DCB

I was trying to add weight to a friend's 00 gauge Bachmann ROD 2-8-0 and I couldn't see how the body comes off. Does anyone have a diagram or pointers to a web site as he has lost the packaging and instructions and its far from obvious which screws have to be removed. Hoping to have another go this evening (Sun 16th July) Thanks in advance

The Hornby Dublo geometry is based on a standard trainset 15" radius curve divided into eight full curves or 16 half curves. One H/D point exactly replaces one (small radius) half curve or one half straight. There were large radius curves very much like 2nd radius though I don't have any. Hornby Dublo 3 rail points have flangeways the same depth as H/D flanges so wheels run through very smoothly without dropping into a rail gap. 2 rail is similar geometry but some weird live frog arrangement. The H/D rail was a strange pressed section rounded on top, The 2 rail was code 100 like peco Code 100. The H/D points have virtually no straight before the point blades so are 15" radius through the curved road Set Track has its roots in Triang geometry which had a 13" ish standard curve divided into 12 sections. The points replaced either a curve or a straight. There was also a rather rare large radius which was around 17/18" radius like second radius. This track had soild bases with dummy ballast and sleepers and a huge rail section easily capable of being walked ion with no damage and continued into Series 3 track which had huge widely spaced sleepers and for Super 4 with 00 scale sleeper spacing. For Super 4 the geometry changed to eight standard curves/ 16 halves per circle with the points replacing either a large (2nd) radius 1/2 curve or a 1/2 straight. The first radius also changed to around 14 and 5/8ths" slightly tighter than H/D. The points had a straight lead in for three or four sleepers so the sharp road was actually nearer 15" than 18" and this annoying feature continues through to cause derailments on modern setrack. Hornby Dublo didn't make 64ft coaches, their Mk1s were scale 57ft and many had offset bogie pivots to minimise throw. and their closer rail spacing worked fine, in fact if laid correctly they could have got away with 50mm and 15" radius

Talking low power wall wart DC here. Clean track helps, however it is the gauge corner, not the rail top, which needs to be clean, as most OO/HO wheels are coned like the prototype whereas unlike the prototype the rails are not inclined inwards so they make contact only on the corner The gauge corner is the inner edges of the rails. I run a Peco track cleaning rubber along the inside of each individual rail angled down at around 45 degrees. the inside corner of point blades frogs etc need cleaning You don't say which locos need a nudge. Some locos with traction tyres like the Hornby Railroad 0-6-0 chassis and Hornby 14XX seem to need a nudge every now and again as the centre axle wheels with traction tyres don't pick up current and the other wheels don't have enough suspension travel to take enough weight to make contact if the the centre wheels stop on a hump. This is much worse if new traction tyres ave been fitted. Leaving these aside, better still selling them, the older Hornby chassis with under size flangeless centre wheels should be fine as long as the wheels are clean. Really clean and that means the back of the wheels where the pick ups rub, and the pick ups themselves need to be clean. This is much more important on modern chassis with less pick up tension and far more pickups, 10 as against 2. Often one or more pickups simply don't do anything and cleaning them without damaging them is difficult. I find the heavier the axle load on the pick up axles the more tolerant locos are to dirty track my old Grafar 94XX with a modified Hornby chassis splashes happily along rain soaked track outside where Bachmann 57XX and the like stop dead. The P 9000 wall wart doesn't deliver enough power to damage fishplates and point tags but extra feeds are a good idea, I like one every six railjoints or so, droppers are too much aggro for me on low power DC though pretty much essential with high power DCC. Some old direct worm drive locos tend to not restart without reversing slightly, this is not a pick up issue obviously but gear meshing and its probably best to sell the loco or you will end up like me in spending hours shimming gear wheels instead of running trains.

