wasdavetheroad

Banking would be a more complex problem than double heading or piloting which can have both locos using the same throttle but 'putting a sock on it' requires careful monitoring of the banker to avoid pushing too hard and causing a derailment. My solution for DC would be to use a battery powered radio controlled banker not coupled and having say a Hornby medium coupler bar without hook to push on the train brake van with a hook less coupler and not a wobbly narrow tension lock. The problem with a radio controlled banker, say a 2-6-4T is finding space for the battery but apparently you can take power from the rail. I just googled it and other locos were used including a A4! and an interesting story about a 9 car DMU assisting a stalled Black 5 on a mixed freight outside Preston

According to Digital wiki??? with DCC speed matching to within 10% is good enough. I have 2 Hornby 2P 4-4-0's that were within 3% straight out of the boxes. I ran them light engine coupled around the layout with the faster loco in front and observed the tension lock coupling carefully. On 3 sections around the circuit the tension lock slackened and the slower loco was pushing!. Even at 10% difference when pulling a train with the slower loco in front the weight of the train has the faster loco as the slower loco of you see what i mean and the couplings remain under tension for the complete circuit. For DC double heading i remember reading on a US site that it helps if climbing an incline one loco can't pull the train on its own and as long as you don't get wheel spin or skidding you should be OK I don't have much need for double heading but can occasionally just couple 2 x 2P's to pull a 8 coach passenger train. Normally i will just use a Black 5 instead. Another consist i might try one day is a compound 4-4-0 piloting a 4-6-0. In this case i would have 2 or 3 different 4-6-0's speed matched with the Compound. ps- I use battery powered radio control but the principles are somewhat similar to DCC

I decided to try out inkredible cartridges as they are a Which magazine best buy, not the cheapest but a similar price to the Wilkinson ones I was using. I loaded the first 4 a few days ago and there was no error message on the Epson SX215. I print on A4 labels and ran a test print of red ashlar, the quality looks OK, as for fading my railway room only has light when I am in there, otherwise it is pitch dark.

I have an Epson Stylus 215 inkjet printer and have been successfully using Wilkinsons ink cartridges. Alas Wilkinsons is no more and it is likely that my local branch will close even if some survive. Any suggestions about alternative ink availability?

Rx 5 LED flashes indicates low voltage http://www.deltang.co.uk/rx611-selecta.htm You could email Deltang for suggestions

Most my OO scale locos are modified to allow for a speedy battery change. The tenders lift off the chassis and the Diesels, mostly Lima have bodies that lift off. You need to find out the power draw of the loco by fitting a battery of say 100mAh and timing how long it will run. If your loco needs 200mA for an hour the battery should be larger capacity. The recharging is easy, have pre charged spare batteries and just swop. It will only take a couple of minutes. 009 might have problems with finding room for the batteries

If 15mph is 22 feet per second (according to the net) at 4mm to the foot for 00 scale that is 88mm ???

I bought a number of Lima diesels some years ago when they were cheap and have a spare Class 47 body with the large buffers, problem solved. Thanks for your offer as well so I don't need to inconvenience you. Hold on to those buffers as Lima stuff is getting rarer and more expensive

What was the diameter of the buffer heads on a Class 20? I want a quick improvement to my Lima model. I have plasticard and several hole punches

Did they do something like that in the olden days of unfitted wagons, applied the wagon brakes and pulled the train down the hill?

If one loco can pull the train uphill an extreme solution could be to have a dummy loco which ideally should be no heavier than one of the coaches. I did this with a pair of Lima class 20's, made easier by spare non powered bogies being available.

That's excellent, at least 120 complete circuits to catch up the slower loco which means it is 0.83% faster so no need to speed match at all. this was discussed some time ago

Spot on, I just tried to insert a Hornby coupling into a Dapol pocket. It fits but you have to push until it clicks into place

Dapol sell a pack of 40 replacement couplers including the NEM pockets (COUPNEMOO). Over £20 per pack. I have modified my Dapol couplers to stop them drooping and the annoying hooks dropping out. I am also completely replacing some of them with Hornby ones. Plus Hornby wheels in many cases to get rid of the wobbly wheel issue.

