John R Smith

Are all of these un-numbered? (apart from the weathered ones, for some reason) . . .

It does look good, but it seems an awful lot of money for what is really just a four-wheeled van - albeit a long one.

Hello Rod Any of the adhesives you mention should be strong enough for the job. The concern you might have is that as the gears will normally be lubricated after reassembly, you need a glue which will not be adversely affected by oils or grease. I am not sure sure how superglue stacks up in this respect, but one snag I can foresee with this (cyanoacrylate) glue is that it wilill not give you much time to assemble the gears before it kicks off. Two part epoxy will be more forgiving in this respect and you will have more time to press the gear home and line it up. Read the manufacturer's data sheet and see if there any negative warnings regarding oil or grease. Good luck with the repair! John

The body comes off with just four screws to remove. Watch out for the exhaust pipes! But there are no wires to worry about because of very clever spring-loaded contacts inside. Mine had a loose partition and a window grille floating around, so there you go . . .

It seems to me that there have been far too many faulty and poor running Dapol Class 121 / 122 railcars. My own 122 was a very poor runner under DC, and I had to resort to the well known trick of removing one motor and running on just one power bogie. Even then, because the bogie is so high-geared, slow speed running was still hesitant and uncertain if there was any gradient or sharp curve involved. You would have thought that excellent mechanical performance would be a given these days, especially in O gauge where there is so much room for motors and gears. Fifty years ago, I had far better performance and slow speed running from my CCW M7 that I built from a kit with a Pitman motor -

I have always been very undecided about the whole business of populating carriages and DMUs. On the one hand, if you do not then your trains are always running empty and driverless. But somehow it seems troubling to me to always have the same passengers sitting in the same seats on every journey. And what do you do about the driver on a bubble car (or railbus)? For 50% of the time he will be gazing out of the wrong (rear) cab - or do we have a driver in both cabs, which almost seems worse? Here is Brenda Pascoe waiting for the 12.45 pm to Tregarrick Road on platform 3 at Ponteglos. When the train arrives, I surreptitiously remove Brenda so that when the DMU pulls out she appears to have boarded the train. But to be correct, I should now be able to look through the window and see her seated in the saloon. Perhaps I should have a duplicate Brenda hologram which can be switched on via a function button on my controller? Ah well, there is still a long way to go for complete realism . . .

Glazing on a lot of coaches, DMUs, diesel locos is often the worst feature. The best way to do it, which is just so much better, is to mould the entire superstructure in clear plastic, and then paint around and up to the windows. This is the way that the Heljan AC railbus has been done, and the effect is truly superior - inside as well as out.

Hello Cowley 47521. My Dapol manual says the saloon lights are on F10. Hope this helps John

Hello Norman Many thanks for your reply. I only have a DC layout. How can I program the decoder? Do you have to have a DCC controller to do this, or is there another way? Yours is the most sensible suggestion so far, I must say. Rails of Sheffield just told me that the DCC version was incompatible with DC, and offered me a refund if I returned it. I do not want to return it, it is a gorgeous model and I want to keep it. So I took out the decoder and replaced it with another PCB in the box (a blanking plug?) to check that the motors were OK. Now on DC it runs just fine, so there is nothing wrong with the motors. Dapol have confirmed by email that the railcar should run under DC input, and give basic sound effects. That would be brilliant and is all I want. With a bit of cleaning of the wheels and pickups it is now running very well, down to a scale walking speed in both directions, with a gentle stop and pull away. Best wishes from sunny Cornwall John

Hello Gang Help please! I have just purchased a Class 122 in green, W55000, from Rails of Sheffield, which is factory DCC sound fitted. I do not have DCC, but have an analogue DC 0 Gauge layout. In the handbook it says "A DCC fitted model will autodtect and operate on both analogue (DC) and DCC". So, OK, I place the 122 on the layout and apply power from my DC controller. All the interior lights come on, increase power a touch and the engine sound gives startup and then idle. But then as I increase power no motion from the power bogies - nothing, right up to max on my controller knob. The lights get a bit brighter, the engine stays idling, but no wheels turn. This seems very strange, current is obviously getting to the DCC decoder but is not getting to the motors. Any good ideas? John

