AyJay

Do you think it's worth keeping the boxes your rolling stock came in? No doubt any collector will say that the box adds considerably to the value of something, that may be very true. I also remember being shocked when James May, in his series about toys, bought a train set at an auction and promptly threw away the box !!! Anyway, I digress... Having just collected some items from storage, I have a couple of packing boxes full of rolling stock boxes, all carriages and wagons; Triang Hornby, Hornby Hobbies, Airfix, Graham Farish, Bachmann, Dapol, Ratio, Mainline, Lima..... This now adds to a couple of plastic storage bins worth that's in the loft. To give you some idea of how much, I have 23 locomotives, about 100 wagons and about 60 carriages. Our house is beginning to look like a candidate for the next series of 'Nick Knowles Big House Clearout' :-0 Certainly, the locomotive boxes must be kept, you never know when one must be returned for repair. But for the rest, should I commit sacrilege and bin, or ignore the clutter and keep? These are not for displaying on a shelf. when not running they live in large stock boxes. Neither are they for trading, the next time they are in their intended boxes and on their way to their next keeper, so will I. So your thoughts please, and a little clarity perhaps? Thank you

The Green Triang Hornby Princess has had a stay of execution! I found some finescale wheels that I bought for it. The problem is that the gearwheel that came with the axles for them, is of a different tooth pitch to the original and so will not engage with the worm that is on the motor AARGH! No doubt if I found a worm..... it would probably not fit on the armature. If I replace the motor.... It would not fit the chassis. Oh why not just be done with the thing and bin it!

I think I understand where you are coming from Harlequin. Perhaps I can suggest an alternative perspective... The person who never made mistakes, never learned anything. There is more than one way to do something. I find it very helpful to see alternative ideas and I may try some of those ideas to see how good they are. Besides, as modellers, I think that we owe it to ourselves to experiment with alternative techniques. Unless the technique being taught is potentially dangerous, or should only be done by a recognised professional (in which case you would be right to shout out), then I think its a case of allowing the viewer to try it for themselves and make up their own mind.

Humm, I may have started something here... OK, some random thoughts: My home is not a museum and my broken possessions are not preserved in glass cases for future generations. Ancient rolling stock in garish colours with overscale wheels will never run on finescale track. That thing that might come in useful, wont. That project that might get started, doesn't. Hanging onto something for the sake of a memory is overrated, it's taking space that could be put to better use. (Having said that, I will never part with the Flying Scotsman and the class 31 that my father bought for me as Christmas presents when I was a child). Let's face it, most of us must have moved house as adults. Hands up everyone who has moved 'stuff' out of one loft and into another, but at no other time even considered their existence. I suppose bits from my candidate castoffs could find a useful life as engine yard clutter. e.g. wheels, cylinder gear etc :-).

I have become interested in the new tv program hosted by Nick Knowles, 'Big House Clearout' and inspired by this, i thought that I'd start small and give a good look at what is in my railway room. The first thing to consign to the bin was a station building made out of plaster, which I made about 25 years ago using Linka moulds. It's been sitting on a shelf gathering dust and up to now I just could not gather the wherewithall to part with it. When I made it, it looked pretty neat, but compared to my recent card kits it just does not look good. So out it went! This was closely followed by a few completed card kits that have been looking sorry for themselves for ages. Again, early dabbling in making buildings. I'm now eyeing up an early Triang Hornby Princess that I tried to rewheel and abandoned, plus an early Hornby Jinty that is no longer used. I would be interested in knowing what other peoples attitudes are to hanging onto stuff that has outlived its usefulness? Do you hoard, or bin?

I was so saddened to hear that Mick is no longer with us. Our world has lost a wonderful person. I met him a few times at courses that he was taking at Pendon. It always made me smile to hear him give the safety notice: "The blades are sharp. The irons are hot. First Aid kit is in the kitchen"

This is, of course, a complete fantasy. Not sure we could get the required range of facial expressions for the locomotives. Besides, how could we animate The Fat Controller in OO gauge? In any case, I think the Isle of Sodor would require an entire exhibition hall all to itself.

