deepfat

Hi, I got the SR Grey crane for my birthday and I love it, however what would a typical era 3 train look like that this would be part of - what pulled and what other wagons and coaching stock would have accompanied as it went from job to job. Andrew

thanks for all the replies I think I am going to have a fight on my hand as a previous owner has soldered the cranks onto the wheels and glued rather than screwed the pistons onto the chassis so stripping this down to modify it is going to be a pain. BTW @34theletterbetweenB&D I didn't need to turn off the light to see her sparking on our club layout so I am beginning to regret buying it but I want a Baltic and this seemed the only option as there don't seem to be any unbuilt kits around

thanks both I may have to re-wheel anyway as I am have peco 75 track

Hi I have recently acquired a damaged Langley's Baltic Tank which has been quite well build but now needs some love. However I'd like to renumber it as 333 Remembrance and I wondered if anyone knew where to get the brass plates lining etc. to do this or even if any of that exists. Also is it easy or even possible to convert to DCC. Looking at the pickups they are on one side of the driving wheels which are insulated from the rest of the chassis. So am I right that I'd need to isolate the motor from the chassis in some way and then route power from the chassis through the DCC decoder to the motor itself? Any help appreciated

so I actually work for Microsoft in the UK and while this is sad Microsoft don't own the intellectual property in those books either. What I can tell you is that if you put your stuff on our cloud then it's still your stuff. If that wasn't the case no one would use it especially not the NHS or the other government departments I work with to pay for my trains. so your stuff is safe with us though I don't think RMWeb runs in our data centres

Puzzled I need to phone you to buy this - no paypal etc. etc.? but I am interested, as it's friendly in here, and you guys do have to pay the rent.

Jonathan you are a star - I didn't even know Hornby published service sheets

I go this supposedly new on Ebay and although new it's missing a connection between the flywheel and the worm drive. as you can see from the photo. so any ideas on where to get the bit if the seller doesn't come through as I had fitted a TTS unit to the tender and then investigated what was wrong ( the motor spins beautifully but can never drive the wheel as it is). I also don't have too much faith in Hornby either, as this is clearly a manufacturing fault

I have to confess I got beaten by the heat too. Although my loft veluxes are north facing and there is no direct sunshine the temperatures up there are too fierce at the moment and some of my track has moved and did jump out of the chairs on a curve. This is because I did all my track work in winter and tried to get thngs nice and tigtht. So I have removed the offending sections and actually I was able to repair them by sliding the sleepers out and refitting them. I then just removed a sliver of rail and re-laid them during the hottest part of the day. That way I know have minimum viable gaps, although I did need a long cold shower after that! My plywood base seems OK and I had gaps basically because I am not that good with wood plus I had the ply in the loft for some weeks before I laid it. However I would have thought humidity was more of a factor than temperature with wood?

Thanks all the fog has cleared let the soldering commence!

OK let me try and explain again. in the DCC concepts instruction sheet for wiring the frog there are three wires running from the point marked 7 which go into the controller red blue and green. I am not sure why the red and blue are needed given that will be the same as the power feed into the controller . However if I just connect the green frog wire to the middle port the frog is dead. I am puzzled by this as well because I also have Cobalt DIP switches which do work and only required me to connect one wire from the frog to the motor to control polarity on the frog. So please reply if you are actually using or have experience of DCC Concepts stuff as I am fine with general DCC wiring - my trains are rolling and my other point motors are all behaving themselves. thanks in advance Deepfat - new to trains but not entirely stupid

Hi I have reread what Bill has posted and my question now is do I have to wire up the blue and red wired from, the controller to the frog switch as well as the green wire. - It's not clear form the manual whether those diagrams apply to DCC AND DC or just DC. Does that switch need power to it - and in that case surely I can just connect red and blue to my bus rather than needlessly apply solder to my points (soldering is not my strong suit!). I am only using these point because I need surface e mounting, For the rest of my layout I am sing Cobalt DigitalP motors. They are super easy to setup and don't see to need these extra wires.

Thanks , I do have the long crossing fully insulated (so all 8 rails) and I do only have one power district so I'll get cracking on that Andrew

I want to know how to connect the frog diamonds on a Peco electrofrog long crossing (SL-E 194) to my Cobalt -SS motors configured for DCC. The relevant are of my layout is attached the motors are driving the two SL-E 188 points. Thanks in advance and apologies if this is not the right place to post this - I am new here @deepfat Using Hornby e-link and RailMaster for DCC control

Thanks all my point was that I now bearing holes have to be broached but the bearings are 4mm or so and making the holes that big would cut through the frame so as Jol Wilkinson says I need different bearings and PDK have promised to send me them. I have the Ian Rice work on chassis building , low temp solder & flux from DCC Concepts, and if push comes to shove some 2 pack epoxy used by Augusta to glue Merlin helicopter drive shafts together so ready to get stuck in. I will also blog this as the weak point of this project is too much assumed knowledge in the instructions. I wanted this kit as I want a wartime black Peninsular & Orient Merchant Navy and no one makes anything like the photos I have of her as she would have been in say 1943-44

My first go at builoding in brass was inspired by an ebay auction becuase it seemd that eveyrhting needed was in the box - a brass kit (PDK Merchant Navy series 1) what looked like the right ALan Gibson wheels, an engine and a 2 stage gearbox. However is you look at the picture attached (let me know if you can't see it) and the bearing supplied are so big that they are big for the frame i.e. they would not be holes but crescent shaped cut outs. However there are essentially two chassis frames under the tender and I can't see why I can't discard the inner frame completely and have the tender bogies on pin point axles perhaps with brass pin point bearings inside the supplied white metal axel covers. It also occurs to me that this might make it difficult to replace the wheels so can anyone offer any advice as I wanted to start with the easy bit which I tho0ught would be the tender! thanks in advance @deepfat

Thanks all, I have redesigned the layout (SCARM is good!) to keep things flat. However I like the sponge and magnet suggestions so I will be trying that as my stations are also on slight (1%) inclines and it would again be nice to leave a rake of coaches there is possible and yes mine do roll really wheel except the Pullmans with the pickups - I have SR 8 wheel luggage vans with nothing in them at the moment so plenty of room and my 20 ton brake vans and queen Mary have space too. All I need know is my builder to finish the loft so I can get cracking

Hi I am designing my first layout and I want to be able to have sidings at say 1% incline where I can leave rakes of rolling stock in place until collected by another loco. In the real world brake vans have brakes so is there anyway to emulate that in the world of 00? I was think either a trackside device e.g. magnet and a modified brake van. controlled by DCC so has anyone got any ideas or is this madness from a newbie who ought to know better? details are prewar Southern layout of about 5m x 4m, loosely based around Hastings so necessarily hilly with DCC control via Hornby e-link and three laptops. the attached bitmap show the an orange track connecting the turntable to the rest of the layout and I want to drive onto that and lave the rake behind as the loco goes on the turntable

Experts, I have been given a PDK 04 Merchant Navy kit that is quite old but unopened and complete with wheels a gearbox and Mashime 16 series motor. While I can get my head around the supplied instructions how do I fit the gearbox and engine and add pickups. I am guessing this may have been answered beofre but i am new to modelling and rmweb and have not found anything yet.