Mutley

Thanks very much for that Roger, really helpful.

Hi, Although I consider myself a bit of a DCC veteran, having fitted decoders to around 250 OO Gauge locos, my first O Gauge loco is leaving me stumped! I have a Heljan 7mm Warship and I have an ESU Loksound V4.1 XL to fit to it. It looks to me as if I can just swap-out the Heljan PCB for the XL but I'm nervous about the lighting. Can I just wire directly into the XL, or do I need to add resistors to protect the LED's from blowing? If anybody has experience of doing this, I'd be very grateful for any advice you can provide. Thanks in advance Mike

Just a quick question on DCC fitting if I may? I must have fitted 250+ OO Gauge locos over the years, including Bachmann split-chassis steam, so I'm no shrinking violet. I'm new to O Gauge however and this is my first DCC conversion. Having opened up my Warship for the first time, I think I can see what needs to be done but thought I might ask before proceeding. As has been alluded to earlier in this thread, it does look as if I can just take out the Heljan PCB and replace it with my Loksound V4.1 XL. My worry is the lighting - are those resistors on the PCB, or are they in-line somewhere out of sight? I feel the urge to just plug-in the appropriate wires but don't want to blow the LEDs! Is somebody able to confirm? Thanks in advance Mike

Looking for a Heljan Class 35 Hymek in BR Green with Small Yellow Panels, item number 3580.

Thanks again Simon. I've identified torch / wire and will order in the morning and see what I can come up with. Your point on blackening hooks / links duly noted! I might actually get around to building a few things for myself, perhaps a wagon to begin with. Alas, lack of time is my enemy, so could be a slow process for me. All the best Mike

Thanks, I'll take a look.

Thanks Simon, that's useful advice, I guess coupling that way around avoids having to try to drop the link 'blind' onto the hook beneath the corridor connection .. hadn't occurred to me. I've found a few examples of Shunter's Poles and might see if I can concoct something using a bit of brass wire and a mini torch. Al the best Mike

Thanks Simon, much appreciated.

Good morning all. I’m a recent convert to ‘O’ Gauge, currently in the process of selling off all of my ‘OO’ Gauge stock and just trying to find my feet in the ‘senior scale’. My interests lie in a period spanning the early to late 60’s and are firmly entrenched in the Western Region, so Diesel Hydraulics and late BR Steam are my thing. I hope you will forgive the steady stream of questions that is likely to appear in this area over the coming weeks and my first relates to couplings. A bit of context first of all. My layout will be garage based and I have a space available to me of 17’8” x 9’6” with annoying piers that jut out at in a couple of places but guess they serve a useful purpose in stopping the walls from falling down! For me, I gain the most enjoyment from operating my layouts and I have a 3-year old daughter who likes to operate the trains with me and a continuous run is essential. I’ve already acquired a Heljan Warship, a Heljan Western and a Dapol 8750 and have been carrying out various tests using a Lionheart B Set to establish what I can get away with in terms of minimum radius curves. For couplings, I’ve been using the 3-link / screw-link couplings provided out of the box. I bought a box of Peco 2nd radius curves and eased these into a straight section by virtue of a Peco curved point and whilst all of the above gets around this arrangement (and I can propel without buffer locking), I sense the Western is not quite so comfortable and slows down noticeably as it enters the curve and that’s true when coupled to the coaches, or running on its own. I’ve widened out to 48” and it seems to be much happier, so that’s my adopted minimum radius and have knocked together a layout plan in XTrkCad and am happy on that front. I’m about to acquire some of the attractive looking Darstaed MK1 coaches and notice that they come fitted with Kadees (with an option for screw links if preferred) and I’ve seen comments from people mentioning that they’ve adopted Kadees for their fleets and am contemplating which way to go myself. I do find the 3-link / screw-link couplings a bit of a pain but can see that with an appropriate ‘shunters pole’ it would be less so. The prospect of automatic coupling / uncoupling is an attractive one for me but given my liking of the WR hydraulics and their deep front valences, I wondered what the route might be to fitting Kadees to the Westerns and Warships and whether anybody could advise on the best way to approach it? Whilst with OO Gauge I’ve been more than happy to ‘have a go’ but with models costing £500 ish I’m less inclined in case I wreck them! Is there somebody out there who could do this for me professionally perhaps? I’ve just completed my membership application to the Gauge O Guild and maybe once that has been processed I’ll have access to just this sort of information. Any advice would be very gratefully received. Meanwhile, I’m enjoying the journey so far and as well as the sheer ‘heft’ of these models in 7mm, I must say that each new item that arrives feels like a real event, which is something I’ve not experienced for a very long time. Thanks in advance Mike

