Fastdax

Thanks, Two Tone.

Upper Level Trackwork Once the track was laid across the joint, and sleepers cut to fit round the brass pegs, I think it will look OK once ballasted and weathered. As you can see from the scribbles on the ply baseboard, I measured the length of the platforms (1 meter) plus a 1-in-8 slope, which comes almost exactly to the joint between the two baseboards. Perhaps I can use this to disguise the joint ... ? I'll also need a couple of platform starter signals. I was going to put a single signal either side of the toe of the turnout but space behind the track is a bit tight (35mm from board edge to rail top) so I may need a bracketed double starter where I've marked a cross. Not knowing much about BR(LMR) signalling, I need more research or advice about this. Finally, here's a "work in progress" picture, just to show that I'm as messy as anyone else! The rest of the upper level trackwork is now laid and wiring is in progress.

Upper Level Trackwork I built the final turnout for OQ. This is a right-hand semi-curved A6 made up from C&L timbers, chairs and machined switch/vee rails. Much cheaper than buying a kit-in-a-bag. Where the two lines into the station cross the board joint, I did a slight variant on what I did on the lower level and used cropped-off brass screws to hold the ends of the rails in alignment. These were filed to the right height and the rails soldered to them.

Garage Scene To finish off the archway front of the garage scene, I fitted the LCUT windows, glazed with Evergreen 5 thou' styrene sheet. Rather than use the LCUT one-piece opening door, which would have obscured some of the lovely interior detail, I made up a folded steel door from plasticard, with a galvanised hood over, all suitably "back street". An extractor fan box and a garage name sign with light completes the new frontage. Whilst stuck in the eBay zone one day, I came across these tiny geared motors for under £2.50 each: They are truly miniature! They are sold as coreless, with planetary gearbox, run on 3V - 6V and turn at 48 - 120 RPM. So, of course, I had to do this: The motor is a bit noisy due to the huge gearing, but I've got it connected to an under-board switch so that it doesn't have to run whenever the lights are on. A preset potentiometer behind the arch frontage controls its speed and is set for the minimum at which it will reliably run. It draws as much current as a couple of LEDs.

I must say that I have only used one rod like this, although I have added a second cosmetic rod to one of my turnouts (plastic rod glued between the blades). Using two does sound like a sound move though.

Wow.

Not wishing to pre-empt Peter's reply, but I do the same as him and fit small bits of PCB under the point blades to hold them down. I do this by soldering a full-width length of PCB to both blades and snipping to length afterwards. This makes sure that the PCB pads lie flat with respect to the stock rails. Then it's a quick in-and-out with the soldering iron to fix the operating/gauge wire to the underside of the PCB pads. My points are operated by servos driven from a Megapoints controller.

Thanks Kevin. I have found that the more I rub the surface of these DAS setts with a damp thumb, the better they look. Next I will model some patches of damage and repair.

Inglenook! I decided to build the Slater's Vanwide next, as I only had one van so far. Here it's half-done but, importantly, with wheels, buffers and couplings, and a bit of weight inside, which means that it could be shunted by the 08. This means that I now have the 8 wagons necessary to run a full 5-3-3 Inglenook shunting puzzle for real, for the first time! As is traditional, some scribbles on Post-It notes allowed me to shuffle the deck of 8 cards and stick 5 to the canal, next to the 5-wagon siding where the train will be assembled. I ran through a couple of Inglenooks and it's just as much low-speed, gentle fun as I remembered! Now to finish the Vanwide if I can stop playing testing ...

... and landed face-first.

Garage Scene The middle under-arch scene came back from Jim's and a cracking job he's done on it! I'll post some pictures now, as it will be harder to see when the arch fronts are on and some windows and doors installed. The basic box is 5mm foam board, with Slater's brick plastikard walls and arched ceiling. The contents are a mixture of plastic kit and scratchbuilt. It depicts a 1960's back-street Citroen specialist garage, with an eldery model under the tarp (baby-wipe soaked in dilute PVA) and a 2CV undergoing the usual chassis welding. The blue light is from a flickery blue LED to represent arc-welding. In the back left-hand corner is an indoor outhouse, complete with toilet made from Das modelling clay. The office is lit by a ceiling bulb and angle-poise lamp (scratchbuilt by Jim). A couple of mechanics are from Preiser, one thinking about sawing something in half and one lying under the 2CV, welding. The "Citroen" sign on the back wall must have a broken fluorescent tube as it constantly flickers! I can't take any credit for this scene, apart from installing the LED lighting and providing some of the parts. Thanks Jim!

