Ray H

Just a thought . . . . Would a very dim small light (little more than a dot sized - you can decide the actual size of the dot) in the black hole help to convey the tunnel impression - and then there's the wisps of smoke emitting therefrom.

I had the pleasure of getting to know Ron in the 1970's when, in his full time job's role, he was our insurance company's kindly representative. I eventually helped to bring him into the then modern world by helping him produce his various slide catalogues and supplements using a word processor, a task I continued doing on his behalf until his wares passed to a new owner. Previously, Ron had re-typed the entire catalogue every two years. I still come across the odd page of the proof catalogue every now and again as I'm loathe to only use one side of a piece of paper. Ron was a brilliant orator by all accounts as well as a good singer. He would always address his good lady as his present wife, whom I met on numerous occasions when delivering the computer produced catalogue's offerings. They do say that behind every good man there is a good woman and that was truly the case with Ron. Another source of considerable railway knowledge lost forever. RIP Ron.

Is the decoder an 8 pin on a lead or one of the other multipin decoders? Do you know the decoder's make?

I went over the Whaddon Road bridge near Mursley this afternoon and there was a ballast train on the line (towards Bletchley?) so they seem to be going at it from both ends. Unfortunately at 60mph (over the bridge) I couldn't tell whether the train was moving. It must have moved at some point because it wasn't there 4 hours later.

I've addressed problems with keys that don't always make contact by placing a small square of the adhesive copper tape on the underside of the button.

Is that a spelling mistake in the web address?

Our club has recently acquired a small portable O gauge layout. It generally uses both locos and (NCE) Power/Pro cabs borrowed from the much larger O gauge club layout that has 8 Power/Pro cabs. We've found that unless the PowerCab is set as Cab No. 2, none of the ProCabs will get past the boot-up stage when relying on the PowerCab to be the master cab.. The manual does imply that the PowerCab has to be cab number 2 and only suggests 3, 4 & 5 as the other usable cab numbers.

The time line is around late 1950's - 'cos the local (railcar operated) passenger service is still in green with no sign of even the smallest yellow panel on the ends but I'm no too fussed about being more or less precise regarding the date.

Thanks for all the responses. These pictures show a road/rail angle that I would guess is probably somewhere near that which I'll have on the layout. I appreciate that things might be different for a light railway/goods yard access "roadway" but there's a touch of rule 1 here as I think they'd add a little extra to the layout especially as I'll be trying to have them working.

When I did the BR signalling voluntary class nearly 50 years ago I seem to recall that a level crossing (with gates?) was not considered as an obstruction as far as the acceptance of a train under regulation 4 was concerned. Were trains allowed to draw up to the gates, closed across the railway, to stop at a platform or would there have been a local instruction that said either the train had to be cautioned (at the home signal?) before being allowed to draw up to the gates or were the gates opened to the railway a short while before the train was due to reach there?

There were four gates over the Ripple Road (Barking) level crossing which carried a twin carriageway over the railway but that probably classes as LMR rather than ER/GE.

I presume that not all road/rail level crossings were at 90º to each other. I'm considering adding a level crossing to my O gauge layout laid out similarly to the following (where the white strip represents the roadway). The red lines indicate where I assume the gates will come to rest at either end of their travel. Again, I presume, that there will only be a single gate either side of the railway track (because I couldn't work out where twin gates each side would pivot. The roadway will only be wide enough to take a single vehicle - e,g, lorry. When the gates are closed across the railway it seems that it would be very easy to drive off the roadway and onto the track. I've seen cattle grids alongside roadways crossing the railway but would this have been the only option or would the road surface be widened between the gates? I presume there would be a fence between the gate end stops on each side of the track. I should add that this is a light railway. Would that make a difference in practice? Thanks.

A few weeks back I decided that it would be good to have an independent device to assist with setting up servo horn travel extremities rather than do it by guesswork and keep having to alter the values in the main Arduino's program code. I used said device yesterday so that I could simply update the figures on Gawcott's Arduino. Imagine my surprise when, this morning, I updated said Arduino's code and tested out the responses from the operation of a couple of the levers only to find that they were nowhere near the required values. I thought that my )independent) servo setter and the layout's Arduino were set up the same component wise - which they are. Without boring readers with too much technical stuff, I traced the problem to a frequency value difference in the two Arduinos. The value is now the same in both and the setter's figures work in the layout's Arduino. All that was left to do once that problem was sorted was to have a bit of a tidy up and add (and paint) the extra coffee stirrers on the extended part of the platform's surface. There's a 19mm hole in top and bottom baseboard skins under the platform near the station building where the various wires emerge from the trunking that can be seen on the front edge of the baseboard in the above image, thereby keeping everything tidy. I think that I may run some trains tomorrow for a bit of light relief.

