Luke Piewalker

Copied from my post in the 33 thread Digihat (or equivalent) top and bottom. These come with a sturdy (Kynar) heatshrink tube which you slip a bit of over the retaining clip and that insulates the brush and spring. Solder the decoder wire directly onto the spring. On my 25 I drilled a small hole in the keeper plate so I could feed the decoder wire for the top brush (before you solder it to the spring) from behind the battery boxes on the underside with it coming out inside the bodywork (when fitted). Remove the capacitor, solder one track feed to the brass plate in the middle, the other attaches to one of the four bolts that secures the keeper plate. Kapton tape to make sure everything is insulated, and the decoder can be black tacked/blu tacked or what have you in between the battery boxes. The screws on the end allow you to remove the end sections of the chassis block which do indeed secure the bogies.

Digihat (or equivalent) top and bottom. These come with a sturdy (Kynar) heatshrink tube which you slip a bit of over the retaining clip and that insulates the brush and spring. Solder the decoder wire directly onto the spring. On my 25 I drilled a small hole in the keeper plate so I could feed the decoder wire for the top brush (before you solder it to the spring) from behind the battery boxes on the underside with it coming out inside the bodywork (when fitted). Remove the capacitor, solder one track feed to the brass plate in the middle, the other attaches to one of the four bolts that secures the keeper plate. Kapton tape to make sure everything is insulated, and the decoder can be black tacked/blu tacked or what have you in between the battery boxes.

I would have liked to see them take in North Road Station/Head of Steam while they were at the Skerne Bridge. Maybe something to revisit post Covid.

Oh I'm a sucker for Strathclyde Orange/Black. The Carmine/Cream is pedestrian in comparison and the Scotrail Blue doesn't give you that regional variety.

Have you got the 3CV speed table activated? Have you set up CV 2 and 5 first? Are other CVs changing ok?

Awespme as ever DaveF!

I am trying to add interior lighting to my Farish DBSO, but there are no handy solder pads on the PCB to access the 'other' connections on the Next18 socket. I have a Zimo MX688 function decoder, but the manual says all connections should be made through the socket and doesn't elaborate on what the solder pads on the decoder are for. Does anyone have any idea if I can access these functions though these solder tabs? Or is there an adaptor board that would sit between the decoder and the socket with breakout connections? Ultimately that at might leave soldering to the socket pins but those are awfully small...

A question for the DBSO experts. I'm putting lights in mine, was the lighting in the guards half of the coach separate from the passenger compartment or did they all come on together?

My Father bought a 3D printed body off eBay, then sent it and a donor Hornby Saddle tank to me. Stripped the body work off the chassis, removed the piston rods. As the body is Polystyrene used poly cement and stuck it together as best as I could figure without instructions. Paints are Revell acrylics I grabbed out the box after priming with Revell acrylic primer. Then dug through my decal stash to find suitable letters and numbers. Finish is very rough as I didn't do any filling and sanding of the 3D print. I have about 60g of wheel balancing weights under the bonnet and on the rear of the chassis (I painted those black so they don't stand out in the cab.

Finally... Does anyone want to buy an older farish DBSO conversion?

That was B&Q

While fully accepting the principle of a higher wattage iron giving a quicker and generally better joint, I am also cognizant of my ability to melt anything within a 6 inch radius, so choose the smaller iron for these tasks.

I have a 12w antex for such shenanigans. I will say try to get the one with the flexible silicon cable rather than the PVC cable as it's a lot easier to handle.

Assuming it's similar to the 40, Farish diesels are the easiest sound install possible. The speaker is attached to the bodyshell (which forms the sound enclosure), and contacts with the PCB. No soldering, just put in the Next18 sound chip and you're off. Dapol you normally have to solder wires to the PCB and speaker, and attach the speaker to the enclosure on the chassis (on the 68 and 50 this is shaped as the driveshaft runs through it, although for my 50 I got a 3D printed enclosure from YouChoose with speaker and wires attached designed with the driveshaft clearance).

You often get a little plastic spacer on DDC blanking plugs, I normally use that as a depth marker and to hold the pins as I trim them down.

It's not a secret that it's heading back to the mainline, that's always been the plan. It's going to Soho depot for various checks and low speed testing under it's own power then if all is well needs a data recorder and GSM-R installed before it would potentially be allowed on the mainline.

I guess that means a 47 will be plummeting through my letterbox soon then...

When I did my (other variation) 08 I used this thread to narrow things down, then looked at depot allocations to narrow things down regionally. Then you can start ploughing through the pictures.

It would help if the main picture wasn't a photoshop job. Seems a bit unfair to give that picture prominence when you have an actual picture of the vehicle in question firther down.

Happy Birthday Mr F, and thanks for the continuing barrage of photos!

Funningly enough the traffic reporter on Radio 2 got Strathaven wrong the first time, then correct the second... I wonder if Ken Bruce had a word. None of this explains the difficulty she was having wth Forfar

Ecclefechan isn't really that hard... I've never understood why radio traffic reporters have such trouble with it.

And we haven't got to Strathaven or Athelstaneford yet...

Smashing set of pictures those.