Pikey

Low cost? This isn't a DCC decoder - these boards cost nearly £80...

Ooh this is exactly what happened to mine. Except my resistors say R91 - so Tam Valley have changed the spec at some point. I bought mine in 2020.

Last week my layout randomly shut itself down and refused to start up again. My layout is DCC with an ESU ECoS controller and Megapoints servo-operated points. Most point frogs are switched by corresponding relay boards, but for various reasons I also have 2 Tam Valley hex frog juicers which have worked fine (I presume) for 3-4 years, but last week one of them seems to have suffered total failure, which is causing a short circuit if I try and plug it back in. I can see two of the resistors have not completely melted but certainly have got very hot, on output 4. There are signs of this on outputs 2 and 3 as well, but 4 looks the worst. 1 5 and 6 appear as new. Pics below: I bought it from CoastalDCC in 2020. After emailing them, I've received a pretty unsatisfactory reply saying 'an actual short circuit on one of the outputs can take the unit out', which surprises me as there's nothing on their website or the Tam Valley website about this. Also, if there is ever a real short circuit, my ECoS shuts the power off immediately, so I cant see how this is possible - and in any case I was running a single train on a part of the layout not affected by this frog juicer when the failure happened. Has anyone else ever had one of these fail? Was it repairable / can they be repaired? And would I send it back to CoastalDCC for repair (or rather, for them to send it to Tam Valley for repair)? Jeff

Well, I just found out that Deltang have ceased production and have no more receivers to sell. This makes converting tiny radio controlled models a lot harder, for sure! Micron sell a version which is at least four times the size, and Sol Expert sell a version which doesn't come pre-wired, and I think that's just about it as far as alternatives, currently anyway. Bit of a shame really 🙁

Turbo Racing minis are also nice for a modern-image user :)

Still havent finished the forklift! I have a model of a mk3 Transit to make, which is going to be a nice little thing when its done I think. I've recently ordered some motors from KKPMO, and they seem to be slightly revised (the 6mm motor is shorter, making it more suitable to put in smaller vehicles, plus they are pre-wired) and also their delivery times seem reasonable, and they have sent the correct products. Which is good. I have 120, 150 and 180rpm motors to try - as the 225 I put in my land rover turned out to be a bit too slow. Oh yeah - I did a new Land Rover too (apologies for video quality, I had to email it from my phone):

Literally all I see on the railway lines near my house are 2 and 3 car Cross Country 170s, and Voyagers. I have a XC Voyager, but only have a London Midland class 170, which dates from when London Midland was still a thing (shows how old the model now is!) - but it still looks the business. I'd absolutely love a XC 170 - but the prices these fetch on ebay for a used model are frankly ridiculous - Bachmann could re-release the existing model, undercutting the prices people want on ebay for a used XC one, and surely loads of people would buy them 🙂

I have a question - what are the 4 tiny things that look like the ends of a shovel, included in the detailing pack for 97301?

That looks excellent 🙂

I've bought a Kalmar forklift truck kit, from Sven Loeffler: https://www.mikromodelle.de/Onlineshop/de/3d-druckteilesatz-funktionsmodell-kalmar-stapler.html A very high quality 3D print in general, although the cab detail and driver figure are a bit naff. Also it doesnt come with wheels, or any instructions - although there are good pictures and its not hard to work out what goes where. It comes with 3 M1 nuts, but no M1 threaded bar, which is a strange choice as you only need 1 M1 nut so why supply three and not the bar? Gears are provided to drive the threaded bar from a 4mm motor, the other things you need are listed on the website - G26 motor/S15 screw /Z12 gear for driving, 4mm motor/M1 threaded bar for the forks, some bearings, and then the usual steering axle & servo, and electronics that you'd need for any RC vehicle. I sprayed it with the CAT yellow paint I bought for the CAT digger (which didnt match). Kalmar trucks are red, but I dont have any red paint so I thought I'd use what I had. Here's the underneath - you can see the recesses for the servo and the driving motor and bearings, good clearance for the steering (although I still had to file some away, probably the width of axle I chose was a bit too wide): I cut the cab detail off, binned the driver figure, and modified a spare one from a loader. It looks the part already, although needs more detailing, stickers etc: I plan on using this to move large construction items eg concrete pipes, tanks, generators, maybe steel beams etc - stuff that's too big/heavy to be moved with a telehandler 🙂

Ah. I don't have either of those things. For the moment, I'll just pull the test train, with the DBSO at the back, but it would be nice to be able to turn the headlights off and push it.

Ooh ooh ooh, that's me that is. Exciting 😀

Actually you saw the previous version of the layout - we completely built a new one from scratch over the winter 🙂

Giles and otherplanet - I've worked out (well, found out, almost by accident) what was wrong. All of my other models have the protocol set to: Type: DSM Subtype: 2 1F Status: V1.3.3.0 AETR Ch. Range: 1-6 The problem ones which showed weird behaviour (two buses and the truck I'm doing for Manchester Model Railway Club) had this set to channels 1-12. As soon as I changed this setting to 1-6 the models respond as normal!

