sparaxis

Although one can make the generic statement "the more poles the better" it isn't always true. The primary requirement for reducing cogging or magnetic locking is to design the armature and pole pieces so that as the armature turns the magnetic reluctance is minimized. The stator pole pieces should cover an integral number of armature slots+poles, so that as the armature rotates the amount of "iron" and "air" covered by the stator poles doesn't change. In a "flat" motor it is easier to achieve this for three poles than for five. (120 degrees vs 72 degrees (1 pole - inefficient) or 144 degrees (2 poles - requires the stator magnets to be wider than the armature diameter) Other measures are to maximize the iron and minimize the slots, and skew the poles so that the entry and exit of the armature poles under the pole pieces is softened. A modern 3 pole skew wound motor with narrow slots will usually outperform a dinosaur like a Romford Bulldog, or the original Ks double ended motor. It is true that "all things being equal" a 5 pole motor will be better than a 3 pole, but in practice they seldom are.

I think Peco's approach is very defensible. We all have our personal wish lists, but the reality is a business needs to concentrate on their core products first. The good thing about Peco is generally their products are available... "for ever". This is stark contrast to many others where even a pre-order is no assurance of actually getting what you want. A complete new track system is not something that many manufacturers want to tackle. Just think how old many of those out there are. For example Fleischmann is still selling its N scale Profi track from around 1970, as well as the old Roco track that started off being manufactured for Trix, and Trix's own track of about the same age. The Roco and Trix tracks really don't look that good by todays standards. In the USA Atlas has a fairly modern code 55 system, but their code 80 is ancient. Where's the state of the art N-scale trackage system...(Peco? Kato?) In HO Shinohara was around forever, pretty much unchanged. Atlas code 83 is ok, with a very limited selection - no slips for example - but this is also around 20 years old. and "British Standard Set track" AKA Triang Hornby System 6. In Europe we have Rocoline, (probably 30 years old by now), Tillig code 83 fairly recent, and the newest of the lot, PIKO code 100. I'm thankful that I can actually buy Peco. (Covid shortages etc notwithstanding). Would I like a comprehensive system of bullhead track? Sure I would but when you start looking closely at prototype bullhead and the vast variety of custom formations you start to realize how hard it would be to satisfy everyone.

Actually, I don't think that it is true to say 'fully geared to each driving axle' is the norm. It was true for almost all N-scale and Marklin/Fleischmann/Trix 40 years ago, but today it is very much the exception to the rule. Occasionally a manufacturer will drive to gears on two axles, such as the Bachmann 9F and D11, (I forget exactly what Bachmann did for the GN atlantic - I seem to remember it was designed for gearing to both axles, but didn't have the gears installed) , or Fleischmann 94, but very seldom to more than that. There are still some German manufacturers that gear axles together, but they are generally the same lot that are fond of plastic valve gear and coupling rods. eg. Piko, Gutzold, Tillig and Bemo. (I model European, American and British, so I have wide exposure to what is out there). Due to the challenges of backlash in the gears, you either have to have a gear train designed with the same number of meshes between motor and all the axles. (No long gear train driven at one end), or significant slop in the coupling rods. Of course, assembly is a challenge....If you are one tooth out the loco can jam...don't ask. Ok, confessions. That was EXACTLY what was wrong with my DJM austerity. Carefully re-assembled it runs fine. At least being six coupled it doesn't suffer from rods that twirl around at strange angles, like the 14XX or 02. Frankly, I'm very surprised that Rapido chose to do this. By gearing the axles you lose the possibility of sprung and/or compensated axles.

I have around 200 locomotives fitted with decoders. Bitter experience has taught me that saving a little on a "bargain" decoder is really not worth it. I prefer ESU decoders, as the rail-com plus feature is really useful (automatically identifies the locomotive to the command station with all the function assignments etc.) but Zimo is a good alternate choice with affordable options like the MX600 series. And both Zimo and ESU allow CVs to be read "on the main" using rail com. In addition, both offer superior motor control with no problems controlling almost any type of motor you can think of. When I first moved to the USA I bought some locally manufactured decoders from a major brand. I could never get the motor control characteristics adjusted properly. Money saved was money wasted, as I ended up replacing them in the end.