The latest Peco catalogue clearly shows the inner radius of the ST 245 is 2nd Radius and it needs a special ST 227 1/4 curve to equal a standard ST 226 curve, The Streamline Curved point always used to be described as inner 30" radius outer 60" radius The set track curved point is very long and does not really save over much space unless it is part of a ladder on a 90 degree curve , so I would try to use streamline points if possible. I successfully bent a streamline curved point down to around 3rd radius on the inner track under a thread about bending streamline points. The Set Track ones look awful and trains on the outer radius sort of wiggle from curved to straight as they pass through which is a good recipe for derailments. I

Skips are a great source of materials. A manky old interior door can make a great free baseboard. Very light, and with a smooth lower surface wont scratch the Dining Table/ coffee table/ bed spread. I have used several, shortened them, hacked them about. For a new build I would take one, shorten to taste and then cut round the track bed and cut away the surplus leaving the track raised and the cardboard honeycomb exposed but with framing round the outside, than way you can have scenery below track level, the lack of which ruins many otherwise admirable layouts. My present N gauge layout costs are negative if you discount petrol. Damaged Layout from skip £ 0 (Yes I did ask permission) Extra wood from skip ( ditto) Pannier, Toad, power unit, 2 X 00 gauge locos and 3 00 gauge coaches from Ebay £ 8.80. Sale of one 00 loco £ 10. Profit so far £1.20. Plan A Tidy layout up, scenery etc. Costs Paint from Freecycle Free. Glues from Freecycle Free. Plan A (i) Sell completed layout for £100 with controller but no stock. Profit £ 101.20 = about 50p per hour! Perhaps I need to re think this.

It will look a lot better when there are some "Dummy" sleepers under the rail joiners. Be careful with those very short filler section of rail ,they just love getting out of level, and you have a nasty straight "kink" between the point and the Y point where it should flow. A chunk of 3rd or 4th radius set track rail would smooth it out. and bring the goods shed round another half inch or so. I try to avoid short pieces of track if possible, preferring to chop chunks off points for clearance. Whether its worth painting the baseboard I'm not sure, most goods yards had a uniform black / green sort of oily / grassy/ coal dust surface across the whole of the yard, under tracks and between in later years. often to the level of the sleepers sometimes to the top of the rails with flanges cutting grooves in the muck. 48" X 18" is a bit wide and short. plenty of room for scenery but unless you angle the tracks diagonally or through an arc the ratio of track to scenery is very much weighted in favour of scenery. Open frames suit this sort of layout . A road or river Under a bridge at the right hand end would be a nice touch. It might work better with the track nearer the centre of the board and then a single asymmetric 3 way could replace the Y and 2ft left and free up a bit more space.

Looks like you can afford a diorama of one DCC tank loco on one length of code 75 track, if you buy new, maybe add in a second hand wagon or a Oxford Diecasts car.... I bought 2 X 00 locos and 3 coaches off Ebay for £8.80 the other week.....

The Hornby 14XX and Prairie are pretty awful runners and our 14XX are out of use since the Hattons 14XX appeared while the Prairies look OK until they move and I am using a Triang chassis under one as I try to make one run half decently. The latest Bachmann 57XX is a good runner, their 45XX prairie runs nicely but has a very short coupled wheelbase which can cause pickup issues on non bonded points The Hattons 14XX is excellent for slow running and shunting as long as your track is flat and level and the loads not excessive, a dozen Bachmann wagons is well within its capabilities. The GWR built a batch of twenty 48XX (later 14XX) with Auto gear and twenty without the 58XX class before standardising on the Auto Fitted variety as they were more versatile. It was not a particularly difficult job to uncouple the Auto train gear and on some lines the 14XX would uncouple the auto coach and haul the branch pick up goods between passenger trains, Faringdon was one. Equally 14XX worked goods on the Presteign(?) branch. 58XX were used for shunting around Swindon but combined this with workman's train duties. The 64XX were generally kept to passenger workings but the visually similar but somewhat stronger 74XX were branch line engines though many were BR built. The 16XX were BR built but the real gap in the market is the 2021 and 850 classes of small panniers which were used extensively as branch goods and shunting engines. I would go for a Hattons 14xx/48XX/58XX, as the 57XX were not branch line engines until they were reclassified Yellow from Blue in BR days

