Chamby

Map pins, the ones with the coloured plastic balls on the blunt end, work best if you want to avoid getting glue all over your fingers before you start!

Clearly we are not alone… it doesn't say much for the manufacturers quality control, it is a simple enough thing to check.

Have a look at the underside of the socket, or test for shorts using a circuit tester. One of my new Hornby locos had sloppy soldering hidden underneath that shorted across two of the sockets - it didn’t affect DC but DCC didn’t like it. All eight of the sockets should be electrically separate from each other, if you are fitting a chip…

I can be very happy with a model until some bright herbert comes along and points out what is wrong with it. After then, it becomes impossible to view the model without also seeing the defect. I admire those who can just shrug this off and continue to enjoy their model just as much thereafter. For others of us, the enjoyment forever becomes tempered until you are driven to fix the defect. Perfectionists don’t have it easy!

Hi Alex, thanks for responding. It’s when you send out those tempting updates about new discounts on offer: As you fully intend, it temps me to visit your site and see if there’s anything of interest… in my case I want to browse through your new OO gauge rail items (ie: excluding pre-owned) and see what you have in stock. Like @Butler Henderson says, the filter options only allow me to select pre-owned rather than to select new items; and I also seem to end up with loads of pre-order items and things that are out of stock. So what I want to see becomes swamped by too much of what I don’t want. I accept that this search would deliver a large result anyway… but the lack of filtering makes it excessively tedious and unsatisfying, such that I no longer bother. If I am looking for a specific item, it works fine… it’s the ‘“I’ll just have a browse and see if there’s anything to temp me” visits that are an issue. A surprising amount of my purchasing is done in this way, and until recently I’d buy several items a year from you, opportunistically. But currently, you miss out on a potential sale, and I might be missing out on an opportunity. I use Mac and iPad, if that has any bearing on site functionality. kind regards, Phil

I prefer to browse other retailers websites now and only visit TMC as a last resort if I am looking for a specific item. Which is a shame really, all that advertising activity, that then just drops you into an intensely frustrating search function.

The biggest irritation for me is when you can’t filter out pre-owned from new. I have no interest in over-priced models that are incomplete and/or damaged and/or coarse scale… yet these can flood the search results, especially when you are looking for a genuine bargain.

Well this terraced street is proving to be a bigger job than I imagined, but never mind - it's all proving to be enjoyable modelling! An update is overdue: I have finally settled on a plan for the street, it requires 30 properties laid out as follows: Note that there are two properties just in front of the turntable which have open fronts, these will receive shop windows, which will represent a couple of businesses from my family's history: Also, sections of pine strip have been glued between alternate houses to create an alley through from the street to the rear of each property. Most Victorian terraces in Leicester seem to have these. Their inclusion is one of the reasons why I decided not to use the SMS brick-paper wraps, as these are only designed to fit an individual property and not with the extra width as set up above. Otherwise, the basic shell of the kit is unaltered. This next image gives a view at street level, showing the effect that I am trying to achieve - imagine a few parked cars, kids playing football in the street, and housewives stood in their front door nattering with the neighbours: The short terrace of four properties straddling the end of the street will be completed before I work on the rest. These are to be a 'test bed' for construction techniques and assembly, which should pave the way for a more efficient build of the main terraces. Lighting is being added to the houses: my railway room doesn't get direct sunlight and is especially dim during the winter months, so it seemed like a good idea at the time... after much fiddling about with LED's, resistances and power supplies I settled on using a power supply from a recently replaced BT wi-fi router, giving a 6V 500mA output. This gives a nice level of illumination when used with 2x daylight white LED's wired in series with a 100 ohm resistor. Of the four houses in this short terrace, I have decided to illuminate 3x downstairs and 2x upstairs rooms, to provide some variety along the row. Different lighting effects from house-to-house are achieved by inserting coloured card 'walls' in the lit rooms which gives a pleasing variety of colours as seen through the windows. The patterns used on the card inserts are ridiculously over-scale but this is not really noticeable once the window frames have been installed, as it is the lighting effect that predominates: Also shown above is how the Redutex brickwork will look, an effect that I am quite pleased with despite the mortar courses being a little coarse - the slightly 3D effect of the brickwork is very noticeable and enhances the appearance considerably. Windowsills have been installed and painted, but lintels above each window have still to be added, using painted plastic strip. The windows and door in the nearest house have been loose-fitted at this stage. And the fit is rather loose, I'll need to add further fillets of plastic strip to the sides and top of the window frames to prevent light shining through where it's not supposed to. My thoughts are now turning to 3D printed furniture and figures inside the illuminated rooms... although this feels like a step too far, for now at least! One little innovation that I have made along the way relates to the polarity of lighting, critical for the LED's installed. With two wires, it would be all too easy to get the polarity wrong and potentially blowing the bulbs. Yes, I could install additional diodes to protect against reverse polarity, however by using a 3-way connector the risk is avoided, using the central pin for the + supply and the two outer ones wired up to the -ve. This way, no matter which way round the male and female connectors are joined, the polarity will always be correct: Next: Adding the lintels, window frames and glazing, then finally the roofs and chimneys. 60x 3D printed chimney pots have recently arrived from Model Railway Scenes, very nice and very reasonably priced they are too. So I think that's everything acquired now, to complete this short terrace at least. Back to the modelling bench...

