RFS

1 hour ago, Andymsa said:

I always solder every metal rail joiner

Does that not then prevent heat expansion in hot weather with the risk of rails buckling?

5 minutes ago, GrumpyPenguin said:

"Coin test" will not put anything under load for long & when you think about it could actually be dangerous with a high powered system. It will never have time to allow a bad (dry) joint or other connection to increase it's resistance under load.

Continue abusing your system under short conditions by all means, it's your system after all.

As an electrical engineer I would never attempt to fault find using a dead short, not good electrical practice.

 

You do it your way & I'll continue to do it as a professional.

 

Have a nice weekend.

Suggest you have a read of this article to get a better understanding of the purpose of doing the coin test for DCC systems.

3 hours ago, GrumpyPenguin said:

The "coin test" proves nothing if the problem is a dry joint & you cannot be doing your controller any favours by shorting it out so many times.

The coin test is a important test for verifying the adequacy of your DCC wiring. With DC, the maximum track power is 12v at 1amp which equates to 12 watts. The OP's system is 3.5 amps at a likely 16v which makes this 56w. Not only is this nearly 5 times the DC load, it's also full power all the time. When a short occurs due to a derailment, that amount of power will flow through the loco's pickup wires until the command station detects the fault and cuts power. These wires are not designed to carry that much power other than for a fraction of a second. A couple of seconds would severely damage the loco (try putting 56w through a solenoid point motor for a couple of seconds, for example).

This why voltage drop can cause problems. If the Op's wiring means that the fiddle yard is only getting, say, 35-40w then a short will not necessarily get detected immediately if at all, and irreparable damage can be done. (Think how hot a 40w incandescent light bulb gets the moment you switch it on - its filament is white hot in an instant.) You're also not going to damage your command station by repeatably tripping its internal circuit breaker - that's what it's designed to do. However when checking your layout in this way, it's best to remove other locos from the track.

The Op says he has "many, many droppers" yet the problem is across the fiddle yard area. I would therefore doubt it's a sngle dry joint as that should only affect a small section of track. 

I would definitely try the simple coin test as this can indicate the problem being under gauge wire. Where the problem occurs, place a coin across the track and make sure the command station trips immediately. If it doesn't, then it means that the wiring at that place needs to be improved.  

1 hour ago, Suzie said:

Does anyone know if text messaging will still work with the new digital VOIP service like it does on the analogue lines? Users the callerID signalling apparently, but I cannot find any documentation on it anywhere.

I think this answer in the BT Comminuty Forum might help. 

59 minutes ago, Izzy said:

 Although I have a mobile - one I now mainly use on Wi-Fi - it’s just on a PAYG tariff which I only have to top up when I need to. I am told this type of PAYG is hard to find now, that most demand a monthly top-up, which I don’t class as PAYG. £10 a month for something only for use as a ‘backup’ I find extremely expensive.

No problem with having PAYG contracts. Both the wife and I have had one for years and I think all providers have these available. We use them sparingly in the house using the wifi, and when away from home just for emergencies. 

If you don't have a mobile phone as a backup, then your landline phone is a single point of failure regardless of whether it's digital or analog. Power cuts are just one issue and here we've only had one in the last 12 months that was only for about 2 hours. Equipment failure is a more likely cause of failure, and BT's analog equipment is getting very old.

About 4 years ago we had a major failure in our village caused by cable failure that took out half the phones from the 40 or so properties. As the remedy required digging up the road, it needed emergency road-closure authorizations etc, which meant is was nearly 3 weeks till the service was restored. The failure was between the street cabinet and the exchange, and at that time our internet service was fibre-to-the-cabinet, so we retained full internet access all the time. Spent that time wishing BT would get a move on with DV. If this happened again, we would be fine with DV but our neighbours still with analog would not. 

And what about emergencies away from the home? You're driving home late at night, it's dark and freezing cold, and your car breaks down. What do you do if you don't have a mobile? I went to Tesco's the other day (a 6-mile drive) and half way there realized my mobile was still at home in the charger. A bit of mild panic set in!

