Adventures in DCC and EM with a BRM 4MT

[MichaelW]

Well, I had a fun trip to the BRM exhibition at Doncaster, and came back with some more N-gauge wagons to add to my burgeoning collection (not that I have a layout for them yet), some stock kits and bits and pieces for my 009 layout, and a two year subscription for BRM.  Of course, with the subscription came this:

 

 

Now, I do modern image, I understand modern image (multiple units and block freights - easy!), I own a lot of modern image stock.  All N-gauge.  I just about do narrow gauge, kinda understand narrow gauge (make up your own railway, figure a way to get stock from almost any other narrow gauge line on to it - fairly easy).  I own some narrow gauge stock, plenty of kits, a couple of them are even steam engines.

 

Now I am the proud (it's been out on display since I opened the box on Sunday) owner of a 4mil kettle.  In fact, I'm getting quite attached to it (is that wrong?  Should I have admitted to that?  Is this all a big mistake?), and want to do something with it.  I don't do steam, I don't understand it, certainly didn't understand the 4MT classification (a quick google and I was wondering why the 4MT on wikipedia didn't have a tender...), and have been utterly disinterested in anything that went chuff-chuff.  I've poo-pooed the idea of 4mil ever since my brother got his first Hornby train set (an APT I seem to remember), and I didn't!  I have no 00 track, no interest in getting any 00 track, and have laughed at the underscale width of the rails (ok, so N-Gauge is narrow, but I can see 2mm, 0.42mm is a bit less noticeable!).  

 

Then I took it out the box.

 

I don't know why, but I find it strangely attractive.  The complications of the motion, the utilitarian look of the high footplate(?), the clean no-nonsense line of the boiler and cab, the open space between the boiler and frames.  I want to find it somewhere to run, give it some stock to play with, make it useful.  

 

Hmmm...

 

Even stranger things have happened since that moment of revelation.  I do DC.  I like the logical simplicity and lack of technology involved.  I like coming up with the wiring plans to let me do what I want to do with a layout.  I've sneered at DCC, laughed about people trying to learn which buttons to press when and decried it for all the button pressing required just to move a loco one foot - something that I can do with DC with a twist or two of a control knob.  So why do I now want to subject this lovely loco to the ignominy of open heart surgery, just to put that piece of unnecessary technology in it, and expose myself to the pain of learning how to press buttons to move a loco?

 

So, what is this thread going to be about?  It will be a voyage into the unknown, an exploration of things that I have ignored in the past, and hopefully a record of some of the things that I learn in the process.  There may even be a layout appearing at some point...

[MichaelW]

So what have I learnt about my loco so far?  

 

With the help of some people on here, I know what 4MT means - it is a classification, meaning a medium powered loco intended for both freight and passenger duties, not a class.  There were three British Rail Standard 4MTs, the 2-6-0 tender loco that 76114 is a model of, a 4-6-0 tender loco, and a 2-6-4 tank loco.

 

I know the history of 76114 (thanks to Western Sunset):

What you've got is a rather sweet model of a BR Standard Cl.4 2-6-0. Numerically, 76114 was the final member of the class, built (rather appropriately) at Doncaster in 1957.

Allocation details are:
10.57 - St Rollox
7.60 - Parkhead
10.61 - St Rollox
5.62 - Corkerhill
11.66 - Beattock

It was withdrawn in December 1966 and scrapped at Shipbreaking Industries, Faslane in 1967.

Thus it spent most of its working life in and around Glasgow on local passenger and freight work. It ended its life on banking duties at Beattock for a month. 

 

I've also learnt a bit about DCC systems, and EM gauge conversions, but more of that tomorrow...

[JeffP]

Last steam loco to be built at Doncaster works.

[Andy Y]

Nice to see someone putting the loco offer to creative and exploratory use!

 

Have fun Michael.

[MichaelW]

Last steam loco to be built at Doncaster works.

 

Hi Jeff,

 

Thanks for being the first to post!  I didn't realise it at the time, but yes, the loco turns out to be a minor celebrity for that fact - certainly most people at the club last night recognised it as such.  It's quite surprising that it didn't survive the cutters torches as a result, but I suppose it had none of the glamour of the other locos that did.

[MichaelW]

Nice to see someone putting the loco offer to creative and exploratory use!

 

Have fun Michael.

 

Thank you Andy.  When I saw that you'd replied I was worried I was about to be told to Mod off for not talking about a layout in a layout topic

 

It was an odd day in Doncaster, I'd seen the offer and thought, nah, not interested, but by the end of the day I thought, why not, it'll be interesting at least...

[Jack00]

It will be intereting to see how this pans out.

My initial thought was an EM diorama, perhaps a museum diorama...?

A cross-section of a roundhouse with lots of visitors wondering around and information boards/safety boards, And "British Railway memorabilia"

 

Good luck with it all though.

