Chris M

I also have sound on my dc layout. I have edited some sound files to suit my layout and trigger them to a Bluetooth speaker from my phone. I prefer this because I get the whole train passing sound and I get a much richer sound than possible from a speaker in an N gauge loco. If I use my big Bluetooth speaker I can make the floor vibrate as the trains pass but for some reason the wife doesn’t appear to be keen on me doing this. Haven’t asked the neighbours what they think!

My experience of MERG point control at the club has been disastrous. Although being a relatively cheap system it has cost a lot more than traditional push button and solenoid control. The plastic servo mounts are flimsy. Older Farish locos cause the points to change all by themselves. So far the only cure found is to install a new capacitor in every offending loco. This ain’t going to happen. Unless a cure is found in the next few months the MERG system will be stripped out. Yes the number of wires is greatly reduced compared to the traditional way but it is just too flaky.

When I restarted building model railways in 2013 I looked carefully into both systems and chose dc because it suits my needs better. For me the best thing about dc is that when you change a point you automatically have control of the loco on the selected track; this feature alone makes dc the choice for me. I model in N gauge but if I was doing O gauge my choice may have been different. I do hope my layouts are seen as being sort of realistic! Some say you can’t double head with dc but I have no problem. Even banking is possible.

50 049 coming soon as limited edition through class 50 fund

Dapol Foxcote Manor and Hinton Manor Dapol pannier 5764 Western Courier Farish Warship Onslaught

Farish 2MT 46443 and 46521. Farish pannier 6412 Farish 8F 48773 coming soon

And the tea will be reasonably priced.

The material cost for a cup of tea or coffee is less than 10p. If you have volunteers manning the refreshments in a room that is part of your premises and use mugs that volunteers will wash then everything else is profit. If you have to pay staff, disposable cups, run a van to move your stand to venues and pay the venue for being there your costs will be considerably higher. At the show I recently organised we sold tea at £1 and probably made more profit per cup than the people selling tea at the BRM show. At the model railway club I am a member of tea and coffee is completely free, or if you like included in the price of membership.

If you go to any event with a captive audience you will pay through the nose for food. Everyone knows this and you have three choices - accept that is the price of convenience, bring your own or go without. Same applies to sports events, theme parks etc etc. As for the admission prices to big shows - well just think how much it costs to go to other entertainment events. Model railway exhibitions are extremely cheap entertainment compared to most events. This is because most of those involved in the show have given up many hours of their free time for the paying visitors. I don't know about the BRM shows but I guess even the paid staff put in unpaid time to organise the show. Comments such as "blatent capitalism" are an insult to all of us who do put so many hours work in to these shows whether as organiser or exhibitor. Yes the venues are business which need to make a return on their investment ( which seems fair) but the people exhibiting certainly aren't.

Love planning, hate ballasting, love seeing a layout coming together. I particularly enjoy working my way through all the issues that arise as you go from plan to reality. For me the best bit is running a train or three through a scene that I have created.

RRP for Farish Hawksworth coaches is £39.95 while RRP for Dapol Collett coaches is £23.40. So an eight coach rake at RRP would be £319 for Farish or £187 for Dapol. While the Farish coaches are exquisite the Dapol ones are ok and I would say affordable whereas the Farish aren't. I fancied a few Hawksworth maroon coaches but they are not sufficiently important to me to pay out the sort of cash required. Likewise the Autocoach - Farish RRP only just gone up a bit to £39.95 while the Dapol RRP is only £16.96. I have one of each. Again the Farish is an exquisite model and is great to get up close to and admire, but, when they are a few feet away on my layout, there isn't much between them.

Thats a whopping increase in percentage terms yet again. I could understand a one off big increase to get things to where they need to be but there does seem to be a massive increase every year now. I reckon they may well have gone too far and could will struggle to sell in reasonable quantities. Fezza could be right in that it will be bad for the future of N gauge. Look on the bright side - all your current stock is now worth more on Ebay!

Thanks to Colin and the Stafford team for an enjoyable weekend. It was a well run and friendly exhibition as always. The attendance looked very good. I was back home with the layout by 18:00 but the layout is still in the car this morning.

