richard w

Some more pictures. Had to do a complete repaint on this one. The varnish on my previous weathering effort yellowed. Stripped back to bare plastic and started again, the cantrail stripe was quite a challenge. Another one I made a mess of. Was 37506 and has now been repainted. I've wrapped the red stripe around the nose and will renumber to 37514. Some touch ups & correction left to complete. New purchase this year. Followed pictures and stayed away from the airbrush.

I've spent the past 10 days or so working on a project I've been putting off for ages. Much of my collection was weathered (badly) by me about 5 or 6 years ago. Certain items I didn't even run as I just wasn't happy with them. I fell into the usual trap and overcooked the airbrushing on everything. Now older & wiser I've removed the weathering from 7 locos and re-weathered or repainted them to a better standard. Paid close attention to the real thing and stayed away from excessive airbrushing. I've also weathered a few new additions such as the dutch 37. I don't claim any of the work to be on a professional level but it's certainly quite a bit better than my previous efforts. Working on a video concerning the project which I hope to have ready tomorrow. Cheers

A good question. I decided to stay with RTR track on this layout as its only my second serious layout. I compromised & used the new bullhead points and re-spaced the sleepers on the rest of the track. I expect I will take the track more seriously on future projects. For now I'm happy with the look, cheers.

Hes welcome to it. Have been watching Ian for a long time. Met him in 2018 at the NEC, top bloke.

Thanks Chris. The Granada is coming on very well. Obviously I'm not able to work on it at present but I remain hopeful of getting it on the road this year. You can follow Granada progress on the below link. I've documented everything I've done to it over the past 4 years. https://autoshite.com/topic/25964-1975-ford-granada-coupe-1023-hours-of-work-rebuilding-all-the-mechanical-bits/

Forgot to mention I also added lights to all the coaches. If any of you have the unlit Bachmann mk2fs its very easy to add lights to those as they have pickups fitted from the factory. I've fitted a single DCC Concepts wiper pickup to the mk2as and so far this has worked fine as I'm using quite large capacitors for the anti flicker.

Spent the last two months working on my mk2 coaches. I bought some new nse mk2s in January and they certainly showed up the flaws in my existing mk2s that I'd repainted into NSE. So I took the decision to strip the paint off them and start again. Along the way I also ended up repainting the interiors a more convincing colour and added figures to each coach. Took a long time, very pleased with the results. I can't recommend painting 450 figures though! Video concerning the project is in the usual place. Most of it was filmed before the pandemic in the UK ramped up. I've addressed it briefly at the beginning of the video as I thought it would be remiss of me not to mention it. I am well and so is the family, I hope the same applies to you. I am currently at home following the Government advice. I am unable to work from home so am on leave without pay. I have serious concerns for the future of the small company I work for. Please be respectful in the comments. I've already had to delete some from people who claim they've had it worse and all this is a joke. Look after yourselves, take care

Managed to finish up the edit for the video concerning the platforms this week. I covered the process from start to finish as usual including the track weathering. I'm making a start on the station building now. Its going to take me ages but I'll post on here as when I make progress with it. Cheers

Been busy ballasting & weathering. Going for much less weathering here compared to the bay platform. I've added a few drain covers and will also be adding further litter. The platforms themselves have been made using celotex with a layer of card over the top. I've then skimmed the top with filler and sanded. For now it's just in a basic grey which will do for now as I progress with other bits around the station. Happy with how things are going. Long way to go yet but it's great to finally have something that looks like a station!

Well, I've been doing a rather poor job of keeping this thread updated! I hope to do a better job this year. So to kick things off again here are some pics of the station area which I've just started to build. I'm having a go at representing some lifted track which was commonplace during the 80s. I've used some laser cut sleepers from scale model scenery and then ballasted the area using a mix of different ballast types from various manufacturers. I've then airbrushed the area with various Vallejo colours. Aiming for a very dirty scene with plenty of oil spills, litter & sludge. Think it needs a few weeds for a splash of colour. The ballast on the main & relief lines will be much cleaner which I hope will provide a nice contrast to this area. Added some litter and almost went blind cutting it out! Tiny stuff but I'm very pleased with the effect. Continuing to work on the platforms now which are the concrete style ones that Peco do. Seen these on loads of layouts over the years and always wanted to have a go. Should be making some more progress over the week if all goes to plan. Cheers

If you remove the body being careful of the detail attached to it you can very quickly remove the cab interior. It's secured by two clips into the glazing. Not sure which figures would be most suitable but it shouldn't be too difficult to get one to fit.

When I boxed the model back up I took a closer look at the cab interior. It's actually very easy to remove being secured to the glazing by two small clips. A closer look at the axle boxes for those who are interested.

