pheaton

Yeah i think Heljan might have taken inspiration from the Hornby class 25 when it comes to lights ;-) it's a grain of wheat bulb, the 47s are fairly easy to fit new lights to it's not quite as straight forward on the baby sulzers unfortunately.

Yup thats about normal for a Heljan, thats why you cant fit Hornby decoders to them, the generally draw above 500ma i seem to recall however there was an issue with the early buhler motors in the class 47s causing issues with high current draw and various re-motor options were considered by the modelling community as its was the creme de la creme 47 at the time.

It's not an air con unit under that hatch it's a toilet water tank.

Principally they are the same, but single cars tend to rasp a lot more as the silencer setup is different or non existant on a single car, where as 101s have the large silencers just below the exhaust.

Hi, Anyone know the correct ratio of PVA to water to create my own ballast glue......im buggered if im paying 8 quid a time for the woodland scenics stuff. Thanks in advance, Simon

Loctite do superglue remover, in a red tube, not used it on paint, but i have used it on glazing and it has been quite successful in removing "frost"

Ive looked at this for some vitrains 47s the ideal motor is a mobile phone vibrator motor, but getting the weight of the shaft might be an issue......the other motor i have looked at is a replacement tail rotor motor for a miniture model helicopter.

Nothing safer than your back garden if they use yodel

Cant have been a 24 im afraid they dont have radiator slats, and also the radiators are in a sealed glass fibre board unit from the engine room, with a central walkway and an electric fan, so it takes no input from the engine like say a 37/20 or a serck controlled fan like a 33/47/46, the only loco that might do as you describe is a 37 or a 50, and the only loco with automatically controlled slats is a 50, a 37 they are manually controlled.

As an aside 25901 has that unit been fitted with b series fuel pumps and injectors?

Stand corrected 25901 :-) I thought it was just the first 19 that had them as my manuals start from 20 onwards and don't show them in the design but they are clearly evident in those two phots :-)

As far as i know only the ones tested on the ER had them so not all of them had the doors, im pretty certain only the pilot batch had them, my maintenance manual i use on 26043 doesn't show them in the drawings, and that manual dates from nov 1959, (about halfway through the build) there is a photo of two of them on a depot with the nose doors connected, but i think its on a eastern region depot. 26043 has no evidence of ever having a door or a bellows fitted. The ones that had the door i expect would have lost them on their first works visit. doors would not have been used when they were transferred to the scottish region The internal door was retained for access to pipework on the later builds.

You guys able to post a picture, or describe how much material you removed? Thanks Simon

Hi All, was a solution ever found to the Hornby diesels (31, 50, 56, 60) derailing anything that wasnt bogied coming out of a curve, having revisted one of my 56s the other day hauling 25mgrs it derailed the first wagon on the same curve every time. Looking at the design of the coupling (for design read over complication) the way its laid out its impossible for it to return to centre after a certain amount of weight is behind it, am i going to have to fit a coupling bar or did somebody come up with an ingenious solution? Ive had a look back through the threads but havent see anything that has fixed the issue. Thanks Simon

Generally the sound fitted locos are wired differently and the body shells and chassis are not interchangable, between sound and non sound fitted models im afraid. If I recall correctly someone here has documented the mods for a sound chassis to a non sound body but not the other way round.

The general consensus is that all Bachmann factory sound locos are now loksound selects

thought i would try a new angle, ZImo fitted Bachmann 47, 2x Bachmann 37s with SWD loksound 4 1x 56 fitted with a loksound and howes the 47 in the background has a factory fitted chip loksound 3.5 wanted to try and get a good night scene

Large logo, It's worth noting in class 50s only the keeper plate appears affected the chassis itself seems to be unaffected, but I know the CE model is affected and I've also seen it in the first original nse model they did

That would be good richard, id like to see that.

