Trofimow

The black one on display had wheels which appeared to be BFB pattern. The silver one may well have been still the earlier sample without.

A few more from me.

I'll try to get you some pix in the morning if nobody else does...

The suggestion I heard was end Q1 for Leader , with the DD following shortly after...

It is on display together with br black leader and looking quite nice. The leader does now have BFB pattern wheels.

Gosh, 6 months since the last update on Effingham, time flies when you are having fun. No new pictures this time, as there has been no new construction to show. That does not mean though, that nothing has been happening. Intensive testing of what has been built so far is under way before the scenic level can be put on top of the now complete 3 levels of storage. To do this, each train set has to be commissioned, have its storage location assigned and be thoroughly tested over every route that it is going to be required to take operationally. Because of the nature of the layout, with multiple levels and automated running, each train set must be 100% reliable, or as close to that as I can get it. Trains are expected to be able to run up and down gradients, round curves and across complex pointwork without issues, sometimes even more than one of those things at the same time. Achieving this with RTR models is proving to be hard work. Some of the things that have been found to lead to derailments and have to be dealt with, in order of frequency, are couplings that are unreliable or incompatible, close coupling mechanisms that stick or jam, bogies with insufficient or excessive articulation, wheels that are incorrect b2b or profile, and vehicles that are too light to stay on the track in a train of any length. All these things are fixable, but take up time. So far 65 of the 109 trains in the roster have been dealt with and passed fit. In the main, tension locks have been replaced on bogie stock, with either rigid bars, roco type or magnetic couplings, and this has made the biggest improvement. Long freight trains are more of an issue and retain tension locks, but these have to be matched and tested wagon to wagon. Progress is still being made, but not as quickly as I would like.

I'd been expecting someone would do the booster sooner or later. Pleased to see who has picked it up.

Oh Dear! I must admit that I had been somewhat put off buying one of these by the issues that seem to have arisen, but I weakened and ordered one from a major retailer, DCC fitted by them. It arrived this morning, all intact, no blemishes or bits fallen off. Initial test running revealed no undue chassis wobbles, so I thought I'd struck lucky and got a good'un. Sadly, not so. Running is unreliable, with all the symptoms of intermittent pick up. It's the same on the rolling road, test circuit and layout, so I guess I've got the dreaded plunger pick up troubles. I've e-mailed the retailer, awaiting their response on the way forward.

Crumbs!

It appears to be a sound module of some sort...I guess we are going to have sound effects

Sorry Paul, I'm going to have to reconsider being a team member if you are making it a requirement to have a wooden leg...

Out of the box, mine slipped to a stand with 3 Hornby Maunsells on a 1 in 100 and wouldn't even look at 1 in 80. 3 Powerbase magnets fitted above the brake pull rod and it's happy with the 3 up the 1 in 80, which is all that I require of it. I wouldn't expect a 4-4-0 to climb anything steeper. Traction tyres are banned on the layout, so I'm very glad that Dapol didn't use them.

I expect it was all the paperwork you had to fill in first to get permission....

I wouldn't expect any issues. Effingham uses Brian Kirby magnetic uncoupling AND magnets on locos for Powerbase magnetic traction and I've never had any problems with decoders.

O levels! Obviously overqualified. Send him down!

I can only speak as I find. Graphite stick used sparingly seems to prevent or at least reduce oxidation of the rails. I don't experience build up on wheels or insulated joints. My layout is almost all on a gradient of 1 in 80 to 1 in 100. I run trains of up to 13 coaches and I dont find any reduction In haulage capacity. Basically it works for me, regardless of what theory may suggest. Of course YMMV.

I use 10 inch stop sections with Traincontroller in my hidden loops. It is important to ensure a stop leaving sufficient clearance for traffic to leave the adjacent loop without fouling.

I have been using 9B graphite stick on my track for 2 years now. In that time I have not needed to clean the track or wheel treads, and operational reliability has been much better than before. Track was first cleaned with a Peco rubber and then graphite applied once only. Very occasionally a few yards of the most used track get a quick once over with the graphite stick and that seems to be enough to keep the rest of the layout topped up by the passage of trains. I should mention that traction tyres and plastic wheels are verboten.

Here is the current view of the centre peninsula now that things have moved on a little. The 4 platform tracks through Forest Road station heve been laid and wired with their occupancy detectors for Traincontroller, and the points have been fitted with their operating servos, connected to a new fifth zone of the Megapoints system and the whole lot programmed into the computer. It's not much to look at since the last picture, but a lot of work has been done. On the other side of the peninsula, track has been laid for a cement terminal. It's still at the trying out stage at the moment, the scenic items are just being tried for position to see what works and what doesn't. The track has been wired so that trial operations can be carried out before anything is set in stone.

When moving off with cold cylinders - to expel any condensate.

I asked them about that and was told that they have revised both the roof curve and windows, but don't yet have a revised sample to show. The sample on display was still the earlier iteration.

It's now just over 3 years since the great rebuild started, and at last some baseboard is beginning to appear on the scenic level, on the centre peninsula at least. There is still a fair amount of work to be done before the same stage is reached with the main baseboards around the perimeter of the room. This will be the site of Forest Road station, a through station on the central / eastern section route.

There are now 7 bridges crossing the stairwell to and from the centre peninsula, two for each of the three storage levels, plus the L shaped access to the ramps from the rest of the layout. As seen looking down the stairwell And the view from below The tracks are very well boxed in as it's a very long drop in the event of a derailment! Once out of the stairwell, the climb up to the scenic level of the peninsula has now been installed, in the form of two turns of an oval ramp above the storage levels.

Some more progress has been made, the entrance and exit routes from the storage area are the current tasks. The storage tracks across 3 levels are basically a one way system, with one way in and one way out, regardless of the routing or direction of a train coming or going from the “on stage” scenic level. The scenic level as planned will consist of a BR Southern Region main line with 4 tracks at the London end diverging via a flying junction into 2 double track main lines at the country end. The main station also has 2 single track branch lines, on on each side of the 4 track main line formation. There are thus 10 tracks going on or off stage in 5 different places in the room which all need to arrive at the same storage entry/exit points and these need to be grade separated on the way. This was “fun” to achieve at the design stage and is proving challenging to actually build. The access to storage for the 2 branches was shown in the previous post. Here are the arrival/departure tracks for the main lines, the four to the right are storage entry, the four on the left are storage exit. Ignoring the stray curved track on the left- From left to right, they are: Up central/eastern section Up western section Down fast Down slow Down central/eastern section Up fast Up slow Down western section And the view from the opposite end, showing how the central section tracks drop down before they turn to pass beneath the bannister rail to cross the stairwell.

Unfortunately, I no longer have the pics I posted pre-meltdown during the conversion, but here are a few taken today. (Perhaps I should have dusted it first...)