DCB

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.

The off load voltage is often around 21 volts on cheap and nasty DC controllers. It sounds like one of the rectifier diodes may have failed leaving it running on half wave. Probably best to get something else off ebay for £5 and see if it improves matters. I won't use them preferring Morleys and the like which deliver from 0 volts to around 9 volts (N gauge) or 15 volts (0 and 00 gauge) off load depending on control knob settings

Why not try it. I had been fitting nickel silver code 100 rail into code 100 peco streamline steel track sleepers as an economy measure to use up good sleeper bases in the garden. I find the locos pull better around curves (3rd radius) but stock drags so the stalling occurs on the straight following the curve. Apart from Magnadhesion Triang locos I don't find significant difference in grip between steel and N/S track. I have code 100 steel streamline track and code 100 N/S nickel silver points as part of the same gradient. I find cleaning the track can cost 2 coaches, I don't do it unless I get problems, as slipping wheels tend to keep themselves pretty clean, only the point blades and frogs seem to get dirty.

That's a big area, equivalent to 18' X 4' in 00 gauge so really the world is your lobster. I like watching trains go by so continuous run sounds good I would go continuous run with single track as I understand Dapol have 12" min radius so you need the full width to get the turn in, and then swing the tracks back away from the baseboard edge to feed a fan of sidings. There is a lot of single track main line these days. I would think about dropping the centre part of the baseboard to improve the visuals. For the proper modern image look you need scruffy 125 year old buildings, and for the real authentic look working semaphore signals. I was at Great Rocks last months, long trains of bogie aggregate wagons, half a dozen locos semaphore signals operated by a tatty old Midland signal cabin or three

It would not have been Rocket Science to have provided a banker as presumably the load was a lot more than an average WSR train. The WSR has several eminently suitable tank locos. I also wonder if driving technique comes into it. I am always impressed by the way NYMR drivers get 3 cyl locos like Sir Nige and Repton away from Goathland up quite a gradient with very little or no slipping even in the wet. Its a bit of a shame the NRM built a replica of the 1947 Scotsman rebuild instead of the 180 lb long travel version which ran the non stops in the late 1920s. Lets face it there can't be anything left of the original Scotsman apart from a nameplate or three hanging in some blokes outside privvy in Darlington, Should have done a Ffestiniog and assembled all the left over bits into a non working exhibit....

Maybe one of our train operators could name a loco Boaty McBoatface instead.