DCB

Never throw nowt out, thee never knows when thee'l need ont. They could be handy when HSTs are hurtling around 1st radius curves at Mach 1

Fowler Locomotives by Brian Haresnape, SBN 7110 0374 2 has a pic of 1108 (Built Derby 1925) in Crimson with coat of arms on the cab side coupled to the tender off 1102 (also Derby 1925) with number on the tender side. He also states WW2 ended the red livery but some retained red livery into BR days and 40934 was probably the last in red into late 1951.

If you only have one controller try this.. Needs 4 isolated rail joiners and two bits of wire. Sort of thing I do all the time, saves loads of wire. It works on the basis of feeding power to the outer rails of points, which lets face it is the same as feeding from the toe. Don't worry about droppers on DC you don't have enough rail joiners to cause issues. in fact on this size of layout you would have to try really hard to get problems on DCC, but use as few rail joints as you can get away with, cut long lengths to fit don't mosaic up oddments. However the track layout is rather like LLangollen and Pickering. You cant shunt the sidings on the left hand end except one or two wagons at a time.. Llangollen and Pickering have been truncated and certainly at Pickering they need a crane to get wagon on and off the spur at the dead end

I have used UHU. Generally if knocked the card delaminates before the glue fails but UHU has a certain thickness which needs factoring in during construction. Personally I would avoid a card core as it is susceptible to moisture whereas the plastic is not. We had the shed roof leak......and the Double length Hornby Signal box had to be rebuilt as the roof was plasticard backed by good quality artists card which warped horribly.

If you remove the capacitors you can get TV and Radio interference under some conditions but this seems greatly reduced since TVs went digital.. Probably only an issue for analogue radios like most car radios. Personally as a DC used I like to fit big ceramic capacitors as they seem to reduce arcing on my filthy/ rusty track in the dark recesses of my loft layout

If its hand built track then squeeze standard turnouts as close to each other as practical, If Streamline chop bits off the points and squeeze them as close together as practical. Tandems are fun/ PITA [Delete as applicable] but in RTR Peco are a bit tight on radius maybe 20" minimum where 3fts look and run a lot better. Having said that and after spending at least 2 minutes sketching on the assumption it was RTR I would move the yard turnout up past the crossover turnout to give more space, put the signal box at the platform end so the lazy fat bobby can grab the token without having to walk miles and you may need a second signal box at the loop ends as they must be more than BOT distance for point operating from the box, unless this is post 1939 and electric point motors have been fitted.

If you want transition curves you can cut the webs between sleepers on the set track and ease the radius out rather like flexi track except it is stiffer and does not try to spring back or kink. I have been doing it for years easing 2nd radius out the 3rd or larger when I have had a glut of 2nd radius and couldn't be bothered/ afford to source new 3rd or 4th radius.

Not being a great fan of split chassis locos you may imagine my delight at the prospect of returning our de motored tender driven Mainline Manor to loco drive as we try to eradicate traction tyres in attempt to keep our track clean. A brand new Bachmann Chassis was found lurking in a box with an unbuilt white metal Grange kit. I tried it. It ran like a three legged Crab, Next another Bachmann Manor was prized from my spare loco drawer in the loft, It too ran like a three legged crab. At this point a Triang Hall chassis with Hornby Dublo 4MT Tank wheels as fitted under my Hornby Grange and Farish Prairie bodys started to look like a possible substitute but I decided against my better judgement to try and improve the Bachmann chassis. First I noticed the wheels were not "square" to the older chassis. I removed the keeper plate to release the wheels, loosened the screws which hold the chassis halves together and forced the edge of a file in the trailing axle slot and tweaked the halves back into correct alignment. I reassembled it and tried it. It was just as bad. It wobbled like a Jelly and clicked every revolution. The trailing wheels waggled from one side to the other on straight track. The wheels were loose on their axle and moved in and out but being square axle type didn't lose their quartering so I removed the trailing coupling rods, (the hex headed pins unscrew) eased the trailing wheels off and slipped washers over the stub axles to reduce the sideplay. The Manor will not need to traverse less than 18" radius so I reduced the play to around 15 thou 0.015" It was absolutely transformed, It still won't pull the skin off a rice pudding but the clacking and jerking have gone almost completely. result. A quick repaint into unlined BR black and we have two Manors again. One in lined Green, Romford wheels, Triang Hall Chassis etc. Fully capable of managing 6 coaches up a 1 in 36 and an Unlined black one on the Bachmann chassis capable of pulling 6 coaches down a 1 in 36 and about 3 up. Can't win them all. But the washers made a surprising difference

Bertiedog should be applauded for diving head first into this particular rock filled shark infested Crocodile enclosure. Unfortunately there are so many variations of good practice that things get complicated. In EjStubbs para 1) Bertiedogseems to describe Electrofrog points with the wires underneath snipped so the frog and the short V rails have to be powered by a separate switch. While EjStubbs describes it as the points arrive from Peco. The rest of the differences seem to follow on from this.