It sounds like the thermal cut out is being used for the wrong purpose. The Powercab's cut out seems entirely capable of protecting the Powercab but under partial short conditions, loco over an isolator with wrongly set point the current is well within the Powercabs limits bearing in mind it the transformer provides less than 50% of the Powercabs maximum Amperage. What this sort of overload does not do is blow the decoder or Powercab but it does stress the other components, droppers, loco to tender wires, fish plates, polarity switches etc and some of these, particularly plunger pickups and tender wires will not take1 amp for long without failing. Realistically a 0.5 amp continuous rated thermal which should quick trip around 0.75 / 1 amp would probably be more reasonable, that is one per power area/ section not one per power cab.

Another vote for Morley, their hand held add ons are excellent.

In my case sawing the baseboard legs off was not necessary, I just got son and heir to lift the baseboard while I scraped away some of the soil. until the spirit level said level. Sorted. Still think pairs of super neo magnets one under the stock the other between the rails N to S poles would work well, don't think super neos and metal plates would be strong enough.

I think we should remember the advice above "a device which prevents vehicles in a siding or loop gaining access to running lines," It is to prevent stock escaping from sidings and fouling running lines. Unlike models full size stock will force points / turnouts open when set against them, in yards with hand points its no big deal, where its operated from a signal box or ground frame it will bend the rods, if theres a FPL it will likely break something but will probably not stop nor even slow the stock. There were serious accidents at Abergele and others where stock escaped. To return to post # 01 the track layout doesn't lend itself to retro fitting traps they should have been planned for at clean sheet of paper stage

On the full size railways the Victorians, Ike Brunnel and the like, put stations on a hump so trains slowed down on the approach and accelerated away under gravity. The wonderful Victorian museum called the "Tube" under London is an excellent example. Conversely and more relevant, the 1980s saw much reballasting which raised track levels so much that tracks had to dip down to the level of station platforms, Swindon being a good example. A similar "Dip" in the track where uncoupled stock is left might be a suitable cure.

That is a very interesting article re Burbage stations. The Berks and Hants or "Westbury" route was fairly lightly used as though it was the route of the GWRs premier West of England services it didn't really serve anywhere of any consequence between Reading and Taunton, hence some Plymouth trains continued to run via Bristol and indeed most of Bristol's GW mainline services did not terminate at Bristol, continuing to Taunton, WSM or further. Todays heavy stone traffic is largely a diesel era feature It was not at all unusual for trains to terminate and reverse at through stations, or for stopping trains to be sidetracked to let expresses pass, but I am surprised that a stopper was shunted to allow an express past at Savernake Low level. I would be very surprised if an Up train recessed in the Down siding but I have read of Up goods being set back onto the Marlborough branch to allow faster traffic to overtake so perhaps the local passenger also performed this maneuver. At Kemble on the Swindon Gloucester line a local passenger arrived at the down platform and set back onto the up line so it could draw forward onto the Cirencester branch so such things did happen. The terminating trains may well have recessed in the down siding, as an example on the Gloucester Swindon line Auto trains recessed in Chalford goods yard between trips, or if there was a short turnaround the loco may simply have run round using the up road and departed from the down platform in the up direction, possibly flagged away by the signalman if there was no Up starter for the Down platform. Alternatively it may have recessed in the down siding and crossed over to the Up platform for departure. It may well have only occupied the platform for 10 minutes. As this was 60 years ago now the chances of getting an accurate answer are fast slipping away. Two old railwaymen who promised to let me record their memories passed away before I| could arrange a time and place so don't delay. The local pub is probably a good place to start. It's worth remembering that infrastructure did not keep pace with changes in service after WW1 and railwayman had to improvise, many locations lacked sufficient tracks and platforms, others had far more than were ever used, I think Highbridge S&D had 5 platforms of which only 2 were actually used, while Cheltenham Midland had only two platforms and could have done with 5 as MSWJR trains terminated and started at this station on the main Midland Birmingham - Bristol line.

