Vecchio

Beautiful scenes, you need a lot of Preiser (or similar) people. Do you purchase them ready made or unpainted? My impression from the few trips I made into China (Tianjin, Baoying, Beijing) was that there are always a lot of people in the markets, and of course with their means of transport. The latter changed a lot, in 1999 Tianjin was full of bicycles (and tricycles) of all kind and shape, best I remember those where the driver has to paddle backwards because of the transmission. Some 10 years later a lot of the bicycles have disappeared and replaced by mopeds and cars. I cannot see all details of the stalls - but I am sure you integrated also some street cooking stalls which you find everywhere. I didn't like them as you see that some of them have a 30l water canister for the cleaning up business of the whole day...

Smaller trees on top - makes perfect sense - not only because of perspective but because of rough climate. Winds can attack the trees more easily, and also from a certain sea level on you will not have any tree as the climate is to rough. What you need are low creeping mountain pines (Latschen Kiefer) which sometimes form a very small tree but mainly grow in groups and form a kind of a thicket. These kind of trees grow between the real woodland and the completely bare area on the mountain top. Tried to find a photo on the net - I think this one is quite typical. Vecchio, ready for the holiday...

Just to give my nationalistic suggestion: Austria, Waldbahn Steinhaus - Rettenegg. For those who are fit in German: see at https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feistritzwaldbahn This was a 600mm narrow gauge railway, erected by the landowner between 1902 and 1917 to get wood out of his forests. It was connected to the Suedbahn (Mainline Vienna to Italy) at the station of Steinhaus very close to the Semmering pass. There were facilities to re-load the timber to normal gauge trucks. It had a rather short life, as it stopped being used a short time after the second world war in 1958. It starts at 838m and ends at 862m above seal level, but it had a pass in the middle which is 1298m above sea level. Both sides of this pass saw an inclined plane type wagon lift - means the locomotives stayed either on the Steinhaus or on the Rettenegg side. Could be an interesting feature, if somebody makes a model then he has to find a cheap source for spruces, firs and similar trees as this is in the Styrian woodlands.... Vecchio

No matter if it is 100% finished or not - it is great and well worth showing it. Go for it! (saying that I have to look at my own layout - should be presented in Feb 2019 but is far from being operational...) Vecchio

Love how you care of all the details! Great stuff! Is there already a plan when to go public with this layout? I would travel a few miles to see that! Vecchio

If you have more files than the purchase of a file brush may be useful. A file-brush has all its wire bristles in straight rows which makes cleaning files much easier.

From other threads users will know I am a Zimo fan - but to be honest - for the usual 3 or 4 module layout 3 A would be enough. And there is always the possibility to split and use a booster. (OK - not if you stuff your boards with tracks like the typical German Maerklin layout of the 70th and all is full with idling diesels... ) So even all the decoders I use are from Zimo (exception: tried one Tran and 4 Lenz, Tran very good, Lenz accepable) I used a Lenz until recently when I bought a Roco Z21. The Lenz works perfect with Zimo, and even better the Roco, here you can also update decoders (not tried yet as I have the Zimo updater) From my personal experience I recommend the Z21 (black), you can do all you need and it is absolutely foolproof (yes, even I can use it...) and that for well under 300£. And you use all your mobile devices (tablet, i-pod touch, i-phone, android phone) as controllers. For those who like turn-knob controllers also the lokmaus family is working with it. Enough advertising....

From March to August - but finally I finished also the class 59. Find here a photo showing the wiring for the lights 20170813_204220 I used enamelled wire, doesn't take a lot of space and stays where you put it. For the lenses I used the same technology I used on other locos, I turn them on the lathe. I found a new material: the led itself. I used cheap 5mm leds and turned the head down to 1.4 for the red and 1.8mm for the headlights. Works nice and has a nice clear lens on the end. Of course a bit fiddly as the whole thing is very small. This shows the wiring on the end of the motorised side. 20170813_204233 Now a test run. Why is the light on without track? well the capacitors are large enough to let the lights on for 20 seconds... 20170813_214959 20170813_214812 Job done, and as usual I had some fun in the making.

I saw some of them several times on the Semmering pass. This is the same line as Villach - but some 280km northeast. If this was regular service or testing I don't know. I was a teenager in theses days and the 1043 was an interesting loco as normal traffic was dominated by 1042, sometimes together with a 1040 and 1046 for light commuter trains. And for those looking for a model: there is a Roco one for less than 150€ at the moment. But I will go on holiday in 2 weeks so I stand back

I know and therefore I do not have a model of the 1043 - it would point to a very limited period of time on my layout (25years of service - 1974 - 2001). They were sold in 2001 (to be honest - I didn't find a cheap model so far so I don't have one....).

C19586: At the first look I thought I see an Austrian 1043 - which were looking like the Rc1 and were actually based on the Rc2. The first 1043 in Austria had even the same colour scheme as the Swedish sisters, just after some time they have been re-painted into the Austrian RAL 2002.

