Bloodnok

Is there any official documentation (or community consensus) on what the function of each DIP switch on the PCB actually is yet? I have a 37001, which does all the "basic" functions fine, but nothing from AUX5 onward does anything. I was expecting "Cab Front", "Cab Back" and "Engine Room" to be connected to pins somewhere. The model was bought DCC ready, has been set to the "Non-ESU" switch pattern, and fitted with a 10 function Zimo MN340C (which has logic level outputs like an ESU decoder). I'm wondering if some or all of the switches should be in the ESU position to get these three functions working, but I've not yet come across any documentation which says what the switches *actually do*, beyond the surface level "this pattern for ESU, that pattern for DC, and a third pattern for other DCC decoders".

Have you tried curving any of Peco's Bullhead range before?

Ooh look, a squirrel. These are the early version Dapol catenary masts, which are painted, ready to install models. I was a little surprised the ones I ordered in the Hattons closing down sale (with the same product code) were instead raw plastic, and will need painting. It would be one thing to say "I guess that makes them cheaper" ... only I didn't notice a reduction in cost. I'm not currently planning to add wires to the scene -- I don't know of a suitable material that is sufficiently lightweight to give the right appearance for the wires, sufficiently rigid to avoid contact wire sag, and sufficiently damage resistant to survive the occasional visit by a sleeve ... or a cat.

This is the last remaining piece of track to be laid on the middle level. I was trying to get it all laid this year. It was not to be. I thought I had enough track. But I'd ordered the concrete sleepers when the design had two tracks through the station, not three. I have enough rail, but ... not enough sleepers. I got this close. So I switched tack to wiring. ... and I'm also now out of 24/0.2 black wire. I can wire all the red rail, but only a small subset of the black rail.

These are now more appropriate for the end of the Maroon period: This is my first time attempting to apply transfers, and I hope it's passable for now?

Yes, early on Saturday morning -- around 10am IIRC? There wasn't really much in the way of lengthy gaps -- with four different lines and long trains, there always seemed to be something moving, and often several at once. Yes, I knew about this in advance, and hoped I would get to see it. I wasn't disappointed! For me the (three?) empty lines between the banked train and the mainline was enough space to catch it on film. I found it harder when I started following a train heading left to right on the mainline, and it got bowled by something coming right to left on the tracks in front of it. However, I was aware that there was a possibility that banking move was about to happen, so I was paying attention. Removing potential distractions will definitely get it more attention, so I think that's a great idea.

Yes, I was impressed by that and wanted to include it. Unfortunately I think either I missed the actual coupling part of the move, or I cut that bit out for some other reason. I try to avoid including any unintended behaviour where something got stuck, was derailed, or needed a 'hand from the sky' to fix. Unfortunately, murphy says that the layout will behave perfectly until you point a camera at it -- and I've got a lot of evidence to back this up on the virtual cutting room floor!

Some of the video footage I took of Beijiao is featured between 2:36 and 5:36 here:

Here's a still from a video I shot. Unfortunately the loco in the foreground was stuck on something -- wheels were turning but no forward progress.

Because this thread comes up on google when searching for info on this loco, I'm going to resurrect it to dump this here... I've just done the "What does each wire do?" analysis on a Dapol 59/0, and here's the results: The "Front Light" wire provides power for the lights at the no.1 end. Without this, the lights at this end are off. With this, they will show something ... but what is shown depends on other functions. The "Rear Light" wire provides power for the lights at the no.2 end. Same caveat as the no.1 end. FO1 is the direction signal. Powered == loco leading at the no.1 end, unpowered == loco leading at the no.2 end. So: F0(f) on it's own gives red lights on the no.1 end. F0(r) on it's own gives white lights on the no.2 end. F0(f) + FO1 gives white lights on the no.1 end. F0(r) + FO1 gives red lights on the no.2 end. F0(f) + F0(r) at the same time is needed for 'light loco' style lights-on-both-ends, with FO1 active for no.1 end leading and FO1 inactive for no.2 end leading. Decoders don't always expose this option by default, so some CV changes are probably necessary to achieve this. The standard pattern of white lights shown on a Dapol 59/0 is the main headlights in the centre plus one marker (on the right or 6ft side). FO2 swaps the marker to the cess side. (In a 59/1 or 59/2 this is probably validly swapping between "day mode" and "night mode" ... but on a 59/0 the edge lights are markers and the headlight is in the centre ... so this doesn't make a lot of sense). FO3 turns on the cab light -- FO1 controls which end. FO4 turns off the centre headlight and puts both the side markers on. There does not appear to be a stock way to get all four white lights on at the same time on a Dapol 59/0, which ... was the normal default configuration while operating. Some hackery may be required to get this working as prototypical.

