Kal Posted January 1, 2014 Author Share Posted January 1, 2014 HI Peter Thank-you and welcome Have a Happy New Year Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Removed a/c Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 The film set looks great ! Happy New Year to you both 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kal Posted January 1, 2014 Author Share Posted January 1, 2014 (edited) Sssshhh!!!! It will be Harry Potter season again if you encourage her Happy New Year britfarmer Edited January 1, 2014 by Kal 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaz Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 No more procrastinations....... replacement TUNNEL well actually a bit of left over foam not too square but.....a pencil and a ruler and a picture for reference rmweb374tunnel1 a rough blade rmweb375tunnel2 mix some white with some browny colours....yes yes i know two tone grey is usual.....I don't do usual rmweb376tunnel3 just be glad it is not dayglo pink...I hit the sales yesterday...which is why you got old photos....and after modelling....clothes......I can honestly say this colouring is not lary!!!! second coat rmweb377tunnel4 some dirt / soot / weathering later rmweb378tunnel5 and an indication of what it might look like, Kal removed the foam to do the wiring underneath..... rmweb379tunnel6 It still needs some blending in, some green, a tunnel behind it painted black. and some scenery returned in front and painted and greened.....but you sort of get the idea.....use you imagination 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Todd Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 "No more procrastinations", quote. Did not know, you were a lover of seafood....... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaz Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 I will eat lobster thermidor ...with relish.......especially if you are paying....... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold ChrisN Posted January 1, 2014 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 1, 2014 Jaz, The tunnel mouth looks really good. It may need to be a little darker where the trains go through. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaz Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 It will need a finally wash regardless to match it to the surroundings when it is finally matched up, plus greenery etc to blend it in. It looks strange in pic 5, the 4th stones up have photographed like negatives, plus if I don't like it when it is finally set, I will just recolour it. More smoke etc will go on when it is finally set in place. When the tunnel goes in behind I promise to paint it a dark colour a nice magenta? anyone? 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Todd Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 Painting by number's now, if I am reading your posts, correctly ? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaz Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 too true I draw the grid on anything that don't move!!!! Plus the foam is upto 3 layers deep and 3 layers front to back, and unto 7 layers left to right on just one table. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaz Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 It is the end of the day so some more rubbish before I disappear close ups rmweb357bingbags6 rmweb358binbags7 7 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brass0four Posted January 2, 2014 Share Posted January 2, 2014 Achilles Heel... Regarding post 1511 - I'm technophobic - don't understand a word! LOL Tony. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Todd Posted January 2, 2014 Share Posted January 2, 2014 Achilles Heel... Regarding post 1511 - I'm technophobic - don't understand a word! LOL Would it be of interest to you, ? dcc, that is Tony. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kal Posted January 2, 2014 Author Share Posted January 2, 2014 Achilles Heel... Regarding post 1511 - I'm technophobic - don't understand a word! LOL Tony. Hi It is easy for me to forget and assume that everyone knows and understands what DCC is. If it is of interest, I can try to explain it further Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kal Posted January 2, 2014 Author Share Posted January 2, 2014 Jaz says she is interested in the basics, so while I am explaining it to her, I may as well write it here too so she has reference. