jaym481

I had an S-Lever unused so I tried it out with a 9V battery. There are two SPTD switch contacts and one passing momentary contact. I wired my point motor and battery to the outboard SPDT contact first, and it didn't work very well. There seems to be a spring at the end of travel of the lever, and when the hand pressure is released the lever is pressed against the lock, but also loses contact. The centre set of contact connections for a SPDT switch work correctly though. I made a short video, but it's still too big to upload and I don't have anywhere to host it right now. Not that it's very interesting.

I haven't, but there's no reason they wouldn't work. They have two SPDT contacts if you just want to throw the points with a DC power supply, and they work with any number of decoders if you want to operate by DCC.

I use the Tillig ones. They are technically for code 83, but the Tilling track is very fine, so they fit quite well. Depending on where the chairs are on the Bullhead track you may need to trim a little off one or both ends of the Tillig joiners.

That's rather ironic.

I have a mobile phone repair kit that has one of those tools. I've used some of the other tools for work on other models, but this one is getting more intimidating every time I see a post about someone's trials reassembling.

By any chance can you post a picture of the tool and some info on how it works to open the car? I would like to fit some crew to the coach, but fear my ham-handed attempt will do more harm than good.

Well, waiting for me when I got home today was this: A bit of a postage ordeal ended well, thankfully. Gave it a run in on the rollers with DC and now to see if I can find that spare Next18 decoder I'm sure I have lying around.

Well aware of that. I had a parcel caught up directly in the middle of that, and it took over a month to get to me. On the other hand a parcel from another vendor arrived last week, tracked from shop to my door, in two weeks, which is normal. It seems some parts of the RM network are in better shape than others.

If I understand Shapeways' checking process, it simply determines whether a model is printable. In other words things like wall thicknesses and such. It doesn't do anything to determine whether the model can fit on a chassis - either a salvaged RTR chassis or perhaps an etched one. From the buyer's perspective it's a "scratch aid" and a bit of a gamble. Items that are a gamble tend to rarely command top money. The "design" aspect is really how much effort the .stl creator puts in to making the print viable for the end user. The design of the coach or wagon itself is to be credited to the original designers who did so for the railways. Where the .stl "designer" makes his bones is in whether the final output is viable as is, or needs a lot of work to get to the point where it will be worth puting on a layout. Some modelers love that sort of challenge, but even they don't expect to pay new kit or RTR prices for a coach body, let alone more than what a Roxley (for example) etched kit goes for. The wargame comparison above is a good one. The producer doesn't look to recoup his hours of labour with a single sale, but by pricing the product where it's affordable to a broader audience, and not expensive enough to make it worth the effort to pirate (which is going to happen - welcome to the digital reality), the .stl producer can still make money. Unfortunately wargame figures are a more viable product for bulk production than obscure GWR wagons, so that business model won't translate directly.

As a reference point Isinglass coach kits, body only are £38.50. That's a kit that has been 3d drawn based on the Isinglass drawings, repeatedly printed and tested, sold as a kit. I can attest that the kits are excellent, especially when you can pay for the bogies, frame and interior detail which are also test printed and fitted. That brings the kit to £63, and includes an A4 sheet with the original drawings (not to scale, but for slightly more a scale drawing can be included.) Kits are print to order in resin. So the question is, would you buy an FDM-printed coach body from Shapeways, that hasn't been test printed to see what sort of underframe will fit it, or any other issues that might arise, would you pay £100 for such a thing (plus Shapeways postage and customs if applicable)? The thing about .stls as a, effectively, NFT, is that they are likely to be purchased by either a hobbyist, who will print or have printed a couple for his own use, and maybe a couple for friends, or a serious vendor who wishes to start a business selling them a-la Isinglass. In either case, if there's no scope to make adjustments or improvements for the purpose of model railways, and the drawings haven't been test printed to assess practical usability, the value of that .stl is not going to be high, regardless of the number of hours the draughtsman put into it. I've suggested the Kickstarter type model before - if you have a minimum price in mind and the crowdfund doesn't meet it, you don't lose anything, but it'll give you a strong idea of what people are willing to pay for what is, effectively, a license to your work.

Mine is still in transit, though at least the Royal Mail tracking shows it left the UK. Unfortunately it's not showing up on Canada Post tracking. Hopefully it'll turn up in the next week or so. I've only ever had one package disappear between the UK and my door. A book that was ordered during the first lockdown. It turned up in a plastic bag, damp and black with mold, about 6 months after it was originally due to be delivered.

RM tracking is still showing it at the Northampton Peak parcels hub since 23 Feb. Unfortunately Canada Post still doesn't know of its existence. Hopefully goon news soon. I'm looking forward to getting No. 6 on to the layout.

