Etched Pixels

I think I may have to nominate 130399089416 as ebay at its finest.

£150 quid for some white metal blobs, for a kit that was infamous and which I've never seen in constructed form and I suspect never has been succesfully built. The fact it comes with six end noses and seven sets of underfranes (six I can see eiight I can but seven) is a bit worrying too

Alan

John, I don't know if you have been asked this before but a CLASP modular station building would be fab, any chance?

Finest concrete (and now and then asbestos) 1960s

Some more useful info and profiles at:

http://www.scapebuild.co.uk/downloads/RBS_IDGuide.PDF?PHPSESSID=87c84525f32f3c8947aa7b731b119981

And some more handy diagrams in the asbestos alert

http://www.scapebuild.co.uk/downloads/Formal_Notice.pdf

Nice work Bernard, yes I guess given their popularity making the fabric elements to fit Mk1 stock sounds like a good staring point.

Mr TPM also has some to fit various Farish coaches as free downloads on his own site at http://www.tpmodels.co.uk of course, and some very nice etched restuarant car interior bits too.

For clear stuff acetate doesn't work well (its hard to print and the print processes needed to print onto it well mostly involve inks that health and safety banned - something to do with the joys of toluene ;. Printing onto vinyl sort of works but you can only print one side so you have to accurately line up the vinyls and then still get a white visible join due to the material thickness. The scalpel is thus probably a lot easier anyway. Plain you can do with suitably coloured vinyl as the sticky and non sticky side are the same colour unlike printed vinyl which of course stays white on one side.

Alan

I'd go for some more textures.

There are some very distinctive UK textures and brick styles not represented that would make many kits useful in more locations

- Slate (North Wales for example) is very distinctive

http://www.penmorfa....e/dinorwic5.jpg

- Pinkish sandstone

- Semi-random packed stone (eg North Cornwall Railway buildings and in similar but not quite the same style many other places) from Wales to Scotland

(eg http://philtpics.fot.../p42539797.html, http://www.disused-s...e/index32.shtml

- Some of the other brick styles

Eg this beautiful example of Neath & Brecon architecture ( http://philtpics.fotopic.net/p56516812.html )

I've used hammerite successfully with a brush on N scale kits providing its quite diluted and you wipe most of it off. It was a little clogging on grillework but otherwise ok. I find it handy for wagons as its a good base for bauxite but its not so good for whites.

Several of the etching companies can do surface finishing for painting. It's something i must look into further if the price becomes acceptable. I imagine it is similar to the magic mix Stephen mentions, and it allows the metal to be painted directly.

Alan

Has anyone had a go at lifting the BR arrows of confusion on the blue one yet ? I'm hoping to run mine un-named but that really means the logo should be mid bodyside.

In N there were several available RTR at one point - a German bo-bo centre cab in bad mock BR blue, and a most peculiar fake BR blue 0-4-0 shunter. After that Lima started producing things that were vaguely the same shape as UK models, but were still borderline imaginary

I've always just used the cheapie transformers from sets and the like that always seem to accumulate with modellers or on ebay. That gives you an adjustable voltage and usually smoothed DC. The smoothed DC makes bulbs last a lot longer.

I thought about it - but the Japanese range is so good, and the quality so high that you can find close matches for everything. I'm very surprised Dapol didn't use a Tomix pantograph. I guess lots of folks will be changing the pantographs.

One of the twin-silo Presflos used is on Paul Bartlett's site. I'm not sure if this is an ex-ICI one, though, as it looks as though SALT has been painted out in fresh bauxite topcoat and replaced with DELAFILA, the BULK lettering being retained as previous.

 

http://gallery6801.f...t/p2919219.html

 

All of the other examples on there are just labelled Slate Powder with no reference to the Delafila branding.

 

David

The "empty to Delabole" rather dates the wagon too, as that would have been quite tricky well before the flow stopped.

If you've got access to proper searchable academic journal archives those can be a great source of reference material.of all kinds.

On the internet people seem to often miss out a few good sources

railphotoarchive.org - searchable by loco number and thus invaluable

youtube - lots of old video footage and more views of entire train formations than the photo sites

www.rssb.co.uk - rail safety standards (see also www.rgsonline.co.uk). These are invaluable for modern image modelling as they include all the rules/checklists for things like modern stations, lighting, crossings etc so you can build the model to the regs.

