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I don't think this has been mentioned before but I just noticed that the rather odd yellow version of "Sussex" represents a unique tooling combination of an Adams loco with a Drummond boiler. Sussex was originally LSWR no 100 and was sold out of service to Stewart and Lloyds in 1949 carrying a Drummond boiler which it presumably kept the rest of its days. For those looking to do some renumbering it could be painted black and re numbered SR 100 and be correct from 6/1945 up to when it was sold in 1949. Another possibility is to give it the identity of 30088 which carried a Drummond boiler from 5/1947 to 8/1956 when that boiler was (re) fitted to 30084. My information comes from the excellent booklet "The B4 Dock Tanks" by Peter Cooper Norm

Hi Richard. Nice to hear from a fellow LSWR mainline fan. I just love that model of 'Beattie' you're building. Can you tell me if it's an available kit? I hope you manage to make your planned trip to the USA in the future. Hopefully next year norm

I like the way your mind is working there Richard but even if by some inexplicable reason the train started out A2 hauled from York it would have been replaced enroute. Oxford was the last interchange before bypassing Reading and heading for Basingstoke. You'd be more likely to find a King Arthur or Lord Nelson hauling it on the last part of the journey However remember rule 1!! Just be sure to fit the correct SR head code on it!! I imagine that beast would cause quite a stir at Bournemouth shed Norm

Hi just curious why you wouldn't want to use the SC1. It's about the simplest way I know to do the job and each SC1 will control two dual aspect signals. I use the SC1/2/3 models for color light and Dapol semaphore signals extensively and have had no issues plus the wiring couldn't be easier Norm

If you don't mind sharing Luke, what chip and sound project did you get and how do you like it? I was asking for this information earlier in the thread but never got a reply. I am only aware of the YouChoos option norm

I wasn't intending to really get into a TTS steam discussion. What I was hoping to hear was any opinions on the YouChoos LN sound project, as well as whether anyone knows of any other alternatives . Any advice gratefully received. My loco awaits chipping! Norm

I did not opt for the TTS version fearing I might be a little disappointed. I see that YouChoos do a sound decoder. Does anyone know of any alternatives or is that the only choice. I hasten to add I have other sound projects from them and have not been disappointed Norm

Good to know Iain and thank you for the reply. A couple of questions if you don't mind and possibly know the answers 1. For those using semaphore signals. One of my minor annoyances with rocrail is that I have to show a junction signal on my track plan as two individual posts placed after the switch for the diverging routes. I haven't figured a better way to do it, and of course I have to create actions so that the switch is one of the conditions setting one to clear and the other to stop. It gets complicated to write the action logic to combine that with not being able to set either to clear if the block or the next block is occupied. 2. One of the things I do like about rocrail is the staging yard support where you can have trains automatically move from block to block when the one at the head of the line leaves the staging area. I did have a quick scan of the iTrain documentation but couldn't see if it has similar support. Does it do you know? i'm going to have a play with it I think. Norm

I've been following the topic on "iTrain good or not so good" with considerable interest and I would be very interested in similar user experiences and "how tos" with RocRail. I am a RocRail user and while I have found it has much of the functionality of TrainController and iTrain it is a very hard learning curve and the documentation is not exactly very helpful most of the time. i am at the point where I have almost full automation but am having trouble operating a true timetable schedule. I also cannot figure out how to implement U.K. Signaling although I understand there is an add in for this. I use mostly digikeijs equipment now having started with digitrax. I find the digikeijs dr5000 control station and dr4088ln block detectors much more cost effective and reliable than Digitrax equipment to to the point, if the new version of iTrain due this year is as good as I am hearing I could be convinced to switch but meantime maybe this is a place we can swap knowledge on RocRail and especially automation and signaling

Absolutely agree. And never issued in BR livery at that. A surprising omission Norm

Thank you very much robertcwp and headstock for this valuable information. Also relieved to know I wasn't just imagining the mix of Lord Nelson and Gresley stock. When the Hornby LN finally appears. ( just heard delayed to Jan 19 now). I will be ready to recreate a representative inter regional working This forum is the best. Someone always knows the answer!! Sorry if I veered a little off topic but hey. The train did employ a Maunsell catering car on some occasions!! Norm

Hmm I wonder what train it was that I have fairly vivid memories of? Not just on one occasion but quite regularly. Mostly Lord Nelson hauled, but sometimes a King Arthur. This would have been about 1955/56. My memory is of Gresley coaches - quite a change from the normal Bulleid/Maunsell stock I saw on all the other trains. What I'm looking for is a (fairly) prototypical excuse to run a rake of Gresley coaches with some appropriate destination boards behind a Lord Nelson - can anyone help? Norm

Interesting that this topic has come up as I've been meaning to ask the group if anyone knows the formation of both the SR and ER stock of the Bournemouth to York train in the mid fifties. Giving away my age I seem to remember seeing ER coaches - possibly Gresley running up the main line to Basingstoke behind sometimes a Lord Nelson 4-6-0. With the forthcoming Hornby model getting close this is a train I'd be interested in reproducing in model form using both SR Maunsell and ER sets. As an aside I remember in later years it would be MK1 stock as someone mentioned and could be powered by some quite 'foreign' locos

Thanks RFS. I will certainly watch that clip and others of the period. Also, yes. I meant to say I recall the Royal Wessex with Mk1's. Not the ACE which of course was not seen in my base of Winchester Norm

Of course for the period I try to portray - more or less pre 1956 cycling lion emblem, I really should have more blood and custard vehicles than BR green but that is a whole different issue and I like to think my green coaches are revarnished southern green!! After so long without proper dining cars I can live with the green one we are getting. I do vividly recall how mixed the livery was in the trains of my youth, becoming progressively more uniform green as the decade progressed

