jaym481

Looking forward to your impressions of the Mimic.

I actually ended up doing that. It looked like an easier proposition for wiring.

What was school like in about 1911 David?

I'm modelling Canadian roads in HO (comes with being Canadian), and appreciate what Jason and his team are doing for us, despite the small market. I suppose if he wanted to have cash to roll in a raft of UP stuff would do the trick. Incidentally, having missed The Canadian when it first came out, I finally got one. Paid a bit over the odds, but it's mine. And moving to a house with space for an HO layout is making things much better.

So, let me see if I have this correct. I'd like the points to be DCC controlled, but not using the controller, so using switches or levers or something like an analogue panel. If I was starting from scratch I would need the following" The Cobalt Alpha main bord Switches (what's the diff between the DCC Concepts digital and analogue switch sets?) LEDs for the mimic panel (if I don't use the DCC Concepts LED buttons) Decoders for the point motors My DCC systems are NCE power Cab and Roco Z21. The layout is likely to grow some, and coach lighting and sound may mean I should use a separate accessory bus for poing motors, or at least a booster. Do I need anything to connect the Z21?

I've experienced quite a few derailment problems with the #4 points and UK stock, so I try to use the #6 as much as I can. My Kato US-outline stuff doesn't have any issues, unsurprisingly.

True, and pretty much any equivalent N gauge track can be connected to Kato with a bit of fiddling. A pack of 2 adapters is £1.65 though, and you don't need to cut anything off of the Tomix track.

The #4 points need modification to allow the point blades to engage with the rails, as they stick out too much, derailing a lot of stock. Tomix track has a much wider range of pieces, including curved points, but it isn't readily available in the UK. The Kato adapter piece that is usually used to mix Unitrack with Peco, for example, was designed to allow the Tomix track to adapt to the Kato. The Tomix track also has a much smaller profile plastic ballast, so would probably be easier to integrate into a well modelled layout.

Ian, I think maybe a short list of things that should be covered (keep it short and simple), like common operational features that are always worth considering: programming features/limits, how many hads to operate, number of function keys, type of control keys (buttons, wheels, etc). Then a "free text" part where the reviewer can sum up whatever he/she wants. Jay (Hoping I'll have the time to do a Power Cab review if someone else doesn't beat me to it)

The chap on the right bears an uncanny resemblance to Lt. George.

Sorry, I can't find any pics of my stuff. It's a common technique in wargaming though, along with a few other techniques that may better suit painting a lot of figures. If you do a google image search for 20mm wargame figure painting techniques you'll see a bunch of photos of the various results.The image below shows three different techniques, all of which have good facial detail. The figure on the right is the black undercoat "3 layer" method.

I find dark primer and layers of drybrushing produce a nice result (sorry, no pics), especially for facial features which too often look washed out from a monochrome application of flesh colour.

I had/have the same issue with an A4 tender. I haven't had a chance to look at it more closely, but the same problem - disassembled and after reassembly two of the four wheel sets drag.

I'll take a closer look at the "plugs." They do look very much like 2 pin plastic plugs fitted to a socket, and all fit straight down onto the board. You can see what looks like an unused male socket near the capacitors, and another multi-pin one at the opposite end of the board just beyond the chip. The wire ends look exactly the same (another reason I thought this might be a factory application). It definitely needs basic maintenance, and maybe more than seems apparent. I'd have expected different behaviour though - rather than a shut-down of DCC functions I'd have thought poor performance. At the moment I'm having a hard time stringing together the time I need to look at this in any great detail, but hopefully I'll get some time soon.

Thanks Phil. The OEM reference is in the QSI documentation I have, and mentions Intermountain. Perhaps they did it a while ago? In any case, thanks for the link to the IM product sheets. I need to work on my Google-fu to find that stuff myself. I'm going to have to see what I can do to remove the board and connect the pickups, as the wires have plugs, and my soldering skills are currently at the stage where I no longer burn myself every time I fire up the soldering iron. The wires look a bit fine for the current state of my eyesight, so I'm reluctant to remove the plugs. Could a duff capacitor have the described effect? My limted knowledge of electronics includes some dabbling in hi-fi, and faulty capacitors can have all sortes of odd effects in my experience.

Well, a bit more investigation seems to indicate it's an OEM board and was factory fitted at Intermountain. The version is Quantum V7, which seems to be the version just before the Revolution variants. Because it's an OEM board, there isn't much available from QSI, though I managed to find a few scraps on a couple of other sites. I have the manual for the board, but not the product sheet for the loco, which is supposed to have some other info. Here's a photo of the board: I did manage to do a software reset of the chip, as that's worked for me with a couple of other used locos with decoders that weren't performing well, but no luck with this one. It looks like I'll have to do as you suggest and take the board out and see if it runs on DC. If it's a duff board is there any way to repair them?

Thanks for the responses. Fair point on patience. I should have given it a bit more than the 48 hours. I sometimes forget that my own schedule isn't necessarily follwed by anyone else. I don't know anyone near me with a DCC setup. I can give it a try on DC - the decoder is supposed to work on DC, so I could try that. I can't remove the board though, as it's second hand, and I don't have the original DC board. I do have the manual, but there was no help there, though it's quite different from the one linked (and the board looks somewhat different as well). I'll dig into that link and see if there's something that might help. There's a local club that I've been meaning to attend, though just haven't made the time. perhaps this can provide impetus (though I hate to think I'd join the club just to solve my little problems). I'm very new to all this. When I abandoned model railroading nearly 40 years ago there was no inkling of DCC. It's made the layout wiring part of my re-entry into the hobby easier, but there's added complexity elsewhere. I wonder if a decoder tester board might be worth getting?