I have just had a read of the previous page of responses. When my Son was very young, someone had bought him a large album containing all of the Rev. Awdry stories (illustrated). I had great pleasure in reading some of these stories to my Son, and even more pleasure reading the whole lot to myself. Well this set me thinking... If we take to concept that Triang Hornby had with their Giraffe car, Royal mail coach, Battle Zone etc. further.... Would it be possible to build an entire Isle of Sodor layout that faithfully re-enacted some of these stories, with all of the drama? The troublesome trucks that pushed Thomas off the end of the line and into someone's house. Silly old Gordon, fell in a ditch. The evil Diesel. Was it Henry who got bricked up in a tunnel? Was it Thomas, again, who went the wrong way off a turntable? Then have this running in sync with an audible reading of the story. I think the kids would love it!

P.S. Form an orderly queue behind me!

Wear a T-shirt that says "Model Railway enthusiasts are just a bunch of 'anoraks'! " That should get you hung - drawn and quartered.

That fixed it! I lifted the plate under the chassis between the wheels to get better access to the contacts. I was able to re-tension a few of them. Also, with the side of a scalpel, wipe the gunge that had accumulated on the wiping contacts. Lastly, picked up a lot of muck from the inner surfaces of the driving wheels, with IPA-soaked cotton buds. Connecting wires and plug got a good eyeballing and seen to be OK. 75005 now runs perfectly. Thank you all for your suggestions.

Thank you all. Sometimes it takes someone else to suggest the things that should be obvious. The one idea that comes to my mind is if I can find an 8-pin blanking plug, I think I'll try disconnecting the decoder and see what happens when run on analogue. Is there any chance the decoder itself could have become 'corrupted'?

Perhaps it's looking for a toad! Don't anyone mention a 'Juicer'......

Can anyone please suggest what might be going on with one of my locomotives? I have a moderate sized OO gauge layout. DCC courtesy of NCE Powercab. Feed from heavy gauge bus to droppers for each length of rail. The errant locomotive in question is a Hornby Black 5 with contacts 4-wire connection to the tender. The decoder chip is probably a Zemo, in the tender. The locomotive recently started juddering, stop - go - stop - go - stop - go. at two specific places on the layout; and nowhere else; on a gentle radius left curve on the innermost (anti-clockwise) mainline. It passes this place without problem if going in reverse, or forwards in the wrong direction. It only happens when running the correct way, slowly, not when moving fast. It only happens to this locomotive, all the others behave perfectly. This locomotive also behaves perfectly when running the clockwise line. I can see no faults with the track. This is not a short-circuit according to the controller. Neither is the current reading on the controller showing a current surge. The locomotive wheels are clean. They do not appear to be jamming mechanically. I put the locomotive on my programming track and reprogrammed the address. No change! Now as an added bonus this evening, when I was investigating what was happening, the locomotive just came to a sudden stop when crossing a live-frog point (Peco) and refused to move any more. The wheels are not jammed, I power-cycled the controller, there was no short. This locomotive has been used a lot less than others and has not been mis-treated. Can anyone suggest what may be behind this crazy behaviour? Thank you, Alan

Continuing on with this thread... I have put together a, very crude, card mockup of what I have in mind. It is overlapping the edge of the board and slightly stepped down to reduce the height. The part where the levers will go is horizontal and the part where the mimic panel is to go, is angled slightly. Without knowing what the size of the circuit boards are, the two encoders and the mimic boards, I can only guess at the size. Also, I have used my only Hornby lever, to give an impression of what it could look like with the Cobalt levers in place. The whole thing could be secured in place by catches. As for the numbering of the points and positions of levers... When I designed the layout, each point was numbered in a clockwise fashion. When the point motors were wired in, some of them were intended to work in pairs and their addresses reflected the numbers allocated to the points. That is why there are gaps in the numbering. As for arranging the levers; I am thinking of having them in two groups, the running lines and everything else, with the levers arranged from left to right as those points would appear. So, as viewed from the left, the first lever is for point #1, the first point encountered on the Down line when starting at the fiddleyard. The last lever to the right will be for the first point encountered on the Up line. Similarly, in the group for everything else, they read as they would be going from left to right. That appears to be a sensible ordering, but now I wonder if everything should be renumbered, so that the lever numbers are in incremental sequence? Signals have not yet been dealt with, next year perhaps.

