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DCC starting out - I'm not a techy but so far its been worth it!


halsey
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39 minutes ago, jpendle said:

And I'm not sure that I can get Copydex here in the US, although I haven't looked.

 

Copydex is pretty much the same thing as plain white "liquid latex" as used for stage make up etc. or general latex fabric / carpet adhesive.

Those are readily available from many places.

 

This looks to be the same stuff: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Roberts-8-oz-Universal-Carpet-Seam-Sealer-8015-A-4/100077982

 

 

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5 hours ago, jpendle said:

Hi,

 

I use XPS foam as my baseboard, just the legs and frame are made of wood. It is rigid and will take track pins to hold your track in place, but you will need to glue the track down to make it permanent.

 

Regards,

 

John P

 

Can you paint it??

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20 minutes ago, halsey said:

 

Can you paint it??

Yes, but be careful. I use Brown car primer, if you use too much at a time it can eat into the surface. It also depends on the primer. I also cover some scenic areas, and embankments, etc with plaster bandage so then it's not an issue.

 

Regards,

 

John P

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You should find the 10mm panels quite firm .... You may be able stand on a sheet without damage ....but not in stilettos !!!.    There ARE different densities ...but you won't want the densest types ....such as used below the concrete floor of our garage to ensure it supports heavy vehicles.

Colours vary by manufacturer ....usually dupont = blue,  yellow = travis perkins and pink = B....

 

You can build up contours from multiple layers  held with blobs of copydex / latex  ...... Yes, it will wind around a  drill bit if you drill into a layer of copydex which is why I advocate just blobs .  ... You may use less too.

I havn' t tried diluted copydex for ballasting but agree that PVA is rigid and tends to therefore prevent track being reused.  Copydex can usually be pealed off.     Gorilla glue is one if the new generation of quick grab adhesives ..... I've used it this year  to repair g scale buildings left out in the garden.  They have survived do far.

 

I tend to paint the surface with standard water-based acrylic emulsion paint from b and q and the like ....and add static grass at the same time.

I do sometimes use halfords car primer grey ....particularly as a primer for then spraying with a speckle finish rock effect ....BUT particularly with aerosols .....keep the can some distance away to avoid the solvent  still being present in high quantity .... If in doubt test in an unimportant area.

 

XPS foam is easily cut or carved or can be cut with a hot wire cutter.  ...without creating lots of static bits like expanded polystyrene, or being crumbly like the polyurethene foam eg in kingspan  insulation ( sold with aluminium foil either side).  XPS stands for EXTRUDED. Polystyrene.

It is available in  many thicknesses from 6mm or 10mm via 50-60mm to 100mm or possibly more.   50-60 mmcanbe leaned on on its own.

At 6mm or 10mm it may appear tobe 'brittle' .... And a partial knife cut is all that is needed to cut and snap it to size.  25mm is i between.

 

Most recently, i have been buying the 10mm sheets in packs of 10.  Each 600mm x 1200mm i think.  For our skandi layout i bulk bought 20+ x 2.5m lengths x 600mm x 25mm thick ... Surrounded/supported by an aluminium square tube frame.... With a few diagonal braces but otherwise the 25mm XPS is 'self supporting‘  within the surrounding  frame ( 1.5m x 600mm, or the longer 3m x 600mm sections which have 50mm aluminium flat strips along their length to be 'free standing' over that length.     ( layout erects as 5.4m x 1.5m x 2 levels and can be carried easily  by 2 people...(without any stock on it !!!!!)    it transports as a 3m long 'tea trolley' of the boards stacked together which is then lifted and wheeled in and out of the van ... ((Although the helix incline connecting the levels is  now loaded separately. ))

 

Whether you lay the XPS across the entire board or not may depend on how final your track plan is .....but it is easy to cut away unwanted areas later ....especially if only held by blobs of glue.   In suggesting the 10mm, if used as 1 thickness, i was probably  assuming it was probably onto at least a 50% supporting surface eg holes can be cut in any ply sheet below to lighten the load.

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DC, the room is 20 ft by 15 ft, the "mainline" is just under a scale mile.....can you see the voltage drop?

I can run up to four trains, two in the station and two on the mainline but I find concentrating on all four difficult so I normally have two on the mainline and shunt one other in the station.

I can have two trains departing and two arriving simultaneously and that is limited by the design of the layout of the station throat. 

 

And to prove I am not anti electronics

 

 

Background music in the first video was by Kælan Mikla - Kalt

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Sam's calculations are correct but Clive video is proof that the issue of volt drop can be addressed. There seem to be lots of wiring hanging from the back section? I assume these were to carry re-feeds?

Many of us (myself included) recommend adding droppers to every section of rail, not only to reduce volt drop along the rail but primarily to stop rail joins becoming a problem, especially once painted & ballasted (which Clive's isn't yet). I would do this regardless of the layout being DC or DCC.

 

I was at a show only last weekend where one of our older club layouts suffered from a rail joiner which was not conducting. Adding a dropper was not practical because the layout was not wired that way, so somebody put a blob of solder across the rail join** (see below).

