terrysoham

Andy, Never used YouTube to up load so wouldn't know how but I did put the video on the club's Facebook page - Ely and District Model Railway Club - if anyone is interested. I hope to see you at the Peterborough show. Regards

I can't see the video so maybe there is a problem. Please let me know if there is and I'll try again.

Recently, I've re-visited the issue of flashing rear lights on my freight trains. I had been using my own design which picked up the dcc supply from DCC Concepts pick-up springs on four axles - two axles per rail - and it still needed a stay-alive to prevent loss of supply to the flasher unit. I felt that the spring pick ups imposed too high a rolling resistance on a 14 wagon train for my class 66s and 70s to pull comfortable particularly from a standing start and again when on curves which in the case of Neely are a minimum of 380mm radius. So I thought about using miniature 12v batteries and bought a few from Rapid to try out. Whilst these worked, they only lasted about 4 hours which, of course, isn't long enough for a day's exhibiting. More searching ensued and then I came across some flasher units sold on eBay by Black Cat Technology. These worked off a 3 v coin size battery and included the flasher chip, battery and on off switch all on a nicely design pcb for £3.00 each. You will need to fit a suitable resistor in the circuit and an external on/off switch. Having tried them - they fit easily inside a freight container - they power the tiny led that I use to give the red flash for days and days.trim.291D478E-93B7-4F4D-8B0A-661202E19FB2.MOV Regards

Mark, If I had dropped a clanger such as yours I would have apologised by now.

It's a wonderful idea which means that the Peco solenoid is easy to fit without any of the centring problems associated with the SEEP solenoids. No glue is needed just push the tabs through the slots in the points first ensuring the actuation rod is through the hole in the tie bar then fold or twist the tags to secure in place. However you need to cut a hole in the baseboard the nominal size of the solenoid. I used one of these oscillating cutters to do this which makes it easy but you could drill and saw the hole by hand. This means if the solenoids are on the scenic board, the hole has to be disguised. No doubt others will tell you how this can be done. I chose not to and went for Tortoise motors on the scenic side with the Peco solenoids in the storage area where there is no need to fill the hole. Regards

For the avoidance of doubt note that in Miss Prism's crossover diagram there are two missing insulated rail joiners. I'm sure that you realised but I thought I'd better say. Kind regards

All the baseboards are now up as you can see. Pleased that after so long in hibernation it ran straight away without problems. So here is Tornado, my only steam train waiting for the off on platform 3. Message to Andy York .... you were quite right, the iPad requires you to take a photograph in a certain orientation to display correctly on here. Regards

Andy, Just tried rotating it and, after attaching it, it still shows the image upside down on the iPad. I shall see if my laptop does the same Regards

I am using my iPad to post on this Forum. When I "attach" a photograph taken on my iPad in a post, it displays it upside down. How do I stop this happening? Regards

Yes do try asking the question on the JMRI forum on Yahoo. I should be very interested to know if you get a response - when I was a member and asked questions in the early days of my venture into PanelPro disappointingly I never did! However, I am extremely greatful for the generous help provided by the likes of Nigel, Kevin of Coastal DCC and various MERG members. If you do get a reply, I'll be quite happy to admit that it must have been my fault and rejoin. Regards

I'm no expert so just some thoughts. Maybe the latest version of either Java or JMRI or both isn't happy running on Windows 7. Try looking if you can find versions that are stated to run on Windows 7. Have you tried to Google for help? Good luck.

Neely has been stored for the four months it has taken me to build Neil Watson's layout, Aviemore. Today, having carried out some modifications to the PanelPro control panel, I couldn't resist checking that these modifications worked as intended so I put up the three baseboards containing the storage area to check, And it worked first time so you can imagine that I was pleased. Next week a short holiday in York with a visit to Shildon planned. When back I shall put all the baseboards up for a thorough shake down with a lot of planning for the new operating schedule. This is promised for October when Neely is at the Peterborough Exhibition. I understand that BRM will publish the article about Neely in their October edition in time for the show. Now Neely is back I shall be adding some more photographs on the N Gauge Forum Facebook site.

Having completed the track laying and then the wiring of a friend's dcc layout over the last four months, I can catagorically state that using dcc does not mean less wiring! I can only think that the "only two wires are needed" proposition must have been a sales gimmick when dcc first started to encourage the take up of, what was then, new technology. In my opinion, dcc has many advantages which is why I've now wired up three dcc layouts but the saving on wiring is not one of them. Regards

Handed back Neil's layout this afternoon after four months of baseboard building and painting, track laying using AnyRail as the template, fitting 40 Cobalt point motors, wiring the track, building and fitting the district cutouts, making the inter-baseboard connectors and finally setting up a control panel using JMRI's PanelPro.

