cliff park

Any idea how much 'repair' it needs ? The mains leads tend to perish, that's easy. The rectifier is replaceable. If it's the transformer it's probably a write-off.

You don't appear to have a gutter for your shed roof. Wouldn't that stop quite a bit of rain landing on your track ?

And, of course, Mark, the aluminium won't accidentally become soldered to the work, often a problem with crocodile clips.

As a (retired) electronics engineer, who must have soldered hundreds of thousands of connections, I agree with Mick. 50 watts is ideal, and if it is thermostatic so much the better. It won't ever get too hot, but will have the power when you need it. You must give the joint, whatever sort, time to heat up, make sure the iron is tinned and apply the cored solder to the joint. NEVER load the iron up with solder.

Dhjgreen is correct. The peak value is 1.414 times the RMS. RMS is the normal quoted figure for ac devices. So when the op spoke of a '16v ac ' source this will have a peak of around 22v. Rectified AND SMOOTHED, no load, this will be the dc voltage. EDITED to add:- If you rectify it, and don't smooth it, it is very hard to quantify the voltage. It is a pulsed waveform. An analogue meter would probably give you somewhere near an average reading, a digital voltmeter could give anything at all since it samples the voltage at intervals, and the instantaneous voltage could be anywhere between 0 and peak

It seems to me that as '34th........andd' says charging from the track is the easy option. Not all track would even need to be powered. Forget about points, reversing loops, track in tunnels...just power the straight, easy to access bits of track, and anywhere a loco stands. Platforms, sheds, sidings, all powered. Engines are not running continuously. Providing that their standing still time is on a powered a bit of track, and some of their running time as well, they should cope. With a bridge rectifier in the charging circuit it wouldn't matter which way round the dc supply was, or it could even be ac. Providing it was beefy enough and regulated this supply could feed anything around the layout, such as lighting, and save an awful lot of wiring.

The thing that looks like a tennis racquet is called a banjo by engineers, for obvious reasons.

Rapidonline have them, various current ratings, make sure you get the right ones. They start at 33p each, but postage might be silly.

I model in 00, and it is unlikely I would ever use 12mm grass, (3 feet high in scale terms). I perfectly understand that the longer stems would be used in other scales. I have some longer grass on order, and when it arrives and I have had a chance to try it I will let you know how my cheapy grasser works. May I say I only made a cheap version to see if they worked. I would probably never have bought an expensive one, using other methods for grass. By the way has anybody used a static grass machine for flock on trees, hedges etc? A bit like modern car spray shops, in theory, the static effect should work at attracting the flock to the armature. In other words, looking for the attraction effect, not the sticky-up effect.

Further to my last post, this shows a part of the layout, still very much a 'work in progress' but does show the effect better, albeit still with short grass fibres.

I finished up bolting the sieve to the swat, mainly because when I attempted to bend the sieve handle, intending just to tape it on, the welds gave way and it fell off. The hardest part of the whole operation was making the two holes in the stainless steel frame of the sieve. I broke two drills, then gave up and bashed them through with a 3mm punch over a slightly open metalwork vice. It was still a pain to file the burrs down. I'm an OAP (cue violins) so everything has to be done reasonably cheap. I haven't bought any long grass yet, but it seems to work ok with the short stuff. PS Looking at the close up of the test piece, the grass doesn't seem to be sticking up much. I think this is because the press button on the swat was very iffy. If you notice the press button in the pictures is a new one. This was replaced after the test and before the pictures.

As somebody new to static grass I'd like to add my twopennorth. I bought a fly swat from Poundland (it only cost a £1) and a kitchen sieve from Poundland (it only cost a £1) and a tub of PVA glue from Poundland (it only cost a £1). I butchered the swat and sieve and added a 4mm socket in the handle (from my scrapbox) as used by multimeters etc. This means I can plug in different length leads and put a croc clip or other appropriate end on. I mix a little PVA with brown or green acrylic, or even a mixture. I mix them on the surface to be grassed. Spread the mixture fairly thin. Insert any old nail, panel pin, screw etc into the glue, probably somewhere in the middle. Now, BEFORE I put any grass in the sieve I connect the croc clip, turn on the swat and touch the edge of the sieve on the paint/glue mixture at the furthest point from the nail. You should see a small spark. It will depend on glue/ paint/distance/electronics..........but that spark tells me the circuit is working. Now I put the grass mixture in the sieve and grass away. Pedants may like to investigate the verb 'To grass', as opposed to 'To grass up'.

I think OP means Opening Post, in other the first post on page 1 which now has photos which weren't there at first

As an ex BT engineer who started just as open copper was being replaced, I can tell you that the wires were pulled taut using a tool called 'ratchet tongs' , which had built in scales (a bit like scales fishermen use), and the different gauges of wire were pulled up to different tensions, dependent on ambient temperature, but regardless of length. The sag was so designed that there was some give, but wires swaying in the wind could not touch each other.