Without varnish etc it very much depends on the printer. I used to get them done on a very fancy copier / printer about £6000 worth and the coloured brickpapers etc which I printed have remained in good condition ever since, as good as Metcalfe kits, however I keep them out of direct sunlight as much as possible. Coloured posters printed on home printers last about 3 weeks on our outdoor noticeboards before becoming illegible while my posters in black and white printed on a copier last literally for years. It may well be a good quality clear varnish will help but equally some colours run at the first hint of moisture so experiment on something unimportant. Its worth mentioning my rake of Hornby Mk2s went almost white when left outside n my carriage sidings all winter and I have seen Hornby Dublo tinplate maroon coaches turn brown when left in the sun, so its not just cardboard. So use a Good quality copier. Keep out of direct sunlight. And experiment and let is know what works and more important what is a complete disaster.

The OP said about the danger of incorrect route setting, With your set up if the route was set for an Oban arrival and then set up for a Ft William departure there would be a dead short, This is a junction not a scissors crossover, different ball game. Suzi's set up or mine, which is essentially the same but specifies accessory switches, is essentially idiot proof and wont short out without running a train across it

Yes that's a stepper, I would call it a traversing motor and they are no use at all for remotoring lima or similar bogies. The ones I have seen have no bearing at the shaft end of the motor and I can't think of a model railway use for them, except in bits as scenery or wagon loads. It is the big motor ( Not shown) which moves that entire assembly as shown in the photo which you need. The computer towers I have taken these CD drives from are getting on a bit now, many had a decent small long motor with a worm before the product cheapening department was let loose, and maybe the real up to date (2010 on) ones don't even have the big pancake motors anymore. As regards the pic There are usually a couple of decent Super Neo magnets in the lazer dead central on the pic, dig them out make up a stack of 9 or so and pop them in a tired X04 motor which hardly runs.... It is like a reet good kick up bum and they go like stink And there's a decent little microswitch right bottom. And some steel rod and some handy screws, and a bit of tin for bodging something with.

As above, trim the rail chair off the last sleeper. I remove the last 4 sleepers, cut the rail chair off the last one and file away enough of the sleeper under where the joiner goes so the rail slides over without a "Hump" and slide them back on. Outside I notch enough sleepers so the rail joiners can be changed in situ as they have a short life in the open air. Be careful if you use the loose sleeper method as again unless you thin it enough there will be a slight hump enough to make your Hornby T9 or Hattons 14XX lose its feet. If you are using DCC and ballasting remember to fit droppers to most rail sections.

Its not quite that simple, You can do it with two accessory switches if the frogs are live at all times, If you want to isolate the Frogs when the road is not set you will need four accessory switches one on each point and there will be a dead short if both crossover routes are set at the same time. I think the simplest system using accessory switches looks to be if the points forming the "Crossover" from down line to Ft William line each have accessory switches reversing the polarity of the adjacent frogs which are always live then it should work. Edit. The above is for DCC with the type of Live Frog dead Knuckle (?) diamond shown and only works if all the track is in one Power Area. DC would be a lot more complicated if you wanted to run simultaneous Ft William arrivals and Oban departures.

Some blades don't have little tags which bear on the underside of the stock rails. They seem to be points with plastic springs instead of spring wire and I found them to be entirely useless. Peco said the tags are un necessary when we rang them, but thats not what I found. They seemed to have deleted a few years ago but they may well be back. I hope so as I won't be buying any without them. The little tags sometimes need bending up if they are present but I have been using electrofrog points as supplied straight out of the box for 30 odd years and almost all the 30 year old ones are still in use, it's the later ones I had to replace.

We used to be able to attach the loco to the back of its own train on my son's Triang layout! I have a through 4 road FY about 15 feet long from wall to wall but as the track splits on the approach curve and tracks converge on the other curve it holds 12 coach trains. There is no reason the trains cant be longer than the scenic part of the layout, or longer than the platforms or goods loops except at termini. But even then Bournemouth West had 12 coach trains and 8 coach platforms. I can't see much point in running 12 coach trains through a six foot ish scenic area but that's what you have at Sapperton between short and long tunnels on the GWR Swindon - Gloucester line.

Good advice, I have spent more hours than I care to remember trying to get Dapol and Hornby 14XX run decently without success. Current plan is to produce a 6 wheel drive version using Airfix chassis and two Dapol/ Hornby motors. Even then the loco needs a decent smokebox door as an absolute minimum. Don't watch this space it could take me years.

