cliff park

One puzzle that nobody sees to have asked (or dd I miss it) :- how or why did the wire come off?? Wires don't just fall off inside a sealed box. If there was movement of the potentiometer I would expect the wire to come off at that end. The point is if we knew what prompted it to 'fall' off there might be a clue as to where it came from.

Or ask us myriads of idiots on here and get 10,000 different answers !!!!!!

Use double switches, as I said, and a totally separate power source for those LEDs, even a battery to try it out.

One other simple option would be to screw another microswitch on top of each existing one, simply longer screws, and use those to work some LEDs.

Slightly off topic, but it seems to me there's an opening here for somebody to exploit the 'vape' technology, and make realistic, but much more environmentally friendly smoke units. They could probably even be made to smell of steam and oil !! Some of the vape units seem to be very small, and of course are powered by batteries.

How's this

For the bi-folding doors think of a screw threadrunning along underneath the doors with a motor/gearbox at one end. A nut on the thread is fixed to a spigot sticking down from the bottom edge of the door. As the motor turns the nut travels along the thread and pulls the door open. I will try and do a sketch.

Here's a radical thought:- presumably you won't be running 0 and 00 simultaneously, so you could bond both sets of rails together to help act as feeds for each other. In other words join the +ve 0 gauge rail to the 00 gauge +ve, and similar with the -ve at several places around the loop, then effectively you have nearly doubled the current carrying capacity, and it should help across rail joints etc !! If you plan on using different controllers for each you just need a switch at each end to switch the feeds.

How long is a piece of string ? Or, more precisely, how long is your track ? If it is a loop, can you feed from both ends , like a ring main ? Mains wire is good, but may work out expensive, use 2 core, 1.5mm . If this feed is permanently fixed, say under the track, it does not need to be multicore/flexible. Don't rely on rail joiners, solder droppers to every length of track and make every joint as mechanically sound as you can.

Full whack with no load could well be around that area. Try to measure it at say half throttle with an engine on the track. Sounds more like an intermittent connection, check all terminations.

A little more information, please. Are you using bulbs or LEDs ? As far as I am aware the only output is the controlled one, so your lamp brightness, whichever sort, will vary with the train speed !!

The speed control pot is a 10K not 10 ohms. If you search on Google you will find the complete diagram, have not reproduced it here, not sure of copyrights etc.

Chocolate block connectors. Links down one side, wires to other side. That way you can take individual wires out if you need to fault find. If you solder them and have problems you really have problems. Are they single or multicore ? This could influence the answer.

Also bear in mind any zener would need to be before any reversing switch, if that is inside the controller then you would have to fit the zener in there.

In the good (?) old days I have used the element from an old electric fire. Unwind it, it has huge power rating, you might have to scrape it a bit to get a connection. Check out your loft, or car boot sales, but people are wary of selling them because of modern regulations.

With regards to the gate pivot (post 636) I remember an article many years ago in the Railway Modeller where the writer advocated the use of bolts for pivots. In the case of gates, using locknuts and washers, this enables easy height adjustment whilst still holding it all in place. He also used them for the pivots in a home made lever frame, enabling sideways adjustment and variable tightness of movement.

Be very wary of soldering the multicore before inserting into screw type connectors. They will break off where the solder ends at the slightest flexing.

The wonders of blue tack!!!! What did we use before it? I worked in electronics all my working days and many years ago, when using blue tack to get a very small screw into a very remote hole asked an older colleague exactly the same question. His reply, after a long pause, was 'bogies'

For the curtain wire see Wilko, 90p for 8' length and 4 screw eyes

A very approximate starting point could be:- 5 supplies, 18 v each (erring on the high side) at 2 amps (average) =5X18X2=180 Volt Amperes (VA) If you said 200 watts you can see that this is less than 1 Amp at 240V. Bear in mind that not all of the outputs will be going full tilt all the time and you can see the whole lot will easily run off 3 Amps. Obviously one transformer could well supply two or three of the outputs, but that doesn't change the overall figures

The best way I have found is to solder the droppers on before laying the track. Slide the sleepers as far back as you can, solder wire then restore the sleepers. It is even possible this way to solder the dropper on the flat bottom of the rail, drill a hole in the baseboard in the right place, or as near as practical, then thread the wire through as you lower the track into position. Even without ballast they are then totally invisible. The wire must be near the end of the track so as not to obstruct the sleepers.

I had exactly that problem, and was really confused because I always put in droppers and bypass rail joiners. Except I'd missed one, and of course it failed after about 3 years. It was so well ballasted and painted I honestly thought at first that the rail had failed in the middle of a length !!

With reference to Martin Wynne's comment about a diode quencher ( a diode in reverse across the coil):- the real purpose of this is to protect whatever is switching the relay. Particularly if this is a solid state device. The back emf (voltage) generated by the the collapsing magnetic field when the supply is switched off can be several hundred volts, it is often the basis of electric fence machines. It does , however , have very little power, despite the voltage, and a small rectifier diode will easily cope. If the switching device is another switch it will help to minimise arcing and prolong the life of the switch.

Couple of questions:- what (voltage) are you powering them from. and is the switch solely to switch the LEDs or does it do anything else, eg powering the isolated section ?

Surprisingly difficult to find, you are looking for a '2 pole momentary changeover switch'. One very simple and cheap way to achieve this would be to mount 2 microswitches side by side and arrange for them to both be operated at once. Most microswitches have mounting holes through them, so an appropriate pair of bolts would neatly hold them together and in place.