davepallant
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Posts posted by davepallant
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Show guides off to the printers!
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Good news for Hornby! Full disclosure I bought some Hornby shares a few weeks ago after avoiding them like the plague. I own a few Hornby locos and a full length Pendolino to run on our club layouts even though I own an N gauge layout and lots of stock for that. Hornby had seemed to 'bottom out' over the last few months and I thought maybe there was somewhere to go after all.
The other thing that made me interested again around Christmas was one of the large shareholders in Hornby (Phoenix Asset Management) forcing Stanley Gibbons (stamps) into taking the company back from shareholders and giving control back to Phoenix who owned their debt. Phoenix had apparently been trying to get Stanley Gibbons to stop behaving like they were selling investments and get back to being a company for stamp collecting hobbyists. Before that Phoenix were a major investor in Games Workshop which has been doing enormously well for quite a few years now. If there was a company that needed to be creative to create and build a market for hobbyists of tabletop games and figures then it was Games Workshop.
The investment manager and co founder at Phoenix seems to understand how a company needs to keep the customers and hobbyists happy rather than investors. There's a Phoenix employee on the board at Hornby so hopefully the same ideas are working at some level to steer Hornby in an appropriate direction for gaining new customers and making stuff that they can afford and keep them happy.
Dave
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Also at the Preston Show...
Demonstrations from
Steve Roberts
Tony Wright
Les Green and Co.
North Turton Gauge O Group
And
West Lancashire Light Railway
The Cumbrian Railways Association
The Lakes Line Rail User Group
The Poulton and Wyre Railway Society
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Traders at the show...
Northwestern Models
DC Kits and DE Video
Squires Model and Craft Tools
Richard Panes' Spares
Sawyer Models
Crafty Hobbies
Railstuff
Going Loco
MTFG Hobbies
Vintage Prints
John Garman Models
The Junction Box
Footplate
Hornby Dublo 1938 to 1964
Along Classic Lines
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Layouts at the show...
Alderford OO BR 1970s into the 80s
Sparkel HO Winter steam in Bavaria
Millhouses N Sheffield in the 1970s
Merthyr Riverside EM Post grouping South Wales
Scarlington N North East England 70s 80s
Lewis Lake On30 Early 1900s Wyoming
East Jackson MI HO US switching layout
Laurencekirk OO North Scotland 1960s
St. Seeb OO 1970s North West small town
Lily Lane N Modern Image
Headingley N North East 1950s
Hillport Goods O North Staffordshire late 70s
Auswiss HO Modern image Switzerland
Ffarquhar Branch OO The Rev W Awdry's Thomas layout
Bryony Lane OO BR 1960s
Arun Quay O Fine South Coast Quay 1960s
Parrot Hall OO 1970s to 80s Manchester
Stanley Junction N 1960s Scotland
Glenties OOn3 Irish narrow gauge steam
Axebridge OO9 South West quarry line- 1
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Our Preston Model Railway show is on again this March 2nd and 3rd at Preston's College here in Fulwood, Preston.
Sports Hall, Preston's College, St Vincent's Road, Fulwood, Preston, Lancashire PR2 8UR
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Caot9SvTrQmsQPM39
The show is open from 10am to 5pm on Saturday 2nd and from 10am to 4pm on the Sunday.
Adult tickets are £8, Children's tickets (under 15) are free. The show has wheelchair access from the car park and throughout and tickets for wheelchair and scooter users are £4 and an accompanying carer can enter free.
This year we have 20 layouts, 15 traders and numerous demonstrations and associations.
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4 hours ago, JSpencer said:
So I guess anyone taking it to a show would need to use their Telephone as a personal wifi hotspot.
I would hope that the Kenesis Hub has its own wifi router built in. There are numerous cheap modules that Bachmann could have used.
The handset was introduced as using its own 2.4GHz implementation which would not be Wifi as it would eat through batteries. It would have to be something similar to Zigbee or Bluetooth hopping around different frequencies trying to find gaps between the wifi channels. The test will be whether there is as little interference over greater distances (larger layouts) in smaller halls surrounded by wifi hubs, hotspots and other layouts running wifi and 2.4GHz systems. There were a lot of wifi routers at Warley, many of the shops had multiple and there were several layouts that were using wifi. However Warley is a lot bigger than the average model railway show hall!
