SRman

It's still a little way off, yet, but I am getting there slowly! Slight diversion at the moment while I make a diorama for the modelling competition on Sunday at the Model Bus Association's AGM.

There is a learning curve with DCC (as with anything new that we try) but I'm sure it is the right move for Peter. It will make releasing trains and locomotives from the platforms much easier and slicker. It will also allow for the loco storage sidings to be 'stacked' more efficiently without regard to isolating section lengths. The Power Cab is pretty intuitive to use too.

I rather liked the shape - squarer and more modern looking than the BTH class 15s. It's a pity the dull livery application did nothing to enhance the looks.

That That is illustrated if you look closely at te line up in Baby Deltic's post #183. The first loco has the deeper window whereas the second in line appears to have the shallower window that lines up with the others. The third loco is facing the wrong way for comparison!

Yeah! Shame on you for being a Queenslander!!! If you are ever down this way you should contact us. We are a pretty hospitable crowd.

Thanks also from me for the very enjoyable running session, great company and also the nice refreshments. Sorry I had to leave before everyone else - obviously the running session continued after that as there are a few models there that I didn't see earlier. It was good to meet Jim and Steve (first timers) and,of course, PCM once again. The layout never fails to impress.

The Heljan ones are better - brilliantly smooth and quiet running with excellent haulage power as well. More accurate detailing than Hornby's one (which actually was prepared before the real ones were launched so had a few errors from the get-go). That's not to say the Hejan ones are perfect; they have made a few livery errors and even complete bloopers (just check out the second grey mainiine version - yes, that's right, it' not a typo on my part; three 'i's and no 'L')!

Yes, it's a 58.

That's good news, Dave ... but not for my wallet / credit card!!

Must be a very powerful vacuum if it'll suck up dead bodies as well as ants!!! Welcome back Pete. Note that the November BRMA meeting has now been cancelled due to the host's ill-health, so we may not catch up with you for a little while. I'll contact Rick about his layout visit too but the weekends are rapidly filling up with other commitments now.

Glad the M7 was an easy fix, Rick. It wasn't intended as any sort of criticism - in fact, it's probably a compliment to the high quality of your photography that i was able to spot that!! It certainly didn;t detract from the superb modelling on show. I must do some more weathering myself. The inspration is there in your photos, so no excuses here!

Looking good, as ever, Rick. :-) I did notice that something seems to have happened to the rear buffer on the M7, though - it looks like the shank may have been pushed in through the buffer beam ... or is that just an optical illusion from the camera angles?

I cannot speak for the 57 sounds but previous experience with SWD sounds says the actual sound quality is very good but with the proviso that they suffer from lag. Howes sounds respond promptly to throttle changes where the SWD ones force you to drive to the sounds. I have owned SWD (or Bachmann's own variations on SWD ones) in classes 20, 24, 37, 47, 52 and 66 and driven friends' classes 25 and 45 and this applied to most of them, with the 25 and 66 being the most responsive and the 24 and 52 probably the slowest for the sounds to respond to throttle changes. I had the 20, 24 and 52 reblown by Howes! I also had the 66 reblown although the Bachmann/SWD package was not bad. Here is the video I took farly recently of the Howes 57 - sorry about the shaky camera work though. MP4 format:

There used to be some drawings of the 4D on the VicSig website - probably still there in the archives somewhere.

Nahh! He's just trying to make us all look bad. Don't pay any mind to him! Great work as usual, Rick. Real atmosphere ... I think Ian summed it up rather nicely, actually.

Definitely. That sounds like a very smart approach. Don't forget that some units had AEC engines too, mostly replaced by Leylands as parts became scarce. Then there were some later builds that had the more powerful Albion engines (Chiltern lines 115s come to mind). It may not be possible to get all of these sounds as authentic ones simply because some of these units don't exist any more. Whatever you choose to do, I'm positive the results will be excellent.

Hi Bif. 110s certainly used RR engines but had a 6 cylinder version with mechanical gears (SCG, like most blue square DMUs), whereas the 127s had a hydraulic transmission and 8 cylinders. I'm fairly sure the RR Cravens units had the 8 cyl engines and some (but not all) had hydraulic transmissions but I never ever encountered those in real life so I cannot say what they sounded like. The 110s and similarly engined 111s seemed to me to have a rather flat and uninteresting engine and exhaust note (I rode them on quite a few occasions between Leeds and York, and sometimes further afield too, to Manchester). Don't get me wrong: I'm not criticising your choice at at all, I was merely wondering how much demand there will be for the 127 sounds ... and I would still love to hear them in all their glory. Being so far away I cannot just go down the road to even a preserved railway to see and hear these things nowadays. I think my last trip on a traditional DMU would have been in 1986. On subsequent visits to the UK I still rode many trains but the Sprinter families had taken over by then. The sounds provided by you and the likes of Howes do bring back pleasant memories of some of the earlier trips. As an aside to my SR and LT modelling, I have a varied collection of DMUs, including classes 101, 104 (from Hornby 110), 105, 107 (one DMS only, done as an experiment), 108, 110, 114 (brass kit), 117 (modified Lima), 120 (Craftsman) and 121 (converted from Lima well before they offered one RTR), with unbuilt conversions still to do for 119 and 129 units. I only have sound in the Bachmann 108 at the moment and I wouldn't even consider it for the older Hornby and Lima based units because the running qualities are rather inferior to the more modern models.

