wasdavetheroad

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.

I have checked out the large flange wheels I have from Dapol, Lima including brass loco wheels and what appears to be the largest flange on a Siphon G, Airfix GMR coaches and Mainline coaches. Apart from normal track I also tested on the 3 turnouts 490mm, 550mm and 867mm radius. Happy to report no flange riding on the chairs and the wheels were OK through the turnout flange guides as well.

Yes, according to Deltang it should work with DC, AC and DCC power. It occurs to me that if you are using the Rx off layout and supplying the track via a Tx acting as a remote throttle the regulated power supply would mean no need the rectification circuitry? This is the latest plan for the layout, Kato HO Unitrack, Green are the quarry lines/ Exchange sidings. Building works are almost compete so maybe track laying can start in early December. No station names yet.

Has anyone any experience of building one of these diagrams from the Deltang site? I have just ordered myself an early xmas present which is an OO scale Andrew Barclay 0-4-0 saddle tank loco. Because of aging hand problems I have great difficulty with complex construction and anyway the loco has room for a decoder or Deltang Rx but fitting batteries is going to be extremely difficult. The loco will run on its own section of the layout ( exchange sidings and quarry sidings) with no access allowed to the main lines. BR locomotives will have access to the exchange sidings and will continue to run on batteries. To start with I hope to have say 12V DC from a regulated power supply feeding a Deltang Rx which supplies the track and is controlled by a spare Deltang Tx I have. The loco will retain its power collectors and requires no modification out of the box. If this works OK I will proceed to stage 2. Stage 2 involves fitting the Rx to the loco with the rectification circuit etc and this should allow for more than one loco to be controlled from the Tx with the advantage of the full 12V being supplied from the rails.

Can you give some examples of the stock you are worried about, I am about to start a Kato HO Unitrack layout and never really thought about the problem as my stock is overwhelmingly newer profile.

Already got a head shunt for that and I might use it for some sort of business, small wood yard maybe An advantage of Kato Unitrack is I can easily modify the layout.

Thanks a lot that has saved me a lot of trouble. I have also looked at the long topic on Lampeter here and have the detailed plan detail with a bonus that a signalling plan is similar to mine

Because plan A is a simple schematic and the actual plan is above (ignore the mineral line run around loop). The 3 RH points would need to be replaced with LH ones in a remodelled plan. Happily I don't need to do this.

Single line passing loop and entrance to goods yard. Was there ever an example of the layout at A? If so I will be happy with the 'there is a prototype for everything' If no and it has to be the layout B I will be faced with difficult choices. 1 - buy new turnouts, expensive at £60 each and I will need 3 of them, leaving me with 3 that I have no use for, and maybe have to wait several months before they are available anyway. 2 - Invoke the ' its my train set' rule and start track laying

Excellent inspiring post. Just shows what can be done but unfortunately my precision fitting days are over due to increasingly ancient hands so all my locos need battery removal for charging. Do you have a continuous circuit of any size? I test my battery capacity by fully charging it and timing how long it pulls a typical load before the LVC cuts the power to save the battery. The Rx-41 still has LVC?

Another vote for Kato HO Unitrack. I have been collecting track for several months as the supply can be intermittent. Many will think the prices eye wateringly expensive with a 867 radius turnout being about £60. For the you get several pieces of ballasted track including a 10 angle return curve to make a siding etc and, for me, the point motor is contained in the ballast base and looks a precision job with gold contacts. There are 8 curve radii from 370mm to 790mm, with 4 pieces in the pack for a 90 degree curve. There are also 490mm and 550mm turnouts with a manual version for the 490mm and for the 867mm as well. The 550mm has just been announced and is a re engineered product so not many details so far. Track centres are 60mm for the 550mm and 867mm turnouts but 75mm for the 490mm. You can take an exacto saw to them as long as you don't touch the motor area. You can also mod the straights and curves and I have just made two length with a 2.5 degree curve at about 2000mm radius. BTW I hate wiring so will only wire the points and have radio controlled battery powered locos Might start a topic about how the 16 foot train set construction is going with how to mod the track etc.

Apparently Tacky Glue = thick PVA

Anyrail has an extensive library of track geometry. For example the Peco code 100 streamline etc has the slips and curved points. I am using Anyrail to design my new layout which uses Kato H0 Unitrack, a sectional track system but no flexitrack . It is possible to modify straights and curve radii so I copied a length of Peco flextirack onto the layout plan and use that to design customised track

The National Library of Scotland site is brilliant, covers England too and you can get OS large scale maps back to the 1850's. It is also free. Zoom in, make a screen copy and print it. I use Irfanview for all that basic image stuff such as chopping the unwanted bits out of the screen copy, also an excellent program.

That's interesting, the point rodding can emerge from any side of the box and maybe even all of them!

Thanks for the designs, the second one looks better. I have redrawn it with the clearances I need, 112mm for the box and 180mm for the cattle/loading dock. This would mean buying an additional turnout and discarding one with the problem of maybe waiting months for delivery. I can delay the decision as the advantage of sectional track is I can easily lift it as I experiment with operating the layout