21C123

A friend of mine used a trailer to transport his large Lego creations to a show, about 400 km away. When he arrived he spent a day rebuilding them all ...... LOTS of vibration in a trailer. Roger

hi all Yes the smoke has made it to New Zealand, the moon tonight from Wellington, and during today the sunlight was an orangey tint, though apparently more noticeable in the South Island. Roger

Hi all I have a Heljan HO gauge 90’ turntable model 89011 and was wondering if anyone has extended the deck and used one of these for turning O gauge locos. Thanks Roger

Snap for the cat dish... Roger

Hi my first O gauge layout started out as 4.5 m by 500 mm. Viewing from the right, the track on the left was a hidden fiddle siding, I tried a cassette here. Coal siding, head shunt and wharf edge. and the other end. Goods shed run round heads shunt and the other end of the wharf siding with a kickback to the other end. this worked well, but I decided the cassette was too tricky to use, leaning over the layout as it ended up being 1.5 m high. I’ve now changed the track uses, the fiddle yard is for coal and the coal siding is the entry from the yard, the heads hunt becoming an end loading dock.. trains of 6 wagons work well with a terrier or two or 08. hope that helps. Roger

I guess the people who drove over these signs were optimistic....

You could check that the red wires and black wires from the bogies are on the same side on each bogie. Sometimes they just wire both bogies the same and of course one gets turned around so red on one is black on the other. Roger

Hi Photos from the Bluebell model railway event. Roger

Will the DCC sound use the brake key on F2 ? thanks Roger

having used a digitrax system then an NCE I went with the NCE. The main reason was the number and layout of buttons between the two and also being able to operate the NCE controller with one hand. The radio system works well as well for me. Roger

Hi all I have recently bought some kit built coaches, can anyone identify the make and what prototype they are supposed to be please. Plastic chassis, body and roof, flat ends with gangways, 360 mm long, Brass sides and under frame, wood seats and roof former with metal roof. Flat ends, 407 mm long Any ideas would be appreciated. thanks Roger

Hi all Christmas 1968, my Grand Pop gave a 3 year old me a Triang/Hornby NZC3 clockwork train set, my Mother thought I was a bit young.... Sadly that was the last Christmas he was with us. Today I've reassembled all the bits, I even still have both the keys, the only damage is the Shell oil tank which has been stood and the chassis is broken. When my son was younger he loved playing with the loco on my layout, I even bought a second one so we could have races. I've just noticed that the desk in the first photo is the one in my room, and the television stand now has one of my layout control panels attached to it.... Roger

Hi Paul I think both sounds are the same, variant 2. CV7 is 037 and CV65 is 007 on both decoders. Roger

thanks for the reply Paul I have activedrive V17.01 and activedrive variant 2 V17.01, ordered in august and october this year. I have just been playing with the 2 side by side and couldn't hear any differences in the engine sound. I did try consisting them on my NCE Procab but found a problem, when F2 is pressed the brakes are only applied on the lead loco ! thats not going to work very well.... Roger

Hi all I have two 08s with the digitrains sound, Is it possible to alter the sound of one so they are not exactly the same ? I have thought about using different speakers or just setting one slightly louder to make them different. Roger

Thanks for all the suggestions, I’ve managed to get all three pins out. I removed the wheels from the axles, the boss is about 4 mm think, with the broken pin 0.5 mm below each surface. I used a pillar drill with a 3/16 mill bit to cut 1 mm deep in from the back surface around the pin, close to,it but by luck I managed to cur a slice from the pin as well. Once the pin was standing 0.5 mm above the milled area I gave the wheel a gentle heat with a hot air gun, then used a pair of tweezers to turn it and screwed it out. With the slice from the pin it had a convenient flat to grip. Repeat for the other two. So all three came out, reassembled to axles with quartering by eye, I tried refitting the broken pins and coupling rods and they stayed in place long enough to show the quartering was ok. Just waiting on new pins from DCC supplies and it will be back in use. I’m going to email Dapol again pointing out that other people have had the same problem so they should know about it and it’s not unique. Roger

And Dapol replied Thank you for your email and sorry to hear of the problem. We have not heard of this problem before so it is an unusual occurrence. The best course of action will be to contact our service agents, DCC Supplies, For help and advice. Has anyone else had this problem ? I wonder if the previous owner had taken the crank pins out and broken them then, doesn’t matter as I’ll have to replace the wheel sets now by the looks of it. Roger

Thanks for the replies. I took the wheelset to work and our workshop engineer was pretty doubtful that he could drill out the pin, its a bit smaller than he is used to.... I've looked at the DCC supplies webs site and this is how the pin should look. I've now got 3 broken pins, one from the front wheels, and both from the rear wheelset with the gear wheel. the loco was bought secondhand in September 2017, from the second batch released in that year I think. I will email Dapol and see what they have to say, DCC supplies has replacement wheelsets at 25 pounds for the geared set and 14.95 for the plain set.... Luckily none of my 3 other Terriers appear to have this problem, hopefully they stay that way. Roger

Hi all My terrier 32636 suddenly stopped last night, one of the driven wheels crank pins had come out. Once I had found if I couldn’t refit it. The thread is about 0.5 mm long as in the photo. Is the threaded part supposed to be longer ? I found two more crankpins were also loose and the same length, and appear to have the rest of the thread broken inside the wheel. Any hints on how to get the broken part out and replace the pins ?? Thanks Roger

Hi Mike I’ve recently done a warship using a Zimo decoder. The main thing to watch with the lights is that Heljan use a common negative and Zimo use a common positive...... they do have two wires to each light so as long as you trace them you should be okay. On the circuit boards with the surface mounted LEDs are resistors so no problems there. I altered the boards slightly to have independent marker and head code lighting. Hope that helps Roger

Hi all This is the plan for my dockside O gauge layout, the 3 right hand boards are built, 1.5 m by 500 mm with 200 mm mm wide extension for the sea.the fiddle yard attaches to the righ5 hand end. The board with the platform at the left hand end is the next board to be built. Roger

Hi My traverser is used on our OO modular system, 1.3 m modules usually. It is double ended so can be used in a continuous layout or end to end. The deck runs on drawer runners, the operating handle in the centre has a wire cable below. . When you want to move the deck the cable is pulled, this pulls back two spring loaded bolts which are engaged into holes in aluminium index plates at each end. This also turns off the power to the common rail by the micro switch on one end. Photo below. The other end also has a microswirch but this only powers the indicator leds. The other rail on each track is livened through its reed switch. In the photo below the reed switches are on the veroboard with a magnet glued to the aluminium bracket. So the power is only live on the road aligned with the bracket. What this doesn’t show is the power feed cable which plugs into the 3.5 mm photo socket beside the veroboard and looping back to the fixed tracks, the photo was taken during the traversers refurbishment and I cant access it at the moment. So in practice to drive a train on you move the deck to an empty track, turn the power switch to select which end the train is coming from, drive on and turn the power switch off if wanted . To change tracks pull the cable and move the deck, which can be done one handed, the leds will be on while the cable is pulled. release the cable, make sure the bolts have engaged, they click into place, the leds will go out, turn the power switch to the correct end and drive off. It takes longer to write than do.... Roger

Evening Mine arrived in NZ today, no problems except I’ve a part loose that I can’t identify. Any idea ? Roger

Thanks for the suggestions, I might give it a go with an old decoder I have. The OO layout is 8 by 2 m plus 15 m of branch line, with 30 or so locos on at any one time I’m not rushing to chip the lot at once, I thought this may be an easy way to get wirelesss control. The duette will have to continue in use for its 4th decade.... Roger