To achieve 4 train movements at once with the ability to isolate various sections requires a lot of wiring back to the control panel, with a lot of section switches. With DCC, all these would be connected together via a nice, thick wire (bus) which goes to all parts of the layout.

A layout as complex as Clive's would be much easier to wire for DCC.

 

 

 

** Yes I know. To see this & let it go this a complete & utter bodge but this is my excuse..

I seem to have inherited a role of wiring consultant at my club. 2-3 of us have our own layout project. We inherited this & it had been exhibited but we were never happy with it, so we decided that the only way to fix it was to strip the track & start again. This will have droppers for each section of rail. We wanted to use new bullhead track but we had lots of code 100 (mainly insulfrog :banghead:) which I have insisted on modifying so as to not rely on point blades for frog (ok, heel end) polarity.

We are also taking the time to re-adjust sleeper spacing & reducing the 6' way to a more accurate dimension. Many at the club don't even understand this & wonder why it is taking so long.

Progress on this is slow...partly because I keep getting asked to look at other faults.

 

The layout which we exhibited last week (mentioned earlier) also uses insulfrog points but only 1 feed, with the tracks being fed by point blades. In my experience, this is unreliable. It is over 30 years since I wired a layout like this & I have moved on.

 

My priority is with the re-build though. I can't re-build 2!

I am keen to get the re-build working nicely so others enjoy operating it & are not hampered by dirty points or sections which are dead for other reasons.

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1 hour ago, Pete the Elaner said:

Sam's calculations are correct but Clive video is proof that the issue of volt drop can be addressed. There seem to be lots of wiring hanging from the back section? I assume these were to carry re-feeds?

Many of us (myself included) recommend adding droppers to every section of rail, not only to reduce volt drop along the rail but primarily to stop rail joins becoming a problem, especially once painted & ballasted (which Clive's isn't yet). I would do this regardless of the layout being DC or DCC.

 

I was at a show only last weekend where one of our older club layouts suffered from a rail joiner which was not conducting. Adding a dropper was not practical because the layout was not wired that way, so somebody put a blob of solder across the rail join** (see below).

To achieve 4 train movements at once with the ability to isolate various sections requires a lot of wiring back to the control panel, with a lot of section switches. With DCC, all these would be connected together via a nice, thick wire (bus) which goes to all parts of the layout.

A layout as complex as Clive's would be much easier to wire for DCC.

 

 

 

** Yes I know. To see this & let it go this a complete & utter bodge but this is my excuse..

I seem to have inherited a role of wiring consultant at my club. 2-3 of us have our own layout project. We inherited this & it had been exhibited but we were never happy with it, so we decided that the only way to fix it was to strip the track & start again. This will have droppers for each section of rail. We wanted to use new bullhead track but we had lots of code 100 (mainly insulfrog :banghead:) which I have insisted on modifying so as to not rely on point blades for frog (ok, heel end) polarity.

We are also taking the time to re-adjust sleeper spacing & reducing the 6' way to a more accurate dimension. Many at the club don't even understand this & wonder why it is taking so long.

Progress on this is slow...partly because I keep getting asked to look at other faults.

 

The layout which we exhibited last week (mentioned earlier) also uses insulfrog points but only 1 feed, with the tracks being fed by point blades. In my experience, this is unreliable. It is over 30 years since I wired a layout like this & I have moved on.

 

My priority is with the re-build though. I can't re-build 2!

I am keen to get the re-build working nicely so others enjoy operating it & are not hampered by dirty points or sections which are dead for other reasons.

Hi Iain

 

The wires are needing tiding up but those you can see are for the point work on the Manchester sidings. There is no electrical connection (wires to be disconnected) across the lifting bridge, that is so it is easy for someone to get into the railway room in an emergency should anything happen to me.

 

The outer track, with the DMU running on it relies of the fish plates and the inner track has a bus bar. There is no noticeable difference. Track on what will be the scenic section is painted but as you observed not yet ballasted, no problems. 

 

A DCC layout might have less wires back to the command module but I oddly enjoy wiring layouts, and you gotta have a control panel.

100_5769.JPG.eafff1dd2803af043d5e351a9c65f675.JPG

 

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On ‎11‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 13:38, Clive Mortimore said:

All my depot layouts were DC, yes multiple wires and switches but still cost less than fitting 200 decoders in my loco stock.then DC is a cheaper route to go.

 

But if starting out, the person is likely to have very few locos and thus fitting chips or buying DCC Fitted would just form part of the initial cost.

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Hi Clive,

I am one of the few who enjoys wiring & certainly would not turn my nose up at running sections back to a control panel.

I have found fishplates to be a weak contact point, which I sometimes see rubbished on here (admittedly not by you). The club layout's issue with them last week was nothing to do with me. The layout was inherited before I was a member. My involvement has just been to fix various electrical faults with it.

 

I did have a similar issue with a home layout years ago. It was about 11'x7' & the boards were not laid very well, causing a 'flat' section to go downhill; the poor baseboards therefore exposing an electrical weakness.

That was about 30 years ago. I don't really consider those to be mistakes, just inexperience.

I have learned a lot since. I hope I can help others benefit from this?

