DK123GWR

If it's just buzzing, and it was buzzing even with the bulb, what exactly are you worried about? Unless there are other problems then you could leave it. Are you sure that the buzz is coming from the dummy, not something else such as the controller?

I would still reccomend going back to the bulb or installing some sort of rectifier (whether homemade or in a decoder) and removing the diode (don't do this unless you do change something else though - it would only be worth it to ensure that the rectfier's output is smooth) in order to prolong the life of the LED.

If the LED not working then you could try turning it around. This is why:

The important thing to remember is that a diode will only allow current to flow in one direction. A light emmitting diode (LED) is the same, so it will only light up when current is flowing in the correct direction through the LED. A DCC track provides an AC power supply, where the direction of the current changes direction several times per second. This means that when you tested your LED against the track, it will flicker, turning on when the current is flowing in the correct direction and off when it is flowing in the wrong direction (you will not be able to see this since the frequency of a DCC supply can be up to 10kHz, so the current changes direction 10,000 times each second).

However, in your model the LED is being wired in series with a diode. As already explained, a diode will only allow current to flow through the circuit in one direction. This means that the diode will only allow current to pass through the power car when one of the rails is positive, but not the other. If your LED is wired in the opposite direction, then the only current flowing to the LED will be in the wrong direction, so the LED will block that current and will not light up. Turning either the LED or the diode around would solve this issue,

HOWEVER even if this is the problem, and you manage to get the LED to light up, it will not last for very long. The AC current will damage the LED and cause its life to be very, very short. It is very possible that you have wired the LED the correct way, but it has already broken (I would suggest that this is actually the most likely cause of the problem, since a buzz would indicate that current is flowing through the power car). You have two (maybe three) options in order to resolve this problem. The first option is to switch back to the bulb (bulbs allow current to flow in both directions, so will work on an AC power supply). The second is to install a DCC decoder, which will convert the supply from AC to DC. The third is to install a rectifier (described here as a 'diode matrix') of your own creation. A circuit diagram for this is provided in the article, although given your apparent lack of confidence with electricity this may not be the best option for you.

Please could you describe how the lights operated originally when the power car was using a DC power supply? Did the lights light up when the train was going in one direction or both? If it was only one direction, and there is nothing at all other than the lighting system connected to the circuit within the power car, I would recomend removing the original diode when carrying out any of the three options above, since this will prevent a continuous power supply to the bulb. Please also note that if you choose options 2 or 3, you may need to replace the LED if it is indeed damaged.

I hope this helps, and I hope that I haven't made too many mistakes. I'm taking an A-level in Physics but I there are a lot of areas around DCC electronics which we don't cover (or at the very least haven't covered yet) so I am relying on my understanding of the basic principles combined with a little advice from Professor Google, rather than any firm knowledge.

As a result of this, please correct me if it turns out that I'm talking out of my gluteal aperture!

On 21/04/2020 at 16:26, The Johnster said:

There would be very few through trains, even in the TOPs era, and what you really need to study is Cross London trip freight operation.  So, trains with traffic from the GW, i.e, the West of England, South Wales, and the West Midlands/Birkenhead, would arrive at Acton and be split up and remade into rafts of wagons for the yards in other parts of London, such as Temple Mills or Bricklayer's Arms, and forwarded on trip freights to those yards, which will return with traffic for the GW from those yards.  This traffic used the North London, West London Extension, and some of the widened LT routes.  On arrival as Cross London trip traffic, they are shunted out again to be made up into rafts for a distribution marshalling yard closer to their destination.  By the 70s and TOPs there were some block trains using the North London, such as the Swansea Danygraig-Stratford-Felixtowe Freighliner and it's return working.  