As my Lenz is blocked by being attached to Donnersbachkogel and I wanted something a bit more modern I joined the Z21 community... Found a Z21 black at Scograil for £279.95 and so far I am happy with my purchase. Went over the installation with little problems. Spent the whole evening to enter the first 15 locos into the i-pad and managed finally also the data transfer from i-pad to android. Means I have now 2 wireless controllers. Was reading now through 22 pages and found some interesting hints. Especially splitting the loco library into different "layouts" is a brilliant idea. Thanks to all who contributed to this thread so far. Vecchio

About C11297:The trolleybus is gone, I think it stops now on the North side of the station. The hotel still looks the same - just the pub right of the hotel has changed into a Chinese restaurant and takeaway. I use this hotel which is called Alpes et Lac once every year...

Interesting Logo - Oensingen-Balsthal-Bahn AG! I wonder why they didn't get into trouble with the Austrians. Oestereichische Bundes Bahn....

Small sign of life after a long break. The layout is more or less where it was in February, I did a lot of other things in the meantime. Now I was looking a bit into the rolling stock for Donnersbachkogel. Especially into the H0e part. One of the locos I would like to use is a Roco Diesel shunter. These are about 60£ new, and with a bit of luck there is something on the internet for half the price. Of course I want to have this running at DCC, there is not too much space in the tiny loco. Here is a photo from the internet how this little engine looks. Roco Diesel On the front there is a lens but no light, on the back there is not even a lens but a painted on light. So something to improve. I use a Zimo MX621 for this loco and to save space I shorten the leads for the lights and put SMD resistors on them. These resistors are glued on the decoder with hotmelt glue. 20170711_170244 I use tiny SMD leds for the lights, and the missing lens I make on the lathe from a piece of scrap plastic. Below see how I turn the lens. 20170711_163719 And now the rear light is glued into position using a drop of superglue and some activator spray. The led is 0.8mm wide! 20170711_165349 Putting all together and closing the loco - have a look from the rear. Of course the decoder is a little bit visible, but normally the people will look at it from above, from there it is invisible. 20170711_171706 Quick function test. 20170711_171537 All working, so some cosmetics. First a driver. Also the red clips are hidden under some green Humbroll paint. 20170711_175724 His tools got a bit of paint and the loco is ready for use. What is missing is some weathering. It is too clean. 20170711_175737 I am happy with that little upgrade, the next one will be a steam H0e loco.

Used Flickr so far, but I do not think that this will stay free as it is. If the others are going to be nasty they (Flickr) will follow. I think it is extremely unfair if you are constantly forced into "free" services which after some time - when you cant go back - will not be free any more. Example: the cloud... I rather buy myself a couple of mobile hard drives to have some data security than trusting into any of these services. Or may be I am just getting old (vecchio) and grumpy???

Just sit in a sandero 2 at the moment. Car is fine and very economic. 90hp out of 900cc turbo. Best value for money. Well - I drive a merc but as a second car the Dacia is perfect.

So what set did you buy in the end? I used also a fulgurex point motor to operate a barriers. Works well. Noise - At an exhibition you will not hear it...

The Zimo manual for small decoders (which you can download www.zimo.at/web2010/documents/MX-KleineDecoder_E.pdf) shows you where to wire the capacitors and how. I use stay alive wherever there is space in the locomotive, and this is not just because I am to lazy to clean but there are always some points, especially at the club layout, where a short loco may get stuck. The limit for capacity of 5000 is just to avoid that a loco runs into a switched off section and will "never" stop... (well - if you have a switched off section...) And: you can also wire their cheapest decoder (MX600) with stay alive - works a treat and doesn't make a hole into the pocket. the bigger the capacitors (or the sum of their capacity) are the more important it is to limit the charging current by a resistor. This is also described in the Zimo manual. If you do not do that it will cause a short at your controller (as the capacitors will draw a high current to be charged) With big capacitors it is also useful to use a load resistor - a higher value resistor which sucks slowly out the capacity so that the loco gets discharged in a reasonable time it you take it off the track. Otherwise the lights (especially leds) will be on for a long time... The first ever stay alive I made is documented here. atw.huebsch.at/modell/h0/LIMA_2061_V20.htm This loco works very well also after 11 years in (sporadic) service. I recently converted a few old Lima diesels - there is a massive improvement as these pancake motor diesels are normally not really perfect runners. Vecchio, a Zimo fan.

I keep all boxes - even the condition of some of them is no longer perfect. Only loss I had was water entering my garage (basement) in Italy some 15 years ago - so there I lost some of the cardboard boxes of several Roco locomotives - so I have only the original expanded polystyrene where the locos were. Is still a protection but doesn't look good. Now in the UK I do not have a basement - so less chances of water getting into my stuff...

now you know where Faller, Brawa & Co take their ideas from...

Impressive size. Even when I go scale speed I am around my layout in less than a minute....

This tells us a lot about standardisation - the only thing which is almost standardised in (western) Europe is the track - if we exclude Spain. Vecchio

Good video as usual! Especially enjoyable after a day of work close to Dublin... Vecchio