AndrueC

For what it's worth the Cobalt Alpha also avoids those wires for DCC. It's not clear (or I didn't find it so) that the Alpha is just a collection of decoders and LED outputs. The idea is that you assign each motor to the same accessory address as an LED output (the outputs are sequentially addressed and you can only set the start address) then both devices respond to the same command. That's why they call it a 'mimic'. I used an Alpha on my last layout but instead of using the same address for motor and corresponding signal LED on the layout I used macros to send individual commands to each. I think I did it because I wanted a signal for each yard lane and access to each lane depended on how multiple turnouts were set.

I have a Toyota (2019 Corolla) and whilst the in-car satnav is okay it looks a bit cartoony. The maps are not hugely accurate either and in fact it uses Here Maps and encourages users to edit them. A road near me had an incorrect speed limit and I tried twice to change it. On the first occasion someone/thing changed it back (their admin team couldn't tell me who or what). The second attempt appeared to stick but failed to make it into the next six monthly refresh from Toyota despite the change being at least four months before the publication date. I've no idea if it's finally made it in as my free period stopped after that update. We also had to go through Toyota's appalling eStore in order to get map updates. They were free for the first three years (you still got an invoice for £0 emailed to you, lol) but quite expensive after that. So these days I use Google maps via Android Auto. The only reason I got satnav on this car was because of other things I wanted in that trim. When I buy my next car I will happily avoid satnav if I can find a trim that offers me everything else I want without it.

Oh right. Well as long as the motor and/or controller allow the throw to be reduced to suit the scale and as long as the modeller is reasonably careful when installing there shouldn't be a problem. If either of the switch blades is touching the stock rail when the motor is at its mid-travel point then the motor has not been installed correctly. I don't see how the turnout can be blamed. I do wonder though why the controllers aren't designed to cut the frog power then move the blades then restore (switched) power. I wouldn't have thought it would complicate the design or increase the cost significantly.

Why is that specific to N gauge though? I use DCC Concepts Cobalt-SS and haven't had the problem you describe. These apparently switch polarity in the mid-position so if you have the throw set incorrectly there could be a problem I imagine although surely no-one would leave the controller configured for such an overrun in the first place. IPDigital might be more susceptible because it's possible to have them installed asymetrically (ie; pulling more to one side) whereas the Cobalt-SS are self correcting. Either way all we're saying is that if you install the motor or configure the controller incorrectly you might have problems.

The only electrical issue I encountered is that Peco don't provide a pigtail so you have to either solder to the wires on the underside of the frog or direct to the frog rails and in both cases be careful of the plastic.

The Hunt couplers arrived today so the rake is on my layout. It turns out it's a good thing I don't have enough siding to run eight as I doubt I'd have a loco that could do it. My Class 33 'Ashford' which was the intended loco can pull them but suffers wheel sleep going up one of my inclines (~1.5 degrees, 90 degree turn, radius in excess of 3rd). And slows a lot in the double 'S' at the next corner. It also derailed at a turnout toward the end of that 'S' one time. Luckily one of my Class 68s was able to step up. It also slows a bit on an 'S' curve but not as badly and you could just say that the drivers are being sensible :) I think the limiting factor now is just the weight of the wagons. They are heavier than anything else I've got. To be fair that 'S' curve is a bit cruel especially with the turnout near the end of it. Maybe the wagons will improve with a bit more running but I have my doubts. Anyway they run well enough now. Thanks for all your advice.

I picked up some black nylon washers today. They are a little too thick at 1mm but the bogeys remain attached when a wagon is picked up and the running is much improved. They do still seem to slow a bit more than other bogied wagons on curves but I don't think it'll be a problem. I've also removed all but the front coupler in preparation for some Hunt couplers that I have on order. Having read about the weak coupling I think I'd rather go that route even if I don't intend to uncouple the rake very often (ideally not until/unless the layout is dismantled). I might eventually switch the washers out for .5mm if/when I see some but I have no problems with them now that they roll freely. They are good looking models but Dapol need to address the issue of wheel scraping and poor couplers before they order the next batch. And, honestly, selling a model railway wagon that more often than not fails to roll is very poor QA.

Very useful information. I do also have one broken coupler but since it's only one I can have that as the last wagon. I'd have removed the coupler from it anyway. Mine will be permanently coupled so hopefully not a problem.

Hah. Yes, it's a known issue. Wish I'd seen this review before I bought them: https://www.ngaugenews.com/post/review-Dapol-foster-yeoman-o-k-jha-hopper-wagons "You can see the scratch marks made by the wheel flanges as a result of this issue in the image below: " Poor show, Dapol.

How did these ever make it into production, Dapol? I've just bought seven of them and almost every one suffers from the wheels scraping the underside of the chassis. Is this a known issue and/or is there a known solution? Ordinarily I'd send them back to the retailer but I've just bought them from Hattons so I'd rather not go that route as I'm sure they have enough on their plate at the moment.

