AndrueC

Agree on use of droppers. I've attached them to every section of track on my layout except for some curves where I soldered the joiners to keep the shape.

Do you have to use insulated joiners on the point rails? Is it a Hornby thing?

Peco N scale Insulfrog turnouts don't need insulating joiners on the point rails unless you have none-standard wheels on your rolling stock (such wheels can short at the frog due to the very small gap). Peco wire the point rails through to the corresponding switch blade so poor switch blade contact doesn't matter.

My N scale layout caters for trains up to a metre in length (so a 7 car Class 43 HST or a 4-6-2 with 7 coaches). It has eight sidings and a two track station that can accommodate any train. It also have four loops all connected.

To me it feels comfortably sized. Trains can get far enough away from the sidings to feel like they've reached the country and with the exception of the inner loop (which I don't run long trains on) they can clear the curves even on the narrow sides. Run at sensible speeds it can be half a minute before a train reappears at the same location.

One thing I learnt from my first roundy-roundy is that elevation changes and tunnels help break up the tail-chasing aspect of it. Being able to run more than one train at once also helps. It's all about distracting the observer so they don't just follow the train in a pointless circle.

My layout runs around the walls of a room that is 3.4m by 2.4m.

However that's a layout where everything is visible. At my club we have a layout where only half of the loop is visible. That allows for tight curves and a large fiddle yard. It works surprisingly well. The observer watches trains passing through a town/station area and the large fiddle yard allows a wide variety of trains to appear over time. Sadly it's DC so requires manual operation but if converted to DCC you could get a computer to do the running and then have a tail chaser with variety.

Thanks for that, @RobinofLoxley. I only did a few of the rails so suggestions are still useful.

Signalling my intent!

So right from the off I'll state that I'm not trying to be prototypical here. My layout is about building something that looks good, challenges me and keeps me interested. To that end I've always wanted signals on it but the placement and use is personal. My intention here is that they look good and serve a purpose - in this case they help the operator determine which way a turnout is set. Most turnouts will have signals on the frog end - two for each leaving rail. Most of them will point away from the frog and in essence indicate if it's safe for a train on that track to approach the frog.

Wilf's junction and the Doorway Interchange will have hand-built gantries but I'm leaving that for a real winter project.

It took me a while to find some good looking N Scale signal lights but I eventually found these:

https://www.modelitltd.co.uk/n-scale-c102x3323537

Nicely priced and they look good in situ:

The plug-it cabling system is also quite good although I've had to bodge it a bit to suit my purposes. What I particularly liked about this signals from that perspective is that they come with a resister already soldered in place.

I'm going to be controlling the signals from my DCC Concepts Cobalt-SS controllers since they have a spare SPDT switch. The signals are tri-wired (Common, Red, Green) so it's just a matter of connecting the common to the centre of the SPDT then red and green to each of the outputs.

Except that I want my signals to work in pairs (one for each track). So I have to connect the commons of both signals and connect the red/greens of different signals together. To do this I made use of Plug-it extension cables. Two wires go into the socket end and the plug end is removed and the wires tied together. You can get extension cables that don't have the plug on the end but sadly when I ordered there were only a few left.

Anyway after the above minor wiring you end up with three leads: Common, Left red+Right Green, Left green+Right red. So far so good. But the signals around my yard work in pairs because they are through sidings. So now the above wiring needs to be repeated for the signals at the other end. The two Common wires that result can be connected to the Common lighting bus. The four signal wires need to be connected together to form two signal wires following the same signal and colour pairing.

A wire from the Common bus is then connected to the centre of the SPDT switch. Then each of the two signal wires connected to the outputs. Some faff might be required here because it's possible to get the wires mixed up and have the signals not showing the correct colour(*). But as luck would have it my first attempt was correct:

(*)To say nothing of the usual faff involved in inserting wires into screw terminals.

14 minutes ago, ELTEL said:

Does anyone make such a model or kit either in stone or brick ?

 

Eltel 

What scale?

1 hour ago, Adam1701D said:

We have new Swallow and Blue/Grey HST sets coming soon, with the Midland Mainline and Blue Pullman sets a bit later. We should be getting the deco samples of the Class 221 Super Voyagers really soon. Please remember that it is easy for us to design the liveries but getting a production slot in China can be hard.