Wanted: Bodyshells for Bachmann Warships: D867 Zenith (Green SYP), D809 Champion (MSYP) and D827 Kelly (BR Blue), D823 Hermes (GNYP). Bodyshells would need to be unmarked with headcodes in-place and preferably with LED lighting module for Headlights / taillights in working order. Complete Locos that are non-runners or in-need of attention also considered. Thanks for looking. Mike

I’ve been in a bit of a modelling rut for the last year or two, became very frustrated with the effort it took to get even a bit of track down and wired, bits falling off points etc and assumed it was all me. I’ve been contemplating a move to O Gauge as I felt I needed a real change and sketched up a plan in XtrkCad. This would be a radical move for me as I’ve accumulated a fair amount of OO stock over the years that’s special to me and with my sensible hat on, decided to mock up the O Gauge plan to the same proportions in OO just to see if it had enough operational interest for me. To cut a long story short, I’ve been working in Code 75 for years but have some Code 100 stashed away from previous layouts and for some reason I turned to that for my mock up. What a revelation! The track went down in about 2 hours, it looked fine (to my eyes) and it was nice and robust - no rails parted company with the sleeper webbing, the point springs were all nice and strong. I got some of my stock out and pushed it around a bit and everything ran smoothly … all of a sudden, the modelling mojo is back! I’d started to build a new OO Gauge layout in Code 75 a month or two back that seemed to take forever and the whole thing has been stalled with a handful of points and some lengths of plain track laid forlornly on their cork underlay … Spurred on, I ripped that up, re-laid it (and wired it) in Code 100 in double quick time and have booked a day off of work to do some more. Thoughts of O Gauge have been banished for now at least. Life's too short and there’ll be a few job-lots of battle-scarred Code 75 pointwork / slips etc heading for a well known auction site shortly

Thanks Nigel, all noted. I've got some time off of work this week to work on the layout so best to make sure that I've got a firm electrical foundation I guess before proceeding any further. I've got enough spare BUS cable to deal with the whole layout, so will replace the lot. All the best Mike

Thanks all. I've had a bit of success today using some of the above. My decoders are almost certainly of the older variety as I haven't bought any new Lenz in a very long time. First thing I tried was to give everything a good clean (excellent advice) ... unfortunately, no discernible improvement. Next, adjusted CV29 to switch-off DC, again no discernible improvement but that does eliminate another possible cause. I then set about CV50, which is something that I must confess I'd forgotten about. Using Programming on the main, I set one of the locos to run around at top speed and found that by setting CV50 to motor type 3 (whatever that is!) and CV9 to 1, I got a definite increase in speed. I did this to three of the cuplrits and their 'lap times' reduced from 31 seconds to 26/27 seconds, so much closer to the Zimo. I thought I'd check the Zimo's settings for completeness and found that CV5 was set to 220 ... I increased it to 255 and the gap between the Zimo and Lenz top speeds opened-up again although I didn't have a chance to time it as 'dad duties' called. I also noticed something else a bit odd today in that the Lenz decoders didn't seem to respond to commands to change speed in one part of the layout. As far as I can tell, there isn't an issue with the BUS, or anything in the wiring in that area and literally none of my other locos powered by Zimo, TCS, ESU etc are affected in the same way. Is there potentially something in the older Lenz decoders that is less resilient to some oddity with the Powercab maybe? I must say that I experienced problems with top speed on all locos some time ago and after reading peoples' experiences, found that I had a 12v transformer and swapped this out for something higher and that made a difference. Although I do love the PowerCab and its interface, I've been thinking for a while that I might switch it for something else ... Thanks again for all your help Mike

Thanks for that. I had a glimmer of hope there for a sec but a nagging feeling that I might already have dealt with the caps. Opened up a couple of the offenders and confirmed that I had done. Alas! Thanks again, grateful for the suggestion. All the best Mike

Thanks for that, very useful, I might give it a whirl again sometime. Meanwhile, bit of a 'sticking plaster' really but I fitted it with a Zimo decoder and an SC68 capacitor pack and that keeps it running nicely. All the best Mike

Hi David, thanks for your reply. The layout is 13'6" x 9'6", so a decent size. I think the problem I have with it is that the locos do look like they're crawling, which isn't quite the effect I was aiming for! As I say, just by replacing the Lenz decoders with Zimo, I can get a 24% increase in top speed and that speed they do look acceptable, I'd just rather not have to fork out for new decoders unless I really have to. All the best Mike