 

All the best,

Jack.

[MichaelW]

It will be intereting to see how this pans out.

 

 

Hi Jack.  Yes, I agree, I don't really know where it's going to lead at the moment.

 

Your roundhouse diorama idea is interesting, but I think I want something with a bit of operational interest too - especially if I'm going to the hassle of putting a DCC chip in the loco and getting a DCC system to play with.

[emt_911]

Michael

 

I will also be interested to see where this leads.

 

It is interesting to see your thought processes on this with it being so different from anything else you have or understand.

 

Duncan

[MichaelW]

Ah, well, if you want to see the thought processes, I'd best get on with the DCC post

[67A]

Hi Michael,

 

76114 - Well now...... when I started spotting at Corkerhill this was a resident and I must have cabbed it dozens of times and I had a cab ride in the shed confines once or twice. I had a soft spot for this and 80000 another 67A resident as one started a class and the other finished a class.

I have a nice picture of it ex:works at Doncaster Works (I think) maybe on its completion - its not my picture I just bought it because it was of 76114.

 

Hope you treat her well...........Sigh

Cheers

Mike

[pH]

  Your roundhouse diorama idea is interesting

 

But St.Rollox, Parkhead, Corkerhill and Beattock were all straight sheds.

 

You've got a lot of scope, though - the Scottish Region used the class on everything from pickup goods and banking to express passenger.

[Andrew P]

Great stuff Michael, I have now also ordered BRM to get my own 4MT.

 

Thanks for sharing it with us all.

 

Andy.

[The Stationmaster]

I have got a picture of one ex-works at Swindon!  They did get about a bit.

[emt_911]

I'd like to join in with this, so I'm seeing if I can justify spending that amount of money

 

Duncan

[MichaelW]

In my first post I said that I sneered at DCC, yet now I want to try it out.  So why have I changed my mind?  I suppose to answer that, I'll have to go back to my beginnings in the hobby, and why I took a dislike to DCC.

 

I started with a minitrix track pack, and old controller of my brother's, and a couple of Ibetren train packs.  I slowly added to the collection, first with more stock (always as a whole train), then more track.  Eventually, I started building my first proper layout, in those days it was DC or DC, so I had to learn how to wire it with cab control to be able to do what I wanted with it, a skill I've never forgotten.  Around this time I joined a local model club (Edinburgh and Lothians Miniature Railway Club), where I learnt a lot of my opinions of the hobby from some of the members there.  The most important one was about operation, and there opinion seemed to coalesce around two concepts - that one could operate a layout in a prototypical manner, or one could play trains.  I always found the former more interesting, and when at exhibitions always preferred to watch a layout being operated well (I still do, which is why layouts like Bradfield and Aberdeen Kirkhill appeal to me).

 

So what does this have to do with DCC?  Well, when DCC started to appear on the exhibition circuit, the layouts it was used on were definitely in the 'playing trains' category - at least, those that I noticed were.  Of course, in those days DCC for N gauge didn't really seem possible, farish locos didn't really have space for the decoders, nor were they designed to make it easy to wire them in.  

 

Skip forward a few years (university kinda got in the way...) and I started going to exhibitions again, and the split was still there, only now, more markedly so.  More and more poorly operated layouts seemed to be DCC controlled, and I'll never forget the one where the operator seemed to spend more time staring at his controller looking puzzled than he did actually moving trains.  Though by now DCC in N was a definite possibility.

 

There is another fundamental reason why I disliked DCC - the concept of operation.  I suppose the fact that one of my main opinion formers was a signalman (or worked in signaling design) led me to the opinion that controlling trains was a better way to operate, than driving them.  And to me DCC always seemed like driving trains.   With DC, it is easy to limit the progress of a train, regardless of what the driver tries to do - you simply switch off the section you don't want it to go past.  The track is always live approach of DCC made that a lot harder.

 

So, having come back to the hobby as Bachmann were ramping up the Farish range, and Dapol were appearing in the market, I carried on collecting trains, now concentrating on modern image prototypes, and always as block trains (so an HST, or an EWS 66 and 12 HTA's - that sort of thing), and I started looking at how I could control a layout that kept them as block trains.  In those days DCC was not up to the job, instead I went down the block controller route (the bloNg, or superblock concept), and built a trial layout to experiment with the system.  This was successful, and allowed me to control trains, the block controller doing the actual driving, always obeying the signals.  In fact, it gave me all that I needed to control the layout that I thought I wanted to build.