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I believe the fishplate/rail-joiner issue is very much related to the environment in which the layout lives. If a layout is kept in a dry, centrally-heated house, I suspect fishplates will do their job pretty well, but if it is in a less cosy environment or subject to cold storage in a shed or garage then damp may creep in to reduce or inhibit the low-voltage connection. Result - misery.

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47 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

I believe the fishplate/rail-joiner issue is very much related to the environment in which the layout lives. If a layout is kept in a dry, centrally-heated house, I suspect fishplates will do their job pretty well, but if it is in a less cosy environment or subject to cold storage in a shed or garage then damp may creep in to reduce or inhibit the low-voltage connection. Result - misery.

 

I’m presently finding this with some Hornby Dublo 3-rail track I’m refurbishing for a club layout/display. It’s fairly simple to get the tops of the rails clean, and the spoons joining the centre rail are no problem, but the fishplates... we’ll see, I might just replace them although so far, contact cleaner solvent spray is doing the trick. 

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Also many of the problems described are inherantly related to the use of a certain (assumed make of point and method pf ballasting which invites insulating adhesive wicking up into the gap between rail and joiner!

Other makes and methods ARE available - possibly at hight initial upfront cost - but perhaps cheaper overall when reusablillity is considered.

This is as relevent as mentioning the gauge (rail code) being used, and the Normal MAXIMUM outout of the Central Controller (UNLESS reduced by circuit breakers)  in conjuction with reference to voltage drop.

 

As always:  DOES a short circuit  trip the central controller from ANYWHERE  ... it SHOULD.     When Multiple Locos are running in an area (and perhaps with sound and lighting) - is the voltage drop MINIMAL  (  and how critical tha drop is also relates to the TRACK VOLTAGE being used. and the  7V nominal minimum voltage for any deocder to work (some are lower nowadays)

 

Use in a 'loft' with poor insulation can also result in rail-creep whereby with a  long 1m lengths, large gaps can open up.

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2 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

I believe the fishplate/rail-joiner issue is very much related to the environment in which the layout lives. If a layout is kept in a dry, centrally-heated house, I suspect fishplates will do their job pretty well, but if it is in a less cosy environment or subject to cold storage in a shed or garage then damp may creep in to reduce or inhibit the low-voltage connection. Result - misery.

Agree.......having said that we had an LGB garden railway for 20+ years before we moved, when I laid the track (all on limestone gravel) I relied solely on the fishplates generously filled with Copaslip and the standard LGB track clip between track pieces, it was fed from one power feed and we never had any issues ever on over 200 feet of track, even after Winter all that was needed was a quick whizz around with the LGB track cleaning Loco to polish bird poop off the track surface and all was good for another year.

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Graphite in a grease form is also popular.

A considerable benefit of LGB rail over Peco Rail for G Scale is the large brass cross section - its a better conductor than many people's bus wires !

(Its a better conductor than the small size wires that they provide holes for in connectors too !)

The alternative solution (which can still benefit from the graphite) is Massoth Screw Clamp Joiners  ... I retro-fitted over 450 last year in our garden.

Our through rail resistance is about 0.5 ohms over 125 metres of track (with some parallelled connections ) ... but the sun can still bake an insulating layer of dust/dirt on top of the rails to give near perfect insulation !! - heavy tracking loco runs were needed in the heat this year.

 

Our H0 layout 'lives' for nearly 2 months at an unheated exhibition site with lots of coal and steam in the air - it needs frquent cleaning there .. but after 10 months back home in the (admittedly heated ) garage - trains ran without problem - except for a few whose looc wheels were totally coated from use at the other place.   Previous experience in the loft with extreme changes also needs more cleaning - whilst the fully converted loft has no problems. environent is key!    

[Oh dear, our G scale portable is still out in the van, without its heater on .. cheaper fuel bills  but lots of work next year 8-( unless we get it inside.]

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7 minutes ago, Phil S said:

 

The alternative solution (which can still benefit from the graphite) is Massoth Screw Clamp Joiners  ... I retro-fitted over 450 last year in our garden.

 

They work but look absolutely awful, great big clumsy lumps of metal.......

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2 hours ago, halsey said:

THANKS for this Nick - DCC is not for me 

 

2 hours ago, dhjgreen said:

Blimey that would put me off, and I use DCC :P

 

Indeed, it's enough to put anyone off.

The opening section on resistance etc, was completely unnecessary.

What a way to switch off your prospective audience, before you get to any useful content.

 

Halsey, it would be a shame if you've been put off by that sort of thing.

It really is quite uncomplicated and relatively simple if you want it to be.

 

 

 

.

 

 

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27 minutes ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

 

 

Indeed, it's enough to put anyone off.

The opening section on resistance etc, was completely unnecessary.

What a way to switch off your prospective audience, before you get to any useful content.

 

It echos how I feel with this forum sometimes.

You can often make a simple statement & can almost feel the trolls hovering over their keyboards, waiting to distort something out of context...so you have to type for 20 minutes to explain your statement.

 

The video's presenter was just trying to justify his statement that the higher voltage of DCC copes with rail resistance better than low voltage for DC, especially for slow running.

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