Evening all, I wonder if anybody can shed any light on a slightly baffling problem that I have? I have a number of Bachmann Class 42 Warships of various vintages, some dating back to the original releases (running on Chassis from 'Glory' models) and others from the later DCC Ready versions including Champion and Zenith and I recently decided to get them all fitted-up with some spare Lenz decoders that I had knocking around (Standards, Silvers, Golds). All ran as expected on DC. After an initial test, I put them to one side and got on with the business of building my layout and now that I've finally got somewhere to run everything, thought I'd let the Warships out for a spin. The problem I'm having is that they all consistently run with a very low top speed. I've been a DCC user for 15 years and whilst no expert, I don't consider myself to be a total novice either. I duly reset decoders, made sure that top speed wasn't being pegged back by values in CV5 etc, all with no effect. I tried a different decoder - I had a spare Zimo MX623 (reset to factory defaults) and the difference was quite stark. I timed the loco fitted with the Lenz decoder and it lapped my layout repeatedly at around 31 seconds. Fitted with the Zimo, 25 Seconds. I tried this with various locos and all consistently gave the same results. I should say that I'm using an NCE Powercab and have noted comments before on slow top speeds due to the Power Supply and dealt with that a while ago. The 'suspect' Lenz decoders were also tried in other locos, the Bachmann Class 43 Warship and Heljan Hymeks for example and all ran fine. I'm not having this issue with any other combination and other than ditching the Lenz decoders and replacing with Zimo, I'm a bit stuck for a way forward at the moment. I just wondered if anybody had any thoughts or suggestions? Any help would be gratefully received. Thanks in advance Mike

Seven Dapol Westerns for me, one a recent purchase of one of the original releases that I found lurking in the Pecorama shop! That particular model suffered from bad wheel wobble so I contacted DCC Supplies via their website, returned the loco under warranty for repair and in next to no time it was back, running very nicely as do the other six. Looking forward to adding more Locos to the fleet in due course. Mike

Hi Jamie, I recently bought your Western project for one of my Dapol Locos and having tried most of the competition (all very good in their own right) for me, yours captures the 1000's the best, a really superb job. I have a further six locos to equip, but by the looks of things, the 21-pin decoders are out of stock at the moment, any idea when there are likely to be more available again? Thanks in advance Mike

Great Service from Derails. Placed an order for my Maroon Hornby Colletts, received a friendly, helpful phone call to clarify the order and the parcel arrived well packed and in double quick time. Excellent price as well. Will definitely be buying from them again. Mike.

Great service from Digitrains. Ordered a Zimo Decoder with Class 52 Western soundtrack a couple of weeks back, as well as an SC68 Capacitor and not only did the order arrive quickly but the SC68 came soldered to the decoder, not a job I was relishing for sure. ... and the Western soundtrack is pretty impressive too! Mike.

Hi, I wonder if anybody is able to give me some advice on a problem I have with one of my Dapol Westerns? The loco in question is one of the original Maroon Small Yellow Ends models, which when last run in anger (about 18 months ago) was a fine runner to match its fine looks. With a new layout up and running, I decided to get the loco out for a spin but found that it was prone to sporadic stalling, not always in the same location and other locos (including a couple of other Westerns) run absolutely fine at all speeds. I decided that there must be an issue with the electrical pickup and so cleaned the surfaces of the wheels that touch the rails with no improvement and next took my brand new Gaugemaster Wheel Cleaning gizmo to it (very impressed with this) but again no improvement. Next step is to get under the keeper plate, perhaps get the wheels out and clean the backs, assuming there are contacts bearing onto the backs somewhere. That's where I hit a problem in that I can't figure out how to get the keeper plate off, although I did find a comment somewhere in the main Western thread that mentioned clips at either end. I've poked and prodded around but nothing seems to be budging. Just wondered if somebody who has actually done this could give me a pointer? Thanks in advance Mike

Excellent stuff Shaun! I live next to the WSR station at Bishops Lydeard and we travel on the line quite often, so really looking forward to seeing how all of this develops. Incidentally, I'm building Minehead and Blue Anchor in my garage at the moment, although it's not a quick process as we had a new addition to the family last year, so domestic duties have taken priority. What you've achieved with Dunster really is something to aspire too. All the best Mike

Hi Pacific, unfortunately the layout got damaged when I moved house, so I never got around to revitalising it. This is the only plan I can find of it, the baseboards took on a pretty curious shape after I had hacked it around to fit better into the space I had. I've just started to build a large permanent layout in my new garage but I always come back to Minories and can see myself building another one at some point as a side line. Mike

I used large radius Y Points in this way on my Minories layout a few years back and as you say, this makes for a much smoother approach and creates some interesting angles. Some of the photos about two thirds of the way down the linked page show the arrangement in practice.