SRman

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.

And a little more fiddling this morning: I have cut some expanded polystyrene to form some rough contours for the village area. This gives a better idea of what I have in mind.

I have been fiddling a little more over the last week, a little bit at a time. Further third and fourth rail has been laid, including most of that for the crossover. Note that I haven't painted any of the newly laid rail yet! I have Blu-Tacked some arches and retaining walls to give a rough impression of what I have in mind for the longer term. I really want a steeper slope on the retainign walls so I will have to do some cutting and joining of segments but some of this would have been necessary anyway to get the walls around the curve. The retaining walls came from International Models and the slope they provide would seem to be aimed more at a railway line gradient rather than a road or more naturally created slope. Please bear in mind this is by no means final! The curved track on the upper level is only pinned very lightly as I will most probably be able to space them a little closer and pare off a bit of the inner edge of the track bed. The radii are roughly equivalent to fourth and fifth radius (around 22" and 24", very roughly). The 6EPB gives an idea of how it will appear with six 64' coaches - still sharper than I would like but it's the maximum I can squeeze out of the design. The traffic jam at the front of the layout is only there because I needed somewhere to store all the road vehicles after clearing the vilalge area! Edit: If the images don't show, I'll fix it tomorrow.

If the new post is from DapolDave then you might be in luck, otherwise it's just we ordinary plebs posting!

The motor output is not usually regarded as a function, to the best of my knowledge. In theory that Bachmann 3-function decoder should do the job but, obviously, in practice it doesn't seem to be doing what it is supposed to, from what skin_2 has said. I used a TCS EU621 in mine anyway and the control is very good; I'll certainly consider the same decoder when I purchase the Western.

You have me intrigued now, Andrew. I'm trying to figure out if I have missed a trick on my 22 or you have made a small error! I have only found three functions on the 22: one for the marker lights, tail lights and headcodes, one for the cab lights at No. 1 end and one for the cab lights at No. 2 end. Can you elucidate, please?

Using the existing Bachmann 2EPBs in multiple with each other (and also the 4CEPs and MLVs with the same arrangements), the intra-unit couplings maintain a close spacing, widening out on curves. I use Kadee #20 couplings on the outer ends of all of these units and they give a reasonable spacing between units. I think it would be a safe bet to say that Bachmann will use the same coupling arrangement within the class 205 units. If Kernow do commission a centre coach (which I also sincerely hope will be sold separately to extend the two-car units), I would assume that the couplings would match the existing standard as well - in fact, that would be more than a 'safe bet' since any centre coach will have to match the existing driving coaches! As far as running three two-car Connex units goes, it was entirely possible towards the ends of their lives when, as Gwiwer said earlier, they were mixed and matched in an 'anything goes' fashion to keep the fleet going, so, in my opinion, such a combination would not 'look wrong' at all.

It will do, Doug, although it'll be a while before anything actually runs on the upper level - probably 2013! Once it is up and running, only the LT stock will remain on the lower level. There will also be more opportunities for shunting and other operations on the upper level, as well as a longer run for longer trains.

The maximum formation that I have seen was nine cars, made up of 3 x three car units. Those two car units that Rick mentioned became three car units of class 204 (3T units), with the ex-EMU driving trailers from the disbanded 'Tadpole' (class 206) being used as centre coaches, so he is absolutely correct in saying that they never ran as three car units of class 205.

Thanks Southern42. I just had a quick look and there still seem to be issues with a couple of photos - I'll see if I can fix them later.

Over the last couple of days I have been adding a little more third and fourth rail on the outer LT circuit and I have also now started the upper level woodwork for the curved trackbed at this end of the layout. The first couple of pics show an intermediate stage with third rail only laid. With the woodwork, you can now get a better idea of how the lower level will interact with the upper level with retaining walls and then a tunnel mouth roughly where the end of the (temporary) brick wall I have placed for the photo. I may have to use a simple girder and brick 'cut and cover' style tunnel entrance here. I may possibly be able to narrow the width of the trackbed before I finalise it, after testing clearances with various items of stock. It doesn't look much but I am very happy with the result as it all comes together. What also strikes me is that the third and fourth rail seem to give the illusion that the track gauge is wider, reducing the 'narrow gauge' effect of OO track. I have now deleted the previous two posts as not being relevant, now I have got the photos to work.

They do look rather impressive as a pair - I think you are right, that three would be overkill. Overall that looks very nicely modelled. One would never know you had to remodel the area.

I think I know who you are thinking of, Rick, but I think his shed is a brick garage if I have the right one. The person I'm thinking of (yet another BRMA member) has his layout in a galvanised iron garage in Wantirna. Apologies to you if I have got it wrong. Whichever one it is, I believe you are right about the enclosed spaces being hotter in Summer and probably colder in Winter as well.

A friend (also in Melbourne) has his layout outside in an uninsulated tin shed and there can be as much as 2 - 3 mm expansion/contraction on a 1 yard length of nickel-silver flexible track between Summer and Winter. Gwiwer's layout probably doesn't get quite those extremes because the tin shed probably exaggerates the temperature extremes a little.

As I mentioned earlier, I added a (Peco code 100) double slip to my mirror-image Minories-based branch to allow locomotives to shunt into the shed from the platform road rather than having to use one of the goods sidings (which, in my case, were nearly always occupied anyway!). If a single slip had been available at the time that would have been better suited to the job. The branch was actually the oldest part of my previous layout, the whole lot lasting over 20 years but the weakest part of it was that double slip, which had to be replaced twice in that time (making the last one the third item to be placed there). Since that time I have avoided using the double slips in all of my current and future plans, although they are undoubtedly a great space saver.

It is looking very good, Rick.

Someone should point out to the bus driver that one is supposed to hail the bus, not bus the hail. I think you got more of that storm than we did - the worst of it passed south of here so we only got very small hailstones. Glad there's no damage, though.