Either that or telling the great unwashed in ThirdSecond class *not* to board here and disturb the diners...

The concept of painting a line on did indeed originate with the GER, but they used different colours. The specific application of Yellow for First and Red for Catering was a UIC standard.

Yes, the Southern definitely seems to have been more rapid at this than any other region.

That would be Era 6 as defined at the start by the appearance of the corporate livery (1966), and at the end by the introduction of TOPS numbering (1973). Specifically I'm looking for information about Maroon coaches surviving into this period that would be seen alongside Blue and Blue/Grey coaches. As far as I can tell, yellow was officially adopted in 1962, and was fairly well applied by 1966. I am assuming that most 1st class and composite coaches would have received a yellow line by 1966. I have not yet found a single photo of a maroon coach with a red stripe in period (any I have found have proven on closer inspection to be modern repaints), whereas I do have a colour photo of a maroon catering car (a Restaurant First) with a yellow stripe above the seated area and nothing at the kitchen end. In Blue/Grey, that car would definitely have received a red stripe. From this I am working on the assumption that red stripes were not applied to maroon stock until I find otherwise. Very little self-propelled stock carried maroon though. Some LHCS suburban stock did remain into era 6, although it was pretty much all gone by the end of era 6. (Edit: Actually, the last suburban loco hauled coaches appear to have been withdrawn from passenger service a little later than I thought ... around 1977). Given it's obvious and imminent demise, things like painting yellow stripes on non-corridor composites may not have been a high priority, so it's possible they didn't receive it? Yes, but they also weren't in maroon either!

How universal was the application of yellow (first class) and red (catering) stripes in Era 6? From what I can find, gangwayed stock in maroon seems to have had a pretty consistent application of the yellow line by the start of Era 6. It's harder to tell the presence of a red line in period photos of maroon stock (which were mostly shot in black and white), but AFAICT the red line seems to have only been widely applied on Green and Blue/Grey stock. I have at least one colour photo of a Maroon Mk1 restaurant first with a half length yellow line over the seating area, and all the ones I have of a red line appear to be modern photos of coaches in preservation or as tour vehicles. What of non-corridor stock? Did this also receive yellow lines over first class compartments? I am finding it very difficult to find any period photos at all of non-corridor stock, and by Era 6, what remained of it was already on a 'managed decline' maintenance schedule.

I agree. I didn't manage to get in to see any layout until about 2:30. I did manage to get in and see a few layouts (including 'Hills of the North') after that, but with only an hour and a half until closing, I couldn't hang around to see the full sequence as I had wanted to do...

... And ideally by some method where he can recoup his loss, too. Unfortunately, after (checks thread) ... sixteen months, it's likely the collection has been through a few hands. The chances of the car boot sale seller being the same person who stole them is not high TBH. He could well be another trader who thought he bought a bargain lot, found the same "something wrong", didn't make the connections the most recent trader did, and instead decided to cut his losses by shifting them at a boot sale where any buyers couldn't come back to find him.

Work in progress. Underlay still shows the previously planned double-track formation here. Not sure if I should cut that away, or ballast it to that width...

I want some opinions ... which trackplan looks more realistic? Two platform station (up and down), with goods loop adjacent to the back of the platform and four yard tracks: Or three platform station (up, reversible, down), with the goods loop not adjacent to a platform and three yard tracks: What I've laid so far could be either of these, so nothing is wasted if I change course at this point. I'm thinking about this at the moment. While I love the two double junctions, the curved diamonds I have both face the same way, and they have also both had rails cut in the wrong place to the point where I'm concerned they'll fall apart when I cut the rails in the necessary places. I'd need to do some fairly extensive repairs on one (replacing at least one long section of rail, if not three) and effectively build the other from scratch using the existing one up-side-down as a template. I would also like to use the single slip (which I have in stock) and is only in the three platform plan.