Good to see the forum back up. Nice and dry at the showground this afternoon with no trace of snow. It was somewhat chilly though. My car earlier today, packed and raring to go.

I always park pointing slightly down hill if I can and with driving wheels as close as possible to the hard stuff. Never had a problem. My brother on the other hand....

Yes they do. USA Trains cannot do new runs of most of their locos due to a tooling dispute relating to a forced factory move. I believe they can't get the tooling released even though it was paid for and they have been told by the original factory that they will no longer produce USAT items. Another version of this story is that some of the tools have been "lost" in transit. Whatever the cause new production is proving to be impossible at the moment due to a lack of availability of existing tooling. There was also the famous Newquida LGB rip off. This is where blatant copies of LGB items suddenly appeared at very low prices. They were inferior in terms of the plastics used and the wheels etc but it did appear they were using the moulds from LGB China produced items. LGB enthusiasts were appalled and even made a video of a public burning of at least one item. Complaints were made to trading standards in the UK forcing one retailer to remove these items from sale. In the end it turned out that the use of these moulds was legitimate and they are still in production today. Whether LGB sold the rights for the models or the sets of tooling or just didn't pay debts (they were going bust at the time) is not clear. What is for sure is that cheap copies of LGB models that are made from the original or identical tooling are perfectly legally in production today. Aristocraft ceased trading and apparently left some unpaid bills in China as they closed. Kadar made some if not all of their locos and rolling stock. One railcar and the motor blocks for some locos have since been re-released by Bachmann USA so they are making use of tooling commissioned by another company. Again this production will be completely legal.

Not blaming them for anything, just saying their normal business practice isn't the same as what we are used to in the Western world. This has caught out many businesses, including some big ones.

I'm going to guess that the volumes for pretty much any N gauge British outline loco are so small that Chinese factories aren't too bothered whether they do a run or not. The revenue from UK locos is going to be nit sh*t compared to the total turnover of these factories and so the work will always be low priority to them. Probably looked upon as a fill in job when things are quiet. We have to be realistic about the size of our hobby and the size of everything else in the world. This probably explains why the class 17 didn't happen. I think there is a danger with the King in that Dave will have negotiated with the current Chinese factory in good faith based on orders made but will now be losing face (which is incredibly important in Asia) because he has not delivered the order for tooling when he expected to. This in itself could kill the project and whatever else is said the problem is down to a significant number of modellers not putting their money where their mouth is.

My knowledge of Chinese manufacturing is now about 15 years old and relates to automotive but back then the factory would claim to be the owner of the tooling you paid for even though they accept that you paid for it. This is very different from the EU where tooling you had paid for could be removed from any factory at any time subject to any contracted notice.

Signal box fixed. There is just a chance that you might see a Western running through Little Aller Junction

Dave has designed some great N gauge models in the past while at Dapol. I don't think he is great at web site management. The facts relating to the king as I understand things:- 1. Dave announced he wanted to crowdfund a king 2. After quite a while there were sufficient people who had committed by their actions on the DJM website to pay 50% of the price of the proposed king up front in order to fund the tooling cost. 3. When this point was reached Dave invested his time in designing what looks like a brilliant model. 4. After many months of work on the design Dave was happy for tooling to start and so asked those who had promised to fund the tooling to fulfil their side of the deal. 5. A significant number of people have backed out when it came to parting with cash. It would have been much better for all of us if these people hadn't bothered to say they would support this project in the first place. I still hope sufficient people will be found to fund this but I am not confident. I don't know Dave at all but it does seem that there have been a number of timewasters committing to things they weren't really committed to. DJ Models have a stand booked at the Stafford Exhibition on 2nd & 3rd February so maybe more information will become available then.

It's a shame that nothing much appears to be happening. I am very disappointed with all those who placed an order but dropped out when it came to paying out cash . Those who did this may well have wasted all our time.

Ed has created something a bit special in N with Todmorden Midland. I hear rumours of an extension, but not yet.

What, and miss out on normal working?https://youtu.be/bUK0hwukn7k"]