 

 

5 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Freight services were, as already noted, basically relatively short distance trains.  The GWR side accessed three basic routes -

 

1. The two north London routes from Acton via Acton Wells to interchange trafficwith other companies and to serve GWR depots in the London Docks,

2. From a mix of Acton and Old Oak Common to access the Hammersmith & City Line and use it to reach the GWR goods depot at Smithfield, and 

3. From the large marshalling yards at Old Oak Common (where you have in mind putting your station!) to access the WLR via the GWR's Victoria Branch thence t the WLER to provide services between the GWR's marshalling yards on the various southern constituent Companies plus access to the GWR's yard (mainly for coal) at Chelsea Basin and its large goods depot at South Lambeth.

 

The WLR also saw transfer freights operated by other companies plus trains southwards to enable them to access their own freight depots south of the river. 

Thank you for the information about routes used. What sort of loads would most commonly be moved? Would it be a bit of everything, or would there be certain types of freight which were extremely likely (or unlikely) to appear?

10 hours ago, RedGemAlchemist said:

On the other hand... this.

It's scratchbuilt so it has that going for it, but also... what. Just. What. What is this even meant to be? I honestly can't think of anything this is analogous to. 

It could be a part finished model. To complete it:

a) Remove the vertical sides of the bogie with no wheels, and the coupling

b) Attatch a horizontal bracket to the back of Hornby's Bagnall*

c) Attatch the bracket to the remaining section of the bogie

d) Wonder why on earth your new lorry on rails is any better than a normal train

*Other small shunters are available Those with more money than sense may wish to substitute for Bachmann's class 03 in BR Blue

1 hour ago, br2975 said:

I'd love to help, but I don't have a scooby what forms  "Eras 2-3 and 7-9".

.

I know it's something dreamed up by manufacturers, but being a 'grumpy old man' and 'oblivious to change' I'll have to defer to others.

.

Good luck in your quest.

.

Brian R

As I briefly mentioned above, the periods I need help with are roughly 1900-1940 and from the introduction of TOPS through to early privatisation (the most recent model I have is a 166 in First Great Western Link livery, so 2005 would be an approximate cut-off point for the end of the time period).

To briefly explain my layout's setting, it is based around a fictional station, North Pole Junction, on the site of the depot of the same name. Along with Willsden Junction, it serves as an interchange between the GWML, WCML, and smaller lines in the region. Using a fictitious line, it is possible for trains to run from the WCML through the station, and then through a tunnel under London (don't ask about ventilation!) which runs from Paddington to Cannon Street, linking to the former Southern Railway, or to Stratford, linking to the former LNER (including the ECML via Cambrdge and Ely). This is allow me to run all of the mixed bag of rolling stock that I have acquired over the years. Given this, what freight movements would be likely to occur here from the beginning of the 20th Century until the start of WWII, and from the introduction of TOPS to the end of the EWS era? I know that nowadays, aggregate and containers seem to makee up most of the traffic, but I don't know about the past. This is essentially a question of what would be moved from London to the West Country and back? I know that its a very broad range of eras, but I'm hoping that between a few people it should be possible to piece together a basic idea of what would be suitable in each era.

1 hour ago, HonestTom said:

 

I put a lot of emphasis on things like dolling up second-hand rolling stock, basic scratchbuilding and using everyday materials

 

I wanted to make videos for people who'd dipped their toe in the hobby, decided they liked it and wanted to get more involved without making a massive commitment. I also wanted to partly aim at people who aren't into the hobby (yet) to show that it's not all about memorising timetables and precise scale modelling - it's about creativity, and the 10-year-old who makes a factory out of a shoebox is as much a modeller as the guy making finescale locomotives out of brass.

That's exactly the point! This is the sort of thing that will make model railways so much more accessible. It will also help to relieve some of the problems caused by the price of models - its still a lot of money to most young people, but if they're not spending money on scenery, or spending is minimal, it may allow them to actually get that model they want, and to stop them from being put off by only having the same two trains running around in stock condition. If you go for the option of buying your buildings and specialist products for weathering, the only option allowing them to buy a new model will be to run them in stock condition on a very mundane sheet of wood. Either way, finding ways to do it yourself will prevent people from being put off because of either boring trains or boring scenery, as well as making the process of developing the layout more interesting and rewarding.

