DCB

Two amp wire should be a minimum for 0 gauge outside, 3 way plus earth lighting cable for two way switches is probably as good as anything but don't mistake a bus wire for 230 volts or you could frighten the horses with your screams. Be careful with soldering, some of mine done with multicore solder oxidised and failed after a couple of years, quicker than failing rail joiners in fact. Make sure your ballast doesn't touch the rails as much of it is conductive especially when wet and make sure the track drains. I abandoned rail pick up for my outside line at home as so much current shorted between the rails because of the way I ballasted with sand and cement. Father in law's outside extension in 00 on elevated wooden baseboards works well even when its raining despite limited droppers and the use of co ax aerial lead as part of the feed wire or bus.

The best way I know of to value a loco, or anything else within reason, is to check the prices on Ebay, Find a similar item, watch it and see what it sells for, or if a buy it now, if it sells. It will probably take several days to get reliable data. The other day about 20 Hornby 27XX were advertised on Ebay from 99p plus P+P so about £4.50 to about £30. Only the 99p one had any bids. From trying to value some old O gauge It looks like no one is interested in bottom of the range Hornby 0 gauge at all The Hornby Dublo value seemed to peak about 20 years ago as did Wrenn which suits me as paying £5 for a chassis or 4 wagons suits my budget. Sadly our highly detailed models are generally worth less than a play worn standard version. I have been putting 2000s Tender drive locos back to standard couplings etc for a friend and hunting in his loft for the boxes to sell as non standard couplings seem to put people off, again standard pristine boxed is what folk seem to want. Luckily I don't care about condition so I can still pick up bargains

There are still a lot of Bachmann split axle locos out there being sold as new. My son had a "New" Cambrian Coast Express set for his birthday present from my father in law this summer 2017 and the Manor shed a wheel within 20 minutes of running in. It went back on kept the quartering but doesn't bode well for the future. My Mainline Manor on a Triang B12 chassis with an X04, Romfords etc, has been running for some 25 years or so with very little attention hence my preference for modified Triang/ Hornby chassis and Bachmann bodies.

Are these loops or dead end sidings? I designed and operate a set of sidings and loops beneath a terminus using DC and simply have a 2ft push button operated dead section on the dead end roads which stops single headed trains from max speed before the buffers. Double headed trains hit the buffers! I can see most of the sidings in the gloom but with advancing years and the possibility of going DCC or R/C my preferred option for enhancement is web cams. Much used on US layouts a couple of strategically placed web cams together with some strategically placed white LED lights should allow you to watch the train approach the stopping point on a monitor, you could go split screen or show individual camera feeds. Many are around golf ball size. The big problem I forsee with DCC is identifying which loco is which and which code it responds to when in the gloom of the hidden sidings. Manobier Castle is much like Devizes Castle which is much like Sir Edward Elgar and not very different to The Gloucestershire Regiment or Denbigh Castle. With DC it doesn't matter which is on a train. With DCC I could end up with some very embarrassing situations as the wrong loco moves and derails 20 wagons by pushing them through wrongly set points... If the low level is below a station planning the framing to minimise depth is a good move, strength members can go above track level at the edges and under platforms for instance, drilling wiring route holes to keep wires within rather than below the framing before assembling the baseboard, and using removable hardboard covers to keep the bottom of the upper level neat will make dealing with the inevitable Quintinshill like accident less painful. Having spent the summer tweaking gradients on friend's layout to allow 21st century RTR locos to pull trains, I would suggest the less height difference between low and high levels you can get away with the better the layout will operate.

I'm pretty sure Penzance was extended in the 1930s losing middle sidings and gaining a 3rd platform in the existing trainshed making 4. Many GWR stations were extended in the 1930s though Plymouth North Road was not finished until the 50s due to WW2. Plymouth Millbay was a good mid size terminus where several long distance trains or parts thereof terminated and started in the 1930s as well as branch and local Auto trains with 4 coaches and a 64XX popping in and out en route from Saltash to Marsh Mills(?). It closed to become a goods station when other facilities were bombed in WW2. I find 7 coaches make a decent believable express train. My winter 1930 GWR train formations book has plenty of 7 coach expresses terminating at places like Millbay and even 5 coach express formations to places like Weymouth. There is no reason for trains to be the same length as platforms, 12 coach Pines Expresses departed from 8 coach long platforms at Bournemouth West in pre EU health and safety laws, equally 2 coach trains departed from 10 plus coach long platforms at St Ives. WW2 is not a great era to model in RTR, plenty of Bulldogs and Dukes with outside frames, and lots of non standard pannier tanks not available RTR Unlined Green shirtbutton or GWR Black liveries. At least there is a decent Dean Goods from Oxford now. No Counties or Modified Halls until the very end of the war, no 7XXX Castles, Think I would go fictionalised with 8 ft long main platforms and an extensive goods yard and double track approach.

