Barry Ten

Cheers, Mikkel - the weathering dates back to when it was painted in BR black, which went horribly wrong, hence the respray back into the original GWR green. As for the coach, must be a summer saturday special!

Way back, when the likelihood of a new, super-detail 28xx from Hornby seemed slim, I set about detailing the existing, Chinese-era model. My version dated from 2000 and was (and is) a nice, smooth running model, so I didn't see any need to change the chassis - not that I'd have been all that confident about doing so, anyway, as to date I've never built anything with more than three axles. I showed some pics of the detailed 28 on the old forum, but the arrival of the new model in the shops prompted me to take it out the box and finish a few bits I'd not got around to - replacing the pony truck wheel, adding a smokebox dart, and lamp irons. Along the way I touched up some areas of damaged paint. The main work on the model was cosmetic, with the addition of various pipes and gubbins to the underside of the footplate, aided by the photos in Brian Haresnape's book. Some of the details are a tad overscale or guesstimated but I'm happy with the general look of the thing, which at least appears "busier" around the wheels than it used to. I also replaced the cab steps with etched ones; I didn't touch the tender steps as they are cast into the frames. The big visual improvement, in my view, lies in moving the pony truck forward a smidge - it's set back a bit too far on the Hornby model for some reason, perhaps because it used common components with the 8F? Anyway, I removed the existing pony truck, hack-sawed it down the middle and inserted a splice piece. I'll certainly be looking to obtain one of the new models, but for now I'm glad that my old 28xx can still hold its own. The tender drive will always be obvious - that big coal load, which there's not much can be done about - but performance is good, and the loco has more daylight under the boiler than the new one...

Not too much to report here, as I've been away from the layout a fair bit, and when I've been here, I've been quite happy just playing trains . Plus, I've been neglecting my S&D stuff, so there's been some snail-like progress on the 4mm side of things, keeping me away from matters North American. One thing I have been tinkering with is static grass, using the Noch Grassmaster. I had some trepidation, fearing that the grass might end up looking overscale in N, but my feeling at the moment is that it's fine - little more than waist-high to one of the N scale figures, which doesn't seem unreasonable for long, unkempt grass such as one might find in the vicinity of an industrial area. I've also been building up the scenery on the left side of the layout. Here's progress to date, showing the terrain rising steeply behind the tracks. This hill - or part of a hill - is a removable module, as per the earlier work on the layout. It sits over the hidden rear track, and (once more modules have been completed) will serve as a view-block concealing not only the storage yard throat, but also the wireless monitor camera. Finally, one of the things I slightly miss in N is the potential for hands-on modelling of locomotives and rolling stock, but there is certainly scope for improving older models. These box cars were all cheapo models of indeterminate accuracy picked up at various points over the last eight or so years. Apart from the replacement of the original trucks with Micro-Trains versions, these have had their interior weights swapped for something non-magnetic, new roofboards (MTL mouldings) in place of the chunky originals, and etched stirrups and steps (BLMA) instead of the overscale cast-on versions. With some weathering, these no longer look out of place amid newer, higher-spec models. Quick and easy - one boxcar can be brought up to spec in half an hour - and very satisfying.

Nice article, too - cracking pictures and a very approachable style to the text.

KT Tunstall's new album.

Just gets better and better, this!

Not sure what to make of this yet - earlier in the thread I mentioned that I'd got a Castle that was a poor runner in reverse - very juddery. It was suggested that it might be due to the keeper plate being too tight/loose but despite adjusting it, I couldn't improve matters. I took the Castle back on the weekend (been on holiday) and this time we were able to run a replacement in the shop. The loco was decoder equipped, so it was tested on the shop's DCC test track. This one ran beautifully smoothly in both forward and reverse, so I happily took it home. Once I got it onto my own layout, though, I was surprised to find the same dreadful running in reverse. At that point it occurred to me that I'm presently running on DC at home, and the loco was test run at the shop on DCC. My DCC controller is currently plugged into my American layout, but when I get a chance I'll swap it onto the 4mm one and see what happens. I have a bunch of other recent Hornby locos running smoothly on DC, but the Castle is the only one with a decoder in.

This worked, thanks!

Hope you won't mind this "almost snap" shot - just a pity it's going the other way!

At the risk of flogging a dead horse, I think Hornby's take on BR green has been wrong for years - far too matt, pastel, blue-tinged whatever. Even my original 9F, from 1980, had that same dead-looking shade. I remember when I first saw Bachmann's rendition of the green, on a lined V2, it immediately looked right. I agree with those posters who talk about the subjectivity of memory, variations in paint mix, and the vagaries of different types of film and colour reproduction in books and slides, but through all the countless colour images most of us have seen over the years, quite aside from real locos on preserved lines, we can get a sense of what is in the right ball park, and Hornby's green is just not quite there to my eyes. Oddly enough it always looks richer and more lustrous on the packaging artwork.