Oh right. I forgot. I've been "doing DCC" for so long that I forgot. Unless you are using a high-tech LED lighting strip from the likes of ESU or Viessmann, with adjustable constant brightness levels, lighting fed directly from the track is not very satisfying. For me, one of the reasons for going DCC was constant carriage lighting. And smoke units that smoke...but that is more for my classic Marklin collection...nothing newer than 1971.

True, but the brighter - darker sort of flicker. (Actually dim and dimmer) not the Sahara desert at midday/dark side of the moon type of flicker. Not to tabulate rivets or anything...but Hornby's lighting is way too bright for both oil and gas. I suppose the "public" would complain if their nice new illuminated carriages had only a glimmer of light instead of glowing like a fireball. I have a gas lamp in my front garden and I am old enough to remember kerosene lanterns at my grandparents house, before they had electricity. No-one tried to read after dark.

I bought some 2032s yesterday and was amazed to find some with a special bad tasting coating. There you go. I would never consider carriage lighting by means of batteries. Split axle pickups and a smallish buffer capacitor (220 microFarad or so) and charging resistor/diode works just fine to kill flicker.

I have always found that RP25 profile round, concentric wheels work extremely well. Sadly the few Dapol wagons I have seem to fail in that regard. The flanges are extremely fine, much lower than RP25. And the wheels seem to be not quite round or concentric. A recipe for derailment! I use my Dapol wagons for testing newly laid trackwork. If they do not derail, nothing will!

I think the problem is that you need more than one locomotive... A couple of locos and some coaches and wagons, and suddenly everything changes. Like the SECR for example. I wasn't planning to go there, but suddenly I have a nice little SECR collection. I shall be buying a coal tank, and a Precedent to go with my Ratio coaches and Gem Cauliflower.

I don't have a link available, but there was a lot of comment with photos in the "drehscheibe-online" forums last year.

Some manufacturers are starting to use a variant of ink-jet printing...with varying results. Roco came in for quite a lot of criticism in the last year or so as some new locos used this technology and the internet declared that it was not as sharp/clear/defined as tampo printing for the smallest elements. I guess it is just one more tool in the tool box. Locos covered in all over advertising, (or teak finishes on carriages) probably benefit from this. But for sharp lettering, tampo still works best. (for now)

Makes sense to me

I did something very similar when converting Marklin C-track turnouts to be 2 rail compatible. The crossing is switched depending on the route, and then the appropriate switch rail is energized from the crossing. The other rail must remain dead, because of the slider for the studs needs to pass over it with an almost certain short. Normally the rails are isolated, with a metal contact strip for flange contact. (removed in this case.)

I suspect all the "Ratio" rolling stock kits will become Parkside over time, leaving Ratio with the line side structures and scenic details. I wouldn't be surprise to see some item swapping between Wills and Ratio as well.

Interestingly enough after three different versions of the "sinus" concept and a bankruptcy, Marklin dropped the whole idea of brushless motors and went back to 3 and 5 pole iron cored motors, (With the odd coreless here and there). They worked "well enough" when supplied with the constant 22 V or so of the Marklin digital system , but when run on "analogue" they were miserable as they needed at least 8-9 V on the track to power the electronics enough to move. The first version was a home made pancake that would run away downhill. The second version was "can" with worm drive, that had noticeable jitter at slow speeds. (Off-the-shelf stepper motor I believe) The third version was their so called "soft drive" sinus with skew magnetisation. A major problem with these is if the drive circuitry dies, your loco is dead as there are no spares available from Marklin. (Quite unlike the "iron age" Marklin locos from 60 years ago that I have been buying on eBay for light entertainment. Generally they run just fine. Maybe need new tyres or pickup shoes...but that's it) Lionel offered/proposed a new generation of locos with brushless motors probably 20 years ago, but I am not sure if they ever reached the market or died a natural death.

Coreless generally don't do well on feedback controllers, but do very well on modern DCC decoders. The pulse frequency on traditional feedback controllers is low enough for the coreless motors to respond to each pulse due to their very low inertia. Coreless motors are generally more efficient than traditional motors, and the high resulting back EMF also confuses the controller. Modern DCC decoders operate at very high frequencies of 18-50 kHz, high enough to get over the low inertia and inductance of the coreless motors. Also the feedback sensitivity can be adjusted to compensate for the higher efficiency. ESU lok pilots have an automatic calibration function that works very well. For example, the LokPilot 4 in my DJM class 71 works very well. Check your loco on smooth filtered DC first. I have been known to use a 9V battery... <grin>

Zimo or ESU would be my choice. While they are not the cheapest on the market, the 121 is not exactly a cheap item...

