Ron Solly

Peter, the young modeller had asked for help in another forum in Aug 2016 and while he had finished it sometime later in 20166 , he did get around to posting his Youtube result on the forum so I posted it here for others to see. It was not intended to start a new conversation here but his initial request and his results for anyone who may be interested in what he found out. The first post had his initial enquiry plus the result of it.

As advised by the modeller who was 17 at the time, still at school Ron, I believe people misunderstood the nature of the task. Can you let them know that the task only ran for 1 semester and was completed last year and was more based on helping students establish research skills rather than a huge paper, the focus was on research skills, not necessarily content correctness. Also, the availability of sources mostly books is certainly not as high in Australia as the UK, nor the personal communication relating to British Railways. Regards Connor

A young modeller here in South Australia had this to say on another forum Hello Everyone, As a high school student from South Australia I am currently completing a subject called Research Project in which I have to answer an open ended question through extensive research. As students we created our own questions. As I am interested in railways I wanted to relate my project to railways and my question is bellow: To what extent was the Great Western Railway innovative and how did those innovations influence other railways in Rolling Stock Technology and Infrastructure? I was wondering if any of you could provide me with some answers and/or sources to help me answer my question. Please be aware that it doesn't matter if some of the Great Western's Innovations didn't necessarily influence other railways, for example, their ATC system. Also the influences don't necessarily have to be limited to influencing other British Railway companies. Regards Connor he eventually, after some pointing in some directions came up with this https://youtu.be/_1MrU5kFWG8 see what you think.

Thanks John for pointing me towards the revamped layout - VBG indeed !

Thank you very much - I remember now !

I know the members name so how do I find his topics please?

I finally fixed it by filling the upper part of the slot to make the slot higher - this allow the coupler arm to be correct & so the knuckle is now also correct. there was a small lip on the top edge which I removed - a rough guess 0.25 - 0.5 mm .

While it appears to be easy to replace the tension lock coupler with a Kadee plugin version #19 or #20, once in, the top part of the slot below the buffers appears to push the Kadee downwards so the glad arm does not clear the Kadee gauge lip & the knuckle is slightly lower. yes, one could bend the glad arm but that does not bring the knuckles in line. Has any other modeller found this & the method to fix it?

While waiting for Ian (oldudders) to respond to this ( which now appears to have disappeared) 250BOB has just posted a reply to a topic that you have subscribed to titled "Bachmann 36-557 21-pin Decoder". ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ QUOTE ---------- Oldddudders: I do as the driver does - turn the handle until it does what I want! How many notches does a real loco have - Southern EMUs had 7, earlier US diesels had 8, as for steam, well. I appreciate that there is a cadre of DCC enthusiasts who enjoy automation, and for that precision is a necessity, no doubt. For the rest of us, basic decoders do most of what we want. While I make use of multiple functions on my US HO and On30 sound-equipped locos, my UK OO ones are silent, mainly steam and need no functions whatever. A basic 128-step decoder, no functions, maybe back-EMF, would be adequate for some of us. My Bachmann 557s do what I want, but are a bit of an overkill in my C Class, with no likelihood of any function. ----------------------------- With the greatest of respect, Why do you bother with DCC.?? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I too have similar views to Ian and I find DCC is perfect for multiple operators on my layout with my main station normally requiring two people to work it whilst a 3rd train can be passing through. One layout I work on regularly can have 4 trains moving within the one station, granted it is nearly 24 feet long.

I asked Bachmann this Recently purchased Decoder 36-557 21 pin/ 4 functions and the leaflet instruction has that to obtain full decoder User's Guide, available via download. But I cannot find this decoders sheet. What is listed on the site is 36-557 Loksound decoder and upon opening that file up, it is for 36-558 Soundtraxx MC1 decoder. The answer The 36-558 and 36-557 are the same decoder but with a different interface Certainly missing CV5 & 6 which other Bachmann decoders do have. In time I will be changing to TCS or DCCconcepts decoders.

During a meeting yesterday at my place , one of my newly chipped Class 37s with 36-557 crept forward until it contacted buffers then was slowly cleaning its wheels or wearing out track!! I had noticed it earlier when I selected the track which fed power to it as the loco lights came on by themselves - I thought I had left the controller cracked open a bit. So I got into CV29 & stopped the DC function, but No, it still wants to light up & move forward when layout power is restored. I gave up at that stage so I decided to do a reset later. Well, I did the reset this morning & under address 3, it behaved itself, even the lights did not come on by themselves so I then reset the address back to what I was using being 756 & the problems came back so I changed the number to 758 & all is OK - nothing unexpected happened when layout power is switched off & on . I now have evidence in front of me that I had only seen once before on a mates' loco that would not accept or read 666 on a Lenz system &have read about in that some decoders don't like specific numbers.

There is always Rule #1 Rick

Expected to be 44c here locally tomorrow so the coolers will be on early feeding into the train room.

Rule 1 is THE Rule to invoke many times. ( As I do on the D&S)

Yes, I will have to keep across this layout here now as well.

Having read a lot of this thread, I often wonder why UK models in some diesel outlines, go for traction tyres? I had in the past, a Lifelike Proto Budd railcar that had a body mounted motor with a cardan shaft to the gear tower on the bogie, flywheel fitted, pick up on all 4 axles, no tyres & it pulled trains of at least 5 long without any problems - due I think to a decent motor & weight.

And I live just north of Adelaide in South Aust.

I fitted a small shim between the bottom of coupler shank & the NEM socket & it all measures up OK against Kadee height gauge. Some do & some don't when first plugged in.

Thanks Gareth.

John, your link took me to http://www.rmweb.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=250&sid=4a762fa0c17005d49499e95ed35f4d2b down the page to the Lima post & I get the error message HTTP 404 not found

I used the link to Bromsgove & from there to the RMweb link - found this OK Fitting Decoders to Lima Diesel/Electric Chassis This has been moved to: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/DCC/lima.htm but the new link cannot be found so can I be direcetd to the correct place please so I can advise a newbie where to lokk.?

Thanks Stephen.

Reading all of the above especially this piece about the new unit The Electrak works by generating a high voltage, high frequency signal that is current limited to about 2 mA. Due to the current limit, almost anything that is attached to the rails (e.g. a motor in DC or a decoder in DCC) will act as a short circuit to the Electrak. Thus, loads on the rails normally short the generated signal. Current flows from the generator, out one wheel set, across the rail load, into the other wheel set, and back to the generator. Due to the low impedances involved, there is very little voltage in this loop (hence its safety and compatibility with DC and DCC). When the Electrak encounters a spot in the track that does not provide a good connection to the Electrak wheels (i.e. a dirty spot), the full 216 volts of the generator appears across this high impedance. This high voltage acts to break up the contamination, and thus clean the track. Now as I read it, as soon as a bit of dirty track is found & the short circuit created by the load being a decoder disappears, the unit reacts & off goes a high voltage spike cleaning track - I am lost to understand this as surely if the dirty spot was 2" long & the loco was a large 6 axle diesel that picks up on all whels, the short will still be there so the unit could never fire! Am I wrong? What good is the unit then? Would Relco on DC be any better in this situation?