I have been helping redo the electrics on our club's 00 gauge layout which is dc and uses code 75 track. Eventually the layout called Wickham Market is intended to be our replacement exhibition layout for Thurston that we sold on a couple of years ago. My comments below equally apply to a dcc operated layout. The points in the storage area are all manually operated and, even after a few running sessions, it was obvious that some form of additional polarity switching was needed to save all the faffing around when the switch rail didn't make good electrical contact with the stock rail. Personally, I feel that an additional switch is essential to the good running of a layout. We used microminiature lever switches from Rapid at a cost of less than 50 pence per switch which are operated off the point's tie bar. I admit that wiring up the switches was made more difficult because the points were already fitted. It would be much easier to do at an early stage before the points are fastened down to the baseboard. I absolutely hate having to make soldered joints under baseboards! Regards

Hi, We used these extensively on our club's N scale layout and had problems with some of them as you describe - even had a few where the vertical driving rod fell out of the hole in the horizontal armature. Like you I glued them into the hole but I used two part epoxy instead of superglue. However I suppose the gel type superglue would be just as good. Try it and see. Your alternative is to return them as not being fit for purpose but what do use as an alternative? I now use either Tortoise or DCC Concept's slow acting motors. However, they cost considerably more. Regards

I am still getting an error on p 75 of my digital edition where the photographs in the bottom right hand corner cycle too quickly to view. I reported this error over a week ago but the unfortunately it has not been resolved. It is NOT a feature because the rest of the magazine is all right so it must be a bug! I can't understand a) why I have not been told how to resolve it and b) why others haven't also complained more recently (since the last bout of complaints resulted in no help at all). Regards

Nigel I will definately fit the spare MERG DCOs to the busses. Thanks for your response Regards

Keith,Thanks for your reply. The coin tests works fine and the NCE PowerPro's status light indicates that there is a short circuit and shuts down the booster for 2-3seconds and then tries again as per the manual.

Nigel, The layout that I'm working on is a friend's. This is the first time that I've used Cobalts and an NCE PowerPro. The other two layouts have used a mixture of solenoids and Tortoise motors and the dcc components are by MERG. This is the third layout that I've wired using exactly the same wiring regime. All my layouts have used a bus wire having a minimum diameter of 1.5mm and all the droppers are 16/.2 equipment wire soldered to the bus wire. In terms of resistance I wouldn't imagine such a specification would be problematic but I am willing to be corrected. The points are modified Peco Electro-frog types code 55. I have sawn through the stock rails before the frog so that the frog is not fed from the switch rails. The stock rail and the cut rails have also been electrically bonded. So it is the Cobalt's switches S2L, S2R and S2C that do the frog switching taking the power from the dcc bus rails via S2L and S2R and into the frog via S2C. The common track on the Cobalt's pcb is quite narrow and I suspect that it could be susceptible to this sort of problem. I think that an email to the manufacturer might be a good idea. By the way at present none of the layouts are using DCO's but I have built a couple of MERG ones and I wonder whether I should try them on the present layout to see if it avoids any further problems - apart from remembering to fit the IRJs If you can see any obvious source of error in my wiring, I'd be happy to hear from you. Kind regards

Nigel, You have me worried. I wonder whether I could take this off line and send you a private message Thanks

Last night, I was fitting a Cobalt IP Digital motor to an N gauge point. When fitted it wasn't switching the frog polarity. I removed it and checked it out on the bench. The S2 switches had stopped working. Fitted a second motor having previously checked that the S2 polarity switches were working. Tested it. Second motor wouldn't switch frog polarity! Clearly there was a power problem. Started to remove adjacent point (fortunately I glue my track down with Copydex) and suddenly there was the answer. I hadn't fitted one rail off the frog with an insulated rail joiner which of course meant that when the point was switched in one direction there was a short on the frog. I opened up the motor's casing and started to check the pcb' s switch contacts - there was no connection from the common slider pad. Looked carefully at the track on the pcb and found that a track had shorted and burnt through. Carefully I soldered some fine wire across the damaged section. Checked it, put the casing back together and it worked on the bench. Did the same on the other damaged motor. Lesson. Always check that you have fitted the insulated track joiner to both frog rails.

Andy I still have the high speed swapping of photos on p77on the latest mag in digital form. I haven't seen any reference to a "cure". I realise that you're a tad busy but would you kindly intervene and ask someone at BRM to please get the program developer to sort it. Clearly it is a bug and needs to be addressed by them. Thank you very much.

Andy, I'm still looking at only a 6 page download on my iPad although having checked I do have the Engineer in Miniature magazine in full!! Has the problem been resolved? If so what do I do to download the full magazine? Regards

Andy, For your info. I use an iPad and I can't download beyond p6. Kind regards