Tuesday was a wash out layout wise. I spent all day on the phone trying to arrange cruise travel insurance because I have a couple of medical conditions that needed to be declared. I managed it in the end (and at cost), but only just. Anyway, back to the layout. By yesterday evening I had re-connected all the frog wires to the relays and all the servos to their controller board. The conduit is now in place on the front edge of the baseboards which has made a big difference. The only wires on now the baseboard surface are (a) those from the frogs to the relays with each having an in-line connector in case I need to remove/lift the baseboards, and (b) the track power wires between tracks and baseboards with the latter's in-line connector hidden under the signal box seen towards top left in the image below. I still have to set up the new servo horn movement limits for the Arduino and re-fit the platform surface. The latter will need extending because I extended the base to accommodate all the electronics.

I'm hoping to get a bit further today. I fitted the plastic trunking along the front edge of the layout yesterday to keep the wiring tidier than it was. I haven't made my mind up whether to reconnect the servos - which will almost certainly mean making up some more extension leads - first or to re-connect the frog wiring to the relays before that which should only mean extending a single wire at a time. Decision, decisions.

I've managed to get some remedial work done over the last few days. The relays and other electronic pieces are now within the confines of the platform, that has been extended by around 70mm in length to accommodate them. I've also managed to hide two servos there as well. One was just moved inwards from the baseboard edge, the other - just visible in the bottom left hand corner of the open area - was turned through 90º with the horn movement parallel to the track. I've used lengths of copper tube for most of the operation wire/rod runs between point tie bars and servos and the new alignment of this particular coper tube can just be seen towards the end of the ramp near to the green wires that are the track power feeds of one running rail to the various relays. A couple of the white wires between frogs and relay terminals can be seen and await cutting to length and connecting to the relays. I've glued a couple of pairs of coffee stirrers together, cut them to the width of the platform walls and cut out slots in the walls into which the stirrers will eventually be secured to give some support to the platform surface.

Has it got a mute key or means to increase/lower the volume? You'd need to check the paperwork that came with it. Has the speaker expired - that's not an extremely rare occurrence. Just a couple of thoughts. Do you know the origin of the decoder - sound file wise?

Humble apologies Paul. For some strange reason I'd always thought the gun came from Axminster - which I suppose, way back, it might have. However, when I wen to use it yesterday I noticed that it is in fact carrying the Arrow brand label and is their Arrow TR550 model. Sorry about that

Paul The connectors are held in place with hot glue. The gun & glue were from Axminster (Tools). However, checking their website doesn't reveal the model that I have so I presume it is no longer made as they only seem to be listing Bosch ones. I bought a Lidl/Parkside gun a while back for our club. Whilst the glue held initially, we are increasingly finding that the glue wants to stay attach to the wood we're sticking the connectors to, but parts company with the connector. So far this hasn't been something I've experienced with the home layout/glue gun. Gorilla's glue gun seems to be highly rated. I don't have any experience of it but I have found their other glues that I've used do seem to have good holding properties. Hope that helps.

The two servos furthest from the station building in the image above have now been repositioned albeit their method of fixing differs from that mentioned above. They've been mounted horn upwards and sunk into the baseboard. I cut the hole in both surfaces using my multi-tool and, because the depth of the servo is slightly greater than the thickness of the baseboard, I've placed a small false "floor" below the holes, with a spacer between the underside of the baseboard and the top of the false "floor", which is a piece of 2mm thick plastic. This somewhat shaky picture, for which I offer my apologies, shows a close-up of the new servo positions. The servo horns can be unscrewed from the servo more easily if needed and the false floor can be prised away from the underside of the baseboard if the servos can't be persuaded to be raised upwards if they need replacing. The effect on the surrounding scenery should now be less dramatic than my previous ideas. Meanwhile, at the other end of the platform, the decision has been taken to slightly extend (rather than foreshorten) the platform length so that we can position the electronics and two of the remaining three servos under the platform surface. The final servo will probably be treated the same way as those moved today and may be done first.

