terrysoham

I've been busy reconfiguring the storage area to give Neely a fourth freight road and a dedicated siding for the Kings Cross to Ely class 365s. Not only did I have to take up and relay several points but I also had to reconfigure the physical control panel by moving some switches around and then modifying the PanelPro panel. I wasn't looking forward to this but it all went very smoothly. At the same time as I fitted the points in their new locations I also removed the Peco PL 13 polarity switches and fitted instead micro switches operated off the tie bar. I wasn't unhappy with the PL 13s I just thought I'd try something new to see which proved to be more robust over time. Now getting on with all the maintenance jobs before Neely's next exhibition in March in March! Regards

I have three of these wagons, two run very smoothly, the third has a problem with the leading axle on the bogie with the hand wheels. There must be a slight interference fit with the wheel flanges just touching the bogie. I am trying to establish how to deal with this and I will report back. In the meantime has anyone else had this problem? Regards

Hi, I went down the MERG route about 5 years ago and I don't regret it. I use their DCC and CBUS equipment on Neely. The CAB uses surface mounted components but apart from that the other kits use through-hole type PCBs. The instructions accompanying the kits are very comprehensive and the help readily available on the website. If you get really stuck someone will no doubt offer to sort it for you. Providing you can solder moderately well then their kits are the solderer's equivalent of painting by numbers! You can get a quality DCC controller, booster (you might not need this for a small layout) and a command station for less than £100.00. Importantly, in these uncertain times, MERG is based in Britain so you don't have to worry about exchange rates or customs duty - the postage is charged at cost. I haven't used the SPROG but I understand that this is also a good buy.

The signal box looks brilliant. Bring it along on Tuesday so I can admire it close up. Regards

Thank you very much Paul. Although I can see in one shot that I was present, I have no recollection of whoever made the video. Whoever it was thank you very much and, if you give me an email addy, I'd ask you for a copy of the Neely bit. BTW Paul I hope that you feel I did credit to your excellent design work for the 365s.

It was good to meet members of the forum who stopped by to have a chat and we thank you for the kind comments. We had one point failure, fortunately in the storage area, that will need attention and the odd bit of tree fell off during transit but otherwise nothing major. In case any of you wondered what was going on at times, we had two new operators on the layout (yes they had operated the layout in the club room before but not at an exhibition) so we had more SPADs and the accompanying warning beeps of dcc shorts than desirable. I hope it didn't spoil it too much. We enjoyed letting a couple of youngsters operate the layout under supervision and, of course, they put us older ones to shame! We also let the children and parents go behind the layout to look at the storage yard and I think this was a successful idea which we will continue when space allows. Finally a big thank you to the Bury St Edmunds club for inviting us.

Ben, Thank you. Neely is next out at March, Cambridgeshire on 4th March 2017. Hope to see you there. Otherwise it will be at the two day Peterborough show later in 2017. Between the Bury show and the March show I have major improvements to make to the layout of the storage yard which also involves upgrading the physical and JMRI control panels. Best regards

Neely will be appearing at Bury St Edmunds show this Saturday (10 September). The show is at Risby Village Hall, Bury St Edmunds, IP28 6RT between 10.00 and 16.00 Please do make yourself known to me if you have any questions or if you'd simply like to have a go at playing trains.

I suppose that it might have been a set without decoders running on dc

Having spoken about my Shapeways Class 365s I thought it was about time that I showed them in Neely station.

Roundhouse, Thanks for that comment. I will keep an eye out for this.