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Problem with bench testing going from DC to DCC.
Just been converting my Northern Rail 319 from DC to DCC. Brilliant that Farish has got the conversion down to a single DCC decoder and I can see that moving to sound will be easy as well.
I ran the train on DC, so I knew it worked, and then waited for the Next18 decoder to arrive. You need to have both of the middle cars on the track to get them to move so installed the decoder, coupled them up and tried them. Nothing. Took the decoder out and refitted the bypass board and still nothing. Came on here to see if anyone had had a cimilar problem but nothing. It was only after stewing for a half hour or so trying various things that I realised there are two ways round to connect the two centre coaches. I reversed them and now they work fine. I can see its now obvious that the pantograph goes as near the centre as possible but with just two coaches on the track its easy to miss which way round the two centre coaches have to go!
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Still at launch price lunchtime 2/3/22 so couldn't resist ordering the second TPE set B to go with my initial order of TPE Set A. Will be looking for another 68 I suppose now!
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On 28/02/2022 at 08:59, Steadfast said:
@davepallantthe one stanchion I've had a play with seemed to be held on with a strong but rubbery glue. There is a pip in a hole where the stanchion meets the chassis, if you very gently try to wobble the stanchion left and right, rotating about the mounting point, you'll feel the glue become weaker and eventually the stanchion becomes very wobbly.
Jo
I must have chosen the most difficult one to try first! I have the hang of it now. Wobble the stanchion back and forth a little bit to get a couple of nice little cracking sounds and then grasp it right at the bottom and pull it outwards off of the chassis while still wobbling. The biggest problem pulling them off was being careful not to catch an adjacent one with your hand and bend it. Once I got going it only took half an hour or so to take off half the blue stanchions off of my 10 wagons. Now need to fit the red ones. Will give it a try with Roket Card glue rather than PVA since they should set in place quicker.
Will probably leave weathering until the future of the bogies and wheels are decided.
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Short of extreme weather or other acts of a higher power we are definitely on for next weekend 5th and 6th of March.
Look forward to seeing you all at Preston's College here in Preston.
Dave
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Has anyone yet had a go at using the spare pack of red stakes supplied in the N gauge timber carriers? I have tried gently moving some of the blue stakes back and forth to see if there was any movement where they are mounted to the platform but I dont see any give. I dont want to break one off half way down leaving difficult lumps in the chassis. The instructions mention fixing the red stakes with PVA but the blue ones fitted at the factory seem to be glued with sterner stuff!
Dave
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I've spent a few hours this afternoon installing Kato loco and lighting DCC decoders into an LNER 800 Azuma. Found a Youtube video that was very useful and a couple that were not so useful! However, once it was all together running on Address 3 I could only get the rear lights on each end working. Direction worked fine but no white lights. I was actually thinking that maybe there were no headlights to start with but had not run it on DC to check it before conversion.
I finally found the Tramfabriek website where the issue of DCC lights not working correctly is covered. Apparently the contacts on the lighting decoders do not always press hard enough onto the decoders to get lighting working in full. So I stripped the chassis of the driving cars down to stretch the contacts as detailed on the Tramfabriek website https://www.tramfabriek.nl/kato-800.html and put it all back together. Now the lights work correctly.
A great model for the price but a little annoying that the ultra easy DCC install fails on a small design issue that, from what Tramfabriek say, affects alot of conversions using the Kato light decoders.
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Just getting the Show Guide written up now!
