Ray H

On 12/01/2024 at 10:51, Nigelcliffe said:

A 21 pin socket has both "VCC" and "Ground" as pins,  the stay-alive circuit goes onto those pins.   

The Dapol decoder probably needs analogue running disabled in CV29 (a guess, but its likely a fairly basic decoder which can't tell the difference between "stay alive DC" and "track DC").   

There appears to be two +ve "pins", 12 & 16. Is it pin 12 that I need to use? (Pin 20 is the Gnd pin as far as I can make out).

I'll have to dig out my very fine soldering iron bit!

Thanks for the reminder about disabling dc in CV29.

Without wishing to get political, I do struggle to understand the figures mentioned above when compared with the amounts paid to (say) junior doctors who, having just left university after several years with, no doubt, more debts than my mortgage repayments came to at the same age, are required to work flat out for much longer hours in a day/week/moth than many of us ever managed to accumulate in double that time span.

Rant over, apologies for taking this off topic.

Thanks Nigel.

I did take a brief look at the decoder and the document that came with the loco. Nothing was obvious other than the manual/leaflet referenced the sound decoder function key allocation suggesting there's just one manual for all variants of the loco electrics.

I'll try ad take a more detailed look at club next week.

Thanks again.

One of our club members has the O gauge non-sound Dapol sentinel. It came ready fitted with a Dapol Experian decoder. He wonders whether that decoder can have a stay alive fitted.

Does anyone know please?

Have you tried various other function keys to see if they turn the rear lights on? I have a Zimo decoder in my O gauge class 121. It requires F0 & F6 to be on to get all the lights on.

It must be Dr Who - they are the only person that I am aware of that can travel back & forth in time.

Nigel

Many thanks for your response. I suspected that might be the case.

I'll simply apply full track power to the braking section for any train travelling over it in the wrong direction as I only want trains to obey the BM1 in one direction.

I want to install a BM1 Braking module on a section of track that can occasionally see loco movements in the opposite direction to normal.

The following relates to situations where the section of track to which the BM1 module is fitted and normal track power isn't over-riding the effect of the BM1 module i.e. the train will come to a stand on the on the BM1 equipped track section. 

Tender fitted locos have had their relevant CV(s) set so that they will brake when joining the braking module equipped section when the BM1 module is connected to the left hand running rail and the loco is travelling forward. I believe and am working on the principle that if a tender loco runs over the  same BM1 equipped section when travelling tender first that it would normally travel forward over, the BM1 module doesn't  have any impact and the loco will run over the section as though the BM1 module wasn't there. Is this correct?

Tank engines have their CVs set such that they will "obey" the BM1 module when running either chimney or bunker first and the loco is travelling over the section in the direction to which the BM1 is designed to apply to i.e. in the down direction on the down line. Will the BM1 module have any impact on the same tank engines when they're travelling in the opposite direction i.e. in the up direction over the BM1 equipped section of the down line?

It is always best to keep accessories powered from a different immediate source to the track. This allows you to change points for example if a train runs onto the point when said point is set against the train. The train will cause a short that you couldn't clear without moving the train manually as the short circuit would also prevent you from changing the point to let the train run over it.

You still change the point to the correct setting with the accessories powered from a different source when the track power has a short.

Happy New Year to you also.

Where do you get your hanging Basket Liner from? It look so much better than anything I've managed to find.

2 hours ago, KNP said:

. . . . . . with the wind whistling through the broken and missing windows.

What, no double glazing?

Happy New Year to all.

39 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

Motion operated?

 

No sorry that wouldn't work would it.

Seems to work at Little Muddle or are we being led up the proverbial garden path?

An O gauge P class would be appreciated by me and is, now, probably the only remaining loco that I would buy. 

The P & H L R Permanent Way Dept are out early in the railway's latest acquisition and, as it happens, passing part of the new backscene at the top of the gradient up from Westbury.

The Northumbrian Painting services metal figures have added some extra weight to the trolley which is helping maintain good track power collection. I've also added a piece of lead to the inside of the roof which is helping even more.

I'm still undecided about effectively making the coupling to the trolley permanent and by means of some very fine wire between the two vehicles, adding pick-ups to the trolley as well.

It might be worth disconnecting the PowerCab & taking the back off and making sure the Integrated Circuit - the long thing with lots of legs - is fully seated - press down firmly but not too forcibly.

It could be worth unplugging the PowerCab from the PCP immediately your problem re-occurs and then plugging it back in to see if that cures it.

Also worth checking that the power supply to the Power Cab is delivering the correct voltage - no more than 15v measured on the dc scale on a test meter. Alternatively, if you have another supply - even just 12v - you could try that.

Any chance of a video of all this shunting - it might only take you ** hours/days/weeks/months?  😄

Here's a very (very) rough mock-up of the two drop in sections and how they're likely to look if you can imagine the lower one with both the blue brick over the white plastic and the black backing sheet applied to both upper and lower sections.

Meanwhile, the landform to the right of the lower section above needed re-modelling because it was high at the baseboard edge in an attempt to (very slightly) disguise the blocks on which the hinges had been mounted.

