Stan Owen

Hi Jol Those pesky droppers - I suspect part of the reason was the flux we used (plumber's "evil") when the original joints were made. It does stay active unless the joint is thoroughly cleaned and, over time, the joint may fail. For all such work I now use the flux available from John at MERG which also smells quite pleasant! Re your servo "jitter", this is a fairly common problem but I'm a little surprised you're getting it with a 4mm loco. It can be affected by how mutiple servos are wired. If the positive and 0v lines have been "daisy-chained" between one servos and another. this cause the effect as can the use of cable which is too lightweight for the current demands at movement startup. Wiring each servo with seperate cable directly back to the control board may sort the problem - possibly worth try anyway. On the N-gauge layout using MERG mounts and cheap servos we have not had the problem at all over 21 turnouts although the magnetic field associated with 2mm locos is going to be much less than in your own situation. Went to the York show Saturday and caught up with John. I passed onto him both the negatives and a DVD with scans for the photographs Philip Hall took back in 1988 for the original Model Railways article. If you'd like a copy of the DVD just email me. Keep safe, regards Stan

Hi Jol I was not convinced when I built the original traverser and, over time, my worse fears were realised - it really was a poor piece of contruction for which I hold my hands up! We selected the Maygib solenoids as they had relay contacts built-in but these proved most unreliable which is why I made the TOUs to incorporate microswitches to change he crossing polarity. I'm pretty sure a problem you did not mention was the "falling-out" of the relationship betwen the rails and the droppers here and there. How have your done these on your new layout? Interesting to hear about the setting-up of the servo-driven motors. The servos on the club's N-gauge layout, driven by MERG's CANMIO modules operated bia CBUS are configured for direction of travel, servo-arm limits and speed via a software utility, FCU, running under Windows and once they have been set-up they continue to operate without the computer being required. Were we building London Road now, we would certainly be driving turnout operation with servo devices rather than the "wham bam thank you mam" of solenoids. The only downside is that servo operation is pretty much silent so that one is not longer able to to hear that the turnout has operated! You layout continues to look great and I'm sure you're looking forward to just being able to "play trains". Regards, Stan

Jol When John, Eric and myself built London Road originally, we used Maygib solenoid motors to operate all the turnouts and I made TOUs from Swish curtain rail with paxolin sliders which operated the droppers on the switch rails and a microswitch. I assume you changed these for Cobalt motors after you acquired the layout? I have no experience of Cobalt devices but they do seem quite expensive for what they are. On the club N-gauge layout my friend Dave and I are wiring for CBUS, all the original Peco solenoid motors were replaced by servos in MERG mounts with the crossing polarity set via a microswitch on the servo mount itself. During the recent MERG meeting at Retford station, I learned that Pete Brownlow is now selling a 3D-printed mount complete with servo and microswitch for a very competitive price and I was able to take a good look at this product. His mounts are very compact in comparison to the standard MERG mount and are available for both horizontal and vertical action via his website at https://www.rmeuk.com. They are quick to put together and, with both the servos and the microswitch easily accessible, can be repaired if either of these two components fail. Just a thought.

I can remember gluing down all those packing slabs (C&L) and the rail chairs (initially whitemetal from Mike Trice, latterly C&L plastic). Ah, happy days! That board is now in its 41st year

Jol No worries and good to chat with you. I'm now retired and find I have far less free time than when I was working full time - I have no excuse now to duck out of all those household jobs I guess! Very best regards, Stan

Good Evening Jol I had a long chat with John Redrup recently at the York Show and he brought me up to date both with the current status of the original London Road layout and your medical issue. Seeing the photos here of how you have incroporated the "through-station" boards into your new layout my only response is that most of the able-bodied modellers I know would be very hard pushed to produce anything with the speed and quality of your work. It is quite thought-provoking that the original London Road, built in my garage by John Redrup, Eric Ramsey, John Nellist and myself was started in 1983 so it has now reached its 40th birthday. I do hope that John gets the layout out on the circuit again if only on rare occasions. I regret never having seen your extended version of the layout but I'll certainly be visiting this forum to keep informed of your progress. I was also interested in your use of MERG modules to drive the servos. The club in Leicestershire to which I now belong started a layout based on the Great Central, near to where I now live, in 2007. This "roundy-roundy" incoporates two stations, one being based on Quorn and Woodhouse, the other a model of Swithland as it would have been had the GC not decided to build the station at Rothley instead. Just before lockdown, I and another club member were press-ganged into taking on this dormant project and wiring it, amongst many others things, to an operational condition. We decided to use MERG modules but in our case driven via CBUS which has enabled us to dramatically reduce the number of wires between the control panels and the baseboards. For example, Swithland has 22 turnouts and 23 track sections and yet the entire control panel to baseboard connection is carried by a single 15-way dsub plus a 4-pin XLR connector for the CBUS voltage and twisted pair. As I gave up P4 cos the bits got too small and moved into 7mm, I do sometime wonder just how and why I took on part of the responsibility for an N-gauge (urgh) layout! I'll close now Jol by wishiing you the very best and I look forward to following your progress on these pages. Keep safe and keep up the good work! Very best regards, Stan