CCTV Now that the fronts are on the arches, it's difficult to see where to stop the locos under the high-level section before they slam into a brick wall. So I fitted a small camera like this under the high level board. It's colour, not that you would know it as the infra-red LEDs kick in and reduce everything to black-and-white on the display. The lens is threaded and can be focussed very close. A 5" LCD screen similar to this one hangs under the layout. A single 12V 1A wall-wart powers both devices and is plugged into one of the multi-way extensions fastened under the layout. It's attached (via a single screw to allow it to turn to face the operator) to a block of wood that pushes into the gap in one of the plywood beams. Hopefully this means that the screen could be relocated to the back of the layout if the need arises. Here's the Jinty on the rearmost of the two tracks. It's now a piece of cake to stop the locos accurately within an inch of the wall.

Thanks CME! So that this doesn't drift further off-topic, please see http://duncan-hurst.se7ens.net for more. (P.S I also had an MGB GT - just a vanilla 1.8 though - not the V8!) James - good looking weathering on that 08. I must do something like that to mine. How did you achieve the effect?

Well I made another wagon. 7 down and 1 more needed for the minimum set. This one is a Slater's steel open: It's built as per the instructions, except for a rocking axle unit at one end and the lamp brackets have been repositioned according to a prototype picture I chose from Paul Bartlett's invaluable web site. I also ran some brass strip between the W irons. For a plastic wagon kit, there are a satisfying number of etched and cast brass parts, which all help "the look". So for the next wagon I have a choice of 2 on the shelf - a Slater's Vanwide or a Slater's Conflat. Hmmm - choices ...

This is getting totally off-topic, but here's why my RMWeb handle is as it is. This was my fast DAX: 3.9L of bugs-in-yer-teeth V8 goodness. Sigh - gone to a new home a few years now.

Duncan, I like the Q1! Duncan

Great stuff Rob! Can you expound a bit on how you did the bolts? Where did you get the styrene washers? Thanks.

I did consider this, but the trouble is that if the buffers compress, the tip of the hook will be well behind the buffer faces and will therefore fail to couple or uncouple because the loop will be in the wrong position in the latch.

Thanks Bill and Rich. I investigated the buffers a bit more and came up with a reversible solution to make them work with the Dinghams. As far as I can tell, the Dinghams are designed to work best with fixed buffers, as the coupling hook should be level with the buffer faces but should never protrude beyond them. So I have made the 08 buffers rigid as follows. First I wiggled one of the front buffers gently, to see how it was fixed on. It turns out to be a simple push-fit over a boss on the plastic buffer beam, held by a dot of rubbery glue. The buffer shank is a nice brass tube with the buffer and its spring captive in the business end so there's no danger of bits flying across the workshop! The back of the buffer spindle inserts into the hole in the end of the plastic boss when the buffer is pressed, so I tried a packer piece to fill in the hole and stop the buffer moving into it. Here are the tools and materials. The important bit is the plastic filler rod. Mine was 2.3mm diameter and came from an assortment pack of Evergreen rod and tube. So long as it's less than the 2.75mm internal bore of the hole in the boss, it should be OK. The length of the bit of rod is fairly critical and should be 2.4mm. I made mine by cutting off a slightly longer bit, then jamming it onto the end of a ubiquitous cocktail stick (other brands won't work as well ...) and gently filing whilst rotating the cocktail stick slowly, to get a reasonably square end. Take it slowly and file both ends until 2.4mm is achieved. Then simply put this bit in the hole in the buffer beam and push the buffer shank fully back in place. After I was sure it was going to work OK, I put a tiny smear of contact adhesive in the end of the buffer shank before final fitting. Do make sure the buffer shank goes fully home against the plastic buffer base on the buffer beam. My buffers now do not retract when pressed. There's maybe 0.1mm travel and the 08 can propel a heavy load and still auto-uncouple from the end wagon when required. This modification should be fully reversible by removing the packing pieces. Just don't glue the buffer shanks on too well!

The 08 has now acquired Dingham couplings and has been used to do some shunting round the yard. The coupling swap procedure is documented over on my workbench thread. Now I really need another couple of wagons to make up the full eight required for an Inglenook puzzle!

Just to say that I have carried out a coupling transplant on my 08, to fit Dingham auto-couplings. This was quite easy and I have documented the procedure with pictures over on my workbench thread.

