brossard

When powered by DC, Tortoises are on all the time with the motor stalled out. My layout from years ago had DCC but DC Tortoises and ISTR they were pretty noisy. Using DCC, as I said, they are only on when switching so mostly silent. As for signal levers, this is the next step for my layout. DCC Concepts levers and encoder are on order. Right now, I have green momentary buttons on the fascia on both sides of the layout enabling operation from front or back. You are right, there should be a signalman controlling most of the turnouts. I do have have one turnout, that would have been manually operated, to the cattle dock and coal yard which will retain it's fascia button. John

In my post above I agreed that 3A controller would be fine. However, I don't think one should worry very much about powered turnouts. I have only a handful on my layout. They are actuated with Tortoise motors and Wabbit stationary decoders. These decoders only take power when activated and run for just 3 seconds. The rest of the time they are idle, taking no power. John

I don't think there is a specific controller for O gauge. Some locos that take a lot of amps may require a large decoder. Most modern O gauge locos (from Dapol, Minerva, Heljan for example) will be happy with standard 00 decoders. All my locos have sound and all have standard decoders. The type of controller you need boils down to the size of layout. If your layout is as you say then the controller you describe will be good. My controller for my 21' long O layout is NCE with 5A smart booster. Overkill I suspect. John

I've been busy titivating the layout and continuing with the industrial building project. First off, I finally got around to making gates for the Goods Yard. These are only installed loosely at the moment. Construction was Evergreen. Main structure is 0.040" sheet, scribed for planks and sandpapered to get the grain. Framing is also plastic strip. Bent 0.090" wire for hinges along with split pins. I applied Tamiya Panel Liner enamel wash and when that was dry rubbed most of it off with white spirit. Still need to straighten my lamp posts. A representation of a boiler house using Scalesenes Workshop from the factory set. It was made more challenging because I had to change the brick finish. Chimney is tricky to get right and I had to face it twice. Ultra low relief workshop. Same kit but the other end essentially without doors. I did try to make the window from the print provided but I'm pretty useless at that. I made it from scratch with Evergreen strip. Next phase of the project is to construct walls to frame everything and separate the railway from the industries. John

Did that, see the relevant post. HTH. John

Interesting you say that, I have one Loksound decoder and, when installed, the loco performance was poor on start up. I discovered Autotune. At the time I had a very good explanation but can't find it now. Here is a concise procedure: "Running Auto Tune Set CV 54 to the value of 0 (zero) (Load Control Parameter "K") Leave programming mode. Press F1. The locomotive should begin travelling down the track: It will launch at full speed in the last direction of travel, so ensure it will go the right direction before beginning the process." Pretty alarming to see the loco takeoff, make sure you have enough track, at least 3 ft I recall. It got my loco running properly. John

Functions tend to mostly the same on sound decoders, and up to 20+. Make sure your system can access all these. Like Peterm, I have standardized on Zimo although my locos are 0 gauge. I have bought my sound decoders from Digitrains. John

I make a lot of Scalescenes buildings in 0 gauge and foamcore is ideal for the structure. It is easy to cut and if you make a mistake, fixing it is relatively easy. I get the foamcore and regular card (1mm and 2mm) from an art supplies store because the quality is good. Foamcore can also be obtained from office supplies places and maybe even Walmart. My most recent project (Scalescenes T026/T026a): The platform structure is also foamcore. John

Lol, yes, me too. When I started, I built a lot of kits, Slaters and Parkside mostly. Even the few RTR I bought have been upgraded. Haven't done a kit in a while although I have a couple of friends kits on the shelf. I keep hoping he will fire me and take them on himself. John

Just went through this thread. Pretty awesome wagon modelling. The micro layout suggestions are good. 0 gauge does require quite a bit of room and a roundy roundy is usually precluded. The G0G manual says that 4' radius is minimum (think 2' in 00) but, to me that is pretty unsatisfying. Mine is 21' long including a 5' fiddle yard and sits diagonally in my basement. No curves to speak of. Exhibited at Exporail last August. John