Long term viewers of this thread will know that the layout has been designed in such a way that accessing the underside of the baseboard for maintenance (and some of the initial build) was to be almost unnecessary thereby taking note of my advancing years (and my dodgy back [and now knees]). This was achieved at Gawcott by mounting the servos above the baseboard and running the wiring along the front edge of the baseboard without any real plan as to how said conglomeration of wires and connectors would be disguised. The above movements of servos and, in due course, a fair bit of the other wiring, provides a chance for the wiring to be encased in some trunking - thanks for that, Jim - and affixed to the front edge of the baseboard. The trunking may go in soon but the wiring runs therein will take a little longer!

With the club's control panels off the bench, I can turn my attention elsewhere. The picture in my previous post shows just how close the servos are to the edge of the bed of the disused track, remembering that the disused track at the back of the platform is a relatively new alteration. I can't use the same excuse for the area the other side of the station building where there hasn't been any changes since the original installation, as can be seen here: With thoughts now turning to scenery - 😒 - and after discussions with Jim, we decided that the servos really needed to be hidden from view. The two servos nearest the station building were the easiest to sort out, The platform has been narrowed by about an inch and the servos have been moved inwards and are now hidden under the platform - the disused track is just placed loosely in position. The section of the platform surface over the servos is pinned in situ and can be easily prised off to gain access to the servos if needed. The two servos furthest from the platform on the same side of the station building (and just visible at top right edge in the above image) are next. We decided that they could be moved nearer to the running line with a hole cut in the baseboard's visible plywood skin and the servos fixed in situ on the top side of the lower plywood skin. The key thing as far as these changes go - aside from making sure they'll work wherever they end up - 🙄 - is to ensure the servos can be accessed/changed relatively easily if necessary (which is why they ended up on the surface in the first place). I also need to maintain access to the servo horn and, more importantly, to the small screw that secures said horn to the servo. Consequently the thought was to position the servos such that their horns faced each other and then cut out a single long section of the top ply skin that allowed for a screwdriver to be able to access the aforementioned little screw, in each servo The piece of plywood thus removed would then be re-instated and subsequently covered in scenery in such a way that it could still be lifted out if there was a future need to access the servos. Unfortunately, as is evident from the above pictures, there's a signal post (and its servos) in between the place where it was intended to re-position the two point servos. I'm not too sure how we missed that! I need to undertake a more detailed survey of the area and see whether the point servos can be located between the disused track and the signal, or under the disused track itself or just a little further in from the baseboard edge but under the top baseboard skin layer. The intention is to have a road/track between the dis-used track and the baseboard edge from the lever frame area towards the single line, where it will cross the running line to give access to the provender store in the sidings in the corner of the garage. I think it might be easier to disguise a drop-in piece of roadway instead of trying the same in an area of general ground cover. There is a plan for the other side of the station building which just may see a shortening of that end of the probably excessively long platform but more anon.

Update: I originally purchased an A4988 driver and then discovered that the DRV8825 driver handled more current, so I purchased one of those and have been using that for the testing. Trawling through numerous Internet pages yesterday trying to find something that might give me a clue as to how I could address the problems I've been experiencing led me briefly to a forum post or response to a post somewhere suggesting there were reported problems with the DRV8825 driver. And so, on the off chance that it might be better, I swapped the DRV8825 for an A4988 driver and BINGO! My problems disappeared. I've now had the A4988 running for a while during which it has performed some 120 or so randomly generated push button combination move simulations in groups of 40. It returns to the starting position at the end of each set - at least I can't see any deviation from that position on the test bed. Problem apparently solved, thankfully.

Thanks Simon. I can see your logic and was going to adopt the one way round idea until I suddenly remembered that despite it not really mattering whether diesels were turned or not, the majority of the stock on the layout is fitted with Dingham couplings which means they'd need to be turned twice.

Thanks for the suggestion Simon. I'd thought of that but as you can see from the addendum to my previous post, there's no specific set direction code. The direction pin is allocated (and set for output) but that's the only reference to the direction that there is. I suppose that I could try forcing the pin High or Low prior to each .runToPosition statement. I might try stepping one step at a time within a for loop for example but I suspect that might make each overall movement slow. Keeping the direction constant may solve the problem but I'd like to avoid it if I can because moving the bridge (say) 340 degrees when the two roads are only 20 degrees apart seems wrong. Luckily the layout generally only uses diesels so turning them isn't too much of a problem and as its a terminus the appearance of the odd steam loco will be wanting to be turned. I did briefly look to see if there was a different library to use with the A4988 controller but didn't find one.