Layouts
Old Oak Yard Gn15
Carrowbeg OO
Great Endon OO
Wolfe Lowe O
Swiss Pass HO & HOm
Hadley, Stonybrook & Swale Railway O16.5
Westbrook N
Newhaven Harbour OO
Heworth Sidings N
Fen March Depot OO
Bodmin Generally OO
Nordhafen HO
St Andrews and Guardbridge N
Rannoch OO
Clayton End Signalman OO
The Coeur D'Alene Railway O16.5
Lily Lane N
The Circle Line NTraders
North Western Models
D.C. Kits and D.E. Video
Stevenson Carriages and Millholme Models
Squires
Country Park Models
J.S. Models
Geoscenics
Bespoke Signs and Print
Vintage Prints
Crafty Hobbies
J.G. Pre-Owned Models
Going Loco
MTFG Hobbies
The Junction Box
Footplate
Hornby Dublo 1938 to 1964
Along Classic LinesAssociations and Demos
West Lancs Railway
7mm Narrow Gauge Association
Tony Wright Demonstration
Lakes Line Rail User Group
Cumbrian Railways Association
North Turton Demonstration
Eric Farragher Scenic Demonstration
Poulton and Wyre Society
Les Green and Co Demonstration- 1
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This Hornby set must be quite rare......
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/333850347893?hash=item4dbb080975:g:73MAAOSwjZFdwsD1
Must be very heavy for that postage as well. If you think it is a mistake then have a look in their shop at the other rare items they are selling.
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On 28/10/2021 at 23:30, Revolution Ben said:
Hi there,
The Revolution projects page (just click on the tab from the home page) has the latest on all our various projects.
cheers
Ben A.
There's an awful lot of Q1 2022 on there! Looking forward to quite a few Revolution parcels!
Dave
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I've got a bunch of the Revolution IPAs closed and open and a load of Ford Transits to go on the open ones. Has anyone got any suggestions for how to attach the Transit vans to the open wagons without making a permanent fixture? I'm thinking a blob of Black Tack or four glue dots but wondering if I'm missing something!
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I find one day enough to see everything with enough time to have an early brunch up in the cafe, a cup of coffee later in the day and possibly an ice cream from the van outside! A nice enjoyable low stress show particularly on the Sunday.
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I've just gone through a lot of stock to sell some of the older items and found several class 47s and a couple of class 66s with newly cracked cogs since checking them a couple of years ago. All are older Farish items (2000-2010) and have been kept in a central heated room so just mild cycling of heat day to night and in the dark. I dont think there is anything particularly you can do with storage environment and that it is just related to age and the quality of the original cog mouldings.
Ended up buying a pack of cogs and a pack of axles from Farish N Spares as I had 7 broken cogs.
Not sure we can yet say the newer ones are not going to have the problem until they are 15 years or more old. We can hope!
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On 27/03/2021 at 19:19, Kaput said:
Panic averted.
Reseated the decoder and reset both decoders for good measure and they seem to be fine now.
Bit weird but the joys of 6pin decoders.
Did get me thinking though, with the 2nd run planned to have Next18 sockets (I believe) is there any possiblity of opening up the option to buy a pair of power cars (or chassis only) for owners of the originals to upgrade? Assuming the body's would even fit straight on.
Admittedly I'm guessing the chances are about zero though.
There's usually a function to turn off rear lights so that when locomotives are pulling wagons the rear light is not on. Even though it is not appropriate here it could still have got glitched and resetting the decoder has put it back on.
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Here's some more Ashville video of them unloading the JNAs. Remarkable that they can just scoop out the aggregates and leave the wagons relatively undamaged and practically empty.
https://youtu.be/BK6gPXc7er4?t=2247
Dave
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Just spotted Revolutions email as well. Got my order in.
Been watching a channel on Youtube called Ashville. He has an building and aggregate company near Heathrow and gets several trains a week loaded with aggregates from the midlands.
Here's last weeks edition with some shots of GBRf 66742 and a lot of JNAs arriving. Look like Revolutions VTG Silver and the GBRf dark Blue with and without the leasing stickers.
This is the delivery last Wednesday,
https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/H03156/2021-03-24/detailed#allox_id=0
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Interesting if the ROG locomotives were a series of custom colour schemes like the German Taurus locomotives which commemorate famous composers or anniversaries.... Lots of brightly coloured trains atrracting attention to ROG and an interesting set of locomotives for us modellers!
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Preston and District Model Railway Show 2nd and 3rd March 2024
in Exhibitions
Posted
Hi Long Island Jack!
Yes. Les updated me and the show guide lists East Jackson MI. I'll update the list above.
Thanks!