@atherton you don’t need correcting, but I would point out that the OP only asked after a ‘skinhead’ and wasn’t specific about which variant! On a separate point, I find it interesting that the manufacturers are currently competing directly against each other with the first generation diesels. Does this reflect the fact that those of us who are arriving at retirement age will mostly recall BR in its early post-steam, blue era - and are therefore looking to this epoch when embarking upon a retirement project? Perhaps then, the hobby’s mainstream is finally moving up an epoch from late BR steam, at least in terms of where manufacturers perceive that the big money is being spent.

Hornby R30120. Available now, new stock at Rails and presumably other retailers. Easy enough to add a small yellow panel…

Did one of them have short, fat, hairy legs?

I always wondered why I am more relaxed after crossing the Tamar when travelling home…

If you modify the loco, then the inherent flaw in the track remains, just waiting for another future purchase or a friends visiting loco to fall foul of it. If you modify the track, the fix is permanent… yes it is a bit of an inconvenience, but it doesn’t compromise the appearance apart from adding a couple of extra rail breaks, and you won’t have any future problems.

Re: consisting and speed matching, I usually set one locomotive off running round the layout and then run the other one up behind it, getting it to run as close as possible to the first one and then determine the speed setting that lets it sit there consistently close, but not coupling up. As others have said, adjusting the speed curve programming helps if you want both loco’s to respond to the same command. It can become quite an absorbing ‘game’ to get it right. When coupled up, watching the tension on the coupling is a useful indicator. I like to have the lead loco very lightly pulling on the coupling rather than the rear loco closing up the gap, if you can’t get it spot on. You can sometimes find the sweet spot where the coupling is engaged but neither being pulled or pushed… usually it will alternate between the two as track conditions vary slightly underneath the two loco’s. In practice though, there seems to be a bit of tolerance when setting it up, ie: getting it close enough is fine, it doesn’t have to be identical.

I have also followed a similar train of thought re: surface texture on building structures, but have settled on different products to achieve the desired effect. For brickwork, I now prefer to use Redutex sheets, this is a flexible, 3D printed self-adhesive product that has a subtle relief that looks right from a viewing distance. Not cheap (unless you buy it from a closing down retailer in Liverpool) but very effective: used here on my station building: I am currently building a street of terraced houses by modifying the laser-cut building ‘shells’ and the excellent sash windows supplied by Scale Model Scenery, but will be replacing their printed paper brick sheets with Redutex. The proprietor at SMS has been very accommodating about supplying part kits in bulk. The are some excellent 3D laser-cut products out there, but I agree that you need to choose carefully: you mention lcut, but I have found their arched retaining walls are amongst the most realistic available - and robust enough. JSModels use a much heavier grade material than lcut with an effective rendering of cut stone or brickwork: these buildings assemble really well and are an absolute pleasure to build: Although in this image clearly one of the ModelU figures has found his sack too heavy! I find it does pay to shop around, do your research and take your time to find the right quality products. Increasingly though, I now find myself using commercial product as a base and then often heavily modifying them - or more recently as my skills have developed, scratch building to get the right outcome. But there is some very good stuff out there now for the discerning modeller.