Again, thanks all. No dice. I adjusted the screws on the keeper plate but she still won't run in reverse. I'm wary of loosening the keeper plate too much as I've been down that road before, and found myself unable to get the pickup assembly to bed back in again. For a loco that cost more than a 100 quid, that's as much d*cking around as I'm prepared to do. I'll have another go at easing the plug out per 34c's suggestion, and then I may give it a firm tug on the wires as a last resort - other than that, it's Hornby's problem, I'm afraid. One thing I noticed, and which I see in some of the photos on this thread, and also on some models in shop cabinets, is areas of white staining around some of the detail parts, esp. near the piston steampipes. It looks to me as if whoever assembled the model had traces of CA on their fingers. The sooner Hornby ditch the plug/socket arrangement the better, as far as I'm concerned - or at least come up with a more user-friendly arrangement. And change their ridiculous packaging system as well, while they're at it...grrr!

I did put them back in, but maybe I'll experiment and adjust them a bit. Thanks, worth a try!

Any tips for removing the plug from the socket in the tender? I bought a Castle on the weekend, but didn't test run it as the shop was busy (and when was the last time a Hornby steam loco didn't run well, anyway?). After I got it home I pushed the plug into the tender socket but my loco only runs well in forward gear - it judders horribly in reverse. Now it must go back to the dealer but now I can't detach the plug! I've tried getting tweezers around it, but they can't get enough of a grip. I'm wary of applying too much force to the wires for fear that they'll snap and leave the plug stuck in place.

Swings and roundabouts, though, isn't? I look at some of the American O gauge stuff and marvel at its sense of mass and solidity, something I don't think it's really possible to achieve in N. And I wouldn't mind a bit of SOO stuff now and then either I guess N gives you the possibility to go for the big picture, but it's not really the scale for hands-on modelling of locos and rolling stock, which is something I enjoy. I found an ad in an old MR yesterday for a conversion kit to adapt the Kato 2-8-2 into a Southern prototype, but it's long out of production. Maybe if there was a scale between N and 0, we'd all be happy!

Indeed, although one quickly gets very used to whatever one has - I want more mainline run now, more scenery, longer trains - never satisfied, eh... My recent photos have been a bit lacking in punch, by the way, but I'm getting to grips with a new camera (an SLR rather than the bridge camera I used for most of these shots) and er... still got some way to go!

Goodbye analog, hello digital... we've gone DCC. Conversion of the layout took about ten minutes, max - I disconnected the Gaugemaster twin track controller, substituted a cheap Trix unit to operate the point motors, and plugged the Prodigy into one of the two cab control circuits. A couple of evenings of test running proved very satisfactory, and by the weekend I was feeling suitably smug. That, of course, was when things started to go wrong... A couple of friends were visiting, neither of them with any interest in trains, but they got the layout tour regardless. All was going well, until I needed to back a train into one of the sidings to clear the main line. To my surprise it was dead, with the culprit quickly being identified as the electrofrog crossing, which was no longer feeding juice into two of the sidings leading off it. Cue much frustration and gnashing of teeth, as I tried to identify a loose wire or broken connection in the under board wiring. No joy. Not wanting to be a bad host I shut the layout down and went downstairs to do the entertaining, but it was weighing on my mind all night. In the morning I had another poke around, in the hope that the fault might have magically cleared itself overnight - this has happened before, so it's not a completely foolish wish. Not this time, though, and in the better light of morning I still couldn't see any loose connections. We spent the day out with our friends while my mind raced through worst event scenarios. If something had gone wrong in the internal wiring of that crossover, it was game over - I'd have to lift the ballasted unit, and I couldn't do that without damaging the four sidings leading off it, which - given that one of them has a road running across it - would in turn impact on scenery that had taken a lot of time to get right. In the back of my mind, I remembered some scare stories about the internal leads in Peco points not being able to withstand DCC voltage/currents - had that happened, I wondered? Back home, I wasn't overly keen on poking around with the wiring while it carried DCC, but I needed to be able to test the track power. I dug out a multimeter - not my usual one, which I've mislaid - and couldn't get it to read a sensible voltage. I then decided to swap back to DC for exploratory purposes. Five minute job - no problems. I ran a loco up and down and the crossover was still dead. It wasn't some transient problem, then, or something esoteric related to DCC specifically. I then decided to get technical and give all the track feeds running into a crossover a good yank, for no other reason than I vaguely recalled something similar happening a year or two back, before I completed the ballasting. I did so, and thankfully my test loco roared into life. Some further running established that power was now flowing back into the previously dead sidings. I then converted back to DCC and things have been fine since then. OK, it's not a very elegant solution - and something is obviously not quite 100% in that crossover wiring - but I'll have to live with this state of affairs, as unsatisfactory as it is. I'd rather accept the need to tweak the wiring every year or so, rather than rip up a year's worth of scenery and ballasting. Other than that, it's been pretty stress free. I spent some time learning about speed curves, so I could tune my two SD35s to run together, and I did some more CV tweaking to get the F unit consists to run properly. I've dug into advanced consisting with only limited success - I can get my B23-7s to work as a consist, but not the SD35s or SD24s, for some strange reason, even though they should all support advanced consisting. For now I run these units together in pairs by assigning the same address to both locos. A mystery, but probably not unrelated to my general ignorance levels at this point. I have also identified and (hopefully cured) a couple of areas of dodgy wiring which gave only transient faults in DC. Overall I am very happy and am enjoying the increased operational flexibility. The layout was already divided into enough blocks to allow all the movements I could envisage, but it did sometimes mean a long wait for a slow freight to clear the longest block. And while the slow speed running was good under DC, it's amazing under DCC.