As an owner of quite a large number of DCC sound fitted models some fitted myself some fitted by others i have bought secondhand, and some factory, im quite in agreement with the above, although better results can be achieved with a little work, i for one am not prepared really to hack around a model ive paid quite a sum for nowadays. i dont think charlie meant anything by it bescotbeast, i think the general benchmark these days is try and seal the speaker. Which i must admit doesent look pretty but appears to make a difference. The issue i find is, some projects appear to work better with unsealed speakers, for example i find the howse 47 sounds worse with a bass reflex than a non bass reflex. Part of the beauty with paul chetters class 47 rail express project was they had an intended speaker and enclosure for the vitrains 47 so you could get the sound quality that they intended. ive got to buy a 47 chassis shortly for a Bachmann body i need to get rid of so i might run a thread on what is best speaker for a particular project that you can get into an off the shelf Bachmann spoon without any physical modification.......and yes that includes the battery boxes For me manufacturers could go a lot further when it comes to accommodating DCC sound.......in that you could lose a lot of the chassis block in the 47, which gives you a lot more space to play with, and costs them less in required materials and shipping weight!

And in addition loksounds work wav format so while you can go mp3 to wav you lose a good deal of quality by recording in mp3 in the first place, and then even more is lost in the extraction routine so you really might as well record in wav. However is it noticeable on the speakers we are currently using is the question.

Nile_Griffith I think you hit the nail on the head, in that dcc sound is a representation, its not "shut your eyes and your there" and with the constraints of OO guage i cant ever see that becoming a reality in the short or the long term to be honest. As an enhancement you have to agree a dcc sound fitted model sounds more realistic than a non dcc sound fitted model. Issue comes where its human nature to defend or gloss over the shortcomings on something that you have a vested interest in, not saying thats whats going on here but ive seen it in many a sound thread where TBH the truth is being told and its vigourously rebuffed, and treated almost like a personal attack, and said thread descends in the anarchy. As an early adopter of DCC sound i have seen my share of poor projects, but things have improved drastically over the last few years. I have to disagree with you regarding the boundries, we have seen a number of new features like Multi-Start, Drive Lock, Udrive, from the various ESU suppliers, and indeed paul chetter in the zimo arena also has come up with his own braking function and similar functions to the ESU decoders, all of these were not availiable from the outset, and most of them come from making use or manipulating undocumented features of the decoder. Also the boundries (particularly on the loksound) are quite rdigid, as a sound engineer im sure your aware there a multitudes of technical capabiltiies for the manipulation of the sound, but in the case of DCC sound thats only half of the story, that has to be then placed on the decoder, and in the case of ESU you are restricted to the capabilities of the lokprogrammer software, and since there is no API availiable so you cant develop new software to create new functionality so unless ESU provide new functions, the boundry is just that, a boundry. And we havent seen any indication of the V4s successor yet. Your right in saying that DCC sound doesent take into account the rest of the train, just the locomotive (units are slightly different since they are self contained you can have all the sounds correctly in one place) however if i have a rake of 9 coaches on my layout using the multi channel capabilities of both the loksound and the zimo, i could install speakers in a carriage which means i get some more realism, however the sheer logistics make this inpractical so like everything in the model world, you have to compromise. Over time people have put foward new idea's this thread is a prime example of them, nobody even thought about using iphone speakers a few years ago, however as you point out DCC sound is constrained by the speakers, and therefore the space you can fit them in. For me there is still not enough competition in the dcc sound area thats improving as more and more suppliers pop up, but with more competition the quicker enhancements will come about as each supplier strives to provide the best sound. However reffering to your comment about talking to a group of people and "getting your coat" as the secretary of the owning group and a driver for their home railway (very close to your apparently location) i have unrestricted access to two operational ex BR diesel locomotives (class 45 and class 26) i also own a lokprogrammer, why not show us how you would do things better?

All, Suppose the following platform layout.... In the real world (should such a configuration exist the only one I know of is Swindon....) how would the bay platforms be numbered? and on which side would the doors be opened in (in an automatic door scenario) for passengers to board or offload? Would it be on the left as the train enters the bay, or on the left as the train leaves the bay? Need to know so I can get my platforms right Thanks Simon

that would be the water header tank cover

Ray, Gauge master ds controllers (I assume yours is fitted with inertia) behave differently to a standard analogue controller loksound chips which is what adb is describing were never developed for dc operation. Gaugemaster ds controllers supply a constant voltage and control the train through current hence the reason you get more control over the decoder over a standard Dc controller iirc. Happy to be corrected though. Thanks Simon