A tale of polarity switching on a dcc layout. When I was planning this N scale layout I was fairly new to railway modelling (It is my first layout) and I followed Brian Lambert’s advice on his web site about making the live frog points dcc friendly. Whilst I acknowledge that he doesn’t insist that this is necessary, it was only sometime later after I had carried out the conversion, that I discovered the consensus opinion is that his advice is really applicable to 00 scale and bigger and not to N scale! Essentially, his advice involves isolating the live frog area by cutting the two rails between the hinge and the frog and soldering the feed wire across both the fixed, side rail and the curved rail between the hinge and the cut. To change the frog’s polarity you use a separate electrical switch rather than letting the point’s switch rail do it. What I didn’t realise is that the switches that I chose, Peco’s PL-13 attached to Peco solenoids, are the sliding type relying on spring pressure to obtain electrical continuity. Occasionally this fails, resulting in a voltage drop in the frog area causing the locos to stall. Fortunately, I only used solenoids and these switches in the storage area. As an aside, the PL-13 switches are quite frustrating to set up in N scale because firstly you have to find the orientation in which they work best and, secondly, you have to position them accurately onto the bottom of the solenoid whilst checking for electrical continuity in both normal and reverse direction. To do this you need a glue that allows for some repositioning before it goes off. I found Evostik worked best for me. This work should be carried out on the workbench before fitting the assembly to the point. By the way Peco do offer an alternative mechanism which includes a fixing plate and much better switches, type PL-15. However, this precludes you then fixing the solenoid’s metal tabs through the slots in the base of the point so destroying, in my view, the main advantage of Peco’s solenoids. There is also a price premium – the cheapest that I could find is over twice the cost of the PL-13 type. If I was starting again, on balance, I would still use the PL-13 switches but leave the points entirely alone thus letting the switch rail and the PL-13 change the polarity. In order to achieve this, over the next few evenings I am going to re-convert my points to their original design. Don’t you just love having to undo things that you did in all innocence? Therefore, be warned, if you’re into N scale, do not follow Mr.Lambert’s advice, good though it often is, but leave the polarity switching to the switch rails and, if you are so inclined, add another switch system as a secondary source.

Hello, At the end of April I posted a photo of my first completed Shapeways class 365 emus and, since then, I have been working on my other two units. Tonight I completed the fitting of the last directional lighting set and after a lot of pleasure, marred with the occasional frustrating evening when things did not go to plan, I have the three emus needed to operate Neely prototypically. These will be on show first at the Bury St Edmunds model railway exhibition at the beginning of September and then at Abrail and the March MRC's exhibition in early 2017. Whilst I am, of course, pleased with them I am very much aware of how much they show my limitations in terms of airbrushing but hey ho come to one of the above exhibitions and judge for yourself.

Neely uses the MERG dcc system - command station, 5 amp booster, power supply and hand held CAB - the lot, home built for less than £100.00!

Can someone tell me the length of the Revolution Trains Tiphook PFA/KFA container flats please? I want to know how many I will need to fit the storage sidings on Neely. Thanks

Hi, The photograph is of a Shapeways Class 365 emu designed by bigP (Paul). The coaches have been fitted to slightly modified GF Class 350 chassis. The livery is Thamelink Govia's Great Northern and is my first attempt at airbrushing and lining (thanks to Ian Rathbone's recent course at Missenden). The front and rear units are fitted with GF Voyager lighting units utilising Zimo stay alives (to remove the light flickers) and function only decoders. The pantograph is a modified Dapol version. The photograph shows a down unit shortly to enter Neely station.

Neely will be appearing at the Nottingham Exhibition on 12 & 13 March with two brand new and, probably, seen for the first time ever, models! Come along and see if you can spot them. To give you a clue one of these often gets held up at the level crossing gates at Ely and the other is sometimes the cause. Busy now vacuuming the track, cleaning the rail heads and the wheels using IPA, checking the back to backs so as to, hopefully, result in a trouble free weekend (fingers crossed). Due to ill-health there has been a change of operating personnel with our Chairman, Andy Wilkinson, making his debut on a dcc layout. Come and say hello.

Thanks Andy. Very, very helpful. Especially the lighting pix. You've also helped me sort out the roof (dark grey) and the ends (black or is it very dark grey?) colours. I have played with my IWata airbrush today for the first time. My wife suffers from paint and other allergies so I had to get her special dispensation to use it in the model railway room (upstairs spare bedroom) with the door firmly closed and acrylic paint so as to minimise the smell. She has agreed that it doesn't smell so I may be ok for further practise this afternoon. Going to Missenden in three weeks' time to learn how to use it properly. Half term this week so Grandson and I are going to Kings Lynn by train on Wednesday for a treat. Me to look at 365s close up. He to visit a toy shop to look at Hot Wheels model cars and, more than likely, cajole Grandad into buying him something. Weatherspoon's for lunch. This family knows how to live!! Once again thanks for your pix. Kind regards

Having primed the Class 365, I debated with Paul (bigP on RMweb) who did all the CAD work and Neil (my fellow conspirator on Neely) about whether I was going to rub them down to get rid of the print lines on the sides. Well I have taken their advice and, having rubbed down both of the driving cars, I am delighted with the improvement. However, next time I prime a 3D print I will just do a couple of coats so that I can see what needs rubbing down rather than the four I have applied. Four coats means a lot of rubbing down!!