It's difficult to take a look at something without straying into review territory and I did slip a bit towards the end. I'm just a bloke with a camera in the attic, I shouldn't be the one telling people what they should or shouldn't purchase. That said I did enjoy the model and it ran very well, looks promising for the production batch. Pleased you enjoyed the background info, I do enjoy putting those bits together. Cheers

Been quite busy on the layout over the last month or so. I've now made some good progress on the first bit of scenery, still plenty to do but the basics are all done. It will eventually be a small car auction focusing on old bangers rather than ex fleet cars. The garage building is temporary for now, I'll be building something else to go in its place. As usual I've filmed the whole process which you can find below.

Just found this on the website. Explains the difficulty in ordering.

Getting hold of it isn't straight forward and delayed the video by a number of weeks. Magnorail have (had) a store that shipped worldwide and I purchased 3 of the 4 sets I needed from there. The page then went dead with a maintenance message and its still there over a month later. Heres a link for it. https://www.magnorail.com/store/ I bought the last set from a Dutch shop linked below. So far I've yet to find anywhere in the UK that stocks magnorail. The main magnorail site has a buy page that links to all the official stockists but none are based in the UK. https://www.avtproducts.com/

I've been experimenting with Magnorail recently. Very happy with it although it does take a fair bit fiddling and work to get it all working smoothly. Had my eye on this stuff for a while as it allows you to move cars and smaller vehicles. I was never that keen on Faller as it's limited to speeding trucks and buses. Video is below. Still some adjustments to make but so far it all seems to be working ok. Cheers

My main issue with dcc sound was how tinny many of them sounded. Things have improved a lot over the last few years and I was particularly impressed with the quality of the sound on the Hattons 66. Personally I still prefer just to have the odd one or two sound locos as running multiple sound locos together doesn't really do anything for me. For those who haven't seen the latest video here it is. I had a really enjoyable week at Hattons and Warley. Also took delivery of some long awaited Mk2fs. Very pleased with them and even more pleased to finally have a rake for the swallow 47 which was bought specifically to haul this train.

Been a bit delayed on the layout recently. The last few months at work have been especially busy, but more importantly I've been having trouble getting the last few bits to complete the road system ordered. The manufacturers website has been down for maintenance for some time and I've been unable to find a UK stockist or over seas seller who has stock. Luckily today I've found one of the Dutch stockists has some so I've placed an order. I wont go into detail about what it is yet as I'd like to save that for the video concerning it. However I have included a shot of it working in the running video so you'll probably be able to work out what it is anyway!

Not a huge amount of progress on the layout since the last video due to it just being far too hot in the loft. I was impressed how well the insulation kept the heat out for the first few days but obviously it did eventually warm the loft up. Luckily no damage has occurred to the layout and everything including the back scenes is holding up well. I've managed to film a review of Dapol class 121 for those who are interested. Hopefully the temperatures will stay cooler for the rest of the summer. Should allow me to get cracking on the roads and base level scenery. Cheers

I've got it working! However the underlying issue is still there. I've set the BM1s up on the layout again and created an isolating section between them. On the end that doesn't work I've reversed the polarity of the track feeds so it does work. The isolating section between them prevents a short circuit and on it I've installed a reverse loop module. The unit now stops and reverses back down the branch at both ends. The reverse loop module provides a transition between the two sections. I suspect the real issue might be with the command station but not having another unit to test with prevents further troubleshooting. A reverse loop module was substantially cheaper than an new command station so I'll stick with that. I'm just happy its working..

I've tried that a few times but the results are the same (loco doesn't stop). It also stops the loco reversing out after releasing the emergency stop button, manual control doesn't work either. I've read quite a bit on the subject but looking deeper into the below suggests negative asymmetry is ignored unless I'm misinterpreting it? https://dccwiki.com/Asymmetric_DCC I might be able to chop the left hand rail instead and turn off the direction dependency setting in CV51. Although that may get trains stopping at both ends it will probably mess up the push pull. I really hope it’s something silly but so far I'm at a loss as to what it might be...

It does operate the layout correctly but what else can it be? I've tested everything else.

I've removed the layout from the equation and setup both BM1s on a short stretch of track. It still doesn't work. As before the train stops and reverses out correctly at point B only. Swapping the track feeds over on the command station moves the issue from point A to point B. You can see the setup below... I can only think the command station is somehow at fault? Its about 9 years old and spend all of them in the loft.

The power supply I'm using is a Lenz TR150. Everything I'm using is Lenz right down to the decoders. I've tried some other locos with Lenz silvers of various ages and all produce the same behaviour. Currently the layout only has the command station and the BM1s connected to it. I've made up some snubbers/rc filters from bits lying around and fitted them at each end of the bus which runs in a U shape. Unfortunately the problem persists despite the filters. Something I have noticed more recently is even on the end that works there is sometimes a considerable delay before the loco actually starts ABC breaking. In some cases it runs for about 2- 3 feet into the braking section before it actually starts slowing down. This happens more often now the filters are installed so perhaps one of the components I've used for those is faulty. I'm going to setup a short length of track on the floor and plug everything into that and see what happens. Edit - I have tried using the left hand rail just to see what happens and the loco ignores it. Once its reversing out the left rail becomes the right and the loco then stops and reverses back into the siding.