Lemmy282

Might work on the Ratty, but wouldn't want to try splitting a mainline steam loco from its tender, major operation!

They are air pipes. Vacuum pipes are thicker and sort of corrugated to look at, air pipes are thinner and smooth.

On the attached picture, the pipes with the yellow and red valves are air pipes, and the pipe between the yellow one and the coupling is the vac pipe.

I did a lot of research into class 13's years ago when I was making up models for a local model shop and never came across this.

I was at the ELR today, the tender is a slightly different shade of green, (like it has been out In the sun for a while), but not as pronounced as on the video above.

Have a look on thr 2mm Association website. From the main menu look under ARTICLES, then got to 2mm FINESCALE MANUAL, and under COUPLINGS there is a PDF that gives chapter and verse on DG couplings. It also recommends 4.5mm from top of rail to bottom of buffing plate

20 hours ago, kevinlms said:

And correctly you never argued with someone spending a fair bit of money!

Absolutely, if that's what he wanted that was okay with the shop owner.

 I think that is true of all DCC wheel cleaning. I have one of the old Trix wheel cleaners which sit on the rails and have the two rows of brass brushes, and even with all wheels picking up can still have issues with DCC acceleration. I think Gaugemaster make a similar model now.

"I was even more surprised about folk buying and just leaving in the box"

I used to do some work for a local model shop, and one of their customers would always buy the latest Bachmann locomotives. All the loco boxes were wrapped in tissue, and he insisted on opening the packing case they came in and selecting the one with the least damaged tissue wrapping. So he never actually saw what the loco, or even the box looked like! Oh, and he wore cotton gloves while doing this. Apparently he had bought many many locos this way, and just stored them away, never looking or running them!

PECO do a couple of wheel cleaning brushes, PL-40 or PL-42

A look online for the standard 21pin connections shows Pin 16 as being +ve and Pin 20 being "ground after rectifier " (-ve). I have used these connection to add a Lais stay alive to a Rails Connect decoder and it worked a treat. Assuming Bachmann have followed this convention all should be okay.

So as the system is DCC, the next question has to be what decoder are you using? Some are not so good with coreless motors.

This evening I have fitted a Nigel Lawson coreless motor and dropper resistor into a 2mm finescale 0-6-0 chassis. I added a hardwired Zimo MX617 decoder and home made 660uf stay alive and it runs smoothly and down to a VERY slow call. No adjustment of any CV''s.

I try to use Zimo where possible, never had a problem with them in N or OO. For N gauge the CT Elecktoniks were brilliant, but sadly now seem to have disappeared, although I picked up a few on Ebay recently. The newer Bachmann 6 pin chips are made by Zimo and have the same features.

5 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

Of their diesels, maybe, although I like mine.

Yes, I should have qualified that I was taking about their diesel and electric locos, I don't have any steam.

15 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

Even my Deltics and 50s aren't being replaced, just tweaked. 

I have quite a few Lima locos and when detailed look very good, except the Deltic which is wrong in so many areas I gave up, probably the worst model they made!

Obviously things must have been done in the workshop, but in all the years I visited I was never lucky enough to see any work actually being done!

It was inevitable that there would be changes between the prototype and production versions, bear in mind the HST was a "stop gap" because the APT project was running way behind schedule. It was only decided to go ahead with the HST in 1970, and the prototypes were running in 1972, so no prolonged testing period. They seemed to do most of their testing on the East Coast before moving to the Western mainline, I don't remember seeing them on the MML, fairly certain they never came to Sheffield at any rate.

The production versions came into service in 1975, so all in all a very quick prototype to production period. It must have been a very good basic design though to have lasted so long.

There should be no problems with the Lais stay alive. I have several that work perfectly well with the Mx600, both the original and revised circuit board versions.

I have them as well. Bit pings off onto the floor, spend ages looking for it, clear the bench just to check in case I was wrong, nothing!

Next day, there is the bit sitting neatly in the middle of an empty building board

That is true, but I think only on the former railway sections which use standard rail, not tramway rail

Ah this changes things, if the other loco's are working properly then something is wrong elsewhere. Have you tried to reset the decoder to factory settings? Is the loco brand new or 2nd hand?

That sounds more like an issue with your command station than a decoder issue. What system do you have?

I think the flat bottomed profile of the SST is to ensure that on the normal tram track is does not run on the flange. That said, the routes where the tram trains run on normal tram rail were re-profiled to a compromise to accept normal and SST tram wheels.

Yes the normal way to enable main line stock to run on traditional tramways was to reduce the gauge to 4' 7¾" (1416 mm), but there the wheels did run on their flanges. Glasgow tramways were all built to 4' 7¾", which did cause Crich a bit of a problem as they had a large number of trams from there!

I would suggest that the wheel profile would be a problem as well as the flange depth. Crich employed a contractor to do some work on the overhead last year, and the wheel profile of their vehicle was not compatible with some of the track.

As regards the overhead, I would assume a pantograph would work well, but the voltage would be different. I believe Mterolink uses 750v whereas traditional trams use 550v-600v, so I assume some adjustment of the electronics would be required.

Most sound projects are designed to use 128 speed steps, so try using that. Don't use the momentum button on the Powercab, the sound project  will be set up with it's own momentum. If all else fails reset the decoder (possibly CV8=8 but check your documentation) and start again with 128 speed steps.