Hello Yes, you are correct, there was a measure - a bit like a metal tankard with a handle - which was used. So there was a "one-can pack", a "two-can pack" and so forth. However, by the early 1970s this practice had all but ceased, and the gangs were using exterior grade hardboard (!) instead. This was in pre-cut rectangles the size of a sleeper end, and these were slid under the sleeper once it had been jacked up to just above the correct level. So now you had a "one-board pack" etc. This was actually a pretty rubbish way of doing things, because the hardboard, unlike the chippings, was not free draining, and so water accumulated under it often making things worse. In bad places on our length we had sleeper ends jacked up on a great pile of soggy hardboard. The advent of CWR and the abolition of fished joints pretty much put an end to all this, but the old chipping bins lingered for a long while. In 2008 I was commissioned by West Devon BC to survey the old Bere Alston to Tavistock ex-SR line to assess it for possible reopening. Amazingly, in amongst the enclosing undergrwth at one point I found a chipping bin with its contents intact (after 41 years since closure). John

Sorry, Rod and Howard, I hope I didn't come across like a grumpy inspector! I love Ramchester and have followed every post with great interest and enthusiasm for this wonderful layout. It's just that I worked out of Newton Abbot on the NA2 gang back in 1974 and so got a good education first-hand on the work of the track gangs. Digging compacted ballast out of the four-foot is a good way of building muscle, that' for sure. John

Those bins are not for ballast or sand. They are chippings bins, and used to contain chippings to pack sleepers which have dropped below their original position. On the gang we had to do this regularly, on what were known as "dippy joints" (sleepers dropped either side of a fished rail joint) or "washy beds" (where poor drainage had caused a soft formation). The chippings down here were a very hard blue elvan and about 1/2 inch in size, usually a blue-grey in colour. John

Great set of pictures, Rod. The layout and the stock are looking very good indeed these days John

Just fabulous . . . .

The problem with any sort of perspective work on the backscene is that it will only work from one fixed viewpoint. So if you move to left or right of this ideal viewing position, then it just falls apart. Geoff Williams did some nice vanishing point perspective on his backscene for Aylesbury, but he managed for the most part to avoid photos from the "bad" angles, and put buildings in the way of the worst views. Jack Newton did some very clever LNWR dioramas in full perspective, but he constrained the viewing position by constructing a "letter box" viewing port. On my current small diorama I have been forced to have a 2D backscene because I only have 6 inches of depth, but I have avoided any use of perspective. Even then, things look strange from acute angles. Best wishes, John

No apologies needed Rod, thank you very much for the info. I will check out the Radley Models website! I love your Ramchester layout because you have resisted the temptation to cram loads of stuff into your available space. So the station looks very convincing because it is relatively uncluttered, just like the real thing. I think we all underestimate just how much space the rural railway occupied, when land was cheap and trains were long! I remember at Totnes how long it took me to walk from up distant to down distant with my lamps, and climbing all the signals in between. It was pretty much a full shift to do the job (especially when it was cold and raining). All best wishes, John

All looking good, Rod. I like that little blue lorry - what make and model is it? Best wishes, John

And they must always be parked parallel to the adjacent running lines, otherwise you get a big ticking-off from the Stationmaster. Do you remember the noise these old platform barrows made? An unbelievable racket over the platform flagstones, because ours a;ways had iron tyres. This all brings back happy memories of working as a shunter at Totnes in the early 1970s. As there was only one milk train to shunt on either shift, I got to spend a lot of time helping out on parcels, lamp duty and attending passenger trains too. Love your layout Rod John

I remember those chairs and keys, we had some at the club in Devon back in the '60s. They were definitely coarse scale O gauge, so pretty much correct scale for Gauge 1 (1/32 or 1:30, depending on which standard you follow). I built a yard of plain track with them, just for fun. John