What adverts? I have UBlock Origin installed and there are no adverts when I browse that page, just a block of white space at the top and the right side both of which I could remove if I cared to. 😉

Good point. Funnily enough I have been using them to mark the intended route of additional trunking but I hadn't seriously thought about trying that. Thanks.

My Dad had a good life but unfortunately succumbed to lung cancer (due to asbestos) in 2020. He tried immunotherapy but it didn't work and after that he gave up. I think that was the only time he ever gave up on anything. My biggest regret is that he died a couple of months before I decided to take up railway modelling as a hobby. I wonder sometimes if I'd started earlier he might have been motivated to hang on a bit longer. It would given us a lot to talk about as he built a couple of layouts including one he made for me and my brother. So..yeah. For everyone with elderly parents (maybe everyone with parents still alive) talk to them. There will come a day when you lose that option for ever. Anyway I actually wired up almost all of one gantry yesterday afternoon. It was a bit of a pain because access is poor. That board is the one I butchered from my first layout and the legs run along the length of the board. The wires from the LEDs are hanging down about 200mm but behind the legs. I have no choice but to sit on the floor and reach across at an uncomfortable angle with limited arm movement. I may yet decide to buy some PlugIt leads because getting the plugs into the chocblocks and screwed in isn't easy.

Getting our wires crossed.. I decided to make a start on wiring up one of the signal gantry sets. I decided to choose the slightly more complicated one - Wilf's Junction - because I happened to be thinking of my late father this morning and wishing I could call him up for a chat. It's been a couple of years now but of course I still miss him. Anyway although it has more LEDs than Doorway Interchange it is actually simpler to wire up. That's because it only has two modes of operation - 'straight through' or 'cross over'. At first thought that might suggest wiring the outer LEDs to one switch and the inner to another. But actually it can all be done through one switch. That's because the inner LEDs are always the reverse of the outer. If I connect red wires for the outer LEDs together with the green wires from the inner LEDs. And the green wires from the outer LEDs together with the red wires from the inner LEDs then connect all the common wires I only need one SPDT (which my Cobalt-SS controllers provide). As I mentioned in my previous post I'm using choc blocks. I've built daisy chains of wires using ferrules (two wires in each). And here's the completed choc block set for the gantry (with some paint to indicate the actual wiring since my colour scheme barely makes sense, lol): Oh and someone asked me what the number on the post by turnout motors was. It's the accessory number. I don't know why I numbered them from 100 and 150 (I don't even have fifty turnouts) but I'm not changing them all now. The above turnout leads to my engineering yard and is accessory number 107. It just is, okay? 🙂 And yes, the left hand choc blocks demonstrate that sometimes I can't count. I knew I needed nine (three for each LED) I counted nine and I made the cut. I ended up with eight. I wasn't even drunk at the time.. Dad would have laughed at that and said it was typical of me. 😁

Time moves on, so this post will bring things up to date. I have assembled my signal gantries. They aren't wired up yet but everything is in place ready for when I feel like spending an hour underneath my baseboards. Three components went into the making of these. Ratio Pratt Truss kit. ModelIt ground/signal lights. Faller bridge fencing (left over from my first layout). Assembling the Ratio kit was fairly easy now that I know to use solvent glue. Fixing the ladders was the trickiest part (brass glued to the plastic) but I managed it. For clarity the kit doesn't come with any kind of signals it is just the gantry itself. After I assembled them I sprayed them aluminium. The ground signals could be fed through the holes in the top of the gantry after widening them a bit with a drill. Gluing them to top was easy but oddly whilst some could be glued with superglue others fixed better with UHU. Maybe some reaction to the spray paint? Lastly the fencing was cut to size and glued between the lights using UHU. This pair are at Wilf's Junction: I briefly ran into a problem with clearance. The trusses are just the right height but I'd not realised that I wouldn't be able to bend the connector legs for the LEDs so they ended up a bit too low. I was able to fit some slivers of card under the truss legs though and as the above image shows (top most line, left gantry) the loading gauge is adequate. There is at least one millimetre of clearance :) I won't be using the Plug-It connectors this time. They are okay but I found a load of spare 'choc block' connectors at the bottom of a box so will just use those instead. The connecting pins will fit in the connectors so no need to remove them or strip wires. The idea for this pair of gantries (not prototypical by any means) is that when the routes are set to straight ahead the outer pair of LEDs will be green and the centre LED red. When the route is set to cross over the LEDs reverse. The other pair are sited at The Doorway Interchange: Here the lights just indicate whether the route ahead is clear. This is a double-slip so doesn't have a permanent cross over ability, anything other than straight ahead will be temporary. Notice that I've added a walkway across the track. It occurred to me that part of what makes good detail is logic. If there are signals and turnout motors then someone has to be able to get to them. Engineers don't just materialise onsite next to the items they are servicing. There is soon(TM) going to be a small platform near the left facing gantry. It will be set up to service the branch line (inner most line) and the idea is that engineers can disembark there then make their way over to either gantry and cross the mainline if needed. This image also shows something else I've been working on. I've laid some Peco concrete 'trunking' around the North Yard along with junction boxes: Which is reasonably good but there's never enough trunking in a pack. So I came up with an idea. I painted some 3mm card with what I hoped was a fairly good match for the Peco stuff and was at least 'concrete coloured'. Then I scored lines across it at 4mm intervals. Then I cut the card into 2mm strips at right angles to the scoring. The result is quite passable trunking for a fraction of the cost (practically nothing). I also noticed that the scoring sometimes allowed little squares to lift off and I've seen other layouts where some of the trunk covers are left loose exposing wires inside. I haven't done that yet because drawing wires in N scale is going to be very difficult but I would imagine it's very doable in larger scales. You can see the trunking here alongside the second line from the right. One advantage over the Peco stuff is that being card means you can bend it around curves. The only thing to watch out for is that the edge of the trunking isn't painted so you need to either paint it or bury it where it can't be seen.

