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Donw

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About Donw

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  • Location
    Isle of Wight
  • Interests
    0 Gauge Cambrian/GWR circa 1910
    Sm32 Live steam
    2mmFS

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  1. I first tried DCC about 20 years ago. I bought a lenz compaq and a couple of decoders and fitted them in to a loco and the steam railmotor. I connected it up to a yard of track an had a go. I could have both on the track and shuffle them up and down quite independently brilliant. In my opinion most people have more difficulty with working out where to arrange section breaks for DC. I have over the years learnt a lot more but I buy a Zimo sound decoder to suit the loco fit it in (kit built locos dont have a built in socket unless you fit one , which is quite easy. Other than changing the number there is no need to do anything more unless you want to. Wiring up for DCC is much easier you just connect droppers to the bus wires. Once it is done you can forget having to think about which section switches to throw or whether one is in use by another loco. You can just think like a railwayman. I fully accept that if you have a dozen locos or more buying sound chips it will be costly but for the CAMEO type layouts with just a few locos the benefits of being able to have a couple of locos freely moving about makes a real difference. Don
  2. A small NG industrial diesel could be small enough to fit in G1 clearances try IP engineering https://www.ipenginnering.com/product-page/the-danny-loco-kit Don
  3. It shouldn't be a problem on straight track but where you have crossovers you will have issues with crossovers because the track centres and the gauge affect the spacing of the two turnouts with respect to each other. To make life easy you can just go for 11ft miminum track centres but if you are replacing one gauge with another and maintaining the track centres the v crossings will move a little along the track as well as closer to the track centre. Don
  4. Nice work Jon, I wonder why they needed the shade over the green. Don
  5. The issue with diamond crossings and slips is that the distance between the two V crossings is determined by the gauge as well as the crossing angle it is only about 2% between 16.5 and 16.2 but can introduce some slight distortion. Templot allows you to set the correct gauge but there will be slight differences. Don
  6. I think the real benefit of 3D printing is that it is suited to low volume customer tailored out put. it would be possible to offer say a 517 body with all sorts of variations just specify your needs. For an injection moulded body the tooling costs are much higher. Whether 3D printing will be suited to volume production is another question. Now if Dave @wenlock could convince you to do a 7mm River (GWR) circa 1900 I couldn't resist. Don
  7. Donw

    About time too!

    superb as usual Dave. I have some kits on order but they never seem to arrive. Don
  8. well as far as I am concerned if you can get it to give the flavour of the original it will be fine. I have been looking through my ebook copy of Phillip Harvey's Amberdale prototype accuracy is not a priority but what a wonderful creation and the buildings and horse drawn vehicles are superb. You could have the station nameboard like one of those bus destination rollers where you change the name to suit the stock. Now thats given me a thought with a little OLED display and an Arduino plus a bit of coding I could have a station name whatever was wanted. I shall look forward to Washburn. Don
  9. Will you have a nice Scottish name for the station and what will the loco be? Don
  10. Donw

    Modbury

    you also get changes the other way the Hydra was originally in Brown Livery probably to carry their coaches. However they lacked automatic brakes and were down graded to freight stock and painted in grey. It would be great if someone could tell me which parts were painted brown just the sides of the platform? or did the sides with the axleboxes all come in brown? Don
  11. Pre-group gets my vote. I do like these views of trains in open countryside few layouts have room for that Don
  12. I like the instanter coupling very nice. The sandboxes do add to the van. As an aside many Toads had instanter couplings but some had screw link is there any particular reason for the screw links? Don
  13. Cable being too heavy may mean you have spent more than you need but 2.5 is not that heavy and will be fine for the bus wires. I would advise using lighter wire for the droppers. Wire on the small size can be an issue wire being a bit larger shouldn't be an issue. Don
  14. Isn't that the guitar storage which just happens to have a layout in it. Don
  15. The term accessory bus covers more than just DCC you can have a DCC accessory bus but you can also have a different bus these may be referred to as an LCB layout control bus. These can include Loconet, MERG CBUS, Open LCB, and more. These provide much more than the DCC used to drive trains and may be better for Automation. On a computer you can use JMRI to control a model railway. Others include Rocrail and Itrain. What I suggest is to try to understand what it is you want from the system get it really clear so you can measure system against your aims, There is no system that will suit everyone. The question of operating Tortoise motors over DCC arose . I did this over 20 years ago using a lens compaq and a lens accessory decoder Lens sold a small adapter to reverse the motor current. However I tend to use servos these days partly because they are more compact. Don
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