A similar diagram to the one above, with measurements adjusted for a variety of scales, can be found here:

https://www.elginmodelrailwayclub.co.uk/2010/articles/advice/standard-railway-modelling-dimmensions.html

An unconventional, but cheap solution is thick cardboard. Mine was from the box of a Wickes toilet (other sources of cardboard are available). It should hold its shape reasonably well, supports can be made from offcuts (glue or tape together three pieces and place your platform on top of them, or cut rectangles with slits in them to make x-shaped supports. Its easy to paint too! I'm not sure whether it's the most durable solution I'm sure that its not the most durable solution, but it may be a good placeholder to see how things look until you are happy enough with the layout to put something more hardwearing down.

On 17/04/2020 at 13:42, HonestTom said:

Personally, I think money is a big factor in young people being able to get into the hobby. Now, this isn't a soapbox whine on locomotives and rolling stock being too expensive - there are plenty of entry-level and second-hand items for the newcomer.

 

But rather, I think too much emphasis is placed on what you can buy. For instance, all too often I find that how-to features in magazines feel like a manufacturer's puff piece. "How do I create a waterfall?" "Well, buy SoopaScenic's EasyWater (£8.99), Megascene's Riverbed Rocks (£5.99), ModelRailwayz' White Water (£6.99) and SceneMaster's Riverbed Plants (£7.99) and install them using GlueXPert's Scenic Glue (£4.99) per our step-by-step..." It's a lot of money for a teenager or a student. And to be honest, it's creatively unsatisfying to just buy stuff.

 

There's little emphasis on actually making things from scratch in a way that's accessible to all. I feel like the last well-known modeller to really lean into the do-it-yourself, use-your-imagination way of doing things was Allan Downes. I was slightly sickened by a recent magazine's Q&A section answering a reader's question about making your own weathering powders with what amounted to, "but you might as well just buy weathering powder." Like, great, but why shouldn't people try doing things their way?

 

I personally believe that a lot of the young people who would have gone into model railways, people looking to make things creatively, are going into war gaming. I watch a lot of war gaming scenery videos online, and so much emphasis is placed on using your imagination to overcome technical and budgetary limitations. There are some really brilliant modellers in that hobby who nevertheless do a great job of presenting modelmaking in an encouraging way, that really makes you want to have a go.

I'm going to say (as a 17 year old) that much of this is probably correct. I had a train set when I was younger (5-ish), with a combination of rolling stock that I had inherited from my Dad and some new stuff that he had bought for me. It all went into the loft for a few years but came down at some point last year. At that point, it was a piece of wood, some track, and a mismatched box of trains. This may be the definition of fun for a five year old, but by the time you get a bit older I think you do need to start developing your layout in order to keep it interesting. I now have a station with two through platforms and a bay platform, each suitable for 4 (5 at a stretch) coaches, with a station building.

If most people were to look into this, they would no doubt go straight to the Hornby website and find that a platform which is roughly 1/2 of a carriage long costs £4.25. For 12 carriages (4 on each through platform and the one-sided bay platform) you would be paying 24*£4.25=£102. No one in their right mind would pay that, whatever age they are.

The next thing that they will do is google 'how to make an 00 gauge platform'. This is much better, but all of the videos that they will find will still require a trip to the DIY store to buy a large sheet of wood. Wouldn't it be better if there was more focus on what you could do with materials found at home? I know that its possible. My station platforms are sections cut out of large cardboard boxes found lying around in the loft, painted grey with a mixture of the left over white paint for a ceiling and black food colouring (it made any food it was added to taste horrible so this was the best use for it). The building is a free Wordsworth kit glued onto smaller boxes, including cereal boxes. It's a completely improvised (and free) station that needs a bit of smoothing over in places, but I like the overall effect of it. Necesity is the mother of invention, but even if you ask a question on a forum about the best way to make something there will inevitably be a variety of pricey products reccomended. Young people are resourceful but I have no doubt that they will be put off if the 'right' way to do things seems so far beyond their means. 