You could cut the webs between sleepers on the curves and gently tweak the curves to a slightly larger radius. I have eased 2nd radius out to nearly 3rd radius doing this. Don't try to tighten the radius, I can't make that work without kinks. On a small layout, for steam days, use set track long straights for straight sections as streamline is hard to lay dead straight and steam age tracks were dead straight. Diesel era use second hand streamline as the dogs hind leg look is quite prototypical.

I do it the other way round with power applied and the bell/ light/ buzzer checking for continuity, both ways equally valid.

Some old 4-4-0s are bad for front overhang, Triang L1 and M7 (going backwards) are my test chassis for front overhang . I don't know anything worse than a Mk3 for center throw but I use a Mk1 coach for center throw on a 1957 layout and a 156 Sprinter on the 1987 outside line. Getting the curve absolutely constant radius is vital, it is the kinks which cause the collisions. I use set track below 2ft radius cutting webs between sleepers and easing them out to larger radius to close the track spacing towards Streamline spacing, and to far less on straight sidings etc.

Excellent idea, I used a door bell for years to continuity check vehicle wiring. where I couldn't see such as stop lights. I'm not sure bells work on AC but a series diode would sort that.

With Live frog points it is very difficult to derail a loco by setting the points wrong as unless there are additional isolators both rails will be at the same polarity. A dead section of one rail adjacent to the frog when the point is set against the train is a good idea (DC and DCC) as a loco bridging an isolator against the frog can cause a dead short. Switching the frog with a microswitch is easy enough but isolating the other rails is more complicated and I can't see any way apart from a Microswitch / relay combo or maybe 3 micro switches.

According to K. Cook Swindon Steam Following the Midgham derailment when a King Bogie was derailed The Swindon weighbridge had a section 1" deep ground out with a removable section which was removed to check that each wheel carried very nearly the full weight even when a dropped an inch into a track irregularity. Coil springs were added to the bogie and the number of spring leaves increased and individual springs leaves made thinner and more flexible on the coupled wheels. The sideplay on the trailing axle was also done away with and King riding was then exemplary. I read when KGV was overhauled in preservation she came out under the quoted weights. The increase in King weight from the new boilers with four row superheaters, double chimneys , new front end frames etc in the 1950s would have been at the front end over the bogie in any case. There can be no doubt that locos with springs changed at running sheds in a rush to get locos back into traffic would sometimes have been way over the stated load, probably on one wheel, and the others underweight as a consequence.

Could be fantastic for a fine scale 0-4-0, 2 rpm and 60:1 Romford gears should produce almost imperceptibly slow slow running for the ultimate slow running experience.

I wonder if the facing crossover between platform 1 and 2 would be more prototypical as a trailing crossover. In steam days apart from some city termini most trains at multi platform termini would be moved from an arrival platform to a departure platform if not taken to carriage sidings between trips, this would be much easier using the outbound line as far as the advanced starter as a shunting neck than the inbound line so keeping T1 for this would counteract its inability to align with the hidden spur. Locos will also depart for the Traverser Tender first to reappear Tender first on the inbound track after turning and ready for their next duty. ECS backing in on the outbound line as a train arrived on the inbound would look good, I do this just for the visuals of one train overtaking the other on a terminus I sometimes operate. Probably best to avoid Pacifics on this size of layouts but Black 5s Std 4s 8fs and Jubilees ran down the Central Wales line into the similarly sized Swansea Victoria...

Text book example of why not to use one pair of bus bars for the whole layout. It applies quually to DC and DCC and reverting to DC will not make any difference at all. If you Divide it into sections with isolating rail joiners and isolating switches and then you can progressively switch the sections on(or off) to find which on which section the fault is located. Prising back railjoiners to create gaps and Chopping droppers is your only realistic alternative, starting again might be easier but wire up the first section and test it before adding any more, then test that and continue until the wiring is finished. When it is all working and then fails that is when you need the switched isolated sections. Faults can be anything from pins in point gaps, displaced point tags, track pins in loco motors, broken wires shorting (Clapham accident 12" to 1 ft scale) displaced layshaft shorting on a Q1. Faults are devious little sods and sometimes reappear after months or years of hibernation.

AC 125V 1A SPDT Subminiature Micro Lever Switch 5 Pcs SY E1Q7 Q4L5 W3P4( 282493201829 ) 2013bestbuybest83597Feedback percentage of99.3% Delete item 2d 20h left Friday,12:24 BST £0.99 Buy it now Free P&P item AC 125V 1A SPDT Subminiature Micro Lever Switch 5 Pcs SY E1Q7 Q4L5 W3P4 I changed all the points in the "Rabbit Hutch" our outside branch terminus to have these to change frog polarity earlier in the year and have had no problems Edited by DavidCBroad, Today, 15:33 .

