Robert Stokes

The layout is several years old and is in a shed which I haven't yet found the need to heat this autumn. So far I've found that just putting on a coat is enough.

Earlier today I ran some new wagons round the layout. It was a train of six wheeled milk wagons. At one place some of them derailed and the train split. I put things right and ran the train round again. The same thing happened at the same place. I examined the track carefully. This wasn't easy because it was near the back of a 24" wide baseboard set 48" above the floor and I am only 5' 7". In fact I had to get a step ladder so that I could lean over and look at it directly from above. I could then see a slight dog-leg where two pieces of flexi-track joined. When I had corrected this the wagons ran round with no trouble. A mystery about the situation is that no rolling stock, engines, wagons or coaches, had previously "found" this dog-leg.

In your first post you mention voltages of 22V and 17V at the track. This implies an input voltage of about 24V DC assuming that these readings are correct. Is this the case? If so then it is much higher than the NCE recommended input maximum of 15V DC. I use an input voltage of 15V DC and get 13,8V AC (not regular AC of course) at the track.

You are right about the lifetime of the long ones. I have three, two 4ft and a 5ft, and they have all lasted many years, although I don't know exactly how many. I don't have any shorter ones so can't answer your question. What prompted me to reply is the fact that the longest one has just given up the ghost.

"with enough room to pick up stock". This part is the key to answering this question. It depends on your fingers and your dexterity. Why not practise. Temporarily fix a length of track to a piece of board. Attach a piece of hardboard as backscene. Try lifting off some rolling stock. Putting it back on the track will probably be harder without a re-railer and maybe even with one.

The wires from the controller are joined to the bus wires at any point along them, although I believe in the middle is better if they are long ones. They can be joined in any way you like, soldered or screw connectors or those ones that clip on. By the way, for bus wires I use the brown and blue ones stripped from house mains cable. With the droppers be careful that you don't accidentally reverse any as this will cause a short circuit. Don't hesitate to ask any question. None are too simple if you don't know the answer.

I forgot to mention that a good example of the above idea is the late David Jenkinson's "Garsdale Road" which was about 13' x 9'. You may be able to find the track plan or pictures of it online. It was a representation of "Dent" on the Settle and Carlisle line. He wouldn't call it that because he felt that it wasn't a close enough copy.

I suggest having a station on one long side with a tunnel the other side containing storage loops. The platforms need only be about 3'6" to 4' as express trains would go through without stopping.

You don't need straights for tracks to diverge - use curved points or large radius ones with the curved line being the main line. I don't think you have the space for a realistic double track and a branch line. A station on a large radius curve can look good.

I like the diagram in post number 7 (the one that looks like an egg). The larger the radii the more realistic it will look. I think small radii look toy-like. There is no reason why you have to include any straight sections at all. It is also simple enough for a first layout. (I agree with the comment early on about not starting something too ambitious first time.) Think about having some storage sidings behind a scenic break so that trains can appear to go somewhere. Then a different train can appear a few minutes later.

O.K. I accept that I got that part wrong. But how do you stop the Tortoise motors drawing their 16mA each at the end of their movement? P.S. I think that I've worked it out. You use push button switches that don't provide permanent current.

Maybe you don't have to, but if you don't remove the spring, then you lose the point (pun intended) of using slow-action motors. With the spring still there, the blades will move across in one quick, noisy movement much as they do with solenoid motors. With the spring removed, especially using 9V DC power, the blades move across slowly and quietly as they do on the prototype. The fact that you have to change the actuator wire should tell you something. Why do you want to leave the spring in place?

Which is why on my latest layout I have arranged for the bus wires to run along the front of it. They are stapled to the 70mm wide main frame between two pieces of 11 x 6 mm strip wood. This makes working on it much easier. When all wiring is complete, this is covered by a painted piece of hardboard pinned to the two strip wood pieces. This makes a nice facia.

You might like to try a variable DC voltage source for the point motors. I'm thinking of the plug-in type which give out 3, 4.5, 6, 7.5 and 9V. I have found that using 9V (or possibly even 7.5V) makes the points change more slowly and more quietly - which I think is better. Remember, that sort of point motor needs very little amperage. A 1A source is more than enough.

