subscribe to golfing magazines and that makes no sense to me. They repeat information freely available on the web and what's the point reading about how to do a physical activity? 🙂

I had that problem with my first layout and it wasn't that big. Eight locos, 8 turnout motor controllers (DCC Concept's Cobalt-SS) and eight LEDs powered from a DCCC Alpha Mimic. Inrush tripped the breaker. I moved the Alpha Mimic so that it was connected before the breaker and the problem was solved. My current layout has the turnout controllers (far more now) on a booster circuit and LEDs on their own curcuit primarily for that reason. My NCE Power Cab outputs over 13v because I upgraded the PSU. Unfortunately (?) it's also limited to 2A because my circuit breaker only offers 1, 2, 4 or 8A trips. It's not been a problem so far as the most I've seen when running four locos at the same time is .61A. That is N scale.

Golf is at some risk of the same demographic. It's noticeable that attendance at our Saturday (all ages) competitions has been declining for a couple of years now whilst it's becoming a struggle to find a place at the Wednesday Senior's comp. And volunteering likewise. I'm on our handicap committee which at three people (two men, one woman) only just meets the requirements. We struggled to find someone to take over as treasurer when the 80 year old incumbent said he'd had enough. I think a lot of hobbies need to put more effort into attracting the younger demographic. Different hobbies have different reasons for the decline though. I'd say a lot of the problems stem from youngsters preferring to stay indoors with computers. I used to play a lot of games when I was younger but I grew out of it in my 30s. Another issue golf has is time. A round of golf takes four hours, sometimes more. A lot of young adults just don't have that much free. Given a spare Saturday they'd rather spend it with their family. But..it's just life. Things evolve and change. Ebb and flow. It might matter to us if our hobby withers but people will always find something to occupy their idle time and does it really matter if it's different to what we chose?

There is a thread in the Dapol section where one of their employees talks about examining a production sample. That was posted early December so that makes 'first quarter 2024' seem slightly more plausible. Although reading it again it doesn't indicate which scale model he was looking at.

I've just paid the remainder of my order so should get my MK5s through next week. Now all I need is for Dapol to pull their finger out and release the Class 68 TPE I have on pre-order.

Building a lineside hut. I originally intended to build a small platform at Doorway Interchange for engineers to use but after measuring and playing around I decided it just looked too large and incongruous. So instead I thought perhaps a small hut would help break up the grass and add interest. Ratio do a kit of two huts but after thinking about it I decided to have a go at scratch building again. After all a small hut is just a rectangle with a triangle on top - it hardly needed input from Christopher Wren or even Kevin McCloud 😁 Stage one was to work out a reasonable size for the main area. I settled on 25mm long by 15mm wide by 15mm high. This is approximately 4m by 2m by 2m in scale size which seems reasonable (it doesn't include the roof). Stage two was to cut out the sides and ends. I used 3mm card and for the ends made a sandwich to increase the depth to 6mm. This gives me two things: 6mm for gluing instead of 3mm. The ability to indent the door. The door was coloured brown using watercolour pencils (vertical strokes to simulate wood grain) then the outer piece stuck on top. I've even drawn a door handle on the door. I also cut out a window for one of the sides. Stage three was to stick some Redutex brick effect onto the pieces. I had originally thought about making a wooden hut. I had a (crazy?) idea to make 'planks' out of card then glue them together. I might yet do that for another shed in the future but this time around I remembered that I had some Redutex left over from the North Yard cover. Stage four was to cut out a base then glue the walls and ends in place. I used a glue stick as it's less messy, quicker to dry and allows for some adjustment. Stage five was to create support for the roof and end gables. Since it's unlikely anyone will (or even can) look inside the hut I decided that the roof supports could be full length. Rather than use Redutex for the gables (I should probably have made them one piece with the end like the support pieces) I just coloured them to vaguely match the end brickwork. Stage six was the roof. I cut out two rectangles including a notch on each for a chimney. Then I scored them lengthwise and 'hacked them a bit randomly' in a vertical direction to try and create a tile effect. Then I painted them slate colour. The final stage. I cut out a chimney, painted it brick colour with a black top and inserted it through the slot. Then I painted the corners and top of the roof and placed the shed on the layout. I might have to touch up the roof later depending how the paint dries but I think it's pretty good. Things I've learnt from this and might do differently: Include the gables in the end pieces. Attempt to add ridge tiles. Add quoins to the corners. The last two may yet get done to the shed. I'd like to make it clear to any keen followers out there that the only measurements I did were for the overall dimensions shown above. The rest of the construction was 'eyeballed' as is traditional here at Wallarium. 🙂 Oh and if you're wondering about the signals from the previous post: Doorway Interchange is now wired up and working. Wilf's Junction needs the final wires connecting. My next post will hopefully be a working demo of both.