Puts me in mind of a joke I posted a while back. Three people walked into a bar. None of them were injured but the foreman had to fill out an HSE form.

I'm not sure I should really post this but I'm going to anyway :) Last night I had the chance to watch some running on new Peco c55. There was more wobble on turnouts than I see on my c80 layout. It wasn't particularly bad wobble but it was there and it was a largish diesel. What little wobble I see is on small wagons and the one tender I have. On the other hand the rail looked better even though it hadn't been painted (mine has). So if you don't care what your track looks like in close up but detest wobble.. So c80 (in my experience) runs better than c55 but looks ugly. I'd be curious to understand what aspect of c55 geometry makes it run worse than c80 but of course this isn't the forum section to discuss that. If I ever do another layout it will be a smaller one and I will probably go for 2FS.

Fair enough. Pity it doesn't have more fine grained control though.

The Honda Jazz nearly had an unfortunate name as well.

At least it explains why children are encouraged to complete those 'follow the line' puzzles. It's preparation for when they are working on their model railways 😁

Something else I just thought about that might be a (mitigating?) factor. I installed the boards before I started laying track. That means the only way to work on the electrics is to sit/crouch underneath, hope you don't get a crick in the neck or run out of rude words to mutter(*). I think to stand any real chance of being neat you need to be able to sit in comfort and either have the boards vertical or upside down in front of you. (*)Not much of a risk there. I used to be a computer programmer. I probably know almost as many ways to swear as the proverbial sailor or blind carpenter :)

Lol. I have used a few 3M adhesive hangers but quite honestly my wiring is probably beyond hope. That's my busiest board but there's another that's nearly as bad. I credit the mess with two things: Suitcase connectors encouraging me to just find a bare piece of bus to clip a dropper to. DCC Concepts plug and play stuff. You're encouraged to just connected point A to point B and the idea of modifying their wiring so that it's actually exactly the right length is too scary - the connectors are too small for me to want to try and solder them. I think for a future layout though I'd drop the idea of an actual separate bus with droppers attached to it. I think that 'virtual' bus is a better idea. Multiple short runs of wire connecting to terminal blocks which then have the droppers attached seems like it would be far more likely to be well planned. I actually have three buses that run under all of my boards: Track Accessory 5V Lighting Most things are connected to their respective bus by droppers although recently with the turnout controllers I've taken to using choc-blocks to combine wires from the turnout controllers before connecting the choc-blocks to the bus. At least that halves the number of suitcase connectors and should the need arise allows me to disconnect those turnout frogs for diagnostics. On the other hand my layout is never going to be exhibited and is proving to be reliable. There's some droppers need connecting then I can just tuck everything up underneath where it's not visible :)

An additional reason for keeping them separate is that turnout controllers might not default to their correct 'frog polarity' when powered off. In this situation when you power on the layout there might be a race condition between the controllers correcting themselves and your short detector. I have this scenario with my layout. With the turnout controllers unpowered there is a short across the rails. I have to power the accessory bus first and wait until I hear the controllers perform their initial 'click' before I power up the track. I'm using Cobalt-SS motors so I don't know if the IP range have the same potential issue.

I've just run my class 121 and can detect no wobble on my 14 degree radius code 80 Streamline turnouts. I mentioned in your other thread that wobble doesn't seem to be as much of a problem for me. I just looked at the code 55 turnout that I happen to have on standby for installation and I hadn't realised that there are actually design differences - it's not just that the rail is sunk deeper: Code 55 is the top turnout. The frog area is has differences: Code 80 frog flares at the heel. Code 55 frog toe appears narrower with a more angular appearance.

For me the problem with the 56 isn't a lack of pulling power, just low top speed. To be fair it's probably not far off a realistic maximum but it seems to have only four speeds . 'Slow crawl'. 'crawl'. 'Walk' and 'Walk a bit faster'