cheshepe

Hi Dave, hope that you have a great holiday!  Thanks for treating our small club so brilliantly in 2012.  Based on how well you treated our exhibition and our members, I've ordered a couple of your first N Gauge models even though they're outside of my usual modelling areas.  Best of Luck with your endeavours and I look forward to receiving these new masterpieces mate!

Simon,

just reading back through these mailings and I noted something that concerns me! Your reference to the Dapol model signal failing. I have one exactly the same and having already filed down the base to bed it neatly into my existing ballasted track area, it cannot be sent back.

I am an electrical engineer and have found that there is no output from the chip inside the signal base. My input voltage is correct and within the Dapol specs and the switched input is also fine. However there is no voltage output from the internal chip and the LED does not light.

I used the two signals for a whole weekend at Wigan then found one to be dead on the next club meeting.

We have our own small show this weekend and therefore |I have replaced the faulty signal. At over £20 a shot I hope that this is not a common fault. Both the present signals are working well. Once our show is over I shall check the chip number and find the reference drawing on the Rapid Electronics website so that I can see what this IC actually does, then I will try replacing it. If this works I will use the old signal on our other club layout, Millom.

Can you please let me know if you found any fault with your bad signal and whether you returned it? Dave Jones of Dapol is exhibiting at our show and I will discuss this with him, so it would be handy to know your findings.

regards,

Pete Chesher MBE

Chesh

Book me in,should be finished by then!!!!

 

Will be on my own this weekend,there's no one available to help, see you Saturday 8.00am

 

Ray

Ray, thanks will do! Make your mind up regarding the name then we can get it posted on our website! Regards this weekend, don't worry Rowan is working at the exhibition and he'll gladly give you a tea / lunch break.

best regards,

Chesh.

Ray, the new layout is looking great, particularly like the buildings. Okay for Millom 2014?

Chesh.

What a fantastic small layout. I always say that the massive layouts are not always the best. You have managed to get so much atmosphere into this model without overcrowding. Very difficult to pull off successfully but you have managed it! This is the sort of layout that I look for when visiting exhibitions, not the large tail chasers. Oh.. and I am a north based LMS fan!

We have Ray Slack's Bodmin at our small show next month, another great GWR layout. If a model is good, it is worth looking at regardless of region or scale and you have inspired me to have a go at modelling Bridport (where my grandad lived) which I have been thinking about for some time.

Having exhibited our micro layout Hartley with the NGS mini stand at Manchester MRX this weekend, I can confidently state that Dapol will do well with these signals regardless of the negative comments posted on this forum. The average modeller wants signals that will work and look reasonable but they must also take a few knocks here and there. We had loads of queries regarding the Dapol signals and all comments were positive. We need to remember that Dapol, Hornby, Bachmann et al need to cater for the average Joe Soap who is new to the hobby and they don't just cater for a few serious enthusiasts who want all singing and dancing controls tied to a laptop.

In our experience many modellers are frightened to fit a plug in decoder never mind understanding advanced control systems. I have lost count of the number of times that I have renumbered a DCC loco for visitors to shows who cannot read an address. This is why I suspect that Dapol decided to keep things simple.

I have made a good number of scale N gauge signals, complete with lenses and working LED lamps. However they take an age to built from brass and, because they are true scale, are easily damaged. I won't hesitate to use Dapol signals wherever we require single arm home or distants. On the club's exhibition layouts I plan to replace the arms with MSE components and to add additional home made limit switches on the unused side of the 'actuator arm' for feedback to the control panels. It will still be faster than building from brass and result in a stronger signal. True, it will make the warranty invalid but so does weathering and fitting hard wired decoders to my locos!

I am sure that those who desperately want feedback will find a means of doing so. If not, we can always scratch build our own signals!

I installed my two upper quadrant home signals this week. I tested the first and then I filed down both bases, taking a few mm off each side / end, then blended them into the layout with ballast. I then tested them after wiring in to my AC supply. Doh, one of them wanted to work as a lower quadrant and jammed in a low position. Moral of the story, as always, is to test first as once work like this is undertaken I don't think my local model shop would accept a return!

Anyway, I softened my ballast with a little warm water and opened the mechanical casing, which was very easy, one screw in the base. It was apparent that the centre mechanism had not be installed correctly at the factory and it was a two minute job to reset and then re-install on my micro layout. It appears that Dapol have used a standard mechanism and that the operating 'screw' is reversed for use on the lower quadrant signals. Is this assumption correct, Dave?

I am very satisfied with these. Excellent Dapol!

As noted elsewhere the arms are a little heavy for the fine scale modeller and I will be swapping with MSE parts on our club layouts. I will also be braver and reduce the bases even further as I am now confident that, performed with care, this can be done without damaging the model. I have not changed the arms on our micro layout as this is designed to show N Gauge entrants what is available commercially and I expect that the average modeller will be more than happy with Dapol's excellent efforts.

For those using DCC and whinging about compatability, there are pulsed stationary decoders out there which can be used to operate the signal. These could also be used to latch relays for your feedback indication, on either DC or DCC. Dapol should be applauded for a great bit of innovation. I have already heard some moaning about the price, just imagine what the cost could be for fully DCC compatible signals. When considering the cost of servos, cards etc, this seems to me a reasonable price for a good product. Until now we have been forced to make signals using brass and I feel that these will sell in large volumes.

Just bought a couple of the upper quadrant signals from Dapol at the Maryport show today. Admittedly the arms are a little heavy compared to my scracthbuilt MSE efforts but they will be sufficient for most modellers who don't wish to spend days messing with tiny bits of brass. I will be adding these to my micro layout, Hartley, early next week. Very good effort by Dapol and something that many UK modellers have been crying out for.