Cheers! I've done very little to it since June other than begin to add some cosmetic point rodding, which is both fiddly and mind-numbingly tedious. I don't think it will go out again until next spring/summer so there is no great rush to get things done.

I really ought to get a couple of those Verta-Paks, indeed. Just got a call from my DCC installer - he's managed to complete decoder installation in a few more locos of mine, so I think I now have the necessary critical mass to go DCC full-time, as opposed to just hooking up the Prodigy occasionally to test things out. Until now I've not really had enough decoder equipped locos to run a sufficiently varied service. In the style of one of those boring stock lists Railway Modeller always used to publish in Railway of the Month, DCC locos now run to: 2x B23-7 2x SD24 2x SD35 1x E8 (BLI with onboard sound) 1 xRS3 1 x GP7 (central of Georgia) 1x GP18 1x RS11 3 x FT A/B units 1 x F3 A (central of Georgia) Should be enough to keep me happy for a while, while I get the other locos chipped over a longer period of time. The two problem cases are my two Lifelike SD7s, which my installer decided he couldn't tackle - too delicate. They're widely regarded as tricky installations, since they don't have a conventional split frame chassis. If I don't find a solution they may be relegated to a DC-only switching area or something. Shame as they run like a treat...

Hope you spotted the Colonial Photo & Hobby business card, John! You're a very naughty man for telling me about that place...

A few posts back I mentioned the use of a camera to monitor the staging yard - well, here it is, plonked in place temporarily (although knowing me, it'll stay like this for some while): And the monitor screen, which came in the same kit: It's a "Sentient" wireless camera and monitor, sold by Maplins. The monitor will support four cameras in total. The quality is more than adequate for monitoring the yard throat. Ultimately it would be quite useful to have a second camera monitoring the other throat. I must admit, until recently, I'd have considered it overkill to install a camera system on a small layout like mine. I've seen setups like this in MR, and always thought to myself that it was the kind of expensive luxury that the Americans seem to go in for on their vast basement systems. Plus, there was an element of technical fear-factor. However, over the last year or two my wife and I have been using a camera to look at our birds and foxes, so I've become much more aware of how cheap and easy to use this gear is. The cost of this Maplins unit was not much more than a decoder equipped N loco, so I consider it money well spent. The camera allows me to free up more layout space for scenery, by avoiding the need to be able to see the staging yard. I must still be able to access it, of course, but that's easily solved with removable scenery modules, of which there are already many on the layout. Over the weekend I did a lot of final wiring and fine-tuning of the yard throat, making sure operation is "bulletproof", as they say in MR. With that in place, I'm now happy about beginning to push the scenery around the bend onto the left side arm of the layout. Here's evidence of progress: this is the spur with the Woods furniture factory. This was the first kit I built and made in N and has been finished for quite a few years. I would now aim to do a bit more to personalise a model, rather than building it straight out of the box, but it's a nice, imposing structure. Obviously there's still a fair bit to do with detailing and painting, and bedding the building into its scene. Moving on, here's an area of the layout where two of the point motors for the staging yard could not be situated by their tracks, and where the framing did not permit under-board mountings. They use brass rods to work the points, pushing through the scenery under the three intervening tracks. I wanted to be able to get at the Peco polarity switch units for adjustment, so I made a section of removable scenery to drop over the motors. Yes, it's all very low-tech, just card and plaster - knocked up in about an hour, simples. The "wrinkly" fascia will eventually be neatened over. And the slight mismatch at the left side of the module is intentional, 'onest. Finally: two massive 86 foot auto parts box cars, courtesy of Bluford Shops. Lovely models. They have body mounted couplings but will still go around 11" curves. Rather nicely, they also come with kits to adapt them for even tighter curves - top marks to Bluford Shops.