Well I live in hope so the orders remain open but two years is a long time to wait :(

59 minutes ago, frobisher said:

 

Maybe an 86, but ISTR they were vacuum braked until withdrawal and were only converted afterwards.

 

But MK2 Pullmans would be awesome!

I've all but given up on Dapol now. I've got two trains (HST and Voyager) on pre-order. One has been pre-order for two years, the other for a year. I was even told by a representative at Warley that the Voyager was going into production having agreed on the livery.

I don't understand what their game is. If they can't make production runs why bother to announce anything? Why do they continue to pretend that they want to service the N scale market? They clearly aren't serious about it any more.

On 27/07/2023 at 11:55, exmoordave said:

My budgie broke his leg today, so I made a splint out of matches. His little face lit up when he tried to walk....

Budgies are funny. I taught mine to say "ploppy bottom" to save me the bother.

18 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

Is there a church of the happy?

On 25/07/2023 at 11:47, Mike_Walker said:

I have this too but not on all pictures.  I've put it down to the originals being very large files uploaded, I always reduce the size of mine when posting.

Yes, I always reduce mine to 25% original size before posting.

This has been ongoing for a while now. I'll often find that the space set aside for the image is flashing before eventually being replaced with the smaller 'no image available' link. Refreshing the page usually loads all images without issue.

Announced now? Might be available to actually buy in 2025 then based on their current track record. I'm still waiting for the Super Voyager and retooled HST to reappear.

3 hours ago, DavidB-AU said:

 

Joseph Bazalgette built the world's most advanced sewer to take human waste away from London. His great-great-grandson gave us Big Brother.

So they both dealt in crap?

11 hours ago, The Johnster said:

‘(irritating adenoidal voice) I think you’ll find you meant Stephenson, didn’t you?’

 

On the rather wobbly assumption that everybody has access to the internet, everybody already does have access, to everybody and all their work.  It is possible to become educated, or at least informed, to a significant degree without being formally taught anything.  Much of what is taught in schools is of little further use; probably fair to say that I’d learned everything of any use to me by the time of my 11+, the rest was marking time and stuff I enjoyed but never used. Value for taxpayer’s money?  To quote The Small Faces, ‘where you go to learn the words of fools’. 

I think education should be about the stuff you can't work out for yourself (the three Rs), teaching you how to be a functional member of society and teaching you how to work stuff out and how to find more information.

I see little value in rote learning of random facts unless you intend to specialise in a discipline which requires them (in this case becoming a historian).

40 minutes ago, Martino said:

Pretty much what was said earlier.

 

However…..

 

“If you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you don't know where you are, then you don't know where you're going. And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong.” 

― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

But we haven't forgotten where we came from. When the subject of Stephenson's Rocket came up I was able to access all the information I might have wanted in a fraction of a second just like anyone else would be able to should the need arise.

There is just no point clogging our minds up with such esoterica until/unless we need it.

Edit: Spelling of name corrected ;)

15 hours ago, Martino said:

One would hope so, but regrettably dear Sir, it invariably is Gha- ridge. ;-)

Meh. Stuff changes. If you don't adapt you die.

That's how nature works and it's at the heart of human civilisation as well. Clinging on to old beliefs for the sake of it was never a good survival strategy. As a species we have an excellent record of Stephenson (and Stevenson, lol) and his work so there is no need for every member of our society to have a personal record of it.

We need to be embracing the future not clinging to the past.

5 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

But ask a ten year old kid who built Rocket they would probably know. Quite a few would have seen it or the replica.

I'm going to be contentious here but - so what?

Kids have enough to learn just to keep up with modern life. What value is there in knowing who designed a locomotive over 200 years ago? If they are choosing to become a railway historian then fair enough but for 95% of children that information has no value and is just a distraction.

The joys of summer. Currently sitting around mid-60s MPG for my Corolla.

No more stone walling!

For a long time now I've had a section of cliff around two of the slopes leading to/from Wilf's Junction. My intention was to make it look like the track beds had been carved out of the cliffs. To be honest I'd never been really happy with it. It looked too orange and the fissures between the rocks seemed to deep. It was okay but disappointing for what was supposed to be a major landscape feature.