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kal Posted January 2, 2014 Author Share Posted January 2, 2014 (edited) DCC vs. DC Traditionally model trains are most often run using electricity fed through the tracks to a motor in a locomotive. The electricity goes through a Transformer, that transforms / changes the electricity type in your wall mains from a higher Voltage 220-260 volts to a more safe and useable voltage around 10-15v It also changes it from an alternating Current, that is one that moves back and forth electrically, to a Direct current, that is one that moves from positive to negative terminal in conventional electrics. So I have mentioned two things already that may make some peoples eyes roll. Voltage and Current. I will add a Third ... Resistance and now try to provide a metaphor to explain it. Think of a locomotive, sat on top of a hill. The height of the hill is the Voltage, that is the amount of distance it could fall to the bottom. The higher the hill or potential, the high the Voltage. Next think of the Slope, this is the Current, the steeper the hill the more momentum the loco will have when we push it down the hill. The last part of the triangle is resistance, the brakes, the more we apply the brakes, the slower the engine will go, but as you know the more heat the brake shoes will generate. now this is a simplistic explanation, but I hope it makes sense. Edited January 2, 2014 by Kal 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kal Posted January 2, 2014 Author Share Posted January 2, 2014 (edited) So... We have our DC at around 15V DC , which we feed from our transformer to our controller (some systems have them combined). From the controller we run a pair of wires to a piece of Track. The electricity travels through the track and is transferred through metal wheels to contacts touching the wheels and through wires to a motor. Now the controller, varies the voltage to the tracks and therefore the motor and as the voltage rises between 0 volts and 15 volts the motor spins faster and drives the loco faster. As more voltage is applied, the resistance in the motor (think electrical break) is reduced and so more current will flow. These three things are happening in unity, not as separate forces and covered by that techno speak you may read else where which is called Ohms law. Volts always equals the amount of current multiplied by the amount of resistance. V=IxR. Sorry if this is teaching your Granny to suck eggs, but it is important we start from the same point before discussing why DCC is different to this. Questions? is this all too boring? Edited January 2, 2014 by Kal Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brass0four Posted January 2, 2014 Share Posted January 2, 2014 (edited) So... We have our DC at around 15V DC , which we feed from our transformer to our controller (some systems have them combined). From the controller we run a pair of wires to a piece of Track. The electricity travels through the track and is transferred through metal wheels to contacts touching the wheels and through wires to a motor. Now the controller, varies the voltage to the tracks and therefore the motor and as the voltage rises between 0 volts and 15 volts the motor spins faster and drives the loco faster. As more voltage is applied, the resistance in the motor (think electrical break) is reduced and so more current will flow. These three things are happening in unity, not as separate forces and covered by that techno speak you may read else where which is called Ohms law. Volts always equals the amount of current divided by the amount of resistance. V=IxR. Sorry if this is teaching your Granny to suck eggs, but it is important we start from the same point before discussing why DCC is different to this. Questions? is this all too boring? Not boring at all, Kal - I wish you'd been my physics teacher! But I'm totally strapped for time for the rest of the day, so please forgive me till later. :-D Tony. EDIT. For the record I am DCC with a very simple four-track mainline layout. One bus for each track. Dead easy, other than that I use 13amp flex for the buses which was a challenge for soldering till I bought a decent soldering station that could really pile the heat on short and quick. L8r Edited January 2, 2014 by Brass0four 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gruffalo Posted January 2, 2014 Share Posted January 2, 2014 Please Sir, me sir.... Yes, I'm the one sitting at the back of the class and I think you have said Volts V = Current I divided by Resistance R. I'm sure that Professor Ohm told me many years ago that V=IR, or volts = current x resistance. ...at this point the teacher would normally chuck an old-fashioned blackboard rubber at the smug little git at the back! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kal Posted January 2, 2014 Author Share Posted January 2, 2014 (edited) Thank you Gruffallo You are correct, my V=IxR was correct but as you saw I incorrectly said divide. I have corrected it now. I do not have a blackboard rubber so.... Edited January 2, 2014 by Kal Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kal Posted January 2, 2014 Author Share Posted January 2, 2014 (edited) As we can see. what we are doing with DC is we are controlling the voltage to the tracks, so if we put more than one locomotive on the tracks, they will all move or stop relative to the voltage we provide from the controller. IF we want to control each locomotive separately, we need a way to "talk" to each locomotive individually and one way to do this is DCC or Digital Command Control. With DCC we put a Decoder / Chip into the locomotive that interrupts the electricity from the pick ups on the wheels and the motor. So in the simplest of DCC set ups, we take the wires that run from the pick ups and