Thanks Andy for offering. I am planning on painting the model to represent the Thameslink Great Northern livery. In terms of the running lights all I really need to know are which front lights illuminate during day time running. I understand that the two outer most lighting pods are the red tail lights but I do not know which of the four front lighting pods are illuminated. With this information I then can commence planning the details for the 0603 LED lighting. Kind regards

Hi, I have done some research and have come up with the following.... The Dapol Pantograph Twin Pack contains one Brecknell Willis (I believe that this is the right hand image) and one Stone Faiveley (left hand image I believe) pantograph. From Wikipedia…….Class 365…….When they transferred to West Anglia Great Northern for use with 25 kV AC overhead line traction supply, the shoes and associated equipment were removed and a Brecknell Willis high speed pantograph was installed………….. Unless you know otherwise!!

I use a MacBook Pro with Boot Camp and am running Windows 10 (upgraded from Window 7) so that I can use Microsoft Publisher )amongst other programs not available under IOS). I can categorically state that it takes almost twice as long (53 seconds compared with 28 seconds) to get to the desktop under Windows 10 than it used to under Windows 7. I see no obvious speed improvement with any other programs. BTW, I have made use of Avast to ensure that I am not carrying any "excess baggage" at start up. My Apple is fitted with a flash drive. So I conclude Windows 10 is slower at start up - more work to do Microsoft, I'm afraid, if you really want an operating system acceptable to all. Please remember that this operating system, will no doubt, soon REQUIRE A SUBSCRIPTION. I am not a great fan of IOS upgrades either other than bug fixes but at least they're free (well I suppose that they're included in the initial higher price for an Apple machine). I just report things as I find them so please don't shoot the messenger. However, if anyone has any constructive ideas how I can improve my start up time, then please let me know.

We've suffered reoccurring problems with misalignment of the 9 tracks across the baseboard joints in the fiddle yards. We'd followed the accepted practice in that the rails had been soldered to copper clad strips screwed into the plywood tops of the baseboards. The layout is in a converted barn which has, we suspect, varying levels of humidity. This causes the timber to move on one baseboard relative the adjacent one. The result was that we would have the rails joints all nicely flush and aligned one week and sometime later we'd find the adjacent rails had moved out of horizontal and vertical alignment to the extent that the rail heads were out by a millimetre or so. Remember Westgate Park is n scale, so the millimetre jump was enough to cause derailment! We discussed this amongst the Club members and one of them, John Mitchell, explained his method of aligning his tracks on his layout. I followed his advice. I used brass tubing about 2 centimetres long soldered to the ends of the two adjacent rails across the baseboard joint. When all was complete I cut through the tubing on the line of the joint in the baseboards using a razor saw. The rail alignment was achieved by inserting brass wire, of the same diameter as the tubing's bore, through the tubing. Additionally the sleepers were cut back so that the rails could "float" relative to each other. This has stopped the derailments. The attached photograph shows the joint in use on Westgate Park and hopefully clarifies the above. I hope that this might be of interest.

I have a MacBook Pro which also runs Windows 7. It has a flash drive so the start up is very quick. I loaded Windows 10 on Monday evening, taking nearly 4 hours! After installation I noticed that it now took a lot longer to start up under 10 and I didn't fancy having to relearn my way around the new desktop. Why should I? Surely it is not beyond their wit to give me, the consumer, an option to leave my existing desktop interface if I want to and not be forced into doing what Microsoft want. The outcome? I reverted to Windows 7. Very disappointed.

Let me see if I can add a few more pix.