Severn Tunnel?

There is a long Intermodal with Stobart and Les Co (Tesco?) containers on the Highland to Inverness daily. Seemed to be a 68 duty last week though at one stage seemed to be a duty for the 67 which brought up the sleeper. Its faster than road despite the parallel A9 being the only single carriageway road in the UK with a 50 MPH HGV speed limit. Road is however safer as the returning southbound Intemodal was diverted into some chaps garden before ending up in a copse at Carr Bridge on one occasion with spectacular results

MNs were very heavy at well over 20 tons axleload which kept them to main lines so the short trains hauled were in the context of being on the main line. The WC / BB was slightly sighter but slipped under the 20 ton axle load which let them roam far and wide on and off the SR to Bath Oxford Plymouth Padstow and even Newton Abbot, while the only non SR line visited regularly by MNs was Weymouth to which shed all the survivors were allocated at one time in the 1960s. I often wonder if a King and MN ever met in pre preservation days other than in the 1948 loco exchanges. MNs were the SRs premier express passenger power so tended to be used on the most important expresses and some heavy overnight fast freight workings, even in their last days they were working express turns so there were not generally any to spare for menial tasks, there were 110 WC / BB class for that! 35009 mentioned above may well have been in steam after an overnight run from Salisbury and commandeered at short notice to replace a failed M7. I can't see it being a rostered duty. The milk trains were short but heavy with full milk tanks being roughly as heavy as a carriage. So really you can probably justify a MN on a short train but not justify one on a secondary route or branch line.

I have the same problem, the whole rake rolls out of the station down the garden when the engine cuts off before running round, its only about 1 in 100 but taking a saw to the base board legs is planned for Sunday afternoon, in the mean time a small super neo magnet under the bogie pivot of one coach and similar super neo magnet between the tracks may just be enough to stop the stock!

It looks massively over complicated for the GWR. Their final branch stations had 4 points only. Have you built it yet? If not run your finger along where shunting moves will take place. The E - C headshunt arrangement is too short for anything meaningful and the G pointwork very over complicated if it faces a mineral branch not the west of england main line. Most of the signals would be off stage, most of the trap points, maybe even a sand drag stage left off stage, the signal box would need to be the other end of the station for token purposes so quite how the sidings would be worked is debatable, ground frame released from box? I was operating (trying to make it work electrically actually) a branch terminus at the weekend and the kick back sidings are just a pain. A shunt takes for ever and is soooooo boring. Much better to forget kick backs and stick with simple and concentrate on getting the incoming wagons in the outgoing out and the part emptied/ loaded/ waiting for loads/ cripples spotted where required

Is it just on the axle or is it still in the frames or gearbox. If its in thin brass frames you need to make up something to support the frame, an old Hornby Dublo chassis block filed smooth is ideal for 1/8 axles or a metal block drilled to take the axle so it revolves freely but with little slop is ideal. place it on a firm surface so the gear wheel is against the chassis or gearbox side which is directly supported by the spacer/ old chassis and give the end of the axle a good clout. I would use a copper hammer. Or put it in a vice and press the axle through. Generally if its that tight you will wreck the axle, but they are cheaper than gearboxes or gear sets. Fixing the gear with a screw is a better way than a force/ solder/ loctite fix, either Hornby Dublo style with two grub screws so you can get the gearwheel exactly concentric, or as I have done drill the axle to take a screw right through Edit. The Johnster has sound advice. Shouting, swearing, even screaming at inanimate objects is a useful technique, it makes you feel better without doing any damage. Doesn't work with animate objects though!

Had a brand new Bachmann 53XX form the Cambrian Coast double presentation set running in last evening with no derailing issues on Peco Streamline code 100 with some 2ft radius points. The brand new unused Manor's rear driving wheels fell off after an hour......

