SRman

A minor update for Newton Broadway layout: with assistance from Mrs SRman, I have now levelled the backscene properly along the western end. I had accidentally introduced a slight slope downwards towards the left in my hurry to get it all up for the BRMA meeting.

As a small distraction, I decided to de-brand the two Dapol JHA wagons I had in the earlier Yeoman livery. The first side I did was not entirely successful: I used some Fox transfers straight over the previous Yeoman banner. Unfortunately the transfers were slightly translucent. I then tried to disguise this with some graffiti transfers. The other side of the same wagon, and the two sides of the second wagon were cleared using T-cut and a little elbow grease. I have left the bottom blue "skirts" at this stage because they have all the wagon data panels. If I can replace those, I can complete the job with the T-cut method.

The first pic shows the 'before'.

Second pic: the first side done, with the second wagon still in original form.

The remaining two photos show the wagons from their opposite sides.

Rails currently has several Dapol class 73s going at a little over half price, at £89.50 (U.K. price).

I need more class 73s like I need a hole in my head (it is there somewhere!), but I succumbed to temptation and ordered two from the later released batch, so there should be none of the electrical gremlins of the earlier releases. I have LL blue 73 126 and Executive 73 136 on the way now. The actual price for me here in Australia worked out at roughly £89 each - less VAT but with postage added.

1 hour ago, fezza said:

Almost all would be plain blue with yellow ends.

 

A few might still be green with yellow ends, but these would be very rare by the mid 70s (mainly a few 25s, 40s and 47s).

... and don't forget the 'wasp' stripe ends on the 08 mentioned in the OP, and likewise for any other small shunters.

You could have a look at Scale Link's etched frets: https://www.scalelink.co.uk/acatalog/SCALE-LINK-FRETS.html

1 hour ago, franciswilliamwebb said:

 

The Goyle of my dreams! 😍

You may have to Brush up on your humour there. 😉

Continuing the last post with more photos.

On the rolling stock side of things, I decided to run a couple of items that haven't been run for a while. First up was my old Hornby Black 5, which I had weathered heavily. I wanted to de-weather it a bit, so gave it a few thin washes of coal black. I think it may need one more wash layer. These show the before and after effect so far.

I also chose to send the Swedish LKAB IORE twin electrics for a trundle around the layout.

I have been modifying the Wills viaduct to suit its new location. It is almost right now, just needing a couple of stone infills on one pier and the join (or rather, gap) where the end arch goes off at an angle. I widened the departure end to give more clearance on the curve by combining bits from two of the arches, utilising the leftover arch from its original positioning - it had four arches originally but only needs three here.

I placed it all back on the layout to test the clearances, but it will come back up again for finishing work. In the meantime, the layout is runnable again. After some adjustment to the lateral positioning, I had to move the signal on the lower level by a round 1 cm, but that was easy enough seeing as it was only Blu-tacked in place! 😁

The DSB/DB double deck coach is HO scale but it is one of the longest vehicles I own and has deeper underframe/'tween bogie detailing than any of the British stock. If that can clear the parapet walls then anything can.
 

3 hours ago, Kirby Uncoupler said:

Hi Everyone,

   I have made some alterations to two of my Accura TSOs (how very dare I), first I have repainted the roofs into matt grey (Humbrol 67), and secondly I have repainted the underframes and bogies into pre-1978 brown. I used Humbrol 160, but it varied and was most obvious on clean ex-works stock. The brown would weather and get dirty, the later black u/fs could weather and look grey.

 

 

   Accurascale have very kindly provided three versions of the blue-grey livery, (a) Without IC slogans (1968-74ish), (b) With IC slogans (1970-NSE 1986+), and (c) With NSE lettering (1986+), the application of the IC slogans appears to have been a long drawn out process, perhaps awaiting works overhauls? 

 

... snipped ...

 

                                                     Cheers, Brian.

 

If you take the Mk 2C coaches to come, you can add Scotrail and Inter-City Scotrail brandings. The only variation I can't see is blue/grey with InterCity branding (no hyphen). 

All credit to Accurascale for being thorough.

2 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Yes. Graham Chapman's assessment of Aussie homophobia was not far from the mark - University of Woolloomooloo Philosophy Department rules. (Mind you I don't think the UK was that different.) 

 

Hollywood Squares was similar to Blankety-Blanks* in terms of double-entendres but Paul Lynde was the centre square. (People may remember Paul Lynde from Bewitched where he played Uncle Arthur.) In his case the campy humour was self-deprecating.