Yes! Ron, your three examples are valuable information, although two show me what I don't want to do. The first is just a box, and possibly an overpriced box, just to hold the levers. I am not sure what 'value' this adds or what function it performs. The third seems to be just a crudely put together open shelf with exposed parts. However, the middle example is more like what I have in mind. Looks professionally made. I think I would like to go for a shallow, enclosed box that contains the circuit boards, with a brass hinged lid (sloping) that carries the mimic panel and has a shaped opening through which the levers are exposed. Constructed from 5mm ply and stained/varnished a teak colour. Edward. I am particularly interested in the printed display. Did you produce this yourself? Is it laminated? One part appears supported by bolts and the other part appears to have legs? Can you tell me how much vertical clearance is required to hold the boards etc?

latest update on this topic: I have now successfully added a second DCC bus for accessories and moved all the point motors across onto it from the track bus. Now waiting for payday... Now as I think through how to site the levers, I realise that I do not want them mounted on the edge of my baseboard; too exposed to risk if I want to move anything. See attached picture for the location that I want them to go. I would much rather have them mounted on a separate box that I can either position on top, or hang on the side next to my controller; something that I can unplug and remove if necessary. This means though, that the two encoder boards need to be with the levers, inside whatever enclosure I can make out of plywood. Has anyone done this? If so, I would really like to see a photo of it, something to give me an idea of what it could look like and how it could position. I also need to do something with a mimic panel? This could recess into the flat space in front of my coaling tower, although I am also thinking of an eye-level panel attached to the wall. Again, if anyone would care to share a picture of their solution..... Much appreciated. Alan

Morning all. This is a subject which I have never seen appear in this forum, so I am just putting out feelers to see what sort of interest there might be in my sharing an approach that I applied in the development of my railway. i.e A Requirements led approach? I am an Engineer by profession, with experience in the subjects of Requirements Capture and Test Analysis. These disciplines would normally be applied to projects with a lot of zero's behind the pound sign. Since I had time to ponder my project before I was able to start on it, I decided to apply what I was doing at work to this. Probably excessive if you are considering a very small layout and you already know what you want. But could be helpful if you are considering a large and complex layout, you are not certain what it is you want to do, or you are a club with many members and you want to be sure everyone is 'singing to the same songsheet'. If there is enough interest, I'll put something together. Alan

Hello again all, Looking at your very good and sensible replies, I am beginning to regret going for the 'entry level kit', perhaps I should have just gone straight for the 5A model instead. So, note to self. Always allow spare capacity for growth! Well I have been scribbling figures down just to see how expensive this is getting, and considering all I want to do is control points with levers instead of remembering accessory numbers, the sum is eye- wateringly high!!! Certainly, as far as seeking purchase advice is concerned, Digitrains would be the obvious one-stop-shop. However, their prices are quite a bit higher than a certain retailer in the Midlands who has a big spread in the magazine. I would not feel comfortable seeking the advice of a retailer and then buy from a competitor. That still leaves a few more questions: If I go for the suggested 3A power unit and connect it to my NCE control board, will the decoder and mimic boards overload it? Should I upgrade that with the Cobalt Alpha option? Also, the biggest single item expense will be the 24 Cobalt levers. There would be a big saving if I substituted this for the Hornby passing-contact levers; but would it work? Probably throw that one at DCC Concepts, their reply suggests that they are quite amenable to the idea of other peoples kit. I can only comfort myself with the thought that its a good thing I don't smoke or follow football. I dread to think what a year's nicotine habit, or a premier club season ticket costs :-0 The single malt habit can stay though, <sigh of relief> Alan