The point you make about weathering powder is also a good one. I would love to start weathering some of my models at some point, but I would also like to do so by buying as little as possible. The problem is: how on earth is anybody with limited modelling experience supposed to know where to start with something like this if nobody else is willing to give them advice beyond 'don't bother'?

On the subject of using materials which are already available, cost is not the only reason that young people would want to do this. Many are concious of reducing their consumption of resources, and scratchbuilding from items they already have at home, especially waste products such as packaging, would allow them to develop their layout while minimising the environmental impact.

As for wargaming, I agree, Everybody else at school who makes models is in that field, while a few decades ago they would have had a railway.

I don't want to agree with the idea that new trains are uninspiring, but I think there is some truth to it. Trains aren't 'cool' now and if there were any other modellers at school there is no way that we would find each other, because we would never want to bring up the fact that we have a model railway. The most obvious reason for this is the rolling stock. This won't get better in the future as far as I'm concerned because while I love the Hitatchi AT300's appearance, it seems that every time a TOC replaces its rolling stock its with a variant of this (800s, 801s, and 802s for LNER; 800s and 802s for GWR; 802s for TPE and Hull Trains; 803s for East Coast Trains; 810s for EMR; and similar units going to Avanti West Coast. I guess that in the steam era, or even the BR diesel era, there was a much greater variaton in the types of rolling stock around than there is now, making the railways more interesting. The only loco-hauled trains which travel along my local railway (GWML in Wiltshire) are EWS/DB's freight trains; everything else is AT-300s and Turbos.

The saddest part is that model railways would have so much to offer young people if we could capture their interest and make them feel welcome. A modern model railway provides opportunities for people with interests in art, DT, computer science, physics, even history. Depending on how it is done it can provide transferrable skills such as research, it can allow people to develop skills that they will need if they don't want to hire a tradesperson every time something needs fixing. It can just provide a form of escapism, where you can enter a world either from the past, your imagination, or a combination of the two. Working on a model railway would do wonders for the mental health of many young people by allowing them to focus on something other than the pressures of real life, and something that they have total control over when everything else seems beyond their reach.

One last note: in case anything that I have said seems harsh, it is not intended in that way. I don't think that the railway modelling community is deliberately patronising to young people. However, while there has been a fast reaction to technological change (widespread adoption of DCC, for instance) I think that the reaction to changes in other areas has been much slower. Or perhaps the reverse has happened. When you started out with model railways, what did you want? Did you want a seemingly infinitely diverse range of specialist, often pricey, paints and dyes for representing everything from water to concrete? Or did you want to buy some trains and some track, and then use things which you have lying around the house to turn it into something special? I think that like many things, there is a certain level of overcomercialisation which has crept in, especially in areas such as scenery, ballasting, and weathering which it should be possible for people to do using, primarily, things that they already have at home (or that they could buy in a supermarket or DIY store if they don't). There is of course a place for high end products where the perfect finish is required for a new exhibition layout, but that is unlikely to be the sort of first layout a young person is interested in building. It would also be nice to see a growing community of layouts builts using cheap, unconventional techniques. While my aforementioned station isn't going to win a lot of (any) contests for the most faithful recreation of a railway station ever seen, it has a certain charm to it. If I tidy up the edges and get around to adding some (free) platform signs, fences (sleepers from old bits of track?) and other finishing touches it has the potential to be far better looking (in my opinion) than the plastic Hornby stations I could have paid upwards of £100 for.

One last note (I mean it this time): I have a habit of thinking that I'm about to finish before a thousand more ideas pop into my head. I guess my layout will definitely be one of those that is never finished. Back on topic: there is one other obstacle to young people getting involved that I touched on earlier. Model railways are generally seen as an old man's thing and you would probably face a fair amount of teasing for admitting to owning one. I don't really see how we can solve this as a community. People have talked about the likes of Rod Stewart, Michael Palin, Ricardo Patresi, and a couple of other names I've never heard before higher up in this thread. If young people are to get into modelling, I guess that they need role models. Once upon a time, this was always the father, but this route seems to have faltered in the past few decades. We need to either hope that some social media influencers decide to reveal their secret passion for modelling, or people like me need to pluck up the confidence to put our heads above the paraphet and try to tempt others into modelling. We also need to get girls interested. If Kathy Millatt wasn't a judge on The Great Model Railway Challenge, I doubt that I would be able to think of a woman associated with railway modelling.