The light railway siding point is operated by a servo by means of a switch (which also switches frog polarity) and a MERG EzyPoints kit. the kit and switch were previously mounted on top of the baseboard and the scenery built around them.

The edge of the scenery now needs to be lower so I've re-positioned the EzyPoints kit at the edge of the baseboard.

However, in my quest to prepare for even older age 🙂 I'm trying to keep as much as I can on the layout where it can be easily got to for repair or replacement. The above board is no exception but I didn't want to affix it to the front edge of the baseboard (or underneath it) so it's had to go under the scenery, thus:- 

The piece of plywood upon which it is now mounted pivots so that it can be swung out if I need to get to the kit or push under the scenery in normal times.

The woven card has since been covered with impregnated plaster cloth which I've left to dry.

Slightly off-topic but . . . 

Where do some of the narrow gauge and miniature railways stand with regard to CDL?

Whilst I doubt many will reach 25mph, several lack doors by using chains across doorways and the presence of semi open sides in lieu of windows and, possibly, some limitations on lineside hedge trimming, present a not completely different situations.

Startling revelation ! Hold the front page.

Train (assumed to have) moved at Little Muddle.

Whatever next?

Would it be possible to either paint the rail ends at baseboard joins or brush something reasonably thick - like gel superglue or epoxy - on to the ends so that if the rails did expand there was a layer of insulation between them?

In theory only doing this to the rails on one board of a matching pair should achieve them same result.

1 hour ago, big jim said:

that’s me until Saturday but I’m no doubt going to get a can you just during the week 

I'm retired and I still keep getting asked that question from SWIMBO 🙄 

I hadn't got anything black, so this is the kind of thing I was thinking about in ordinary card. I think it looks better.

A couple of months back - 21 September - I showed a couple of images of the new (lighter weight) drop in sections across the Garage (to house) doorway.

Later the same day Jim posted an image of the "bridge" at Rugby which I quite liked.

Today, whilst I'm still in the modernising/wrecking the scenery mode, I upscaled and printed a couple of the Scalescenes OO engineering blue brick sheets to O gauge and added them to a shaped facia that I've now fixed to garage side face of the lower drop in section to see what it looks like.

I've purposely not edited either image which show the BR track and the end of the exchange siding. Ultimately there would be handrails and coping stones added to the side wall(s).

I was/am hoping to get away with just having the facia because the section can then sit on the adjacent (to the right) curved track bed baseboard without impacting upon the fixed track below. However, having now seen it in situ, I feel that (perhaps) the drop in section needs something additional to distract from the items in the utility room behind it. That said, there won't be too many people who look at the bridge from the angle that I took the upper image from. I wonder if I can get away with simply fixing some black paper onto the back of the arch cut-outs? 

The wall at the rear of the section shewn will be faced with the blue brick and coping stones to disguise the bare plywood.

The current plan is to treat the upper section in a similar way.

Progress so far. The backscene is complete with, now, just a single mismatched join which will be behind the factory.

I've cut a piece of hanging basket liner to (more or less) fit the corner - its just laid loose at present to cover the bare board.

Ignore the blue MDF in the lower foreground which is an odd offcut that'll be replaced in due course.

I dismantled the old hinged access flap and recovered the track, plywood and strengthening softwood. The rest has just been collected by the bin men.

I couldn't cover the whole of the corner using just a single piece of the recovered plywood but there was enough plywood if I used two pieces of the same recovered plywood piece. The picture shows the result although, fortunately, it doesn't show the number of plywood pieces used to make the template because the corner and surrounding walls etc were anything but square. 🙄

We talked about moving the (inclined) track a bit further away from the backscene in order to use a tree to address the mismatch in the backscene seen a couple of posts back. The idea was to replace the grassed embankment between the BR platform and the LR overbridge with a retaining wall because the grassed embankment would become too steep.

I think that I've solved the backscene problem by remodelling the corner because the previous backscene sheets won't cover the increased wall length. However, I have grown to like the ides of the retaining wall so, whilst the track bed won't change, the embankment will go. Consequently, I took the opportunity whilst everywhere was in a mess to rip out the embankment and put the remnants of the embankment in the bin.

All ( ? ) I need to do now is to work out how to support the retaining wall (and what to make it out of !).

I've been working on some Arduino related stuff for the club layout recently and had left the test bed - which is mounted on some plywood - on the work bench in case I need to re-visit it in the near future. The small drawer unit seen in the 22nd October image above was removed from the wall as part of the corner works and placed on the work bench alongside the Arduino test bed pending it finding a new home.

Unfortunately. the presence of the test bed limited work bench depth whilst I was dismantling the old access flap with the consequence that, in one blinding flash, the content of a considerable number of the 24 plastic drawers from the drawer unit suddenly found themselves spread over the limited remaining space on the work bench and the garage floor which was, at that time still covered in sawdust leftover from cutting bits for the new backboards.

I've already managed to separate the drawers' content from the sawdust but still have to sort and return that content into the appropriate drawers. On the plus side, I have at least managed to find a new home for the drawer unit and it is already fixed in place.