 

* Originally in the US in 1975 and aired first in Australia in 1977. Blankety-Blanks was a repackaged version of Match Game (originally NBC-1962). There had been a rebooted version of Match Game on ABC (2016-2021) hosted by Alec Baldwin.  The run ended with Baldwin's "legal" troubles.

To be fair, Graham Kennedy who hosted Blankety Blanks was gay, himself.

A couple more photos of the backscenes: one a more overall view of the room, the other the end piece I added this morning. I was working single-handed this morning as my wife has gone to her quilting group, and the alignment slipped slightly. there are only four screws involved, but I needed a break, so straightening it up can wait a little longer. The apparent shadow in the back corner in the first photo is actually caused by the angle it slopes away from the camera as the right-hand scene is actually curved to clear the window sills and curtains.

Most of the sugar cube speakers are 8 ohm impedance. The LokSounds do have some tolerance, with ESU listing the acceptable impedance as being between 4 and 32 ohms.

All the usual sound files are locked to a decoder so cannot be copied, but the functions are not locked and can be remapped at will. I have been doing this remapping to many of my previously fitted sound decoders to try to bring the most used functions into line with each other.

 

12 minutes ago, smt009 said:

 

I need to work out how best to do this. A quick look at postal rates for Australia tells me I'll need to charge between £4 and £11.50 depending on weight and whether economy or standard delivery is used.

 

If you want to drop me an email at stuart@stmodels.co.uk for what you want I can work it out manually and send you an invoice.

 

Stuart

Thanks Stuart. 

I could certainly use a bit of the Southern fencing, and maybe a few other bits and bobs. I'll make up the list in the next few days and get back to you. The postage sounds about normal for small items to Oz. 👍

Still with the upcoming BRMA meeting on Saturday 20th in mind, I decided that I must add the backscenes along the western side of the layout. With assistance from Mrs SRman, and a little bit of swearing, I turned the train room into a shambles for a while! I did succeed in getting them into place, and am quite pleased with the effect. I did also manage to scuff a part of it as I manoeuvred the boards into place in the very narrow confines behind the layout.

No option for anywhere other than U.K. delivery?

1 hour ago, G-BOAF said:

For some reason I thought the booklet was only for the sound decoder. but I presume the non-sound decoder is basically set up to operate the non-sound functions in the same way. That makes sense.

The same occurred with the class 92: Accurascale standardised the function keys between the sound and non-sound variants, it's just that pressing those functions that would have worked sounds will do nothing on the non-sound locos.

I have been remapping quite a few different sound decoders for locomotives from different manufacturers to help my memory a bit without having to consult the list sheets all the time. That's just a personal preference, but, as you  said, it makes sense, especially when dealing with the same type of locomotive.

3 minutes ago, JSpencer said:

 

Thanks. very useful as my sharpest curves are 26in radius. Oddly I use Kadee #20 on my class 33s (except those on push pull work which use Roco style). It avoids removing pipe detail.

That's really funny, because I actually do use Kadees on my class 33/1s that are used exclusively for the push-pull work (the rest retain tension locks). Unfortunately, those are the very few class 33s from Heljan that don't suffer any coupling droop, so I had to introduce a downward bend in the shafts of the Kadees.

38 minutes ago, JSpencer said:

 

Thanks for the consist settings. That is indeed something I'm looking at for a full boat train. Great video.

Thanks also. 😊

I don't know if this will be relevant to your mode of operating, but for ease of consisting, and standardisation, I equip all of the Bachmann units with Kadee #20 couplings at the cab ends. If your curve radii are a little easier than my minimum 3rd radius, you may be able to reduce the gap by using #19s.

And hot on the heels of fitting sound into the class 52, I have now done a Hornby class 50, 50 045, the one that featured in the last video I posted. This one has an 8-pin interface, but the speaker wires are pre-attached to the decoder, so soldering a speaker to them is not really a challenge at all. Speaker choice this time was a double iPhone speaker from Roads and Rails, and the sound quality from it is very good. The ESU/SWD sound file has some very good sounds and also a few rather naff sounds. There is a very thin, reedy spool down from the turbos at some points, and the top end thrash is a little inconsistent, but the spooling up sounds and thrash are really evocative.

I had to cut away part of the fan mechanism's housing to fit the speaker in easily.

Seeing as these are unlocked files, I may be able to do a few edits and tweaks further down the track. For the time being, it will do nicely.