I added some 3d printed chain link fence that I got at a show. A disappointment really. Very fragile and it broke in several places. I'll probably replace with brick wall. I cut out an indent on the board and added the factory: I put the BG in the bay to prove that there is clearance. Quite impressive I think. Shame about the Sharpie. John

The building is as good as done: Parapets from the T026a kit have been added. Windows were fixed from the back with canopy glue. Note the base. The back really looked nasty so I made a back plate and painted it black. Note the shadowy interior. I have been preparing some chain link fencing, so I'll do that next. John

I've been busy making parts for the parapet and buttress caps. One thing that dawned on me was the lack of complete corners. The older kit doesn't consider these as far as I can tell. This shows the incomplete corner and it needs beefing up. Some quick sums and I produced a new partial buttress. Double thick 3.5mm foam core. This is covered with brick paper leaving a flap in order to cover the join. This is one I did earlier. The buttress is fully square. A piece of sad news, I visited my art store last week looking for additional 3.5mm foam core. The sales guy did some checking and announced that it appeared to have been discontinued. I don't know if the manufacturer has stopped making it or whether the store chain just stopped carrying it. These things are sent to try us. John

Oh dear, I have one of those thinking it would be a good secondary controller (well it does do the job). However, nobody likes it in my group either. The major drawback is the lack of screen I think, so, yes, a slave powercab is going to be better. Sigh. Another thought, our club standardized to NCE eons ago. Most members have their own Powercab kit. John

Congratulations on your first outing. Layout looks really good. Sorry to hear of your mishap, but it's something that can occur. At my last outing I had some solid core wires break on me. Happily I was able to repair, but it is terrifying. After the show, this spurred me to review the wiring of the entire layout, stripping away solid core wire in favour of stranded. John

I got the main wall done: The vertical buttresses were harder to get right than you might think. I had to redo three because they got askew. Requires some repair to the walls using brick patches and totally recovering the buttress. I was struck with an epiphany today. The kit I am building in the T026, which it turns out is the original. I realized today that the kit has been upgraded and is not T026a. It looks quite a bit more refined than the original. I shall do the upper parapet for mine. I sure wish I had realized this earlier. John

I didn't do anything on the warehouse today as I had our weekly meeting of MBOGS (Montreal British O Gauge Society). Tea, coffee and banana bread plus a good natter. Upshot is I agreed to upgrade the layout with DCC Concepts levers, encoder and snubbers. Yesterday, I progressed the walls: You can see it scrubbed up right nice and looks a lot better than the disaster above. I show one of the buttresses of which there are five. These will hold the walls together along with ledges between the buttresses. Note the blank wall at the corner. Consistent with Sod's Law, I found the prodigal window after I had done that. One of the issues with the windows are the arch lintel. My dodge was to obtain just one wall section from Lcut: This was scanned to PDF (for some reason the JPG wouldn't scale properly). These are printed, cut out and glued to self adhesive label. I used artists felt markers to colour the bricks. John

A point of clarification, I assume you mean 145C solder. Will this method work on 188C solder? I hope your hair dryer doesn't have the heat to melt paint and/or solder. I shudder to think what that would do to ones hair. John

Oops, should have said, it's Weller as well. John

I bought a Weller 80W iron a couple of years ago. A huge disappointment as the bit turned black almost immediately. So, there's a non recommendation for you. Depending on the thickness of the brass you might consider a mini torch although I've never used one. My 50W soldering station has been man enough to tackle my 7mm kits up to now. John

Try a replacement bit. I bought a Weller replacement wand (from Amazon) for my soldering station not too long ago. At the same time I bought replacement tips. Tips will wear out after a while but not in just a few hours of use. My Weller 20W stand alone iron has been champion. I have used the replacement wand quite a bit since then with rosin and regular flux without any issues. One thing I swear by is the use of brass wool. Frequent wiping of the tip on this keeps the bit shiny. You could use a damp sponge but the wool is more convenient IMO. John

