DCMarvel

I think someone may be collecting these.

The original poster had one but can't find it...and I had one on my exhibition layout last year and someone nicked it!

I didn't notice at the time as you pack up as quick as you can when the show is over, and it wasn't until I started a new layout and thought the little Midland van would be ideal, that I realized I couldn't find it anywhere.

The show went well, decent attendance fairly steady over both days. 

All layouts there were first class and the demo stands were interesting, incredible trees and wagon loads.

Same place, same weekend next year.

Club open day in February at Cleveleys - see website for details.

Must be an issue with your ipad/browser/firewall as the site loads directly or via the link from here on every PC, phone or desktop I can get to try it with. It works on i-phone safari, so presumably not a general mac issue, although Wix has a slight issue with scaling to mobile size, and it is fine on Android tablet. It displays OK on my smart TV browser which is useless for most things. It works with Firefox, Chrome and IE on Windows PC without any such issues.

This is what I have been working on for the last year or so. Double fold to the wall base boards. Completely freelance done in SCARM.

Agreed. The best part is the planning, so put most effort into this aspect until you are convinced it will work in the space you have. Then design baseboards to suit the trackplan, never work on set sizes with frames all exactly the same as once you start laying track sods law dictates a point motor has to go where a baton exists, so you modify your plan. This is the thin end of a slippery wedge of further compromises.

Never known an old layout go dead, If it works well when new it continues to work for years. If you do a good job with soldering on the power supply droppers, they shouldn't fail. A quick track cleaner rub should have it as good as new in minutes.

Yes be careful, some bubble wrap has a coating that seems to stain, possibly when it's been used before and picked up a contaminant, so avoid pre-used bubble wrap.

My collection is all housed in white card boxes divided inside using foam core stuck with neat PVA. This way I have customised each box for the stock required. I got the idea from the 'Warley stock box' which comes as a 2 layer with ready made liners that lift out and can be altered to suit which I use for my exhibition stock. These are excellent boxes but hard to source and very similar boxes without the liners can be had in large quantities for peanuts from the famous auction site, for use at home.

I prefer this so keeping stock in the original boxes as that makes it much more bulky, and I can have a rake of wagons running round in less time than it would take to get a couple out of their original boxes as they are all in one place. I don't bother about the original box adding value, I don't do model railways for the value I do it for the fun.

LEDS are polarity sensitive but wiring them the wrong way doesn't damage them they just don't light.
The twin colour LED will light a different colour for each polarity. LEDS require about 1.5V DC so use either a low output transformer or resistors in a 12V feed.

You can use more than one LED per resistor but if a LED fails the others get more power and a chain of failures follows.

Wire all the - pins on the LEDS to a buswire and use a resistor in the feed to each + pin. (anode and cathode to give their correct names)

see http://www.electronics2000.co.uk/calc/led-series-resistor-calculator.php for a resistor value required. Go higher in value for longer life or lower for brighter light output but short life.

Most of this kind of stuff made in China is hand soldered, I have seen photos usually by women sat at well lit work benches quite cottage industry looking, and quality is generally quite good. It's actually amazing how they can turn out large quantities in short time with a pretty good consistency. At the price they sell to UK resellers for they would never be competitive if they invested in flow solder technology. Occasionally a dud or lesser quality one slips through and if a buyer returns one as faulty, it would be tested and opened up and if anything unusual found they would be made to correct it. You would get a replacement from another batch or your money back. If you have already opened it up then you probably wouldn't but the product development team where you bought it from would still have liked to see it.

I have used suppliers like Farnell, not direct.  The fault has been traced to the input capacitor, too high a value, but it will be confined to use on the bench for testing etc. Also the fuses were suspect, although marked 2 amp, they blow at under 1 amp (British made BS marked)

I work for such a company you purchased from in product compliance and can confirm power supplies from China are a pain in the neck. We thoroughly test all PSU's sold and included in products so they comply with RoHS, CE, WEEE, LVD, BS etc but the Chinese do have a nasty habit of changing the spec or modifying components on a re-order but not telling us. They also slip in the odd counterfeit item, sometimes deliberately, sometimes they get caught out too by sub-suppliers of parts. We do get odd ones that, until someone lets us know, sell many. Another problem we have is when users are buying a PSU for a purpose other than what it is intended for, and I guess this would be such a usage, as it is difficult then to determine whether the problem is purely in this instance, especially if no one else using them for the intended use has reported any issues.

Don't forget a new building will have cleaner concrete than an old finished one. I would just give the outer shell a wash in some thinned emulsion in a mid greyish beige then wipe it all off so you just leave a few streaks and a darker line in the joints. Dirt up the lower supports from continuing construction in a sand colour might help take off the pristine look.

Do the opposite. Site everything as far away from the backscene and as close to the front edge of the board as you can. This way you are left with options for the blending into the backscene. If you squeeze up close to it you are stuck with a low profile or even a dead flat scene which once the layout is lit has shadows cast on it from the items on the board in front of it which ruins the effect. If you have space you can 'slope up' and have the impression of more space, plus you move the operating area closer to the viewer.

There may be a bit of an obsession regarding voltage drops. Remember the James May Toy Stories series where he built a 10 mile length of track powered by car batteries every half mile or so and it worked. It was many times more than every 50 feet or so and locos ran fairly smoothly.

I know this is not to say overkill isn't a good idea, but too much overkill is also a waste of time, effort and money. If you can add more feeds at limited extra complexity and cost then it's probably worth it but more time and effort spent in careful track jointing such as filing burrs, making sure fishplates are a tight fit, gapping the joints neatly, probably eliminates the need to add extra feeds in the real world. Again a domestic fixed layout is a different beast to a sectional exhibition layout, where reliable operation is paramount as well as being robust.

Remember as well a 40ft loop is only ever 20ft from the power input at the furthest point. 20ft is nothing.

Sometimes the plastic moulding for the dead frog doesn't have enough depth for the flange and lifts the wheel ever so slightly, so if there isn't much 'articulation' in the wheel sets it lifts the opposite pickup wheel. You could try filing them deeper, as at worst if you cut through you have already sort of decided to replace them.

Anything that carries current is usable but beware thick solid copper needs more heat to solder to the rails it will also need polarity ident below the boards.

Assuming you are not going OTT with block section wiring for initial DC then to use the solid copper as a layout length main power bus for + and - and the more usual coloured multistrand for droppers from the rails to these would make more sense. As DCC doesn't need switching for sections just the usual live frog isolating fishplate on the frog rail this would not need any modifying when you switch to DCC but you would be limited to a one loco at a time operation on DC unless you added an isolation switch into one of the droppers in each section or siding.

1. Use pellets to attract them away from the models. Put them well away from the layout.

2. No idea, it probably dries and becomes invisible? As long as you don't scrub, a quick wipe with a moist cloth or sponge shouldn't damage the surface.

3. You can't because 'slumlords' and 'developers' snap up all the affordable stuff and renovate them, then sell or rent again at the inflated prices you mention, or rent them in dishevelled state for less. Blame TV 'Homes under the Hammer' etc for stating a trend!!

The table isn't driven by gear teeth as such at all directly. The big gear has a groove that engages with a series of cams in the form of eccentric loops moulded into the bottom of the table all the way around. The slots in the gear fit into these cams and drive the table round in a series of steps, disengaging at fixed intervals for the duration of one full rotation of the big gear again. There is no way to change the way the gear drives the table.

To drive it in a single motion would entail either a centre axle or a full radial gear attaching to the table underside, both of which are complicated or even not possible.