MichaelE

Auhagen offers several plastic brick pattern sheets. Check at the Auhagen site, or your favorite online dealer.

The third Loksound 5 in less than three years is arriving for my Allegra ABe 8/12 in a few days . I hope this one lasts.

I haven't seen ESU mentioned in this thread, though I might have missed it. I'm very much satisfied with my ESU Cab Control. I upgraded from an NCE Powercab and glad I did. Night and day difference for the better. The only thing I don't like is not being able to order the locomotives to my liking. I couldn't do that with Powercab either, but I could only store six locomotives at a time with that unit.

I have the manuals, I don't need copies. In fact, I found the solution. I found some A5 top loading clear vinyl pouches that will fit a three ring binder. Problem solved.

That would be an excellent solution, but I have removed the laptop from the train room due to real estate considerations on the table. A tablet might work, but I am still a fan of hard copy with pages. When I want to work with the Loksound Programmer I have to bring the computer to the work table, but it doesn't stay.

As my collection has grown over the past five years I'm in a quandry about how to keep the manuals and other paperwork that comes with a locomotive organized, but with quick access. Currently the manuals are all stored in the boxes the locomotive came packed in. But sometimes I want the manual immediately without having to dig through the boxes that are upstairs in a storage room. I am leery about separating the manuals from the boxes, but I thought a small special file box for keeping manuals organized might be what I need. I can keep this under the work bench for immediate access. How are you all keeping your manuals organized?

Across the Pond here in the Colonies, a trainset is something that comes complete and ready to run in a box. Usually a circle or oval of track is what you get. To me, that is a trainset. I don't know where the line between a trainset and a layout is drawn. I know people built 'layouts' on a 4x8 sheet of plywood that is nothing more than an expansion of what came in the box. Others add a lot of variation to that roundy-round, add realistic scenery, weathering in some cases, and variations in terrain. At that point I think it starts turning into a model railroad. I also think that the larger the area is that you have to work with will add to that impression of a model railroad instead of an oval of track(s) on a rectangle of plywood. Multiple levels also add to that impression. I cringe everytime I hear someone call a beautiful, well constructed, room-filling layout, 'a train set'. I don't usually hear this from other model railroaders, but the general uninformed public at train shows.

I guess it could. I don't know much about metallurgy.

But they tend to be bristling with sounds.

I've noticed a difference, but I would still miss them on my grades. The Bemo locomotives do not use tractions tires and that track stays cleaner longer than my mainline DB tracks where all of the locomotives use traction tires. That track is always dirtier than the meter gauge RhB tracks.

It's taken the US a long time to come up to European levels of detail and authenticity. Some products are really quite nice. Others, not so much.

I like just about anything from the West. I don't get much of a chance to see railroads from the UK or Europe around here. Many US railroaders think they are the only railroaders on the planet. One area that I have no railroading interest in is the Far East. Not that I would see any around here, but I see plenty of ads for You Tube videos for Far East railroads.

About all I can add, is that you are going to have a rat's nest of wiring if you use DC and cab control. Operating the railroad will be much more straightforward and simpler if you use DCC. You need wires for each isolated block all running to a switch box with a switch for each block and each cab. I wired up a 4x8 Atlas layout 40 years ago that was a nightmare. And I forgot to mention three wires for every turnout, plus the power wire for the machines. DCC hadn't been invented back then but I sure wish it had been.

As a very young boy, I would stand in my backyard and watch an Illinois Central locomotive and a box car or two make it way to the stove foundry across the street. The tracks were about 60' from my back door. When I was about five, my Great Grandfather got me a ride on the locomotive one day when passing through when they had to stop for motor traffic ahead when crossing the street. From that day onward I was hooked on trains.

I like the idea of the two mains running on the retaining wall with the branch line running on a bridge above. That sounds like a lot of visual appeal with many of scenery possibilities. Thanks for the track plan. That helped a lot.

Could we see the track plan you propose? A visual depiction might help us. I have a dual main lines (DB) rising, crossing, and descending both mains, with an HOm branch line above in parts, but mostly running across, or parallel to the main lines. Where it runs above the main lines is mostly on the back side of the layout, or in a hidden area. In this section of the photo, the branch line (Arosa Bahn) runs above, but parallel and behind the two main lines until it crosses at the tunnel entrance in the far back of the photo. Farther to the left, the track meanders away from the parallel main lines before arriving at the tunnel crossing in the previous photo. The part of the branch line that is directly over the main lines is mostly hidden inside of the mountain on the far right of the layout. It allowed wider curves and a longer running straight section before descending on the far left of the layout. I don't know if any of this helps, but a mixture of the two techniques of parallel running, and directly above, worked well in my case. It's tough to do scenery if you have the branch line directly above unless you are in an urban setting.

It's been more that 20 years since I had a land-line phone. Don't miss it a bit.

It performs well at low speed, but that is mostly a function of the decoder, the programming, and the locomotive. I have yet to buy a European locomotive that did not have a shunting function built-in to the programming. It essentially halves the speed step so precise speed control is possible.

Yes, but with much more precision. Say for example, speed matching when two locomotives are sharing the same track and you don't want a rear-end collision. The Powercab has the same setup but it is not programmable as the Cab Control is. I like having this dual control.

I never worry about how the directional control is set up. If it doesn't move in the direction I want, I just push the directional button.

This is a PIKO Br.232 Ludmilla with Loksound 5 with a modified sound file from a Brawa Br.232 startup. The speaker is a 23mm mylar round type.

It works well for me. When I was shopping for a new DCC system, I was wary of touch screens. I don't care for them much on mobile phones and I sure didn't want a controller that was 100% touch screen. The Cab Control has a very large speed control knob and four hardware buttons that can be programmed for whatever function you want. The two left side buttons on mine are programmed for speed step up/down, and the right side upper is programmed for coasting to a halt, and the lower for emergency stop. Global emergency stop can be performed from the pressure button to the lower right of the speed control knob that cuts power to the layout. Those were just my choices, but you can program anything to these buttons except the power button I mentioned.

The meager 12V was at a no-load measurement. After starting up and running more than three sound locomotives, that's when the sag occurred and current consumption started increasing. Powercab is a good starter system, but it wasn't designed to operate a larger multiple sound locomotive layout with strings of lighted wagons. I used the Powercab for five years before I moved up to Cab Control and the layout grew as did the amount of rolling stock and sound locomotives.