N scale and 2' 6" wide. That should be reachable without having to move anything. Devise a cunning scenic break in front of the fiddle yard which would be OK if you are more interested in trains moving through scenery, in which case your viewing height will be low, not like from a helicopter or drone!.

I have a copy of Harold Bowtell's book 'Rails Through Lakeland' and there is a chapter on bridges. There are a number of upper and lower Bowstring girder bridges on the line including some with the track curved. They have heavy longitudinal timber baulks beneath the rails, canted in the curved versions with longitudinal heavy planks between. No evidence of ballasting. It is mentioned that the lack of ballast puts more strain on the bridges structure.

It appears that NFC technology (near field) is designed for transmission ranges of about 4 inches, however other radio protocols are available.

The problem is this: the second receiver/loco was successfully "bound" with the Tx22 and worked just fine. However, after turning it all off and coming back to it a day later it refuses to sync. The LED on the receiver has the normal steady on-off pulse of once a second but when I turn on the transmitter - with the Selecta switch on 2 - the channel it was bound to- it changes to flashing twice quite quickly, then a second pause before the double flash. Once you have bound a receiver to the transmitter the sequence for subsequent sessions is to ALWAYS switch on the transmitter before switching on the receivers.

Many thanks, I can see how it all fits together now and the mysterious hatch in the rear wall of the small building turns out to be the loading hatch for the coal 'ole. It appears the toilet block has door access to the urinals, maybe because of the high and COLD locations of the small stations.

I have just bought a 00 scale Metcalfe Settle & Carlisle small station kit and want to know the internal floor plan. A fruitless online search brought up a plan for the larger size station from visitcumbria dot com which has the following rooms - waiting hall * - waiting shed (porch) - station masters office * - ladies waiting room/WC * - porters room? * - lamp room? * * marked rooms have fireplaces at the toilet end - urinal/WC - CSALS ??? - OU?T ??? Can anyone help with the floor plan? I think i might add some extra rooms as I will be cladding the building in Scalescenes red ashlar anyway.

It is also my understanding that Protocab developed their own radio control system unlike Deltang which uses one of the standard model radio control protocols Spectrum DSM2. It should be possible to run both locos at the same time using their own controllers as I know Deltang use the 2.4Ghz band with various redundancy and checking protocols and would think Protocab would do the same.

The site will be sadly missed as I Got a lot of inspiration and advice from the knowledgeable people on there

I use flexitrack in Anyrail a lot for my Kato HO Unitrack designs. Hold on, the Kato track library does not have flexitrack!. No problem, just open a Peco streamline track library and past a piece of flexi onto your design then close the Peco library. Anyrail flex track is very useful and I use it for making custom curves and straights. When the flexi track piece design is finished you can 'freeze' it so that you don't accidentally modify it. Some advice for final track designs is to adjust the tolerances as small as you can go in the SETTINGS menu. One additional function I would like is to lock 2 items together so they move as one, this would have proved very useful for designing the modified turnouts I am using.

I tested the loco this evening and it looks as if the best solution if possible is to fit radio control and battery power. My layout points have insulated frogs and there are stalls on the points unless moving at a fair speed, faster than I would want. I fished my converted Smokey Joe out and it cruised happily over the points at I calculate about scale 12mph. Its problem is the awful motor and stiction so the 3.7V from a single battery is marginal in starting the loco. Once started the speed can be reduced. The pleasure of no rail power. I know there is no way I can now do a RC conversion so I will have to investigate getting a commercial job. I think there is a topic here somewhere about slow running industrial locos so might try a different loco Thanks everyone for the advice

The loco should arrive today and I will use an old gaugemaster controller to try it out on DC first. If it passes that test I will try using a Deltang Rx to power the track using a regulated power supply. The Deltang Tx control will solve the fixed position DC controller problem. The IMPORTANT question, how do you prevent a short circuit on the track frying the Deltang Rx edit - the loco just arrived, it is beautiful.