Continuing my drive to replace non-sound decoders with sound ones over time and as funds allow, I have fitted a LokSound 5 DCC decoder to my Dapol class 52, D1030 ' Western Musketeer', and loaded the free ESU/SWD class 52 sound file onto it. I tried an Accurascale Accurathrash speaker in it, which meant breaking away the moulded speaker well along one side to get it to fit. However, the result was a tad underwhelming, so the next step was to look up Roads and Rails fitting guides to see what they had used: a 25mm square x 7mm deep speaker was duly substituted, and that sounds somewhat better. I can't say it sounds the best it could, yet.

I'll persevere with this one for a while, and if I don't think it cuts the mustard, I'll try a pair of them in series next - they are 4 ohm impedance speakers. I did tweak the bass and treble settings, which helped the sound quality as well.

Thanks for the review. They are still lovely looking units, and the livery applications are still well done by Bachmann.

I would draw your attention to the original units actually did have a space for fitting a speaker - there is a removable section of seats in the middle of the powered car in all of the variants, right from the first releases.

I was seriously considering getting one of the SWT 3 CEPs or NSE 4 CEPs but in the end, plumped for a non-sound jaffa cake 4 CEP, which has all the good and bad features you have highlighted in your unit. Like you, the expense is just too great at present to buy two or three of these units in one hit. I did post a video on YouTube of the refurbished unit running with an original blue/grey unit and a jaffa cake MLV.

I have never been impressed with previously available sound files for the SR EMUs in general, so your comments regarding Bachmann's sounds are of great interest to me. Is there a chance you could post a video to demonstrate the sounds at all?

All of my current 4 CEPs and MLVs have Lenz Standard + decoders (v1 and v2) fitted, and all will work happily together in consists without any adjustments having been made, although I do alter the inertia/momentum settings on all of them: I standardised long ago on CV3 = 25 and CV4 = 18.
 

I decided to do a bit of troubleshooting and a minor overhaul of a Network South East class 50 (Hornby 50 045 'Achilles'). It was intermittently shorting on left hand curves and any slight humps in the track, but not consistently, plus there was a hint of bearing shriek coming from somewhere inside. I traced the short to a pickup wire having dropped off the bogie tag and touching the chassis just occasionally. To fix that I had to dismantle one of the bogies, which also meant I could lubricate it properly. It also resulted in much swearing until I realised the wire was caught up inside the chassis and left a little short at the bogie end. I fixed it once, then fixed it again!

I oiled the motor end bearings and the worm drive bearings as well, then put it all back together, and this time it ran beautifully. While I was working on oiling the bearings, I removed the fan drive belt but left the fans in place. I suspect they were responsible for a bit of drag on the motor drive shafts and also for the bearing noise. There's no sound in this one, so it runs very quietly.

The Mark 2 coaches are mixture of Bachmann Mk 2A and Accurascale Mk 2Bs, and the magnetic close coupling can be seen to good effect here.

32 minutes ago, maico said:

I had enough reward points at Accurascale to get a free pre-programed Deltic Lokpilot decoder. Can I reset it to ESU factory standard via an F no. for use elsewhere or is it locked?

Thanks.

The LokPilot would not be locked. If you have the facility to do so, you should save the settings for possible reuse later on. 

Only the sound file on a LokSound would be locked to that decoder's serial number, but even so, you would be able to reblow it with someone else's sounds. You just would npt be able to restore it to the factory sounds later.

I decided to do a bit of troubleshooting and a minor overhaul of a Network South East class 50 (Hornby). It was intermittently shorting on left hand curves and any slight humps in the track, but not consistently, plus there was a hint of bearing shriek. I traced the short to a pickup wire having dropped off and touching the chassis just occasionally. Long story short, I put it all back together, and it ran beautifully hauling my NSE rake of mixed Bachmann Mk 2A and Accurascale Mk 2B coaches. The effectiveness of the magnetic close couplings can also be seen here. The train ran continuously for several minutes without fault, but I only videoed one complete circuit.

13 hours ago, Kaput said:

Factory sound will be a Loksound 5 DCC.

Having just done a quick read of mine (factory-fitted), I can confirm it's a LokSound 5 DCC.

20 minutes ago, JhornG201 said:

I note from the specs that the lighting is directional. I’m assuming therefore that this is a straight re-run and no changes are being made so head and tail lights are independently controlled? 

Andy's first post shows it as being an 8-pin interface, so I would hazard a guess and say you would be correct.