21 minutes ago, Philou said:

@DK123GWR Oh no, quite the contrary with DCC, you will need a switching unit that automatically senses the polarity and changes it - you CAN do wyes and the such where reverse-polarity is created. It's with DC that things are a little more complicated where you need to put breaks in the circuit and DPDT switches and the rest.

 

By the way, welcome to the RMweb collective.

 

Philip

 

Edit: Phil answered as I typed .........

If it was DC I could just isolate the central flexitrack from the rest of the track and use my spare controller (I used to have a three loop DC layout, so if I were using one controller each on the main loops I would have a spare) to control it, changing the direction of the R2 loop's controller before the loco reached the end of the flexitrack (in practise, bringing the loco to a stop in the middle may be neccesary, but even so that wouldn't be too much of a problem. By contrast, using an autoreverser would mean:

1) A completely new piece of kit that I don't really understand (I've only heard of them very recently, and whereas I understand the physics behind turntable motors and isolating sections of track to avoid short circuits, I would have to start from the beginning on what an auto reverser actually is and how to wire it.

2) Losing the cost advantage a wye would otherwise have against a turntable, as I would have what I need to resolve short circuit issues in DC but an autoreverser (around £25-30, as far as I can tell from brief research) added to the cost of track would make a wye as expensive as the turntable, even if I could save around £10 on the RRP. For a roughly equal price, I would get a turntable to preserve the buildings that I have produced so far.

49 minutes ago, Harlequin said:

You would need to do a bit of cutting: The angles are roughly 27.5 and 28.75 - the tangent between the R2 curves is at roughly 40 degrees from horizontal.

Thank you. I'll definitely preserve this idea in case I have a yard area of a similarly restricted size in the future, but for the variety of reasons set out above I think I've been swayed towards trying a turntable on this occasion.

16 minutes ago, Philou said:

Whoa there cowboys - nice plans and ideas but is OP running DC or DCC? If the former, be aware of short circuits - just sayin'.................. .

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

 

DCC, which will likely be a problem. For some reason, when I thought about it before I could get around that by switching points the right way and not attatching point clips to any of the points in the 'wye'. Of course, that would mean that the middle section is always isolated. More thought needed.

10 minutes ago, F-UnitMad said:

A wye takes up a lot of space, though - as you are finding out.

As for installing a turntable, you're using set track so I would think a Hornby turntable would do just fine, and is pretty much ready to use, no cutting holes in baseboards or suchlike. I've no idea how much they cost; I've been out of OO for a very long time.

£74.99 new, plus upgrading to digital. I don't know whether its worth looking into used turntables, its certainly something I would be very cautious about doing online (by which I mean it isn't going to happen). By contrast, three sets of points and R2 curves linking them should come to less than £60 (I have spare flexitrack to do the rest). Having said that, I wouldn't need to upgrade my turntable to DCC if I just used my now redundant analouge controller to turn it. It would also allow me to keep a newly made station platform where it is without altering the platform itself. And I could avoid the even more daunting prospect of confronting short circuits until another day. Maybe the wye inside R2 will be a useful idea to save for the  future, but a turntable the way to go on this occasion... I need time to consider this now as it's a rout I never thought I'd be going down (I did start out with the backup plan of limiting the A4 to through platforms if a wye was impossible, even though that would make no sense in the context of my layout, so even getting to the stage of wye vs. turntable is a big step from where I was.

10 hours ago, Harlequin said:

What is the angle of those R2s?

4 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

Re having a turntable being easier:-

Yes, real life railway planners ask that question all the time when devising track routes & yard layouts....  

