AndrueC

For me the problem with the 56 isn't a lack of pulling power, just low top speed. To be fair it's probably not far off a realistic maximum but it seems to have only four speeds . 'Slow crawl'. 'crawl'. 'Walk' and 'Walk a bit faster'

Scary Video... So it started innocently enough. I decided to investigate why trains were stalling on one of my juiced frog turnouts. Turns out I needed to trim the hardstanding and clean the track more carefully. So that left me with one of my cargo rakes running a circuit. So I got my bubble car going as well. That's not scary because the bubble car pretty much runs on its own loop. It has connections to the rest of the layout but I rarely bother. Then I though 'Why not run a passenger train as well?' So I chose Miss Behaviour (class 43 HST) and stood back to watch. I was rather caught by surprise when she entered The Interchange on one line and came out on another. I can't remember fiddling with those turnouts but apparently I'd left them set to cross over. So then I had a bright/scary idea. Since I now had three trains running on three loops why not get a fourth one going. So I did. First ensuring that the interchange was set to both tracks straight ahead. Rather to my surprise everything ran really well. Okay so a few minutes into the video I realised that the cargo train was travelling too fast (out pacing the HST) but otherwise I leave you with this: The first time I've run the full four trains at the same time. And for the record, I was able to park them all without an issue at the end.

My post also mentions pedestrians. You're nit picking.

Not normally it doesn't. In most situations traffic in the opposite carriageway has no need to know what you're doing. If you're approaching a roundabout and the only other vehicle in sight is one that is exiting the roundabout there is no need to signal. If you are turning into a side road and none of the oncoming traffic is indicating to turn across you there is no need to indicate unless there are pedestrians approaching the side street. If you aren't aware enough of what other road users are doing around you to know whether you should indicate then you shouldn't execute any manoeuvre either.

Tachometer. Airmiles. Obviously 😁 You should use your indicators when there is someone who could benefit from the information. Otherwise they are just a distraction. An advantage of this strategy is that it encourages you to be more aware of what's going on around you to help determine if anyone needs to be told of your intentions. The alternative strategy of just indicating out of habit can lead to drivers seeing indicating as just the first part of a manoeuvre and assuming that having indicated they can continue with the manoeuvre.

Yes it's a mystery. Tomorrow I will try and do some testing using a single 21t hopper. My 21t hoppers don't wobble when in a rake but if you push an individual one by hand they almost always practically throw themselves off on turnouts.

Are you guys all using code 55? I did some tests today and my 08 (when it could be persuaded to run at low speed which took some serious track cleaning) barely wobbled. In fact from running quite a bit of rolling stock I'm going to partially retract my earlier agreement. Whilst it's absolutely true that there is a honking great hole at the frog almost none of my stock notices. I get a slight tremor occasionally but nothing else. There are some turnouts where there's a more significant wobble but they turn out to be places where droppers are proud of the rails and need filing or resoldering. All my turnouts are medium radius and a mixture of handed and some (as above) Ys.

Hang on, you mean my Brackley where I live now? 'Cos that does look like it could be the lower platform buildings. The upper buildings still exist - currently a café and (I think) a pet grooming place. Dunno if the lower ones are still there but it's now a small industrial estate and I can't see them on Google Street View. Most of the route of the old central line is still visible in the landscape. Part of it has been left in situ separating two halves of a housing estate, presumably because building houses on an old embankment was too difficult. https://maps.app.goo.gl/yc1RqY3qwKneq6GL8 It's the arc curving through the cluster of buildings below 'Brackley Medical Centre' and the embankment curves on to the north. I live quite near where the line to Banbury ran. The line used to go under (or was it over?) the A422 but the road has since moved when Banbury Road was bypassed so the remains of the line are slightly north. https://maps.app.goo.gl/NYFJ9j9YuXVCFDjd6

Is that one of Santa's Elves that's been run over?

Not when the curtains were closed ;)

Until I took pity on them my neighbours were proudly displaying a lit sign in their living room window that appeared to read "24MX". I let them show it for a week before I pointed it out. 😁

Dunno if it helps answer your question but at one point this video shows my Class 08 going over two of the turnouts that comprise a cross over. No wobble there. But if you look very closely on the inclined curve just after that you might see a rather abrupt movement of the loco. That was because of a kink where two sections join. I fettled that recently and improved it a bit but it's still suboptimal. https://photos.app.goo.gl/Uu5JkEGRwvProDTP7 That was before I tweaked it. https://photos.app.goo.gl/qYZFnbR1s7tN83o47 Slightly improved on the bottom rail but it's still poor. The top rail on the right section is noticeably steeper as well so there's quite a kick as wagons traverse left to right. Proof that I'm not a perfectionist and also that our little charges can tolerate a surprising amount 🙂

Here's a train of hoppers crossing two medium radius code 80 Peco turnouts at the exit of one of my yards. You can see a little bit of wobble but not very much. I've added a couple of grammes of lead to each wagon (front and back) but they still don't weigh very much. That suggests that it's particular combinations of track/rolling stock that don't get on. My stock is all relatively new (bought in the last three years) but those hoppers are old tooling since they don't have NEM pockets. BTW - sorry about the focus I wasn't really paying attention when I shot this.