I ordered my Hunslet from Hatton's on 23 Feb and it arrived yesterday. Tracking was uninterrupted from Royal Mail to Canada Post (other than a few days in customs jail on arrival here, which wasn't bad as that has added over a week to the door-to-door time for some past shipments). RM tracking seems to work, except for a couple (few. More?) from Rails that have, err, gone off the rails.

Interesting - I wonder if any other international shipments have disappeared into the twilight zone of the Northampton parcels hub. I have to say though, that Rails' end was good. Mine was despatched within 3 days of the order (not a preorder) and a tracking number was provided with the notification of shipment.

Royal Mail is causing me a little heartburn. My A5 is on the way (along with some other items from Rails), and tracking is spotty. Sometimes I just get the "we're waiting for it" message that was scanned on the 20th, and sometimes I get the added "it's at Northampton peak Parcel Depot" which was scanned on the 23rd. However, the tracking sometimes shows up only as "waiting for it" even after the Northampton scan has been seen. I've cleared my history for the tracking sit to see if that's part of the issue. In any case, this is in contrast to a parcel from another retailer that was ordered a couple of days after the Rails order. The second parcel enetred the international tracking system and is now showing on the Canada Post tracking as having cleared customs and will be delivered next week. Rails, of course, can't do anything about RM's handling, but the confusion of the recent hack seems to have been cleared some time ago. I would just hate to see the package go adrift - an extremely rare occurrence in my experience.

Thought I should follow up on this. My Tramfabriek order finally arrived with the Train-o-Matic function decoders. I programmed them with JMRI, setting the brightness as low as I could (which wasn't much- but does take a bit of the edge off of the stock lighting wne in DCC track). They worked fine, so it appears the ESU decoders are a bit sensitive. No contest really, as the Train-o-matic decoders are about half the cost of the ESU ones from my local hobby shop.

His website said up to 28 days, and I'm almost there so I plan to contact him today. I suspect any issues are post office related though.

I ordered a couple of those, somewhat before the Royal Mail hack. Still not received after 20-odd days. Hatton's replied, but had not heard of another case of the issue, so they couldn't help. I suspect it's something ESU-specific.

Has anyone successfully tried fitting a lighted coach with a DCC chip? I just tried an ESU Lokpilot 5 FX and though the decoder was tested fine with a Lokprogrammer the lights flash when powered on. The ESU documentation indicates that this will happen if the current draw is too much for the decoder. I have a service request in to Hatton's about it, but I was wondering if anyone has had success, and if so with what decoder? My suspicion is that it might have something to do with that capacitor, or that there's not enough resistance in the PCB, despite all of those little resistors in there.

My modest rake of five SECR coaches (4 pack and full brake) finally arrived after their perilous trans-Atlantic crossing. They are very nice, though I haven't managed to take a roof off yet - on quite tight and almost no space between the roof edge and the body. The only "issue" I have is that the 6-wheeled coaches with lights are apparently useful for finding where my track's transitions from lower to higher height (at the end of a 2% grade) are mildly abrupt. The pickup is, of course, only at the outer axles, and one or the other axle will lift as it rocks over the transition. The lift itself is imperceptible, but enough for the lights to go out. It's quite brief, so some sort of stay alive should do the trick. I'm still mulling over adding decoders. The lights are a bit bright for 1910 SECR I think.

Sorry, I had the wrong number. Its 192.168.0.111. Which, of course, is still not what the OP's is set to.

The IP address of the z21 router is most likely the problem, as the default Roco address is 192.168.1.1, and the z21 itself would have to be reconfigured in order to use a different IP address. Roco strongly discourages anyone to change the IP default because it requires some knowledge of how those things work to do that without creating a brick. Now, I can say that my home router is also accessed by typing http://192.168.1.1 into a browser of a connected computer, and my Z21 (black) has never been set to anything other than defaults. The router address itself shouldn't create routing issues if they are two separate networks, as the router address is not what normal wifi devides are looking for (they look for the address provided by the DNS server). The Z21 is different, and uses the fixed defaults in order to make the system function for people who have no desire to become experts on how wifi works. I'm afraid I'm no expert on how these things work, but I know a little about how to set up a wifi router - enough to know that I should never change the Roco-set defaults. Is your z21 router a Roco sourced one, or did you get a third party one and set it up yourself? edit to add: the 192.168.1.100 of your z21 router must have been set by you at some point, as it's not the default.

Just asking as the original post was how to do it DCC. I think anybody could manage your battery rig just fine.

How do you run it on DCC?

Won't find copper wire in a skip this side of the pond. Too much money to be made at scrap dealers.