One thing our club layout (Meacham) (DC) has for the fiddle yard is a rotary switch with a separate button. The rotary switch dictates which lane of the yard gets power and you press the switch to set the turnouts to access that lane. A lane will also have power if the turnouts are set correctly for it (power routing). It's a bit complex to understand at first but it allows you to move trains up their lane whilst also allowing incoming/outgoing trains of a different lane. Each lane also has multiple isolation sections. It's great fun to operate and also fun to watch although probably more action out front than would be prototypical :)

It's worth noting that you don't really want the EV light on as much as possible. It's a nice trick to be able to drive short distances on electric but since the battery charge comes from burning fuel in the first place and there are losses involved it's not necessarily the best way to use the battery. Really the electrical system should be thought of as 'playing second fiddle' to the ICE. It's there to help the ICE operate more efficiently rather than as a primary source of motive power. I encourage the car into EV mode (by lifting off then partially reapplying the accelerator) only if I know there is a light load or deceleration situation coming up - eg;a downhill stretch or traffic queue ahead. The rest of the time I let the ECU decide how best to use the electrical system. In summer I typically get high 60s mpg.

I wasn't aware of that (maybe it's a new feature) but it is interesting that the mobile app can criticise you for things based on what you did (eg; mine forever berates me for accelerating away from roundabouts) so perhaps there's something in that. Meh. I'm currently getting over 55mpg from my 1.8 (measured at the pump) even though it's Winter so yar boo sucks to the app 😁

For what it's worth the Cobalt Alpha also avoids those wires for DCC. It's not clear (or I didn't find it so) that the Alpha is just a collection of decoders and LED outputs. The idea is that you assign each motor to the same accessory address as an LED output (the outputs are sequentially addressed and you can only set the start address) then both devices respond to the same command. That's why they call it a 'mimic'. I used an Alpha on my last layout but instead of using the same address for motor and corresponding signal LED on the layout I used macros to send individual commands to each. I think I did it because I wanted a signal for each yard lane and access to each lane depended on how multiple turnouts were set.

I have a Toyota (2019 Corolla) and whilst the in-car satnav is okay it looks a bit cartoony. The maps are not hugely accurate either and in fact it uses Here Maps and encourages users to edit them. A road near me had an incorrect speed limit and I tried twice to change it. On the first occasion someone/thing changed it back (their admin team couldn't tell me who or what). The second attempt appeared to stick but failed to make it into the next six monthly refresh from Toyota despite the change being at least four months before the publication date. I've no idea if it's finally made it in as my free period stopped after that update. We also had to go through Toyota's appalling eStore in order to get map updates. They were free for the first three years (you still got an invoice for £0 emailed to you, lol) but quite expensive after that. So these days I use Google maps via Android Auto. The only reason I got satnav on this car was because of other things I wanted in that trim. When I buy my next car I will happily avoid satnav if I can find a trim that offers me everything else I want without it.

Oh right. Well as long as the motor and/or controller allow the throw to be reduced to suit the scale and as long as the modeller is reasonably careful when installing there shouldn't be a problem. If either of the switch blades is touching the stock rail when the motor is at its mid-travel point then the motor has not been installed correctly. I don't see how the turnout can be blamed. I do wonder though why the controllers aren't designed to cut the frog power then move the blades then restore (switched) power. I wouldn't have thought it would complicate the design or increase the cost significantly.

Why is that specific to N gauge though? I use DCC Concepts Cobalt-SS and haven't had the problem you describe. These apparently switch polarity in the mid-position so if you have the throw set incorrectly there could be a problem I imagine although surely no-one would leave the controller configured for such an overrun in the first place. IPDigital might be more susceptible because it's possible to have them installed asymetrically (ie; pulling more to one side) whereas the Cobalt-SS are self correcting. Either way all we're saying is that if you install the motor or configure the controller incorrectly you might have problems.

The only electrical issue I encountered is that Peco don't provide a pigtail so you have to either solder to the wires on the underside of the frog or direct to the frog rails and in both cases be careful of the plastic.

The Hunt couplers arrived today so the rake is on my layout. It turns out it's a good thing I don't have enough siding to run eight as I doubt I'd have a loco that could do it. My Class 33 'Ashford' which was the intended loco can pull them but suffers wheel sleep going up one of my inclines (~1.5 degrees, 90 degree turn, radius in excess of 3rd). And slows a lot in the double 'S' at the next corner. It also derailed at a turnout toward the end of that 'S' one time. Luckily one of my Class 68s was able to step up. It also slows a bit on an 'S' curve but not as badly and you could just say that the drivers are being sensible :) I think the limiting factor now is just the weight of the wagons. They are heavier than anything else I've got. To be fair that 'S' curve is a bit cruel especially with the turnout near the end of it. Maybe the wagons will improve with a bit more running but I have my doubts. Anyway they run well enough now. Thanks for all your advice.

I picked up some black nylon washers today. They are a little too thick at 1mm but the bogeys remain attached when a wagon is picked up and the running is much improved. They do still seem to slow a bit more than other bogied wagons on curves but I don't think it'll be a problem. I've also removed all but the front coupler in preparation for some Hunt couplers that I have on order. Having read about the weak coupling I think I'd rather go that route even if I don't intend to uncouple the rake very often (ideally not until/unless the layout is dismantled). I might eventually switch the washers out for .5mm if/when I see some but I have no problems with them now that they roll freely. They are good looking models but Dapol need to address the issue of wheel scraping and poor couplers before they order the next batch. And, honestly, selling a model railway wagon that more often than not fails to roll is very poor QA.

Very useful information. I do also have one broken coupler but since it's only one I can have that as the last wagon. I'd have removed the coupler from it anyway. Mine will be permanently coupled so hopefully not a problem.