RobClogs

Replacing the 680Ω resistor with a 2K did have an effect, but in the opposite direction: It caused all motors to be running even with the controller pot at 0. So I tried the opposite, and fitted a 470Ω resistor instead. Bingo! Now everything is quiet until I turn up the power, and all my engines are well-behaved. Solved! Thank you very much for pointing me in the right direction, @JimRead! Cheers, Rob

Thank you Jim, that's very helpful. I'll try that and report back here.

Could I ask the assorted electronic wizards here for some advice? Inspired by Jim Read's enthusiasm I built the modernized Gaugemaster UF/Jonathan Scott controller. I followed the diagram shown in Jim's post quoted above. The good news is that it works: locos with simple 3-pole ironcore motors, 12V rated, are very controllable, with more hauling power at low speeds, and moving at constant speed through curves. Long live PWM and feedback. However, with the 10k pot turned all the way down, I can still hear the 100Hz pulse in the loco, so there is some residual power going to the motor. I could live with that, but at least one engine's motor keeps running, very slowly, with the 10k pot in the 0 position. The loco is creeping ahead; the LED on the controller blinks. Apparently this motor is very energy-efficient. When I fly-lead connect an open frame motor to the controller, the anchor, happily humming along, visibly makes small steps despite the controller pot being at zero. It appears that the pulses are still too wide. You may need more information, so: I am feeding the controller at 16V AC. I do not have an oscilloscope to view the output voltage of the pulses. I am not using coreless motors. I used a linear 10k pot. For the C106D, which I could not find anywhere, I substituted a TIC106N. So, my question to the collective forum brain: what do you think is causing the power output to be too high with the controller knob set at zero? And what can I do about it? Thank you for any pointers you may have.

Thank you for those nice pictures, @Arun Sharma. To complete the captions, might I add that the red T3 Tatra's seen in your Prague shots are all running on the 23 service. The 23, 41 and 42 services are tourist lines operated with historic vehicles. The T3 Tatra's went out of regular service in 2011. More here: https://www.dpp.cz/en/entertainment-and-experience/dpp-history/nostalgic-line-no-23 and make sure to check out the menu on the left of that page.

Don't bank on it - my then 16-year-old niece, young and budding movie director, looking at my "Chinese" passengers, needed about 1½ second to observe that "hey, they're all the SAME!" So apparently to the innocent viewer it's still glaringly obvious that they're from the same mold, paint them however you will. Paint them however you will, just don't invite your clever niece to take a look.

Thank you very much for the useful suggestions, @D9020 Nimbus. My suspicions were also turning towards the wifi connection between PC and printer. Will try a USB connection. I will also reinvestigate the conversion to an image file. I had made one attempt by taking a screenshot, importing that into paint.net, but found it hard to get the scaling right. Plus you only get a small part of the file; this particular Scalescenes kit is 21 A4 pages. I have meanwhile found out that Inkscape is able to import pdf files, so I'll explore that further. Oh, and about that 1:45 scale: as @melmerby pointed out, it is the O scale ratio which is widely used in Europe, including most of my friends, when modelling continental prototypes. Unless they're French or Swiss or Anglophiles

Sorry to keep nagging everyone about this. I've now got the state-of-the art Adobe Reader DC. But when I printed a Scalescenes pdf page, Adobe or my printer refused to commit all the brick detail to paper. It's as if the Scalescenes page contains too much detail for the printer's limited? memory. This is a legal Scalescenes page (low relief engine workshop) which looks OK on screen, but prints out only part of the brick structure, and drops masonry arches apparently randomly all over the place. Other, less detailed, Scalescenes pages print without any problem, as do detailed photographs. I printed this at 100%, no fancy scaling or anything. There are no newer drivers for my HP Envy 5540 printer than the current one. The printer is on my home wifi network. Has anyone experienced similar garbled Scalescenes printouts?

Well, 1.68 * 1/76 = 1/45.

It was on my system when I inherited it, and I had assumed it had been updated regularly. Wrongly. I'm happy to report that I've now got Acrobat Reader DC and I'm painlessy scaling my Scalescenes prints. Up to 168%, using the Poster print feature, because it then no longer fits on an A4. Thanks for the responses.

Ah, thanks, Q. I'll try that then.

To make printing ScaleScenes kits even harder, Adobe Reader's latest version - 9.9.5 on on my Win10 system - has dropped the option to customize print scaling. Instead, you're merely given the option to fit more pages onto one sheet. In other words, print at half, quarter, eighth etc. size. That's not what we need. Has anyone come across this problem yet? And found a workaround?

The trick with the passengers disappearing from the bench when the train is hiding them has been executed by the builders of B.A. Bodil, a multi-scale diorama. Here's a video. The chap waiting for the train at 2:40 has disappeared when the train leaves again. And there's more movement.

Short bows flipped over when the tram changed direction at the terminus, the higher wire allowing the bow to move to a vertical position and then back. As mentioned above. Longer bows had to be turned horizontally. They were mounted on a pivot with a lock that was released at the terminus. When the bow had made its 180 degree turn, the pivot clicked into the lock again. Here's a 16 second video: Beugelzwaaien-HTM2 by Tramweg Stichting, on Flickr

Just a brief message to say that I'm enjoying Thornton Gate immensely, even though it is far removed from my own approach. But it's such a nice undertaking: it's a tramway system (+), it's being exhibited (+), it's got a story (+), it's relying on the builder's ingenuity (+), it touches a chord with the public (+), it's part of the builder's family (+) - what more can you want? More of this!

Which shows (a) That the free market system isn't always right (otherwise the local government, the railway inspectorate and the contractor would have made sure they were building the second line to compatible standards); (b) That the average railway modeller could have seen this coming (a Märklin and a Roco train cannot run on the same tracks); (c ) That the public representatives (which I'm sure exist in Australia) should have listened to the self-appointed, well-informed, impartial, committed citizens who are actually knowledgeable about rail systems - many of whom are on this forum; (d) That the free market system isn't always right (I know I just said that), otherwise the company building the system would have said, Hey, are these specifications, which differ from the other ones, in the (paying!) public's interest? Instead, they built it with their eyes focused on their wallets. In all, time for a public enquiry, after which heads must roll, into the question 'What went wrong here?'