 

So what's opened my mind to trying DCC?  Well, three things; first, the realisation that the layout I thought I wanted, with the controlling trains approach to operation is perhaps not actually what I want.  For a long time I was convinced that I wanted a good model of the ECML around York, all modern image, and run by essentially a signaller, with the trains 'controlling' themselves.  Sounds good yes, but I can no longer see that I would be satisfied with that type of operation, nor can I see me reaching the end of the build process.  Secondly, acquiring the 4MT in a totally different scale lets me start again with the control system.  I shudder to think how much it would cost to change over my N gauge collection to DCC, and too many of them have DCC unfriendly Farish chassis.  Finally, I was chatting to Jason (Sandside) at Doncaster as he operated Black Country Blues using DCC, I think that finally made me realise that incompetent operators will always be incompetent operators, regardless of, not because of, the control system.  The ease with which Jason was using the handset, even when carrying on a conversation, meant I didn't really notice that he was using DCC. Of course, the smooth, slow running of the class 20 as it crawled up the industrial line may have had something to do with it too...

[MichaelW]

It would seem I'm not the only one wanting to DCC a BRM 4MT, so this thread could be useful when I get a chip to put in it...

[MichaelW]

So, according to the instruction sheet for the model, I need an 8-pin NMRA/NEM decoder.  Having had a look at a few websites, I'm now utterly confused by the number and range of decoders available.  Even looking at a single manufacturer, there are lots and lots of different ones available, and just to confuse things, even when described as NMRA/NEM they come with differing numbers of pins or wires.  This may not be quite the quick and simple thing I was hoping it would be...

[emt_911]

Michael

 

As with all forms of technology, there is no quick and simple solution if you start looking at the details.

 

I've only recently started with DCC myself and ended up doing a massive amount of reading including looking at what problems others were were finding with particular setups.

 

It may be worth having a look at the DCC threads on here as well as getting answers from 'The Lounge'

 

Duncan

[Jason T]

 

Finally, I was chatting to Jason (Sandside) at Doncaster as he operated Black Country Blues using DCC, I think that finally made me realise that incompetent operators will always be incompetent operators, regardless of, not because of, the control system.  The ease with which Jason was using the handset, even when carrying on a conversation, meant I didn't really notice that he was using DCC. Of course, the smooth, slow running of the class 20 as it crawled up the industrial line may have had something to do with it too...

 

I'm glad I read to the end of that paragraph because at first I was thinking 'cheeky sod'  The Gaugemaster Prodigy I was using is simplicity itself and once you have selected the loco (very easy: press Loco, type in the code and hit Enter), you can treat it just like an Analogue controller, especially with the speed dial controller. I use Digitrax myself, the main reason being that I wanted to be able to control two locos independently from the same handset and the DT402 has two separate speed dials on it (it cost a fair bit more than a Prodigy though).

 

As for the baffling choices of decoders, I wouldn't worry. I would say that it is worth spending a bit more and getting a decent one. Hornby and Bachmann ones are ok but like anything in life, the more you spend the better you get. If you can, wait until you can get to a half-decent model shop and they will be able to advise you better than I ever could.

[MichaelW]

I'm glad I read to the end of that paragraph because at first I was thinking 'cheeky sod'   

 

I didn't realise quite what I'd implied till I'd posted it.  Then I thought I'd leave it and see if you noticed

 

I've been doing quite a bit of research into the DCC handsets, I'll add it here when I get a chance this evening.  Didn't realise the Digitrax offered that ability though.

 

I'm beginning to agree with you re. the decoders, I'll do more reading, but I think I'll end up at Digitrains and taking their advice.

[LNERandBR]

Personally I would recommend the DP2X-UK decoder from TCS. (See here http://www.dccsupplies.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=24_151_153&products_id=1085)

 

I've got a Bachmann 4MT 2-6-0 which I used this type of decoder in before I switched it to a Sound Decoder. There's no wireing harness, just plug and play it's the decoder I choose for all my non Sound steam loco's.

[Oldddudders]

Yes, you must get a feel for a number of systems before plumping for one. I am a contented Digitrax user - but not everyone likes their style of throttle.

 

I am intrigued by the nature of the anti-DCC sentiment that was passed to you in earlier times. My joy in using DCC since 1997 has been the fact that I am driving the train, and I have to obey signals (if I had any, but you get the principle), just as in the real world - because if I don't we may have a mess to clear up. But DCC offers so many different ways of being set up that, if automation of the trains while you hold the role of signalman is your preferred option, then that can be very well catered for, too.

 

Decoders vary enormously in price and capability - and some would say quality, too. For a British steam loco, you do not need many functions, as lights etc are few. OTOH, if you are going to go down the signalman-led path, with auto operation of trains, then a decoder that has smooth and reliable acceleration/deceleration may be important.

 

Talk to the dealer, talk to others, read DCC stuff on here. The better-informed you are the wiser your choices will be.

[Horsetan]

Last steam loco to be built at Doncaster works.

 

 

....and immortalised as a rather splendid painting on the front of the Airfix plastic kit box for the same class of engine.

[MichaelW]

More DCC resources available here. Lots of information and opinion about DCC, changing to DCC, and a summary of the major brands.  Interesting, very interesting...