I often get given one glove as a present. I'm a keen golfer ;)

Yes, from running my coal train the wobble is quite subtle and I only notice it when actually following an individual wagon with my eyes. Like others though I went for N in order to run long trains through the 'countryside'. So I watch the train not individual wagons. I've never thought N was a good choice for shunting anyway. You can get automatic decouplers and I know it's been done but I've always thought it too fiddly and pernickety. For shunting I'd go with OO or O.

Sorry, no. I just meant wagons that don't have bogeys. So coaches and modern freight wagons don't wobble. Even my troublesome spine wagons were fine over turnouts.

I'll take a look at my coal train (13 21t hoppers) tomorrow but I don't think they wobble very much. That may be because they are evenly balanced front to back so are pretty happy to balance on three wheels for a fraction of a second as one wheel crosses the frog. It's also worth noting that when testing my track by rolling a single wagon or a disconnected bogey across a turnout derailments are common. So whilst that confirms there is a problem it also (in my experience) says that it might be irrelevant. Group a collection of troublesome wagons into a rake and they run fine. It's also worth reiterating that in my experience this only effects single axle rolling stock. Most of my stock is modern era and thus has bogeys and is immune to the problem. You can even see on my video that the tender is the only thing that wobbles - the coaches and loco don't.

Here's a video from my first layout. About half way through after the train has gone round a 180 degree bend you will see it crossing a diamond. The tender wobbles quite alarmingly but the train keeps going.

Okay some pictures I've just taken. They use two wagons that I built from Peco kits. In all cases the frog is under the left, far wheel. Sitting on an installed code 80 turnout: You can see a bit of the cardboard that the turnout is mounted to. lol. A slightly longer wheelbase: The same again, this time parked on a Code 55 turnout that I bought as a future replacement but not currently being used: And: Both wagons can be made to fall into the frog by pressing on the corresponding corner (enough to grossly unbalance them) but left to their own device and/or when part of a rake them seem fair happy to roll across on three wheels.

Something wrong there then. All my turnouts are flat. I'll add that I'm no perfectionist track layer either so I wouldn't say that N scale with code 80 is pernickety but I suppose code 55 would be more so by its nature. I have always had diamond crossings on my layouts and aside from one of them causing shorts everything runs through them just fine.

For most of my rolling stock hardly ever. If/when they do it's because of debris left on the track or me running them into incorrectly set turnouts. However I do have experience of some rolling stock being more sensitive than others. Troublesome stock I've found so far: Dapol JNA Falcon Wagon - Refused to run on my first layout as they apparently didn't like 2nd radius curves. I blamed the couplers for not returning to neutral position as the curve ended. Dapol Spine Wagons - Unable to negotiate a slightly dodgy part of one of the inclines on my current layout. Not enough vertical travel in the bogeys. Also the fixed connecting rods between pairs of wagons which prevent horizontal rotation of one wagon with respect to another. Dapol 21t Hopper Wagons - These are okay but are a little bit sensitive to rough track. Just a bit too light and easily cured by adding some weight to them. My layout uses code 80 track laid on Gaugemaster underlay apart from the turnouts which are laid on corrugated cardboard salvaged from parcels. My club's N scale layout is code 55 and it has no problems. Nor for the record do I for the vast majority of my stock. I agree about the frog wobble - it's quite poor for short wheelbase stock. My 4-6-2's tender suffers it a bit and my 21t Hopper wagons also do. It's not enough to cause a derailment but doesn't look nice. Bogeyed stock doesn't suffer the problem.

Well it could be worse. We could be arguing over bracket placement or indentation. 😁

Glad to see it being retooled but I have to agree with the poster who said it was slow. And I don't believe that cleaning it is the answer because mine was slow from the day I got it. I think I once worked out that its top speed was the scale equivalent of 50mph. To be fair it is a very good low speed runner but the gear ratio appears to be too high. It's far and away the slowest loco in my fleet. Mind you my class 121 seems to have a top speed of 150mph so I suppose it averages out :)

They do if you have ageing eyes. We had a limit of 150 characters set. This was very recent (ie;this year). We picked that because some of the team had ageing eyes and once you're into your 40s even with today's wide screens 150 is about all you have to play with. But I'd also argue that it's not easy to type an underscore. If I want a capital letter all I need to do is reach over with one of my little fingers and hold down shift. But for an underscore I have to also reach across on this keyboard to the top right. That's moving my other hand's fingers away from the letters where they normally hover. But I think that familiarity and standardisation also has to be considered. CamelCase is far, far more widely accepted than underscores. I think you're on a hiding to nothing trying to suggest that as a standard for identifier names ;)

..and takes up more space. No, I'm with the other 80% of the programming fraternity here. CamelCase is the way to go. Underscores if used at all should be a prefix to designate really low-level entities (eg; registers if referred to by high level code or perhaps OS structures). Mind you speaking of naming convention one that's always made me smile is the Windows Shell Item ID. Microsoft developers abbreviated that to 'SHITEMID' :)