The run up the hill now looks like this: View from the other end: The bullhead track on the mainline is Exactoscale FastTrack, (same range as the flatbottom track I'm using on the mainline). I like the fasttrack bases -- they make great little insert pieces when I want a small piece of track, allowing me to save the yards of flex for when I need a longer run, or something more curved. The bullhead rail I'm using in the FastTrack bases is stainless steel, chosen ... because I have some in stock. I bought a finescale track kit at a show in ~2006 ish which included a quantity of stainless rail, got intimidated at the idea of building a point, and ... that's where it sat. But the stainless steel rail turns out to be perfectly usable, albeit in OO gauge fasttrack sleeper bases, not in the intended kit form. I haven't had any problems soldering to it. A tiny bit of flux is necessary on the wire. It's also critical to clean off the flux afterwards. Other than that nothing different to how I normally solder anything. I did try to use my one metre of DCC Concepts bullhead track (from the first batch, so also stainless steel) but whereas the stainless of the Exactoscale track soldered just fine, the stainless of the DCC Concepts track ... didn't. I could not get it to take, no matter how much flux was used. After I'd made a mess of enough sleepers overheating things, I concluded it wasn't worth messing with it any more. So the bullhead flex I'm using in the yard is Peco. Which TBH I'm perfectly happy with. View in the other direction is far less complete: Two point motors awaiting fitting, tools everywhere, and retired ex- UPS batteries in use gluing down the rest of the fan of points into the yard. Fitting the point motor for the curved point is going to be a bit of a pain. One of the very few legs holding the layout up is right in front of it...

Three of the points are now Installed. Bullhead fishplates sure are fiddly things. Now I need to lay about two metres of track to the right of this picture, to connect to the rest of the layout.

RRP for portholes is now £79.95, which turns into an actual sale price of about £56 at the moment. But the ones on sale right now are in Blue/Grey, which doesn't appear to be a popular livery on these. Second hand price for any Crimson/Cream coach and Maroon firsts seems to be around £35 ish. Maroon seconds, composites and second brakes appear to be unicorns. I don't know how much they go for as I've not seen them come up second hand. Naturally those are the ones I want...

A while ago I picked up some second-hand hand-made points in not so great condition. They were cheap enough to be a speculative purchase -- if all they amounted to was scenery (dumped in the back of an engineers yard) that would have been fine. However, I didn't want them to end up like that ... so I'm renovating them with many new timbers. I think the PCB timber strip was more expensive than the points so far. I can solder, but my prior experience is with electronics, not track construction. Has anyone else got any experience of using points like this? What should I be looking out for before putting these into service on the layout...

This. If you wanted black fronts, it was 15 vehicles as the 7 car set contains the research vehicle you didn't need. And if you bought the complete NDM it was 16 as now you had a spare dummy NDM too. Personally I'd have specified: * 5 car yellow fronted "nostalgia" focused set (premium price, 1980 style boxart) * 5 car black fronted "main range" focused set (standard offering most people are expected to buy) * 7 car research department (red line) special edition set with the converted TS research car. * Additional powered NDM (one variant, but provide the "other" pantograph style in the box to swap over) * Four-pack of intermediate cars, with one of each car type in each set, liveried to work with the black fronted set. Yeah, that means numbers of coaches would have been the same in the front and back half of a full rake. If more were needed, then a new batch with new numbers could be done. I don't think this would be a problem. How many people are actually bothered by their full rake of identically numbered Bachmann Mk2Fs, but aren't game to renumber them? And more to the point, who didn't buy Bachmann Mk2Fs because there weren't enough numbers made available? Anyone? Didn't think so ;) I disagree. My 10 car set would NOT make it around my layout with just the one powered NDM. It wasn't marginal either. A 3rd radius curve on a 2.5% climb was clearly too much for it.

I did it in the video that E100 helpfully linked about two posts up. Once the pantograph and two end body screws are out, lever the upper body side outwards (not upwards) using the lifting jack hole. Then put something thin in the gap, and work your way down the side towards the centre. I use old 'key ring tag' size store cards -- same kind of material as credit cards, but no embossing and smaller. First time getting the shell off is the hardest. Once it's been off a few times, it's a lot easier. Both of mine still have all the clips.