A wye would be cheaper in real life and probably in model form if using Harlequin's design, and cost is a question they ask all the time. I also wanted to avoid committing to a turntable without evaluating other options. While a turntable may be easir to design, I imagine that it will be harder to install than anything I've done before, and I'm not neccesarily ready to do that on my current layout (If I'm lucky I could have another six decades 6.2 decades or more to change things around, so I'm sure I'll get around to it at some point).

Edit: It's slightly odd (scary?) to think that 6.2 decades into the past there were still ten years of mainline steam left, and the world wide web was still over thirty years away. Who knows what the world and its railways will be like in 2082?

1 hour ago, Flying Pig said:

 

Never mind eliminating points. If you arrange the gradients right you've got a perpetual motion machine.

I hope not. Perpetual motion sounds like the recipe for a very nasty accident if another train gets in the way!

3 hours ago, Flying Pig said:

Wouldn't a turntable be easier though?

It would, but where would the fun be?

I've gone back to the puzzle this evening and I've produced this. To cut down on the number of points, it would be possible to remove most of the left section of the loop and replace the bottom set with a 22.5 R2 curve. This would also allow the addition of a short straight onto the upper R1 curve on the left hand side, meaning that larger locos would fit properly (rather than just about squeezing the wheelbase in with large parts overhanging the end). The piece of flexitrack used could probably be subsituted for an R2 given the slight flexibilty of the track in real life, but if not the radius is still large enough for any loco to navigate.

If anybody knows the name for this system, please tell me. At the moment I would describe it as either 'an unfolded turning star,' 'a cross between a turning star and a reversing loop,' or 'messy.' Also, feel free to improve on it if I've missed something obvious such as a way to eliminate another set of points.

To clarify, the outer loop using R3 curves is not shown in this diagram.

Hello everybody. For context, my current layout consists of a loop of R2 track inside a loop of R3 track. The corners are 180 degrees separated by 670mm straights (equivalent to Hornby R603 straights. On the outside of the layout there is a terminus platform, and the layout fills the baseboard (which cannot be made larger). I have a siding layout which allows me to run locomotives around a rake of up to four coaches in the terminus.

However, this only works for locos with a coupler on the front, so I am attempting to find a way to fit a turning wye-inspired system into the interior of the layout. I genuinely have no idea whether this is possible, or if it is possible whether it would be practical, but I do know that I can't design it (I've been trying for the past hour).

In order to be ideal for my situation, there should be enough room for a 300mm A4 Pacific to negotiate it, and the minimum radius should be R1, or 438mm (I too was supprised when the A4 was able to navigate such tight corners). Even if it can't be made to fit such a large locomotive, it would be a remarkable piece of design even to turn a 0-6-0 tank engine in such a restrictes space. Any ideas for how this could be done?

5 minutes ago, Paul Cram said:

North Eastern Railway Association https://ner.org.uk/

Thanks! Some of the sources in there look like they wiil be very useful when I have a bit more time to dig through them (i.e. after I've slept).

1 hour ago, gordon s said:

Shed history of loco’s are available in this resource. Doesn’t give the depth on information you need, but it could be a good starting point.

 

http://www.brdatabase.info

This is a great start. Rough information on the distribution of locomotives should be a valuable starting point for any more detailed research required later.

1 hour ago, Paul Cram said:

NERA have information on carriage workings and train make up.

What is NERA? I'm sorry if that's a stupid question.

Hello everybody. I'm sorry if this is in the wrong place since it isn't strictly a question about prototypes, but a question about where to find more information. I was wondering if anybody knew of a resource which had information on what locomotives (and possibly other rolling stock) ran on which routes and during what periods of time. I appreciate that this is a very broad area, and that not all of the information would be available. I'm also not especially hopeful since if such a useful resource did exist then I'd imagine that everybody would know about it and use it. However, it may be that there are some sources which, while far from comprehensive, provide such information for a specific region, route, or time period. I don't have any specific queries about particular points, hence my desire for a broader overview which may help me to discover information of this nature.