As mentioned over on my layout thread, I took delivery of a green Dapol 08 with late BR crest and wasp stripes. Offerston Quay uses Dingham couplings, so I decided to bite the bullet and convert the 08 to use Dinghams. I thought I'd document my findings here in case it's useful to anyone else contemplating a similar modification. At the cab end of the loco, here's the unmodified set-up. The plastic coupling hook is retained by a small spring which hooks through the back of the coupling bar and wraps round a small brass post set into the chassis. There seems to be some rubbery glue on the brass post, but a bit of careful pulling with tweezers got the spring unhooked and removed. The coupling can the be withdrawn from the buffer beam. One thing that is immediately noticeable is how long the links are in this coupling. I guess Dapol wanted to avoid buffer-lock by having a sizeable gap to the next wagon when pulling stock over reverse curves. I wanted to re-use the Dapol screw-link coupling as a cosmetic addition to the Dingham (as shown here), so I sprung the legs of the upper link apart, which allows the centre section to be removed. The upper link is then passed through the coupling bar and also removed. Only the springiness of the upper and lower links keeps them in place on the screw section. The hole in the Dapol buffer beam is much wider than the etched nickel-silver Dingham bar and allowed the coupling to slop around sideways as I initially tried it in the hole. So I added a coupling plate from the Dingham etch, but to the back of the buffer beam. There's just enough room to get one in and hold it in place with a little aluminium clip (while checking for squareness) before loading a cocktail stick with a small drop of Roket Hot CA glue and touching it to the edge of the plate. I had to cut the Dingham coupling bar's length down, to fit in the gap in front of the brass post. I found that the Dinghams, as supplied, protruded from the buffer beam just the right amount to be level with the buffer faces (as instructed) without either cutting them down or packing them out. A bit of spring and a brass ring holds the new coupling in place. Once the right way up, the Dapol screw-link coupling could be snapped into the small cutout I put in the top edge of the Dingham coupling. At the front of the loco access is a bit tighter. A skinny set of tweezers and a long, thin "mosquito" forceps are the weapons of choice here. This is with the tiny spring removed. Like at the rear, I glued on a n/s plate to locate the new coupling and retained it with a spring and brass ring. You may notice the c0ck-up I made here - I accidentally got a drop of CA glue on my finger and then touched the underside of one of the air tanks! Pulling my finger off left a nasty fingerprint (and a small patch of skin). I will have to try to smooth this down and cover it over with some weathering crud at some point. Annoyed at myself! Anyway, here's the finished item, at the rear: ... and at the front: They work OK when propelling a light load, but the very soft Dapol buffer springs do allow the buffers to compress when propelling a heavy load to the point where the Dinghams stick out further than the buffer faces. This has caused failure to auto-uncouple using the electromagnets (as the 08's loop is too far into the next wagon's latch), so I may have to consider toughening up the buffer springs or fixing them rigidly. I'll run it for a while first to see how much of a problem this is. This mod should be reversible if I ever wanted to revert to the Dapol couplings. It would mean prising off the n/s plates behind the buffer beams but at least the outward appearance would be as original afterwards.

You can get an NCE 5 Amp Booster, such as this: http://www.ncedcc.com/online-store/!/PB105-5-Amp-Power-Booster/p/38322063/category%3D10026287 Cheaper than starting again with a new system?

d600, The setup given by John (Brossard) above is exactly what I got from Digitrains, with the addition of a capacitor array stay-alive pack. The MX644D chip arrived with the stay-alive pack already made up and soldered to the chip. The sound file was, of course, also already installed. The speaker arrived with 2 trailing brown wires. These need soldering to the "Spk" connections on the 08's circuit board. Apart from this minor task, just remove the fitted blanking plate and plug in the 644 chip (being careful about which side is up - helpfully labelled "TOP" by Digitrains!). That's all! All the kit was from one place and fitting took about 10 minutes.

Latest Addition to Offerston Quay Roster Here's the latest addition which arrived just in time for New Year - a Dapol 08 shunter in green, with late BR crest and wasp stripes. It has a Paul Chetter ActiveDrive Zimo 644, twin speaker and stay-alive capacitor array from DigiTrains. The sound is superb! It's from my local model railway emporium, Rails of Sheffield. I picked it up in person which gave me a chance to open the box, inspect and test run it on the shop's test track. Lucky I did so, as the first box opened had a loco with half a coupling at the front end and no coupling at all at the rear! (And no loose bits in the box - strange). The Rails staff simply took it away and brought me another to check. Top service! I love the slow running. Just as a test, I set it to propelling five wagons from under the high-level board and into the frontmost siding, at speed step 1. This journey of 180cm took 1 hour 45 mins! I would post a video but it would appear almost stationary :-) Needless to say, a few wagons have been moved somewhat aimlessly around the goods yard, using the JLTRT Midland 1-plank wagon as a runner until I fit Dinghams to the 08.