There are also some rather handy yahoo groups

The Japanese ones are non working designed to ride below the imaginary wires.. Mechanically and modelwise they are a wonder to behlold. Greenmax PT-71A is probably the one you want for modern UK stock but Greenmax stuff is fairly hard to find outside of Japan (annoyingly as their TR-23 and DT-10 are also the perfect bogies for a ton of UK pre-group stock)

For some pictures of the Greemax pantographs:

http://www.mid-9.com...pantographs.htm

(and they can be put in up or down position)

I solder fine decoder wires direct to those little strips on the old CO-CO and DMU chassis as over time they get oily and also in heavy use can wear a bit. Not sure its a big win but its less potential future maintenance work. The BO-BO chassis has a much more sensibly designed bogie-chassis power transmission and doesn't need this.

(Another reason to do this of course is that short of a chemistry exercise you can't solder to the metal blocks on the chassis, so it eliminates another weak point).

Any word on the N gauge version of the 22 or is that still just WIP? Between this and Farish's class 14, that just leaves the D600s missing from N gauge hydraulic lineup (and the full set available to in 00).

D600s are available RTR resin albeit a bit pricy.

Missing are however some of the other old heritage hydraulics that people forget

- NBL D2/1, D2/10 etc (incredibly for North British diesel builds some of the NBL shunters not only survive in preservation but actually still run)

- Class 127 DMU

Steel track is different, the HF signal appears to induce some corrosion as the device is used, due to the iron oxide flaking more on removal, and steel track can become a bit rough in use with these devices in the very long term

It would. Rusting is an electrochemical process (which is why you use sacrificial anodes on steel boat hulls and water heaters and the like). Unfortunate for us modellers really.

The HF cleaner signal could jump the gaps more easily, but the input stage of the chips are designed to damp such voltages, and the chips are protected with Zener inputs, there to stop static and handling voltages.

 

I was also told that makers had made tests with the chips in the States and all worked with the HF systems very well. They were testing it to see what would happen. I believe that the NMRA have an application for conformance for these US commercial devices and are looking in to it.

Thats good to know - both that at least some of the decoders have proper fast acting protection and that the NMRA is working on some kind of conformance. Relco type systems have their uses in small scales especially with things like short wheelbase industrial locos.

Alan

We have tested this device with popular decoders, (including sound) without any problems!

If they ran locos with it for a bit that isn't testing as I said before. Voltage spikes damage silicon devices that are not designed to take them, even very short ones. The damage can be gradual and insidious. It really will depend what the decoder is designed to handle and how it handles sudden short (relatively) high voltage spikes

The people you ask are almost never the people selling the product, it is the people whose product it will be used with. So I would suggest anyone with doubts asks Lenz, Digitrax, Hornby and/or Bachmann or whoevers decoders they use whether it is safe to use with their hardware and whether it will invalidate the warranty on the decoder.

Has anyone used one of these? Electrak3 Cleaner

 

Now theres a box version, I am considering mounting one and having it switchable in or out since it claims its safe for DCC.

 

I would like, however, to know if anyone has actually used one.

 

Regards

 

Graham

I would be incredibly incredibly cautious about this. There are a couple of problems with the relco style of cleaner and DCC. The first and obvious one is that it interferes with the DCC signal when in use. That can fixed and presumably this unit has fixed it. The second is more insidious - silicon chips not only don't like higher voltages (hence the fact you are supposed to take static precautions updating a PC) but they can gradually get damaged even by the most momentary of discharges. It could be all the modern decoders have enough protection on the power side to clamp any spike fast enough.

That isn't something you casually test IMHO, it's something where you have to go do the maths with the vendors of the decoders because if it is a problem it will happen over time and only in some cases (just like ignoring the antistatic precautions on a PC often works providing you don't do it too often). I would ask the decoder vendors what they think of it if you want a more cautious asessment.

For the long DMU stock its a lot easier to put the deocder in the underframe moulding than butcher the roof area. Also if you are using a sound decoder its in fact pretty much essential both to get the needed height and so any speaker wires to the other car are low down and won't make the unit topple on curves.