Well, I spent most of today, on and off, working on the Terrier and getting nowhere most of the time. Very frustrating, but in the end - SUCCESS! So an explanation may be of some use to those of us who own the Dapol Terrier, Pannier and Jinty, which I suspect all have much the same mechanism. I stripped the loco down to the chassis, and checked out all the things which could possibly cause poor running - We must be fair to Dapol. Most of the mechanical design and component quality seems pretty good, and certainly a lot better than the H****n locomotives which I have previously examined. Fit and finish is fine, the c/sunk setscrews holding everything together are good quality, and there are no obvious issues with alignment or gear mesh. There is a lot of sideplay in the driving axles, which at its extremes could cause a problem with the rim pickups. However, this is necessary and forgivable because it allows the use of small radius curves. There is also some sideplay in the nylon gear train from the motor to the driven axle. I reduced this using some washers to shim it, but it made no difference to the running quality so I think it is of no consequence. There is some endfloat in the can motor drive shaft. However, it seems well within what I would consider acceptable limits, and moreover has a spring tensioner to take it up during normal running. You may remember that I said I had cleaned and lubricated everything, but still had this problem with ticking and poor running in one (reverse) direction. The lube point I had most trouble with was the motor shaft bearings - one end is behind the flywheel, the other below the worm gear cover. So I stripped down the PCB boards for the DCC and removed the worm gear cover. When I lubed before I had use Locolube synthetic oil as recommended by Dapol and sold by DCC Supplies. It occurred to me that this oil is very thin, in fact perhaps far too thin for a heavily loaded bearing. So I got out my favourite lube, Singer Sewing Machine Oil, and used that on the motor shaft bearings. One is behind the worm gear, and was now accessible. The other is behind the flywheel, and is tricky to get to. Take up the endfloat gently with a screwdriver tip, and use a thin oiling pin to drop a little oil right into the bearing. I had been trying different things and testing them all day with no result. You can imagine the good vibes when at last after re-lubing the motor bearings I had perfect running in both directions - smooth, quiet, and down to a crawl. It looks as if those bearings are critical and need a good thick oil too. Sadly there is no felt oil pad as we had on the old 00 locos of my childhood, so perhaps this job needs doing at fairly frequent intervals. All best wishes John

Thanks for your replies. I have had a look at the DCC Supplies site, who do the Dapol spares, and they do not list a replacement motor for the Terrier. I am beginning to think more seriously about endfloat as a possible culprit, because the ticking sound can be intermittent. Can motors don't have to be rubbish, of course, back in the day some Japanese ones had a very good reputation, IIRC. So far my recent adventures in O gauge (after a long absence) seem to have been bedevilled by very poor mechanical performance from the current R-T-R offerings. Makes me nostalgic for the M7 I built from a CCW kit back in the early '70s, powered by a 5-pole Pittman motor. It ran superbly. Best wishes John

Good afternoon everyone And I hope that you all had a great Christmas. During the festive season, I have taken the opportunity to give my rolling stock a service, but have not succeeded to improve a problem with my little Dapol Terrier, which has been the regular pilot and local goods loco at Ponteglos for the past two years. Straight out of the box when I first got it, it was a very poor runner at slow speed, but I fixed this by adjusting all the pick-ups and cleaning the wheel treads. Recently, however, things have gone downhill again, so I removed the body from the chassis as per instructions, and cleaned and lubricated everything. The problem is this - running forward the loco is quiet and smooth, with perfect slow-speed performance. But running in reverse, bunker-first, there is an annoying ticking sound from the mechanism and the motion is not as smooth. Checking this with body removed I can see that the 'ticks' are related to motor revolutions, with one tick per rev of the flywheel. Has anyone else experienced this sort of problem with a Terrier? And did you manage to fix it? (illustration copyright Dapol ltd) Many thanks in advance for your time John

Hello All I've been away for a while (not working on the O gauge layout, that is) and now I'm a bit late with this e-card, but Merry Boxing Day and a happy and Prosperous New Year to you all. This started out as a bookcase test track - and then I got a bit carried away. Regards, John

Great signal, Chris. My wife, Kate, on her last trip to Oz found an abandoned line which she investigated and the signals which still survived there were British Saxby & Farmer items. Yours look pretty much like ones from the Old Country too? Best wishes John