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That wont work well, the siding straight tom the turntable is unprototypical and a bit of a recipe for disaster. The massive 80 foot 15" turntables from Hornby make this configuration ugly. Bachmann do a UK 50 foot for their US range which is good for Black 5s, Hall etc but really the turntable needs to be in the corner to make it work. I did dozens of plans for a similar site before coming up with a cut down 10" Dapol turntable in the corner and a two road shed with a coal stage against the wall.

The drawback is excess width. Traversers are all about length width compromise. A standard traverser has to traverse so all the traverser tracks can align with all the incoming and outgoing tracks. so a 6 road traverser has to traverse 11 roads width for single track, 12 for double etc, so you need 24" travel for 6 roads minimum. You can S bend the first 2 feet on the outer roads to reduce the sideways travel at the expense of reducing usable length. You could get 11 fiddle yard roads in that. I once designed a "Hockey Stick" traverser to minimise this length width trade off on L shaped layouts. Low relief sheds are good. You can't see what is in them so why bother with a working one. Mine was 3" long into the backscene, double track and either the doors were shut of you could see the back of a 61XX and the front of another, 2 halves of the same plastic Airfix kit. Loco sidings with inspection pits, a water crane and maybe a turntable would be more interesting than a shed. Operationally Minories was a Urban terminus of Suburban trains. Trains arrived, a new engine coupled on, and off it went again, with the loco to the loco spur, very Great Eastern. If you expand it to have main line arrivals then Main line train arrives. Pilot loco couples on and takes the train to be cleaned inside and WC water tanks refilled at carriage sidings. Train Loco follows to be watered and turned. At Paddington to avoid congestion this was at Ranelagh bridge a couple of miles away not Old Oak Common Loco depot a bit further down the tracks. After a while, anything from half an hour to several hours later the loco departs again on another train, which is brought in by a pilot engine. This way the train can be kept moving. in with a train loco, out with a pilot, back with a pilot out with the train loco On an expanded Minories, if the "Goods" sidings are given over to carriage sidings with the characteristic staging between tracks, the pilot can remove the coaches and push back into the sidings, later pulling them out to push back into the platform without trapping the loco. Or simply push back into a spare platform for the cleaners to do their magic. This then leaves a shortage of goods facilities, you can't win

I have coal fired central heating using Antracite garins so when I need coal I take a few grains and my trusty sledge hammer and smash a few grains to bits before running the bits through a sieve. Antracite dust is quite coarse so its not too dirty, and the lumps have a nice shine and don't crumble to dust quickly so I UHU it to cardboard to make wagon loads and tender loads grading the lumps, breaking the big ones to a reasonable size and grading them so each wagon load has a consistent size of lump. The broken coal I store in sealed plastic containers which originally contained a Chinese take away, one for large and one for small. Half filled tenders look best to me, Tender drive tenders with huge humps of coal are not my scene.

You can use Peco accessory switches or little Chinese ones off Ebay like I do at 99p for 5 including postage.

The front axle drive X04 powered chassis is probably the rarest of the Jinty/ 08 etc chassis. Most came with flangeless centre wheels and centre axle drive. The safest way to identify one is probably by the front axle drive, lack of traction tyres and one piece coupling rods. Most Ebay sellers show the bottom of the locos. I can't believe many lurk unsold on dealers shelves unless they charge full retail... 31A inproved his J52 by fitting a Bachmann chassis, I got fed up of Bachmann wheels coming loose and motors failing and I am fitting Bachmann bodies with Hornby chassis re drilled for the correct wheelbase using Bachmann rods and that super reliable X04 motor

Can two singles be used with common return? Presumably there are a variety of frequencies or side bands available. If so individual units makes sense. Could be connesting + and - to the same terminal the unit short it out, like I did to my Duette 45 years ago and fried a rectifier diode. I wired common return 35 years ago and wish I had not done it. The saving on wire was minimal

The Loco? Have you tried more than one loco because it sounds more like a faulty loco than a faulty power unit or two

If you are checking off load voltage 90% of controllers deliver full output voltage to the rails regardless of the controller knob position, some old H&M Safety Minors, OnTrack and Morley start with low voltage and increase but pretty rare. If locos go like a bat out of hell no matter where the knob is then you have fried something but you need some resistance across the outputs to get a sensible reading.

As the Hornby R965 DC controller seems to only have two output terminals then No you can't run LEDs from it, LEDs have a very limited operating range lighting at around 2 volts and go pop at around 4 volts and will only light when the train is not on the rails or is going flat out if you fit the correct resistors or will go pop when the loco is not on the track with no resistors.Plenty of quality transformer controllers on Ebay with the uncontrolled DC connections you need.