That's certainly my recollection of the mid fifties on the Waterloo Bournemouth line. A mixture of Maunsell and Bulleid coaches with I believe Mk 1 on the ACE. I think ( stand to be corrected) the more important trains had Bulleid dining sets but almost every Bournemouth train had some dining facilities and they couldn't all have been Bulleid stock in the mid fifties. Hence my original observation that I'm hoping that coupling a restaurant car and an open second between 2 three car sets, or a three car and a four car set would be at least somewhat 'correct' for the somewhat shorter trains I must live with. Normal train lengths I observed in real life ranged from 9 to 13 vehicles Norm

Thanks for this and your reply also Jason. To answer Martin Trucks my period of interest is 1950's By the end of that period of course most express trains were Bulleid stock but I'm aiming for representative vs extremely accurate Norm

An excellent question for those of us who would like to run realistic coach formations. It also raises the question of where in the train one should place these vehicles. I like to run 8 coach trains on my layout so if I combine a 3 and 4 coach set I would have to increase my limit to 9 coaches to accommodate the restaurant car and the open second. I am no expert on these formations but I do seem to recall that on the Waterloo to Bournemouth line where I watched trains in my youth the dining vehicles were in the middle of the train. ( I.e between 2 coach sets or included in one of them). Were there also occasions where the 2 coach dining set would be marshaled at one end or the other? With careful placement this would also solve the tricky problem posed by RFS in the original post. Those poor first class diners would then be placed at the extreme front or rear of the train. P.s. I know that there were also dedicated sets that included dining vehicles. Does anyone have details of realistic Maunsell vehicle formations we'll be able to reproduce?

I don't know if this has been reported in other threads but if you're using DCC the easiest way to control these Dapol signals is a TrainTech SC3 or SC300 module. Each one will handle two signal heads and DCC wiring could not be simpler IMHO If you're using DC read through the dedicated signal thread in the Dapol section. It's vital you don't apply too high a voltage to these signals. The SC3 takes care of stepping the DCC track voltage down to a suitable level according to what TrainTech told me in a reply to my email enquiry. The consensus from the other thread is that about 9v DC is the ideal voltage To me these are nice signals, available in a number of pre group formats and easy to install and wire Norm

If you use a computer system to drive your DCC trains and use it to have named sections of track then these systems (JMRI,RocRail, RR&Co) can track which loco is in which section. Another fun way is to have a sound decoder in some of your duplicates. If you have 4 castles then if a couple or three have sound you may be able to hear which one is which

Hmm. Sorry you're having such problems with it. On further checking I see that dcctrainautomation has other videos specifically dealing with using the DR4088LN with z21. I don't use Z21,myself so I'm a little confused by all the different versions but he does mention that it has to be the black Z21 not the white. Does that make sense? He does also mention that the red led in the middle of the board just indicates that current is flowing through one or more of the outputs to blocks. I.E there is a loco in at least one of the blocks fed through the unit. In my experience Digikeijs will respond to a query. In my case it took about a week but perhaps a question to the dcctrainautomation guy on YouTube might get you a quicker answer. He seems to know what he's talking about Norm

Hi IainThoroughly agree on the quality of the documentation but I do have good experiences with the actual products. I am not sure what the red LED indicates. As soon as you connect a loconet cable and press the button the programming led should flash green. May I suggest you take a look on YouTube searching for Digikeijs DR4088LN? There are some good tutorials out there especially from dcctrainautomation. Failing that you will eventually get an answer to a query to Digikeijs themselves or of course you could ask the retailer who sold it to you It's possible you have a faulty unit but I do remember a lot of early frustration with the unit until I went through those same steps. It's also possible you don't need to program it at all. From the factory your detection blocks will be numbered 1-16 so perhaps a quick test will tell you whether it's working correctly. Programming is only needed to change the starting number of the block of 16 Hope this helps Norm

Many thanks for the confirmation. I will have to try this again. There is room in the bunker for the supplied stay aliveNorm

Out of the box you don't need to configure any CV's ( which is good because I found the programming instructions very vague. Unclear whether use of a jumper, or additional power inputs on solder tabs as opposed to screw tabs was needed). OOB it comes configured to act as your reverse loop controller by just connecting power in and power out wires using 4 screw terminals. It's configured by default for current detection using 2 additional screw terminals which I was told should connect to +com and any 'A' terminal on a Ds64 which then sends the loconet message. A CV can be changed to set the device for optical detection using 2 different screw terminals. I have no experience of that but I assume you still need to use something like a DS64 to produce the loconet message So I can highly recommend the device for its primary purpose but because of poor documentation and so far tech support that cannot get my detection problem resolved I can't tell you that it will do everything you want Norm

Just seen this thread. It is of considerable interest to me as I am in the middle of this situation myself. My first comment concerns the PSX-ARFB. Brilliant piece of kit except that I cannot get the FB part to work at all. The actual reversing part worked seamlessly right out of the box but the very generic instructions that came with mine do not explain how to wire the feedback very well. I've been in contact with their tech support who have explained that I still need a device such as a digitrax DS64 to take the feedback signal from ports J4-3 and J4-4 on the PSX-ARFB to the DS64. Since you need the additional hardware anyway how about just using the base PSX-AR and adding a digitrax BD4 downstream feeding into a DS64? The PSX-ARFB will also work with an optical sensor. Can anyone tell me a suitable sensor and again how to convert the output to a loconet occupancy message? I also quite like northolland's approach of a virtual detector and did the same thing using 'actions' on RocRail. (Thank you northolland for that idea) Please keep contributing ideas and user experiences on this thread. A reasonably cheap solution would be of great interest Norm