OldNick

Hmmmm

still listed on ukmodelshops too - where it could quite easily have been removed.

Great to see that you got back later and had the 'ballast train' pose done. I was behind you inth queue when you had the 60//66/70 shot taken.

Really looking forward to seeing the 3D prints. I can see a few places I could place myself on the club layout.

Scalescenes have released some pictures of their station building and goods shed kits for this station. They do look pretty. From their comments I'd expect top t see them on their website this Friday.

Supplies - that's the easy bit. Lychett Manor - http://www.lytchettmanor.co.uk/mercontrol.html

Now the trickier bits.

• There's three ways of varying the throw. Either an Omega Loop - the wiggle in the wire - or by using a hole in the operating lever closer to the pivot, or by using a crank, using a hole nearer the pivot for the point-side movement
• No problem with strength for working two turnouts - thw only thing to be aware of with a crossover is that when you pull one point you probably need to push the other. This is done using a crank to reverse the throw to one turnout
• Gunging it up. Keep it clean, mask the area around the end of the tube when using glue. You'll need to keep that part of the turnout ballast free as well..

Good to see mention of 'Mad' O ROurke's chain, even if at its peak it did spread ouf of the black country. As a student \at Wolverhampton Poly in the (very) late 70s - early 80s, I had a weekly Wednesday afternoon in Dudleyand used to catch the bus over there, and usually spend the evening frinking there, or in Gornal, or other points on the wsay back. I got to know of this chain back then, but it aasn't until a few years later that I completedthe set - not in a day as suggested but over a year.

The deal y then was that they flogged a souvenir in each pub, which you bought when you got your card stamped (in my year it was a beer mat - not the absorbent cardboard type, but a solid, cork based thing, with a picture of the pub) and when the card was complete you could sent if off for that year's decent gift - in this case a framed and mounted print of the artwork from the mats - pictures of allt he chain of pubs. I still have them at home somewhere.

I only had the cow pie twice on that tour - there was enough other good filling food that I actually preferred to it on the menu, and it didn't seem as large as it had done in my student days. I wsa mainly a mild drinker then, but the chjain was one place where I used to try other beers - encouraged byt he daft names.

Thinking moddeling, would there be trroom to fit on one of their pubs - typically run down failing pubs in poor areas, cheaply decorated up, and tarted up with a lot of tat to fit a theme?

 

However to make the kit better value for money I have asked for the mounting block to have a number of extre features that all modellers should find handy.

 

Will it come with a device to remove boy scouts from horses' hooves?

Joking apart it sounds very useful.

A single rare earth magnet pulling down onthe trip wire will not operate this style of coupling. A pair, careful;ly placed might do so, by attracting the wire sideways..

Aquick experiment on a couple of scrap pieces of Peco track a few nights back indicate that hiding it will be a delicate job. The magnet is about as deep as a Peco sleeper, so there's not a lot of height on top to play with. My plan is to use thin strips of stained wood. and paint between them with a textured paint. The wood from a Camenbert cheese pack looks about right - it shouldn't be any thicker than the head of a rail pin..

Fitting it to Code 55 will be easy. The rails are well embedded into the sleepers, so cutting along the inside of the lenghwise plastic that holds the rail base gives a snug fit and leaves the rails well supported.

Code 80 may be trickier. It's easy to strip the rail fastenings off the rail, and leave the rail and the outer ends of the sl;eepers floating in mid air. Care will need to be taken here unlesss the rail is already well fastened down and probably ballasted.

I may have found a use for those little wooden tubs that Camenbert is sold in. I've not put a gauge on it, but the wood is pretty thin, and might well end up as fake sleeper segments on the top of an uncoupling magnet.

Given that the only advantage of setting the coupler at Microtrains' height is that it can run with US fitted stock, I now understand (as does Dapol Dave) that Farish have decided the problems outweight the advantages, and have sensibly decided to set the coupler at the lower NEM height.

Hi Ben,

Thanks for passing on that information. It sounds to me like a wise call by Bachmann. I see my couple of packs and a magnet were despatched by Dapol yesterday - time tro do some experimenting over the weekend with a bit of luck.

"they have designed their knuckle couplings to ride at the American standard height not the NEM height."

 

Not according to conversations i have had with Colin Albright but i might be wrong and didnt talk to him

cheers

Dave

If they haven't that's excellent news, but in coversations I've had with him some time ago at exhibitions (all long before I had any idea you were releasing knuckle couplings) he was certainly talking about the need to 'step' the head height away from the NEM height, as well as issues with making sure they didn't flex vertically. Of course, haviong not seen his couplings I could have misunderstood what he said, or things may have changed.

Farish have also been working on a similar knuckle coupling, and from conversations with them and with Dapol it seems they have taken two incompatible routes to get them to market. Neither company has said they are incompatible or given any dimensional data to support it, so these conclusions are driven by descriptions.

Dapol have gone for a straight through design, lpacing the knuckle coupling at the same height of the (european standard) NEM pocket. This is simple to engneer, and they have stated that they will be supplying NEM pockets as a glue-on replacement accessory for stock with pre-NEM Rapido couplings.

As Farish is part of Bachmann, and they already provide non-NEM-mounted knuckle couplings for American stock, they have designed their knuckle couplings to ride at the American standard height not the NEM height. This allows interoperability with other Bachmann products, but (presumably) not with Dapol couplings. It has two disadvantages though - first of all the plug-in unit has to have a vertical joggle to get the coupling head to the right height, and secondly it may interfere with UK height beffer beams. Fromt he discussions it sounds as if getting the first issue sorted without vertical slop is what has taken them so long to develop.

What it has not been possible to determine yet is whether the actual heads and mechanisms are compatible anyway, even if they were at the same height.

As the one constant (on recent stock anyway) is the height of the NEM pocket,and it allows easy substitution, I can see some people going for one 'standard', and some the other, depsnding on a variety of factors.

I can see a lot of barrow crossings being modelled ithe near future.

The pricing seems high for a single pair of couplings - although looking at American equivalents the same seems to apply, and larger volume packs generally are at lower unit prices. Let's hope the same applies here.

The real benefit I can see is as Andy has said - replacing end couplings on rakes of vehicles, and on appropriate locomotives. At least with NEM pockets now becoming widely available this is easily, (and temporarily if required) done without major conversions, and convertor wagons, with a different coupling on each end, can easily be made up.

Anyway, a definte step forward. Now to start experimenting with pairs of Neo-magnets under the rails to get the same effect.

I think there's a hat going into the ring here. Since getting heavily involved in a club layout I've done nothing on a barely started layout at home, and other ideas have been tempting me. A micro / diorama could be the fix I need to get me working on stuff for home.

The problem now is to work out which idea is achievable, both in time and space.