Izzy

Once you try DCC you soon realise that there is no going back. Perhaps not needing sections and being able to run one loco right up against another is the biggest single advantage. I'm sure you'll have great fun with it.

Izzy

Great display and presentation. A wonderful advert for 2mm. You must be very pleased with what you have achieved, I know I would be.

Izzy

Hacking servos by removing the electronics and using them as simple stall motor devices has been done quite a lot. Look for the threads here. Although the current draw is high compared to a commercial stall type, at around the 1.5-3v mark it's workable and reliable if momentary power is used. I've done it with digital servos using centre-off switches and gear jamming to set the rotational arc limits.

Izzy

I do think it's a wise choice to stick with mechanical point & signal control. A few years back I got seduced by the servo control idea (using MERG boards for cost saving) but found it unreliable/glitchy and have managed to rescue the situation on my latest layout by converting the servos to stall type units. I shall return to easy/simple/cheap mechanical means on any future layout.

Izzy

I built a K's kit too, back in the 80's, and I think you'll find that no 2F body kit would fit onto a chassis made for a 3F because the boiler is rather low and there just isn't the room for a motor. If I remember correctly I put the motor in the tender driving the loco via a carden shaft, as Dapol do with their N gauge steam locos.

Izzy

I recently had a Hymek on the workbench to try and fix it and encountered exactly the same issues. Removing the circuit board caused the chassis to fall apart. and after looking at it I concluded it was down to poor design and casting. The dummy loco route was tried, but proved an expensive dead end as the chassis in these is plastic and doesn't have all the gears either.

Eventually I managed to glue the original chassis back together aided by plasticard, but also hit the gear meshing problem. Turns out there is just too much gearing play everywhere in the gear train, but especially here, the worm shafts almost going their own way within the worm housing. The answer was to sleeve the bores with brass tubing to remove the play since there wasn't the room withing the chassis to use top-hat type bushes in the housing.

Non of this was ideal but got the loco up and running to a fairly reasonable level, and you may be able to do the same. However to be honest the body deserves a decent chassis/better motor combo if it should prove possible, but this would take some time and effort to produce even based around the current bogies as finding anything with the same 10' wheelbase might prove difficult..

Good Luck!

Izzy

Although I've bookmarked your new/old blog I do hope it will appear on the 2mm site to remind me to look. Always inspirational I'm sure a lot of RMwebbers will miss it, whatever scale they model in.

Izzy

Really enjoying reading of how your tackling the challenge you've set yourself with Arnoldale - and the puns, and just a bit puzzled by the lack of a run around loop. I presume it was originally based on a GWR branch that used rope/horse/gravity shunting.

With regard to the point switch toe clearance I tend to favour around 1.0mm to allow a bit of wriggle room - and a bit more if the track point entry isn't dead on square - since 0.62mm is the absolute figure. I also prefer pivoting tie-bar joints as it assists here with both clearance and reducing load on the blade/tie-bar joint - useful if you intend using servos.

Izzy

Although it might be optical illusion I also think the axle centres errors are proportional to the splasher spacings. Personally I wouldn't want to try cutting/shutting the footplate to suit. Cuts/joints like this always seem to show, no matter what you do to try and hide them.

If you use double thickness coupling rod etches then you can fairly easily cut/shut these to match the axle centres, especially if you start off with longer than needed dimensions.

Izzy

If all you want is better looking track, then sticking with N wheels and track standards and using Finetrax would seem to be the way to go, especially considering the savings made on time and cost converting stock to 2FS standards.

However, if you want better and smoother running through pointwork, not stock jumping and bumping it's way through, which has been my experience and to my mind the biggest downfall of N gauge, then you do need to consider at least, whether the 2FS track standards would suit/satisfy you better in the longer term.

Since the overall cost of the trackwork would I guess be roughly the same, Easitrac v Finetrax, and the time and effort involved in making it also comparable, perhaps you could consider making a couple of short test tracks each with a point, to both standards, invest in a few 2FS wheelsets for a couple of wagons and compare how they run through 2FS points compared to how they run through N points.

Izzy

Hi Julia,

Re the number plates, part of the problem with small print reproduction is the material it's printed on as much as the printer resolution. Most home printers can have high enough resolution but using ordinary paper like say 90sgm inkjet gives high 'bleed' of the inks at small repro besides being quite thick and not ideal for 2mm purposes. You could try using say gloss photo paper at a fairly hi res, 1200ppi/dpi, and then taking the top layer off using a scalpel to get it thin enough.

Izzy

Having struggled with the tall coach issue I came to the conclusion that Dapol use 6mm wheels for clearance but deepen the underframe to remove the large gap between the bogie and body, as has existed with many of the Farish ones of the past. So fit the correct sized 7mm wheels and it's too high, but you can't lower the body on the bogies to compensate, as you can with the older Farish. 

Izzy

To motorize the gate you might like to consider using a servo. Tam Valley now produce a single servo board with SG90 servo, the 'singlet' which can work off either DCC bus power or DC, and can be simply programed for end points and speed. Not too expensive at around

Hi Izzy For this little section of board the servo4 board is powered by a 12v DC input. The board has a connector with 0v on one pin and then 4 other pins, one for each servo. A switch simply connects the appropriate servo pin to the 0v, nothing clever there at all. As I said I use a double-pole-double-throw switch so I can use the other pole to switch the polarity of the frog. On the main section of the layout I use the MERG CBUS modules to switch double-pole relays which have exactly the same effect, however for this little section of yard I was happy to just leave it with 4 simple switches. Hope that helps. David

Thanks, it does. As someone electronically limited, I get there eventually but it takes a while, and this helps me understand things now. Obviously the MERG board takes the 12v dc and puts out just what the servo's need.

Having tried a Colbolt recently and not been over-impressed with it's limitations, larger and more expensive than I'd like, and like the similar but even larger Tortoise not particularly adaptable in limited space situations, the servo answer seems a rather neat solution.

Having gone down the DCC route for Loco control I'm not sure how much further I want to go with point/signal/electromagnet control(for couplings), and something like this could be part of the solution I adopt.

cheers,

Izzy

I like the simple design of the TOU's and the way you are operating them via servo. As a newbie to this way of doing things, and appreciative of the clear way you have shown how you made and programmed it all, could I just ask how the servo's are actually powered and operated. By ordinary switch, or via DCC perhaps?