If the Chassis is Bachmann not Mainline, You could take the wheels off the axles and and insert spacing washers between chassis and wheels instead of the shims. Bachmann wheels have squared axles so you can easily get the quartering right again. Don't try it with Mainline as they don't have squares and I can never get them to run again after having the wheels off. You could shave down the shims so only a small area around the axle bears on the wheel hub. It would be a lot of filing but might be worth it on a Mainline chassis where you daren't take the wheels off the axle.

You don't have that many possible parallel movements so the complexity will depend on whether it is live frog or dead frog. I wired a pretty similar station, 1 less road each direction but lots of headshunts and 4 parallel movements possible and it does need lots of switches, mainly because it is live frog. Your diagram is fine for dead frog. If you go live frog you will need isolators on each through road or setting points "in opposition" will short it out. Where to put the isolators is difficult as metal wheels bridge them. DONT USE COMMON RETURN, on this type of layout with live frogs it causes horrendous complications. Actually, you can't use common return with live frogs as you will need to isolate one side on the Up side of the layout and the other side on the lower. My current MO is to use two pole rotary switches so any section can be fed by any controller, Indoors I also count fishplates and point blades, 6 sets of either from a feed is my limit. That is a lot longer at 20 feet maximum and shorter at 18" minimum than other people recommend.... I hope you have some nice long 1/8" drills for all those long holes through the 3/4" chipboard baseboard... (Unless you run the wires on the surface and ballast over them)

That ain't going to work. 1st problem the pick up wire, the brown connects to the same end of the white capacitor/ thingy as the red which goes to the little tag under the insulated side brush. The Capacitor is important on DC as you will get flash overs on the commutator without it. If you don't use the original use a ceramic capacitor in its place. 2nd problem side play. You have miles of side play between the wheels and the chassis and it will either limp along like a most likely crab along the rails if the worm drive actually remains in mesh. I always shim between the gear wheel and sides of the chassis with washers or sometimes brass spacers drilled to take the axles to give around 10 thou, 0.010" clearance. I must have done 40 or more locos like this over the years with a notable improvement in running Not many people do this, most shim behind the driving wheels using Romford shims but they are for 1/8" axles. so won't fit the Markits Triang axle. If you shim behind the driving wheels on the gear axle I find the wheels work loose. For this reason I use 1/8" axles with Romford top hat bushes for the non drive axles so I can use Romford shims. If you use the Markits large axles you may have to file up your own spacers to get the wheels equally spaced across the chassis but the time is well spent. It should be blindingly obvious that the loco centre line view from the front should be dead centre in the middle of the track but a visit to almost any exhibition says otherwise with a wide variety of nodding donkey type limping Lulus swaying drunkenly from side to side. 3rd problem, there is so much side play that the coupling rods on the insulated side will hit and short out the wheel rims. The rods are live to the chassis and only the wheel rims are insulated. Restricting the sideplay to 10 thou ish should cure it, otherwise use a small washer like the rim from a romford pin point bearing under the crank pin to space it away from the wheel. With these few changes it should give many years further service at least 50....

It is a myth that the quickest route from London to Cheltenham was via Andoversford, In fact it took 10 minutes longer by semifast via Oxford to Kingham and the stopper to Cheltenham than by the best Cheltenham Express. It was the Cheltenham to London Journey which was quicker through Andoversford, the MSWJR South express to Andover and change for Waterloo was the quickest before WW1 and GWR decelerations and when pressed to restore the schedules the GWR introduced the "Worlds Fastest Train" The Cheltenham Flyer which set the blistering pace of around 45mph for the 90 odd miles as the crow flies. Gloucester is not London. There is no mid 19th century Underground. Its no good commuting by rail to the outskirts and taking a bus to work. along its dysfunctional road system Passengers other than from the south wales line will just take the bus all the way, closing the present station will kill the commuter traffic, some of which comes by XC so even a 2 station solution is not a solution. They should have rationalised Eastgate instead of closing it.