Anyway this week's project was to finally install a stone wall along the top edge. I decided to use this because it looked good. It's also remarkably cheap. But then I realised there was a problem. My track sits on Gaugemaster underlay and because it's code 80 it meant the top of the rails was about level with the top of the stone wall which didn't look right. The only solution was to increase the height of the cliff edge. After a bit of trial and error I settled on using Sculptamould. This is plaster with shredded paper mixed in. I'd bought it a while back for making rocks with moulds and didn't like it. But for hand moulding plaster it's pretty good. Damn' good in fact. It looked okay and even 'rock like' when it was hardened. But then I painted it and quite frankly it's almost impossible to tell where the original rock ends and the extension starts.

Anyway with that in place it was time to install the wall. It was fairly easy - just put down glue then hold it in place against the landscape until the glue has set. I was quite impressed as I laid it. The next and final stage was to cover any gaps or joins with flock and put down some static grass along the edges and in a few select places along the cliff.

Then I stood back..and my jaw dropped. My somewhat odd looking 'thing' had become a rock face. It's even a rock face that stands up to close scrutiny. It's some of the best scenery I've done so far.

And an overview of the area:

Ah ha! It's always worth digging around in your bits and pieces drawer! Turns out at some point in the past I'd bought a split power supply from DCC Concepts. I've also found a collection of their ground signals which I can butcher to suit my gantry purposes.

Would it be possible to power the three wire signals from one of the split outputs? I already have a transformer for that but it would mean two signal buses (one for the two wire LEDs and one for the three wire LEDs) if I do that. Presumably I can only use one of the outputs which results in an unbalanced load.

In case anyone is wondering the reason I have two kinds of LED is that the three wire LEDs are already mounted into lineside signals with ladders, the two wire LEDs are just moulded light units or in the case of the ones I've just found intended to be ground signals).

Just did a test with a coin battery. Connect the wires one way round the green LED lights. Swap the wires and the red LED lights.

Thanks for all the replies. I haven't had a chance to test the LEDs but it's two LEDs (one green one red) in a plastic moulded housing with two wires coming out. I assume that polarity one way lights one of the LEDs and the opposite polarity lights the other one.

I'm going to have perhaps a dozen of these signals to mount so it sounds like the DPDT route is more trouble than it's worth.

I have some pre-built signals that I can just connect to the SPDT because they have three wires and they do sell ground signals I could use. It just seems a shame and a waste of money not to be able to recycle these LED signals.

I am looking to build some signal light gantries and connect them to my turnout controllers which have an SPDT switch I can use. I have some old LED signals that I'd like to repurpose but there's a catch. The LEDs are only fed by two wires (black and red). I assume it's a pair of LEDs wired together in reverse.

Can I just connect red to one output, black to the other output and red+black (with an appropriate resistor) to the common?

That sounds far too simple to be correct.

22 minutes ago, AndyB said:

In talking about living with dignity in retirement we've focused a lot on the financial aspect; after all that was where the OP came in on.

 

With a handful of years to go before retirement I'm also focusing on physical fitness. Having previously been responsible for elderly parents I believe that a major part of staying independent - and out of care homes - is fitness and core body strength. And for me a definition of living in dignity would be to postpone entry into a care home till the last possible moment. Ideally I'd avoid a care home all together! 

Absolutely! I've always followed the mantra 'use it or lose it'. Muscle loss is harder to counter the older you get and eventually it becomes unavoidable. I've always planned to start off with more than I need so that toward the end I still hopefully have enough.

That's one of the reasons I took up golf. It's not the most physically demanding of sports but if you walk rather than ride you're getting a lot of benefits. Today I'm playing a course that is officially 6,300 yards from the normal tees and with my usual amateur's standard of play I'll probably end up walking nearer to 7,000 yards including up a couple of steep hilly sections. I won't even be out of breath at the end of it.

It's sad to see that most people riding buggies are young people. The older generation only use them if they are injured or frail.

I also always use the stairs (and run up them) rather than taking a lift or escalator. Although I did once regret doing that on a rare visit to London when I was exiting St Paul's. I'll confess that was a bit much 😁