Very kind comments, but anyone who can drive a digger can drive one of these - the controls are exactly the same. :-) At the same show, we also premiered my conversion of an Oxford Diecast car transporter, which can deliver up to 8 of the Turbo Racing minis (we only have 3). My ultimate plan is to convert various Land Rover / Range Rover models, and deliver up to probably 6 of them to the JLR dealership on the layout. The Evoque on the lower deck at the front of the truck is glued in place, partially as I didn't think it was worth motorising the additional piece of floor I'd need to access this position, and also because it meant I could use a bigger battery which is being hidden behind the cab. Its operation is not quite prototypical, as real ones can lower the front of the upper deck as well. I have compromised by fixing this point and only being able to lower the rear part, as it makes the mechanism far simpler - a motor winds in a fishing line which pulls the front bit of the upper deck downwards, gravity pulls the deck down when you wind the line out. The rear ramps are simply mounted to a nut and constrained so they can't rotate, a motor turns the threaded rod which makes the ramps move. The rest is just normal driving motor mounted underneath, and steering servo mounted inside the cab with the receiver. It has no lights for now (Oxford's Scania cab moulding has painted bits for lights rather than actual light lenses, so they wouldn't look amazing), but when I get the Land Rovers done I might include hazard lights for when I park it on the road, getting in everyone's way like the real ones do 🙂 Other improvements I made included cutting off the quite poor moulded wheel holders and made new ones of these out of 0.4mm brass, and I've also cut off the handrails which were massively thick and looked silly - these have been replaced with much finer wire.

How do you make the tail lights come on by themselves, so you can run them as a top and tail?

I don't think that's what's happening. When the model becomes unresponsive, the led on the receiver is on, and I think its supposed to flash when it's told to be inactive via the selecta function. But it's a good idea, I'll check anyway.

Barring a few minor issues, the digger worked very well for two days at Redditch exhibition, and we won 'Best Layout' as voted for by the public as well, which was nice 😀 We did get a lot of weird radio gremlins, whereby models would become non-responsive for anything from 1 to maybe 15 seconds - continuing with whatever functions were operating at the time, so continuing to drive when the throttle is released, for example (!) The problem did appear to be worse when both Jumper T-Pro controllers were switched on, but the bus I've just finished seemed to do it all the time and other models appeared unaffected. Has anyone else experienced this?

I received my yellow 97 and promptly dropped it on the floor 😭 Thankfully, it looks like minor damage to the bodywork such that I can make it look like weathering, loss of buffers and couplings at one end and a bent bufferbeam. All of which Accurascale have said they will send replacements as soon as they have them 🙂 I have a query about the flange squeal though - does anyone know, or can explain, how it actually works? It works extremely well on my other DRS 37, but on this 97 it seems to just be on almost all of the time. I'm assuming this must be something to do with me dropping it, but I'm curious to know where the sensor is and how it works so I can maybe try and adjust the sensitivity of it (?)

I've got A Remote Depot out in preparation for Redditch show this weekend, so I thought I'd film a proper video with it in the correct location. I also had two of the controls reversed (had the main arm on the left stick and the dipper on the right stick, which is the wrong way round) - needed to look back over an old GoPro video I took when we hired a mini digger to see how the controls should be, and now that I've swapped them over it feels so much more intuitive to operate 🙂

Video as promised, excuse my slightly ponderous driving I'm not quite used to it yet:

The arm is all 4mm motors with screws on, driving an intermediate shaft with a z12 and another screw, driving the output shaft which has another z12 and the cylinder on the end. The cylinder rotates and there’s an M1 nut in the end which drives up and down a threaded rod to produce the motion. It’s a good design, everything’s nicely hidden

Well its been a while! Mobile excavator, might have been worth a topic all by itself, but I've nearly finished it now so its too late for that. https://www.shapeways.com/product/ALGKTDDJE/mobilbagger-1-87-rc?li=shareProduct I'd been meaning to tackle one of these for years, but the control methods I'd previously seen were somewhat clumsy, and it was only when this kit arrived on the scene that I finally decided to take the plunge. I've put together kits before (the Das87 4WD LandRover you may have seen on Luke Towan's youtube channel) but they always seem to have brass components which never fit together properly without hours of work, so I was a little worried that this might just be a load of money wasted. And it is a LOAD of money: the kit looks like its £53 on Shapeways, but you have to buy an additional 38t gear which is another £6, then VAT is added, plus processing and extortionate shipping costs, so in the end it comes out at about £100. Then you need £120 worth of motors, gears and bearings. Then you need a receiver and 2 separate ESCs (another £75) plus some other stuff like a steering axle, battery, servo, flashing LED light. And you need to buy the model to convert as well, which in my case was £45 by itself. So total cost runs to something like £350 😬 Mind you, it is a very good kit, with useful instructions, albeit in German, so still takes a bit of lateral thinking to understand what to do even after it's been translated. Even better now you can get it printed in the self-coloured tan resin rather than mine which was clear and needed to be primed and painted, and on the last bit of the digger arm the paint has really suffered just with handling it to install the bucket motor transmission. I've enjoyed making it, and while it definitely is NOT for beginners, it is perfectly attainable if you're really careful and patient. I'll post a video of it working shortly, but for now here are a few build pics: Drive motor and steering axle: Slew motor on top of completed chassis: Slew motor/base inserted into model: RX and one of the ESCs installed: both ESCs, cab with flashing light and battery installed: Digger arm with rotating cylinders: The finished article:

Update - the tender was on the closest of the two coupling holes, moving this to the other hole has solved the derailing issues. Weirdly there is nothing about this in the manual! It sounds and looks amazing! The firebox lights up when you operate the sound for shovelling coal, and turns off again when you’ve finished 😀 I think I can put the chimney back on to a satisfactory standard, if that’s the only issue then I’ll just glue it back on 🙂

Does anyone else’s not run properly/at all around curves? Mine arrived yesterday in a box that looked like it had been stamped on quite hard from the top and the side as well (the side had been taped up to try and hide it), inner plastic packaging was very distorted and it derails on every curve on my layout - none of which are even remotely close to R2. Also the chimney broke off when I touched it!