Progress report. Windows have been glazed: I used canopy glue. I also applied black pigment to give them a weathered look. Somewhere along the line one of the small windows has gone adrift. That's OK, I will make a bricked up window. I have started covering the walls. This is the ground floor. I did half to illustrate the steps. Note the upper arch has been coloured. Also note the arches need a lintel. I have a plan for that. There will be sills as well. The upper windows turned a bit problematic. I found that the lower windows were off relative to the upper windows. My solution was to cut out notches and glue in some 5mm foam board. You can see I've traced the window shape. Here's the outer wall over the inner: This shows that the windows are better aligned inside the apertures. After cutting out the unneeded foam board, I started covering: So, I'll finish covering these walls and get on. One other thing, you may require extra brick paper as I did. Download TX02, Brown Brick to match. John

In my experience, the coach structure is usually pretty straightforward whether the material is plastic or brass. It is getting them finished to a good standard where the trouble starts. I've been there and done that, and no I'm not putting my hand up.

I'm of a mind to make a tutorial for the construction of Scalescenes kits in 0 gauge. Honestly, the only real difference between 4mm and 7mm is the size. First off, the basics - card. I get mine from an art store. The kits call for heavy, medium and light. This translates in 4mm to 2mm, 1mm and 0.5mm thickness. For 7mm, I scale this up as best I can. Now, you can get 3.5mm card and I have some, but it is absolutely exhausting to cut. Instead, I use either 3.5mm foam board or, if I can't find that, 5mm foam board works fine. Light and easy to cut. For medium I use 2mm card and for light, 1mm card. Tools: Some obviousness here, steel rule and heavy knife with renewable blades. Sanding stick to remove cusps after cutting. Worn out Xacto knife. Use the back of the blade to score paper before folding. Glue stick for adhering the paper print to the base layer. There will be times when the card edge is exposed, this can be remedied by the use of felt marker. The one show is ancient from Letraset. These were replaced by Winsor & Newton but now they're gone too, sigh. Check your purveyor of felt markers. I spent some time gluing the templates to the base layers and I've been cutting those out: I left this half done to illustrate the steps. On the right is the base layer with the template glued on. Because the area is quite large I used spray adhesive and a roller. Card is medium so 2mm thick. The apertures needed a fair bit of sanding. Cutting these out is extremely tedious. On the left is after the cover layer was glued on with the glue stick. Finally, windows. I have finished these: On the left are Lcut windows. These need some assembly because there' a surround and a representation of window opening. The large windows are scratch built from various sizes of Evergreen strip. A tedious job requiring patience. At the bottom, is one of the jigs I made to aid in building the windows. Note that the arch radius differs from the Scalescenes arch and is the same as Lcut. John

Wow, a long time since I posted. I haven't been entirely idle, the layout has been effectively rewired. Delays came about because of newbie mistakes that had to be chased down. That's all done now so things should operate well. I have decided on a couple or three side projects. These will be low and ultra low relief buildings from Scalescenes. I completed the first one: This based on Scalescenes T002b, Low Relief Warehouse ( https://scalescenes.com/product/t002b-low-relief-warehouse/). My original intent was to build it as shown, with sliding doors. I plan a wall to separate the industry from the railway. However, I got shouted at because there wouldn't be room. Instead, I imagined that this is the back of the warehouse with the sliding doors at the front. Windows are Lcut, downspouts are ModelU hoppers and brass tube. Brackets from 0.9mm wire were soldered on and inserted. (Walls are 3.5mm foam core so very easy to work with). I am in the planning/preparation phase of the large warehouse T026a (https://scalescenes.com/product/t026a-factory-warehouse/). A huge building but don't panic, I plan to do the ultra low relief version. I got myself some Lcut windows to replace those in the kit. Not exact but I think I can work with them. I did have to scratch build the ground floor large windows so we'll see how those look. John