I'm not sure how many models of 127s are around, Bif, but I applaud you for doing something different (well, I love hearing all the different sounds of these things, anyway!). As for the 104s, I remember riding a train of two power-twin 104s from Manchester Victoria to Blackpool in the '80s and the coach I was in definitely had a rasp to it. That was quite an exhilarating ride as the acceleration was electric - we arrived at every stop early and had to await departure time. Going back to the 127, could those sounds also be used for other RR/hydraulic units such as the Cravens ones, or were they different again (does anyone remember?)?

And a little video of the above running session:

I haven't done very much to the layout in the last two weeks but I do keep experimenting with the building positions and ideas for the locations of roads in the village. My new Hornby Town Houses arrived yesterday (so I haven't had time to modify or paint any of them yet!) so I have positioned them going up the slope for the moment. For a little fun, I set up a running session with mainly Network SouthEast trains running today. The trains in view include a Hornby 4VEP at front, two Bachmann 2EPBs in multiple behind (one NSE liveried and one blue/grey liveried one), a class 455 on the other side of the platform (Bratchell kit) and a renumbered Heljan Railfreight class 58, 58 017, on a Speedlink service behind that.

I'll be looking forward to the class 33 in particular. I have two with Howes sounds and, good as those are (to me), I would like to have one a little different to the other. I think we have your rain here today in Melbourne. A few rumbles of thunder this morning, then, just as I was ready to leave for work, it poured! Looking out of my office window, it is still squally and miserable. I hope your weather is kinder to you now.

I know this has been seen before but I have now converted the maroon Hymek, D7013, to DCC operation, with one TCS T1 decoder wired to both motors in parallel. It was an absolute sod to wire up: I soldered the brush feeds to brass tags but every time I threaded all the wires through, at least one would break off again! I also had to cut away the copper feed to the 'live' brush (as Triang/Hornby had originally wired it) and insulate both brush springs on each motor bogie. Anyway, after turning the air blue for a while, it all works rather nicely now. A different project, but also a sod of a job, was doing the wasp stripes and cab end glazing on the Maunsell diesel-electric shunter. This also has been hard-wired to run on DCC but the DCC Concepts decoder was much easier to wire in and secrete behind the radiator. The tricky bit was finding somewhere to put the stay-alive capacitor but I eventually stuck it in behind the fuel tank on one side. It is still not quite sitting properly on its chassis but I'll fix that properly after I have fitted all the handrails and the footsteps. It will be numbered 15201 but it has not yet received any transfers. The wasp stripes are still a teensy bit uneven but I am reasonably happy that they only need a few minor corrections now.

Yes, according to the email they are in the warehouse now.

One other thing I forgot to mention: just about every Heljan loco I have bought needed a few tweaks to the electrical pickups in the bogies - the usual out-of-the-box experience is that only four or five out of eight possible wheels are in contact with the pickup strips. they are easy to adjust as the bogie sideframes just pull off easily. This could be a possible cause of the Hymek's hesitations.

I think there is a small port that is off-centre somewhere that differentiates one end from the other. Having said that I cannot tell at normal viewing distance except for the fact I have no coupling and full valance details at the front of my one and only Heljan Western. The lights are dim - prototypically so. The tail light should only be visible in the dark. Most of my Heljan locos are very, very quiet (until I turn on the sound I have fitted to some of them!). One class 33 has a little more rumble and whine than the rest but could hardly be deemed 'noisy'. Maybe something is not quite aligned correctly on your Western, or maybe the gears need the horrible grease cleared out and re-oiling, plus the usual running-in turns around your layout or on a rolling road. The detailing hoses/pipes will certainly interfere with the coupling swing unless you crop them off where necessary. The Hornby close couplers should plug straight in to the NEM pockets but I cannot vouch that they will work well on this particular model; you'll just have to plug them in and try them - some, but not all, Heljan models suffer from coupling droop.