The Drawer motor is the one you need. The 2 wire one. The 12 wire is pretty useless except as a load for a well wagon, and I have never seen a linear stepper, mine have had long type 12 v motors with worm drives to drive the lazer, The long motors are pretty good for powering 0-4-0 s etc through Romford 60:1 worm drives and the like.

It is like the Airfix coupling but the Airfix does not have the "Wings". Its a much neater coupling than the big tension locks but has the big disadvantage that 4 year old kids find them difficult to couple Tomas the Tank engine to Clarrie and Annabel with their pudgy little fingers. I have a rake of Airfix Mk2s with them which I use in the garden with 1 in 14 grades and 3rd radius curves and they are very good. The big advantages are appearance and the fact the pull is much nearer the centre line of the track so minimising side thrust on curves which makes them much better at staying on the track at the head of heavy trains than the Hornby/ Lima wide coupling breeds..

40 years ago there was the same discussion about Caledonian Blue, and the fact is blues change with the light and are sods to match. As the guy who re sprayed the tailgate on my sons metallic blue Rover will testify. As with most things model railway a consistent colour across different models in the same livery give or take a few shades of weathering is the optimum. It is only in the preservation era that wide disceprances in hue have become commonplace.

CJ Feezer was 1950s onwards, I have some of his books by my chair 60 plans was first published in 1958 and my copys are 1964 2nd edition and 1973 3rd edition. He fiddled around with reprints and he often changed layout plans within the same titles, some were reprinted 15 times or more. 1940s Hornby Dublo coaches were scale length for LMS 57ft. coaches. Triang had "Scale length" BR Mk1s in the early 1960s. BR Corridor Mk1s and Mk2s are 64 feet, Mk 3s are 75 feet . Allow a foot per coach and 13" for MK3/4 in 00 as a rule of thumb. CJ freezers layouts are best when stretched a bit to fit a larger space but they were based around Peco Streamline points though he does use strange curved diamonds which don't actually exist so beware. His gradients are a bit too steep for modern locos. Be careful if you have the baseboards made, having a level base on which to start is vital if you start building gradients or spirals. A 1 in 50 gradient on a base sloping at 1 in 100 becomes 1 in 33 and that reduces train length by about 33%

Most likely problem is the rollers are flat and wheels are coned, unless they are 1950s Triang. The wheels will wobble and hunt as the wheels try to find equilibrium. The prototype had similar issues when heavy flat bottom rail sections on concrete sleepers with much less give were introduced towards the end of steam. EDIT I believe the Swindon "Home Trainer," had the locos securely attached to the frame using the tender drawbar and the rollers were braked so the power could be measured. I wonder if its possible to make a set of roller sleeves to code 100 (or 75, 87 what ever) rail profile.

I had a layout around a spare bedroom which was at 60" above floor level with lift out/ duck under sections across the door and airing cupboard doors which left the floor pretty much unobstructed. It worked well. Generally wall hugger layouts work better than solid boards which you walk round in UK size properties garages, sheds etc but US style 30 ft X 20 ft or bigger basements are a different kettle of worms. I would recommend you get a copy of 60 plans for small railways, Track Plans, Plans for larger layouts by CJ Freezer, and start dreaming. Just add 10% space all round as trains and points seem to have grown over the years. A good spirit level is a good move, 1 in 100 is level by most builders standards but is enough to cause modern RTR locos problems.

There are usually quite a few on Ebay, both Bachmann and the earlier Mainline models, Mainline suffer from loose wheels and I pushed one de motored example around with a Hornby 28XX Tender drive for 20 odd years till I got fed up with it making the track dirty, andI have another Mainline body is on a Triang Hall chassis with Romford wheels which actually pulls decent length trains and has done so for 25 years or more. I have a Bachmann Manor but it is very difficult to weight it sufficiently to pull reasonable trains, a problem also common to the similar Hornby Grange.

Frog juicers have to be the way to go, whether one with six outputs or six individual ones. I'm guessing this is DCC but wondering if frog juicers work on DC? The problem is authority, which point controls polarity? You have trains approaching the scissors from Oban and Ft William heading for the up platform and trains leaving the down platform for Fort William and Oban. No one point has authority. its not something that can be controlled automatically without a third party input. Simple answer power the polarity from a servo selected like a point on the control panel. A point motor with a micro switch possibly powering a relay is ideal I use diode matrix route setting with solenoid motors which makes setting up a road dead easy. Is that a dead frog diamond? My live frog diamonds need 4 pole relays, but they are DC