Imustbemadatmyage

A bit of thinking has produced this track plan v 1.0. It’s not to scale but I think it fits ok. The baseboard is 810x405 mm

As this is a try out for learning (an apprentice piece of you like) I am not too bothered about longevity. I take your point about sound deadening though and also Duncan's point about drainage. 10mm of raise does, however, seem a lot. That's 4ft 8 inches in scale which, to my memory, is a little high.

It's my first attempt! Was never any good at DIY when I was younger. Must have got better with age!

Can I please ask why? Is to deaden the sound or just to raise the track bed?

Hi Duncan, many thanks for replying. Yes, it certainly is a good idea to have drainage on the layout, and I was thinking that the track would effectively be in a cutting, although one side would be a retaining wall and the other an embankment. Water would certainly drain onto the operating part of the layout! I hadn’t got round to thinking about any of the details around track height and ballasting as yet - it’s taken me 5 months to consider starting this and it is really just a way of learning skills. I am certainly not modelling any sort of real location. There’s too much chance of someone saying the signals are wrong or that my engine never came north of Watford! Better for me to make mistakes on a small imaginary layout and then, if I can do it well enough, I will tackle a “proper “ layout where things are correct. Many thanks for your kind offer of visiting your layout. I would love to see it. Let me have some contact details please Regards, John

Due to the file size restrictions I couldn’t post this one which is a pinned down early track plan. A main line running right to left has a branch line joining (the one with my castle class on it for scale) and sidings which will work as an inglenook. Track will, of course, be slightly curved and cut to the correct lengths when I lay it properly! My scenic idea is to have a road running over a bridge at either end with an embankment at the front and a wall at the back, behind which will be a grassy bank leading up to some terraces. Around the sidings will be the usual buildings of course. What do people think of my basic idea?

Hi, having browsed on here for a while I am taking my first tentative step into a layout. Lack of space has made me think of an inglenook, as that will teach me how to lay track, wire the layout for dcc and how to shunt. I have probably overkilled the baseboard as it is 5mm ply on 2x1 battens.

Clips on frogs just make the points live in both directions. You still need insulated joiners on both inner frog line, together with additional feeds beyond the insulation and, perhaps, frog polarity changing. All the clips do is to distribute the power to both lines at once, rather than relying on blade contact. Draw your track plan in two colours, one positive and one negative. You will then see where the problems are.

My advice, as a total newcomer to the hobby after 50 years away, is to go for dcc. On my very small test track in n gauge I have 3 separate locomotives. I have a Graham Farish class 37 diesel, and 2 Dapol " Grange" class steamers. They all have different decoders and ran very differently out of the box. The 37 had quite marked delays on starting and stopping whereas one Grange started and stopped immediately and the other about half way between the two. A one off CV adjustment to each loco produced a most realistic effect and this, alone, was enough to convince me of the benefits of dcc

Many thanks for the help and suggestions. Having looked at the dimensions of the various suggestions I have gone for the MX616N. It's the only one that is smaller than the DCC23 so should be guaranteed to fit!

Having just purchased a nice Dapol n gauge Grange class to go with another Dapol Grange class with dcc fitted, I am considering which chip to use in it. Dapol appear to use Gaugemaster DCC23 chips but they seem to be hard to get hold of! Are there any other chips small enough to fit?

Just bagged an n gauge Forthampton Grange for £70 from Dapol. Less than half price. A real bargain and will complement my existing Bampton Grange. https://www.Dapol.co.uk/index.php?route=product/special

Insulated fishplates on the 2 frog rails eliminate the possibility of shorting if the frog is at the opposite polarity to the continuing rail. If you want the siding to have power even when the points are set for the opposite direction you need to supply power beyond the insulated fishplates

Sorry I meant chip not child! Can't seem to be able to post if it's edited

The final update on this problem is that I returned the engine to the shop today and it did exactly the same thing with a new child fitted. It was immediately exchanged for a different model. I did, however, take on board the advice about the Bachmann controller and replaced it with a Prodigy Express. Many thanks for the help about this John

Is that too high?

Just tested track with no load and 16.5v so no really excessive. Thanks for all replies.

It’s just a standard Bachmann cheapie controller. As I said, a class 37 runs fine. Sounds like another trip for me on Monday morning

I bought a Dapol n gauge Sea Eagle with dcc chip fitted today. It ran fine in the shop and I started to run it in this afternoon. It ran fine for 15 minutes then stopped with a ticking sound and the tender felt very warm. The lights on the controller were also flashing. The same controller (Bachman) will still run my class 37 perfectly, so I think I can rule out the track or controller as the problem. May it just be that the CV to allow dc running has not been switched off or do I have to return it on Monday?

Many thanks. What may happen if the laptop supply is wrong? I am not trying to penny pinch, BTW. I am simply trying to be responsible and recycling old stuff, in the same way that I have a sodastream rather than using disposable plastic bottles for fizzy water.

I hope I'm not expected to suck the transformer while it's plugged in! Many thanks for the help

I'm sure this gas been asked a lot before but I can't face searching 189 pages! I am getting parts together for my first layout (N gauge ddc) and am working to a budget! My board size is 1200 x 750, so it's a small layout to learn on. So far I have a load of domestic mains cable which I am going to use for the track bus. I have peco 55 streamline track and some unifrog points which I am going to wire as electrofrog, using seep pm1 motors with switches, running them from a Gaugemaster cdu. My questions are: 1. Is my bus wire ok? 2. Can I use wires from a cat5 cable for dropper wires (multistrand AWG 24)? 3. Could I use an old laptop power supply to power the cdu? 4. What size wire should I use to run from the cdu to the switches and then on to the point motors? Many thanks for any help John

Thanks for that. I had initially thought to do the layout on Osborns models website where they supply all of the setrack bits needed to complete the layout as a single pack. https://www.osbornsmodels.com/ekmps/shops/osbornsmodels/images/peco-new-plan-001b-n-scale-adding-the-second-oval-7679-p.jpg To my eye this looks like a version of Bredon, simplified for n gauge. I want to build with code 55 streamline, however, as it looks better and I want to practice my techniques on a small layout to begin with. As I have a larger board than that shown I can't see that any discrepancy in size between setback points and unifrog points would make the layout impractical. Edited for typos

Many thanks for the help. The links were extremely helpful, particularly the railway technical one. I now understand a lot more of the basics of track design and signalling. I just need to get to grips with Anyrail now so I can start designing my layout. I won't be basing on a real place as no-one can then accuse me of getting details wrong! John

My board is 29.5 inches in real money. I can reach front to back easily enough. My basic thoughts are as the reply to Joseph_Petrell