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About AndrueC
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South Northamptonshire
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Golf. Driving. Model Railways (N scale). Reading.
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All my Streamline code 80 turnouts cause a solitary bogey to derail if not set to straight ahead. A four wheel wagon is fine. The problem seems to be that something as light as a bogey 'picks' the frog V. It doesn't cause any problems when the bogey is attached to a coach nor with any other rolling stock other than occasionally causing my solitary 4-6-2 to derail presumably the front bogey it being light but it happens so rarely that I haven't tried to investigate it.
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AndrueC started following Loco stalling/overloading on a point , N Gauge Electrofrogs and Best Way to Apply DCC
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I just love the way that an unweighted bogey can't be used to test them. Strangely I thought it was fine on my first layout which used Settrack.
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For what it's worth there are two ways to implement the bus. The way I did it is to have two bus wires running under the layout. Then wires are soldered to the rails and dropped down (we call them droppers) and connected to the bus wires using Scotchlok connectors. The problem with this is that it's easy and can lead to haphazard wiring. A better way is to use something like these or these. Here you have the bus wire connected to two of the terminals then the droppers connected to the remaining ones. So instead of a continuous run of bus wire you 'daisy chain' the terminals together. This encourages planning and more careful wiring. Both of these also allow you to make/unmake connections which could be good for fault finding. Tidy well planned wiring is a must for exhibition layouts. For those that won't ever leave your own home..it's nice to have. I was able to wire my layout up quickly and can add new things with little thought. But if I ever need to trace where something is getting its power from that can be a real pain.
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If you want the whole layout live just connect the siding rails to your controller outputs (following the same 'polarity' as you did the main power connection). Turnouts can be a little more complex as per my other reply. But for your layout as shown here I think five pairs of connections should be enough but if in doubt add more. A lot of us make a point of connecting each section of track to the bus just to ensure electrical connectivity. For turnouts the fixed outer rails need power. The frog..as per my other post ;)
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What scale are you modelling in and what kind of turnouts are you using? For N scale Peco 'insulfrog' turnouts are as I described and can be installed as-is out of the box with no special treatment. For Peco electrofrog you need to isolate the frog connection but otherwise installed and used as-is. Ideally for electrofrog you'd power the frogs separately.
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Your controller should have two output wires. At a minimum you pick a section of track and attach one output to each rail. For a small and simple layout that should suffice but possible improvements: * Your turnouts are probably power switching. That means whichever route is not selected loses power. That's not a problem for DCC but means that any locos parked in sidings will lose power so their lights will go out and sound will stop if the turnout is set against them. It isn't necessary for DCC so... * On larger layouts it's not wise to trust fishplates to carry power. More complex layouts will have a separate 'bus' and each section of track and each turnout will be fed power from that bus.
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And if they get caught they feel sheepish.
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Which Models would you wish from RevolutioN Trains?
AndrueC replied to Stefen1988's topic in Revolution Trains
Yeah I could get behind the idea of a Class 185. I could retire my whiny and 700mph (scale speed) class 121. -
I occasionally bemoan not having stickers on wires or controllers to indicate what turnout they relate to. The trouble is that by the time I've traced the wires back from the turnout and found the controller and fixed the problem there is just not enough left in the tank for me to bother attaching a sticker. Rinse and repeat 😁
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Perhaps worth noting for anyone who reads this thread that the above modifications aren't needed for Peco N Scale Insulfrog turnouts.
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I've had a similar issue recently on a couple of my turnouts. In my case (N scale for what it's worth) I don't think the back to backs were wrong but rather the turnout motor wasn't quite throwing far enough. One of the switch blades was therefore not being pulled tight against the stock rail. It left just enough free play (and it really wasn't much even by N scale standards) for the opposite switch blade to touch the inside of the wheel. A quick test for this is to use a small screwdriver to push the blades fully across thus ensuring a proper sized flangeway between the inactive switchblade and its stock rail. Given the absence of turnout motors here I'd assume the over centre spring is still in place in which case this is unlikely to be the cause but I'd thought I'd mention it.
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An update. I've been a bit remiss of late so I'd better bring things up to date. I've got rid of the bridge. Some comments here convinced me that it really wasn't working so I've replaced it with a couple of at-grade crossings and a farm track. It definitely looks better: Clearly that fencing needs redoing (think I've mentioned that in a prior post) but otherwise I like it. The gates were from Scale Model Scenery. The crossings were from me - maybe I'll do a post on them in a bit. I found another turnout that needed its throw adjusting which is curious. Again I've had to set it to 'slightly too far' but it's solved that problem. I also found another motor whose linkage was fouling some of my rolling stock so I remounted that one lower down. On the subject of turnouts I've programmed some macros on my controller - an NCE PowerCab - now. Each of the four sidings in the two yards has a macro to set the turnouts at either end so eight in all. Unfortunately I'd forgotten that PowerCab macros can only control accessories. I'd hoped to have also selected the loco and switched on lights etc. but sadly it can't do that. Another reason to keep thinking about replacing the controller. In more exciting news my Trans Pennine Express Class 68 finally arrived! The Wallarium fleet is now complete! To celebrate here's a gratuitous photo of four trains. Although it's only a single image I can assure that it is possible to run four trains at the same time on Wallarium and it only comes to approx 0.6 amps even with one of them being sound enabled (the TPE Class 68). Speaking of being sound enabled: The engine sound is a bit meh but there's nowt wrong with her horn 😀 Out of desperation one rainy day (has there been any other kind in the last few months?) I tackled a job I'd been putting off for a while. I bought a cheap load of N scale figures last year and have been dreading painting them. Much to my surprise it turns out that with a set of magic hands it's an easy job. They aren't as detailed as those you can buy but they are plenty good enough. The orange overalled workers are now in place to supplement the existing workforce but the rest will have to wait until I've rebuilt my station platforms. I've also been constructing trees. That will probably be the subject of a future post but for now here's the upgraded corner (note - no bridge any longer!):
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RevolutioN/Accurascale MK.5/MK.5A coaching stock/DT
AndrueC replied to TomE's topic in Revolution Trains
Finally! My sound enabled Class 68 TPE arrived today. -
I was assuming that as it's a toggle there was just one command being sent which implied that the decoder state was not being echoed to the outputs. However doing some research on DCC commands it appears that although it acts like a toggle on the controller there is actually separate on/off arguments so in that case it's probably just that the decoder is not remembering that the lights should be on. I wonder if there's a CV setting that controls that functionality. Time to dig around for Imperium decoder information I suppose.
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I scratch built mine (N scale) by using ground signals from ModelIt and Ratio Pratt Truss kits. Turned out well enough for my purposes but not prototypical and I've not yet managed to hide the wiring.