Frutigen

Thank you @Montreux_1991, I think I might now have some mission creep! I’ve checked out the link (very detailed) and bookmarked it so I can come back when I find a pair of EWIV bogies for it.

If I lose the original spring I cut a piece of top E nickel coated steel guitar string, commonly used on electric guitars. Mine are .010 gauge which is quite a bit thicker than the original but it still works. Acoustic strings could be a bit too thick, but worth a try if that's what you've got. If you have to buy one specially then the smallest commonly available (.008) is probably the one to go for.

😊

I have one of these (Minitrix N). And, being Minitrix, the tiny wire spring that holds one of the couplings in place has come adrift. I know how to fix this as I've had to do it on a number of wagons, but I can't work out how to get at it on this model. I think I need to get the chassis out of the body so I can get at the spring and its anchor points, but I can't work out how to do that. Can anyone advise please?

To my eye, an N gauge train on a flat curve always seems to be leaning slightly outwards, which looks a bit wrong. A touch of superelevation takes that impression away and a little more can flatter the train as it takes the curve. The superelevation on Obermatt is judged more by eye than by any scale calculation, but it typically starts with a piece of thin card under one edge of the Kato trackbed and works up using thicker layers. This short clip shows a train rounding a long curve that gets up to about 1.5mm maximum elevation - that's at the edge of the plastic trackbed, so the height difference at the railhead will be less. As an aside, this train is 28 wagons and genuinely needs 3 locos to avoid wheelslip up the 2% gradients. I reckon to add a loco for every 10 or 12 wagons. Wheelslip is not only annoying, it leaves rubber deposits from the traction tyres on the railhead in places that are hard to clean.

Can you make the rear wall replaceable, maybe a slide in or something? That way you can leave it blank for now and give yourself the option to go back and finish it later.

Thank you @Gottardo and @chb2488 for the signalling diagram! That’s an enormous help and much appreciated. Thank you also to those who have mentioned and illustrated various different makes of signal, all food for thought. I think I might have to get some samples and see how it would all go together from an installation point of view. Although I’d be quite happy with dummy signals I find myself now at the edge of the working signals rabbit hole and want to see just how much of a faff it might be to make them work with different aspects as described here by others. First off I’ll look into how JMRI handles signals. I already use it to set routes with one touch, rather than setting individual points, so it would be really nice if the associated signals could set automatically for that route at the same time.

Thank you to all who responded with much helpful info and advice. I found the documents very useful (and I was able to read the German ones by opening them in the Chrome browser which translates them quite well). I enjoyed the photos from the 2 layouts and the photo at Twann illustrated a real situation well, especially as I’ve visited it before. The overwhelming vote for Mafen signals has me convinced. Having studies some single track cab video I’m happy to go with @Gottardo’s suggested scheme and to keep cost and complexity down I’ll probably go with group start signals. Would anyone be willing to offer a view as to how many lights the start and home signals should have? Either 3 or 4 seems suitable but I haven’t yet worked out the subtleties of the signalling system enough to come to a conclusion.

Excellent, thank you.

When I needed advice on catenary for Obermatt, the members of this forum were a great source of knowledge and wisdom and the result was very pleasing. So here I am again and this time it’s about signalling. The layout is Swiss standard gauge, single track, secondary route, approximately 1 scale kilometre in visible track length with a 3 road through station and its goods yard. If pushed I’d say say it’s set in 1990 to 2005 ish but Rule 1 always applies. Some days it’s SBB, other days it’s BLS or a mix of both. I’m not really bothered about having signals that work, but I might be persuaded if the cost and complexity are low enough. In part, this is because the baseboard is solid insulation block about 150mm thick, with track then laid on Woodland Scenics foam risers, so any wiring would have to be laid into the scenery in some way. You can’t drill through from below. Also, the layout is DCC, with trains and points operated from a smartphone, and I’m not interested in building a separate physical control panel for non-DCC signals. So working signals would require suitable accessory decoders I think. The point decoders are located in a cavity beneath the village and all wiring goes back to there - laid before the scenery was added. I’m hoping the members of this forum might help me with 2 questions. First, what basic set of signals would give the layout an appearance of authenticity? And then, what is available that might suit my needs? In case it helps, here are the track plan and an overview photo (both have already appeared in other threads).

Not with Fleischmann but I did it with an Eriam coach with a combination of smaller wheels and filing away some of the depth of the bosses where the bogies fit into the chassis. I don’t know if the Fleischmann design would allow something like that. Finding wheels where the axle length fits your bogie seems to be a lottery these days, and when you succeed you next have to deal with a coupling that rides too low. I think Flanders & Swan had a song about that.

Those trees plus the back scene work really well together, and the snow is coming along very nicely.

I have 2 snaking tracks on my Obermatt layout, but they’re perhaps different from your situation in that they’re single track and I’ve done the superelevation myself. But it’s Kato unitrack in N so maybe some of the principles will still apply. Basically, I followed 2 rules wherever I could. 1. To avoid the ends of your coaches sticking out in opposite directions where the curves reverse, insert a straight section the same length as your longest vehicle. This gives the train (as opposed to the track) a smooth snaking movement through the landscape. In practice I found that the longest unitrack straight just about works fine for Swiss mainline coaches such as EW IV. 2. When designing a curve, use the widest available radius as you come off any straight. You can get gradually tighter as you get into the middle (if it’s a long curve), I have some 180 degree curves that get very tight in the middle but somehow the eye doesn’t seem to mind if there’s at least some attempt at creating a transition effect. Even so, I find I have to drive trains at a restrained speed as they enter any curve to avoid the toy train twitch. Flexi track would let you create genuine smooth transitions but that would be a different project altogether. This all means that you might have to compromise in other areas. On Obermatt I have some sudden changes in radius at the ends of the showcase snaking tracks but I’ve tried to hide them behind scenic features. There are also two very tight curves, one is hidden in a tunnel but the other is in plain sight at the left hand exit from the station. Here’s my track plan which might illustrate the ideas better. The level sections show the part numbers, the percentages indicate gradients. One last comment on using unitrack for a permanent layout, the rail joiners are really sloppy and I found it hard to get smooth and level joints even on a firm base. If I were doing this layout again I’d use Peco joiners and then ballast in the gaps left in the track bed. A bit of weathering would make that visually acceptable I think.

Thanks for posting those great photos. Now suitably inspired I've just ordered decoders to get my pair of Kato Re460s up and running on Obermatt.

Thank you Jeremy. I'm hoping the next one will be a bit more in focus now that I've looked up how to work the camera on my phone. I think.