Living in the USA, I have ordered from a number of UK retailers, but my go-to remains Kernow because they are so responsive to small requests. Such as "please wait to ship this order until the Hornby brake vans come in next week". And of course they did. Absolutely superb service.

If I am not mistaken, more than a few GCR modelers have been happy to use repainted Triang clerestories. The give a good impression of the equivalent GCR coaches. Are they accurate models of anything. NO. (Not even GWR) But short of spending way too much money and effort on hard to build kits, they allow us to recreate an impression of something long before any of us were born. You could say the same of many private owner wagons. The liveries do not necessarily match the exact wagon types. Or the liveries may not be correct either, considering that the source material in many cases is a black and white photo on orthochromatic film. Yes, I can and do build kits, and have a large library of all best reference books. (Thank you Internet). But since I am probably not going to live to 150, I shall be purchasing quite a few of these where they match the general panelling style of the railway in question.

The Loksound selects have been replaced by the USA/Australia only DCC versions of the V5. The only differences are that the DCC versions don't do the other protocols such as MFX, and don't come with a speaker. "The LokSound 5 DCC is made for the North American and Australian markets. It is a pure DCC Decoder, which supports RailComPlus and can also be used on DC layouts." "Can you explain what happens with the Select product line? The LokSound Select is getting discontinued. It will still be supported but the reason of the change is partly because of an end of life component issue. It is getting harder and harder to find the components needed to produce the Selects and V4.0s. They are 10 years old in 2019... The V5 DCC has some of the best parts of the Selects combined with the programmability of the V4.0s plus some new and exciting features. We've priced this at the Select price though so it really is the best the both worlds. Can I load a Select sound file on 5 hardware? Only V4.0 files can be loaded onto 5s. Will the Select file library be converted to 5 files or reprocessed as new 5's? Almost all of the Select files have V4.0 equivalents. These will convert automatically to load into a 5 with the LokProgrammer 5.0.0 Software."

My guess would be GCR liveried 04, using the revised ROD tooling.

My was shipped Royal Mail from a certain Cornish establishment earlier today.

How long is a piece of string? (As long as you want it to be) Two wires IS possible. Many European manufacturers have decoders integrated into their point motors etc. So you just join your tracks together and off you go. It is when a layout gets to a certain size that it is no longer an option. Way back when I had automated power routing on my DC layout. Throwing the turnouts automatically set up the signals etc. Signals were operated by reed switches and magnets on locos. Needless to say there was a jungle of wires and many many multi pole relays. Now, there is a 2 wire bus to each of the "Switch pilots" on the layout, and 4x3 wires to the 4 solenoids that each controls. Similarly for feedback to drive the signals. WAY LESS WIRES.

Nothing like paper! (or is it nothing like leather?) Horses for courses. Those of us who are "foreigners" are confronted by two real issues with respect to paper magazines: 1) It gets really expensive 2) Magazines take ages to get here. Paper is great. My German magazines are still on paper as they haven't sorted the electronic mag thing out as well as pocketmags or Zinio. (But that is changing: VGB aka Miba and Eisenbahn Journal now allow Digital Downloads, but you lose out on the 4X a year cover DVD) Bonus: 3) I can carry around a stack of magazines on my Tablet...and I still have shelf space in the basement. I like the way BRM is using the digital format to do more than paper allows, because, really, a flat file of the paper mag doesn't add much. Keep up the good work, BRM.

Living in the USA, and observing this farce with some interest, I think the current shift to using MTC21 in the USA can be defined by three letters: ESU ESU has been very successful in infiltrating the US market with their Select decoders, Replacing US vendors like QSI, Soundtraxx etc from factory installed systems. Since ESU was the developer of the MTC21 interface, they could hardly be expected to push anything else. They have been pushing NEXT18 as well. Although as believe the PLUX series of decoders was better thought out and do not have the incompatibility issues of the various MTC21 flavours, it seems that more and more of the US manufacturers are accepting the "correct" interpretation of the specification lately