connect them to the black and red wires on a standard wired decoder (if it is NMRA compliant those are the colours) and we connect the orange and grey wires to the motor. At this point if, the decoder is straight out of the box, and has not been "programmed"... we could pop it straight back on our DC track and run it as we always have. So next lets talk about the decoder.... Edited January 2, 2014 by Kal 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kal Posted January 2, 2014 Author Share Posted January 2, 2014 OK.... So we have our decoder and we have installed it in a basic fashion, of course many locos today come with a socket and decoders with a plug, so you can just plug them in, but we can come on to that later if somebody would like. So how does the decoder help us, well by itself it does not, I will talk about how to control it next, but for now...the decoder. It is a little electronic board that at its simplest can memorise an address which on you layout should be unique to it and hence the loco. Older decoder allowed an address between 1 and 127 meaning you could have 127 unique locos (power allowing) on a single layout all controlled individually. On newer Decoders that number was increase to allow up 16384 unique addresses although some systems will still only allow the use up to 9999, but as you can see it gives you more variety even if you will never have that many locos. For me I use the first two and last two numbers of the loco, so it is easy to remember. EG. Class 37, running number 37016, I would set the decoder as 3716, you do not have to do it this way, I just find it easy this way. As well as the range of loco decoder addresses , dcc also has a separate set of addresses for Accessory decoders. What are they? well as running locos , you may want to control turnouts, signals turntables etc, so each of those can have a decoder and be controlled individually, but more of that later if it is of interest. Now I realise there is some gaps here. how do you set the addresses act, but for now lets just say some one has programmed the decoder for you , as 3716, lovely but what now... Next we will talk about the Command Station (dcc system) Questions? too fast? have I missed something or got something wrong? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kal Posted January 2, 2014 Author Share Posted January 2, 2014 (edited) Ok... So we now have a loco we want control, so we need a DCC controller, there are many to choose from, but for now lets just talk about what they all do. Now on DC , we vary the voltage to make the locos move, but in DCC we do not want to do this, we want a constant voltage (or what appears to be a constant voltage) There are many discussions on what this voltage should be, but in general it will be 10-12volts for N, 12-16 volts for HP/00 and 16 to 20 volts O gauge. I will talk about 00/HO as that is what I use. This voltage is on all time time once you switch on the power, which is why lights and sounds etc stay on even when a loco is not moving with DCC. But this voltage is not DC, or even AC, but rather it is a voltage that switches between for example, 7.5Volts positive and 7.5 volts negative (rough figures for explanation purpose) very fast, around 8000 times per second. This is why if you put a loco, without a decoder on a dcc track, it "sings" with a high pitch whistle. This is not a good thing for the motor so do not leave it on there with no decoder. Because DCC switches so fast, it means that you cannot really see any effect on things like incandescent bulbs or led lights etc. Now the clever bit.... because this voltage is switching, what is called a square wave, we can vary the switching to make it stay at the positive or negative voltage, for a little bit longer or a little bit less. So what... well by making it a little longer or a little shorter we can represent a 1 or a 0 . by stringing lots of these ones and zeros together we can send messages over the electricity , so over the rails and into the decoder. If we start this message with an address of the loco (decoder) it knows what follows is an instruction for it to do something. Are you still with me?? As this is the essence I will pause here for a few hours and see if anyone has anything to ask, has questions or argue it is wrong or needs more explanation. Edited January 2, 2014 by Kal Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
freebs Posted January 2, 2014 Share Posted January 2, 2014 Kal, thanks - this is very helpful. As a returnee to the hobby and having 2 Two guagemaster Q series 4 track controllers that I was given, I will be sticking firmly in the realm of DC, but sometime in the future I'd like to change. Besides which, I've got too many locos that require converting (a lot of them don't work at the moment too - is there a market for non-functioning locos ?) Lee Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
cgraham Posted January 2, 2014 Share Posted January 2, 2014 Jaz/Kal, What was your source for the baby blue Ford Anglia 105E? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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