I hope that an informed person can give me some good advice. I would like to extend my DCC system and have contacted the suppliers concerned, however their replies do not really give me the information that I need and leave me more confused than ever. So I hope that someone here has done what I plan to do and can advise. I have a moderate size OO gauge railway. It comprises a twin loop for mainline operation, 10-track fiddleyard, engine yard with capacity for 20 locomotives and goods sidings. There are 39 points, operated by Cobalt ip Digital point motors, connected to the DCC bus. Control is via the NCE Powercab (the starter kit, I believe) with a 1.5A rating. I will be running up to 3 locomotives at one time, a few of them have sound. What I want to do is purchase the Cobalt levers for operating my points, this will require two Cobalt Alpha encoder boards. (before anyone says "but you have 39 points?" A number of them work as pairs, so I only require 21 addresses for them) I also want to have a mimic board that will show the settings of the points. This will require two (possibly three) Cobalt mimic boards with LED's. At some point in the future, I will want to deal with the matter of operating semaphore signals, but that won't be yet. However, when contacted, the replies from both NCE and DCC Concepts did not 'join all the dots' for me, were at best confusing and at worst, conflicting. DCC Concepts suggest that I upgrade the mains PSU to a 3A rating and put a circuit breaker (in the DCC bus?) They suggest that the encoders can connect to the NCE power panel, but do not say how the encoders and mimic boards are powered. NCE says that I should upgrade my power panel (I was shocked to see that upgrades are in 3-figure sums!!!) They know nothing about DCC Concepts and advise me not to connect any non-NCE product to their power panel. I have sketched out what I think it should look like (existing system is in black). The encoded output from the levers is fed into the power panel and the mimic boards read the DCC bus. I am happy to replace the 1.5A PSU and add a circuit breaker as suggested, but I still don't know how the new boards will be powered and where I can plug in the feed from the encoders? I also think that the existing NCE power panel is very small. I would like to avoid unnecessary expense, so don't want a 'bank busting' do everything solution. Can anyone sort out this mess for me. Thank you. Alan

Is that an asbestos roof!!!

Hi Mick, good to hear from you! Looking forward to your next presentation. I use a spare Dyson Animal for all my 'creative' mess clearing up. As for recapturing scatter material, I stretch an old bit of recycled tights over the end of the hose, with the crevice tool on the end. Really must remember to make sure the work area is clean of other rubbish before applying scatter though, so as to not contaminate the collected scatter :-(

When I was working 'on the tools' I bought myself a pair of orange coloured wire strippers from RS. They lasted faultlessly for years and years, until finally the jaws went blunt and did not strip reliably any more. Then I tried a cheap pair, BIG MISTAKE! I have now recently purchased the ones from CK that everyone endorses and am very impressed with them. Moral of this tale..... Buy cheap, buy twice.

Good morning all. I have not yet started making this shaped moulding yet; but have decided that I am going to carve it out of plasticard, using needle files and some emery boards bought from the make-up counter. However, there is now a more pressing show-stopper that I must deal with first... I need to reproduce the mock Tudor wood framing that embellishes three sides (see photo) and feel that the best way to do this is to overlay the white painted surface with a second layer of card, cut to represent the wood beams and painted. However, my attempt at cutting the required shape with a scalpel is just not good enough. Then, looking on the Screwfix website, I found this hole cutter. The punches will do holes from 2mm to 4.5mm (I need 4.5mm). I am thinking that by experimenting with overlapping punches, I should get a neater result. I don't mind buying this tool if it gives me the effect that I want. Has anyone else tried anything like this before? If anyone's interested, this building is a church in Goring. Forge Steel Multi-Material 2 to 4.5mm Hole Punch 9.5" (240mm) | Marking & Punching | Screwfix.comhole punch.docx

Can anyone offer any suggestion for how I can model this ornate corner feature? (the shaped concrete bit that is ) The model is OO gauge in card and this feature will be 10mm across (bit bigger than a garden pea). Fortunately, it will face away from me when the model is positioned, so it will not have to stand up to close scrutiny. But I did promise the occupant of this building, that he would have pictures, so I want to do the best I can. I do not have a 3d printer and have never done anything like this before. So do I: a) Buy a pack of DAS modelling clay, some dental picks and grinding bits for my small power tool? (Not my preferred option because I would have no use for these items afterwards) b) Mix some PVA glue and polyfilla, then try to mould it with a toothpick before it hardens? c) Glue some pieces of plasticard together to form a block, then attack it with a needle file? Your thoughts, please. Alan