And many people overlook the fact that cordless phones will not work in a power cut either, as they rely on a pwered base unit. It also does not need a power cut to take out PSTN lines, for example, if they travel above ground on poles for part of the way. A big storm could take the pole out etc..

Not broken anything yet, but I do worry when using brute force in this way. I suspect you might be able to drop it out more easily from inside, but that would mean prising the body off which is another experience I try to avoid.

So much easier with the Bachmann coaches where the bogies unscrew.

1 hour ago, Combe Martin said:

Its probably on here somewhere, but I cant find it.

 

I need to remove the bogies from a couple of Hornby Maunsell coaches to sort out a coupling mechanism that's jamming.

 

How do I do it ?

Happened to me a few times as well. You just slide a wide flat-bladed screwdriver under the bogie from the inner end, and then while holding your breath lever it up until it pops out. It's just a clip fit to put it back. 

You can do this by setting up a DCC consist which should be explained in your Digitrax manual. Basically you assign each loco to the consist and also which direction it is to travel in. The consist is assigned a unique number and you drive it via this number. 

I recently had a couple of NEM fishtail pockets fail and had to buy replacements. Of course they only come in packets of 10 (Hornby X6354), so I've had a few spare. So where I've had a Hunt coupling lose a prong I've simply reused it by glueing into a spare NEM pocket with a few drops of Loctite. 

And a couple of couplings have lost their magnet. On one occasion the train uncoupled and the front coupling's magnet was left securely attached to the rear coupling. Again it's just a couple of drops of Loctite but making sure the magnet is the same way round as before. 

One daft one here ffrom TMC. £727.98 for a Britannia Models 4-CEP unit that looks decidedly inferior to the Bachmann model, which at least has door handles etc and can be had new for little more than half the price. 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/266217819364

Well good luck with that!

1 hour ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

I want to operate up to 15 coaches, and require scale separation of loco and tender on straight track. Now my recollection of the N class is about 22 years past, a late friend had one, and it regularly derailed its tender to the extent that he lost patience and we put in a plain drawbar - more on this anon. 

This was a problem with early releases of the N and Bachmann revised the design to cure this. I have two N class locos with the revised tender coupling and never had a problem with either. 

1 hour ago, Combe Martin said:

I'm trying to produce this loco by renumbering & renaming a Hornby 34091 Weymouth.  I've already done a tender swop with 34088 213 Squadron (which will become 34028 Eddystone), but I'm having difficulty finding out the background colour of Calstock's nameplate.  Is it red or black ?  All the colour pictures I've found so far seem to show it dirty, or is that black ??    I've got loads of Southern and Somerset & Dorset picture books, but most pictures are black and white.  Does anyone on here know ?   

Here's a photo of 34103 which shows the nameplate to be red. Might not have been red all its life though!

8 minutes ago, TyBryn said:

Hi, I have just bought a used Bachmann 32-355 Class 4MT Tank on ebay and found that it has no blanking plug and so a non-runner.  Looking at the 8-pin socket there is no marker to show which way round the plug should be fitted.  I have ordered a generic plug NEM 652 from DCC Supplies.  Is it safe to try the plug in either direction?

Yes it will work either way round. The loco does not have lights.

1 hour ago, E100 said:

No idea if this is old news but I've noticed they've added a series of Bachmann bodies for sale. 

https://www.kernowmodelrailcentre.com/c/1102/Diesel-Locomotives-and-units

Class 37 / Class 158 for example

There are a lot more available direct from Bachmann spares. 

I have a number of Tortoise motors and they are extremely reliable. However, I have had the same problem as you with one motor, and the cause was due to a failure of the internal switch I was using for frog polarity. Simple fix was to use the other switch on this motor as luckily I only needed one to be working. 

I've seen that Circuitron say this can happen if, for example, some ballast has fallen into the motor and I'm assuming this might be the case with my failure.