Yes use a voltmeter, but it will have to be one that works with AC and up to at least 15V. My NCE Power cab delivers 13.8V at the track. It should read virtually the same figure all round if the bus wire is thick enough.

I can only answer some of the points you have raised. Firstly I think that with a layout of that size it would have been better to use mains cable for sockets, not lighting cable. Voltage drop may explain the slow running. You mention using DCC Concepts point motors. Are these the slow-action type? If so then you definitely should remove the springs and should use DPDT switches which give constant current instead of push buttons. Have you adapted the points to feed power to the frog by a switch on the point motor rather than rely on blade contact? I don't know anything about the Prodigy so can't comment on that.

Recently, every time I come to this forum, or go to a thread, or change page within a thread, about a second later a white bar descends at the top of the page. It is about one sixth of the height of a page. There is nothing written in the space and I can't find a way to get rid of it. It doesn't stop me reading what's on the page but it's annoying and I have to scroll more than I would have to do without it. Very occasionally it can be two or three seconds after I change a page before it appears. Does anyone know why this is happening? Is it something I've done, perhaps accidentally pressing a key that I shouldn't? And most importantly, how can I stop it happening? (It doesn't happen on other websites.) Thank you.

I made a signal box diagram by using Anyrail. I used the facility to draw rectangles for the tracks so that they were solid. I made crossovers using more rectangles turned slightly. There are home and distant signal symbols to add although theu are rather small. I then used the words facility to number the points and signals to match the numbers on my DCC Concepts signal levers.

You don't have to recreate a real location to get something moderately realistic. It can be an entirely ficticious station of your own design but still look reasonable. What I mean by unrealistic is a track plan I saw for an 8ft by 4ft baseboard which had two stations. The engine of a train would be entering one station before the last coach had left the other station. Some people may be happy with that - O.K. But my point was that you have to decide what degree of realism you want or don't want.

The first thing you have to decide is whether you just want to run a few trains or whether you want a moderately realistic model railway. A garage, usually about 5m x 2.6m, is large enough for a double track oval round the walls with a minimum radius of at least 24". I don't think that the loft space you mention is large enough to do this. If you want something not too unrealistic then please forget about set-track and use Peco flexi-track and streamline points (the larger the better). These give track separation of 50mm which looks far better than set-track. Also set-track curves have too small a radius to look good (4th radius may not be too bad). Good luck with the project whatever you decide.

I have recently rebuilt my 00 gauge layout with Peco bullhead track and points on the scenic part of it. The points so far laid make a trailing crossover between the main lines and trailing leads into sidings. Trains run through these on the main lines with no problem. However, when I try to back trains slowly through them (i.e. as facing points) much of my rolling stock including engines derail. This has even happened when I try running the train through the facing points with the engine at the front. I suspected that the problem might be back-to-back measurements and checked them with a DCC Concepts 14.5mm gauge. A few needed adjustment but not many, and correcting them did not eliminate the problem. This has made me wonder whether this track range needs a different B2B setting. Can anyone throw light on the matter? As a supplementary question, how do you adjust the B2B setting of steam engine driving wheels? Thank you in advance for any help. Robert

I agree that the run-round loop does not look long enough. You could make it a bit longer by moving the signal box to the right and have the run-round point immediately after the one leading into the goods yard. Robert

My wife and I were invited for vaccination by a telephone call from our local surgery. This was over a week ago and we were done the following day. It does not surprise me that there are phishing emails about this. Criminals will try anything with the slightest chance of success. Robert

I suggest that a very noisy motor in a new engine indicates that something is wrong with it and so you should send it back. Bear in mind that if you interfere with it, i.e. try to correct it in any way, then you invalidate the warranty. Robert

I agree that 3mm scale RTR would be just right. I saw a lovely layout in this scale at an exhibition and thought the scale was very good. To me N gauge looks just too small, but for some reason 3mm scale looked much larger and not much smaller than 00. Also 1 to 100 seems appropriate, although logically there is no reason for it. This scale would allow decent main line layouts in the size of spare bedrooms in modern houses. But it must have a nearly correct track gauge. Robert