I guess not. Can anyone recommend a US-based forum which might be able to help?

Posting here on advice. I hope it's the correct thread. I have an HO loco recently purchased used that has a QSI sound decoder on board. I think it's a Revolution V7, but I'll post a pic tomorrow and maybe someone can ID it for sure. In any case, the issue is that it seems to start up ok, but when I give it a little throttle it cuts out. I'm running it with an NCE Power Cab. The PC is 2A, so I wonder if it may be a case of excessive current draw? The loco cuts out and won't re-start consistently - sometimes it'll restart when I select a function, and sometimes it has to be taken off the track and replaced. The PC doesn't show any signs of a short, and the loco is recognized on the programming track, though I haven't tested functions there. Any ideas? The loco is Intermountain, and the decoder is a board replacement, not a plug in.

This reminds me that I need to update. It now works for me, mostly. I still get an occasional "no loco detected" message, but I suspect it's my track and/or connections. The larger problem is that some Hornby and Bachmann decoders seem to go unrecognized.

Thanks for the tips. I'll doublecheck everything and see if a driver re-install works.

I have an NCE USB interface that I got as part of a bunch of stuff a while ago, and thought I'd try it out today. I installed JMRI, connected the Power Cab, PCP and USB interface, then connected the USB to my laptop. The driver downloaded and installed automatically. I launched JMRI DecoderPro3, carried out the configuration according to the instructions. Everything seemed to work - the status indications in the bottom margin of the decoderPro window indicated green (see the log file at the end of this post). When I attempted to read the decoder the LED on the PCP and the one on the PCP connected end of the USB adapter flickered, so some info was being exchanged, but I kept getting an error failure to read the decoder. I tried several locomotives, and no luck, though the Power Cab was still able to recognize and operate them, so they were clearly "connected" to the track. From this, it seems there's a problem with the connection between the USB adapter and the computer. The Power Cab is only a few months old, I bought it new from a UK dealer. Here is the info from the log file if that will help: --------------------- 2015-04-30 15:11:09,019 util.Log4JUtil INFO - ****** JMRI log ******* [main] 2015-04-30 15:11:09,073 util.Log4JUtil INFO - This log is appended to file: C:\Users\Jay\JMRI\log\messages.log [main] 2015-04-30 15:11:09,074 util.Log4JUtil INFO - This log is stored in file: C:\Users\Jay\JMRI\log\session.log [main] 2015-04-30 15:11:09,081 apps.AppsBase INFO - DecoderPro 3 version 3.10-r27895 starts under Java 1.8.0_40 at Thu Apr 30 15:11:09 BST 2015 [main] 2015-04-30 15:11:12,492 gui3.Apps3 INFO - Starting with profile Test_Profile.3edc6978 [main] 2015-04-30 15:11:12,785 usbdriver.UsbDriverAdapter INFO - NCE USB COM11 port opened at 9600 baud [main] 2015-04-30 15:11:12,910 nce.NceConnectionStatus INFO - NCE EPROM revision = 7.3.0 [AWT-EventQueue-0] 2015-04-30 15:11:14,255 util.FileUtil INFO - File path program: is C:\Program Files (x86)\JMRI\ [main] 2015-04-30 15:11:14,255 util.FileUtil INFO - File path preference: is C:\Users\Jay\JMRI\Test_Profile\ [main] 2015-04-30 15:11:14,256 util.FileUtil INFO - File path profile: is C:\Users\Jay\JMRI\Test_Profile\ [main] 2015-04-30 15:11:14,257 util.FileUtil INFO - File path settings: is C:\Users\Jay\JMRI\ [main] 2015-04-30 15:11:14,257 util.FileUtil INFO - File path home: is C:\Users\Jay\ [main] 2015-04-30 15:11:14,258 util.FileUtil INFO - File path scripts: is C:\Program Files (x86)\JMRI\jython\ [main] 2015-04-30 15:12:03,235 jmrit.AbstractIdentify WARN - Stopping due to error: No locomotive detected (301) [AWT-EventQueue-0]

I have an Intermountain F7 A and B set, and intend to convert them to DCC. They are DCC ready (8 or 9 pin sockets on the light board), but I'm wondering of the best choice would be the ESU Select Direct board, a Tsunami IM1000 board or a plug in decoder and retain the stock board. I spoke with Kevin at Coastal DCC and he admitted they don't have any experience with Intermountain, so he suggested a plug-in ESU Select. I'm just wondering if the Select Direct is an easy drop-in, as swapping the whole board seems a cleaner solution to me. If anyone has experience with a Select Direct into an Intermountain loco I'd appreciate the input.

Some potential changes to my layout show a gap. I need to be able to model multiple baseboards with different sizes.

You have my attention. I have a Bachman D of C (split chassis) and want to do sound for it, with "bells and whistles" of course. Well outside my current abilities though.