SRman

OK, then possibly we could try turning all four off and see what happens. The decoder shouldn't require remapping of the functions.

What settings did you use for the dip switches with the decoder fitted, John? I found with a Cavalex 56 belonging to a friend that when we fitted a LokPilot, the dip switches had to be left in the DC analogue positions to get all the lights working.

Interesting, as the old Heljan class 57s top lights did work.

If he said it's green, then it's green! 😉😂

The overall volume can be adjusted to personal tastes. None of my sound-fitted locos and units are at full volume. ESU and ZImo also allow individual sound volumes to be adjusted (several other brands also allow this). Some sound projects can be a bit hissy but for steam projects that's not necessarily such a bad thing. Even so, it is difficult to get enough bass into the steam sounds for that chest-heaving "woof" sound. ESU have addressed this to a degree with the recent update allowing one to adjust bass and treble settings. The ultimate output still depends on the speaker and its size and quality. Having said all that, sound is not everyone's taste, and if you don't like it, that's fine too. I seem to be lucky on the hearing front: I had a full hearing test last week and the practitioner pronounced my hearing "excellent". Considering that I am approaching 70, it should be dropping off a bit at the top end and the bottom end as well, taking the norms of ageing into account. Incidentally, I had a friend drop in last week with his Kernow steam railmotor in GWR livery and sound. The sound was actually very good (in my opinion), straight out of the box, although we did turn the volume down a bit almost straight away (I had to look up the CV for Zimo's master volume so I could program it on the fly as it chuffed around - it's CV266!).

Back in the 1980s I took a good many photos of my travels in England and Scotland, and had most of the films developed and printed in a shop in Leeds (Cross Gates). The last two films had to come back to Australia with me and were put into a local shop for printing. The colour renditions were quite different on the locally printed ones. So, we can add the inks sued in the printing process to the potential variations. Then again, when looking online, we can have different monitors with different colour renditions, and we can personalise them with different colour temperatures, brightnesses and contrasts. I found that my top quality Dell Ultrasharp monitors at my work were much better for colour matching than my good quality Asus home monitor, and that was still better than the laptop screen. At one time I was assisting a local model manufacturer with getting colours right on an Australian bus model they were producing, and the only monitor I could use was my work one: matching yellows and creams was particularly difficult on all the other screens. In short, the only real source for accurate colour matches for our models is the prototype, assuming they haven't faded or darkened. There were also various livery books available that had colour swatches matched to paint flakes from prototypes - samples that are sometimes buried under layers of paint from subsequent liveries. Is near enough good enough. Being so far from Britain as I am, near enough often has to suffice for my own modelling attempts.

The construction phase is complete. Now for the painting ... once the weather cools off a bit (currently 33.3 degrees and climbing, which makes it too hot in the garage where I do any spray painting). I've drawn a silver Sharpie line on the home-made span to show where it will have to be cut. Note the jig I made from some of the spare material I had, to stop the walls from spreading. I might still be tempted to buy the extra span for the new viaduct as that would be just about the same length as the bit of scratchbuilt bridge that remains after cutting. On the other hand, having that thick end support continuing the brickwork from the overbridge might create too much of a blind spot there, on the left.

I can't answer the question about pushing the antenna out from inside the body, but getting the body off is quite easy. It is only clipped in four places, near the cab doors. Just make sure you unplug any ETH cables if you have fitted them in the first place.

I had that happen with an old, much abused but much-loved Triang DMU from my teenage years. It still ran, without too much grinding noise (they were noisy anyway!), but it gained a sort of automatic clutch effect. I could sit it in a station with a load behind it, turn the power on a little and one axle would start to turn but the other remained disengaged, so it would sit there idling, as it were, until I revved it up a bit more, the second gear would engage and it would move off. I eventually replaced the bogie frame, transferring the works into the new one, and it is still going to this day. The old bogie frame around the axles was paper-thin from the wear.

Progress. It's around three-quarters finished now. There is a lot of brickwork left over from all the shortening of the support piers, some of which can go into repairing any damage I have done in the cutting process, as well as filling any accidental gaps. Thankfully I haven't made too many mistakes in the cutting and hacking, and all those I have made have been minor. You can see how much I'll have to trim from the home-made span. It will make the lighter girders on that look more appropriate, though. I think this gives some indication of how much more "daylight" will be visible beneath the viaduct compared to the Wills arches.

Still showing 30.7 here in Blackburn - time 23:15.

Without wishing to start a long argument on here, I would dispute the statement about Bachmann's history of accurate colours, at least when referring to the various shades of Southern Region green they have tried over the years. Many of their other colour renditions seem good to me, but the greens were out by a long shot, especially on the first release BR mark 1 coaches. Then there was the over-dark shade on the next batch. Maroon is, as you have said, a somewhat unstable and translucent colour. Way back in the 1970s, there were long discussions in the model railway press about whether the LMS maroon and BR maroon were the same. I think the upshot was it was the undercoat colours that most influenced the final colour (as it came fresh out of the paint shops - fading and weathering certainly add a whole heap of extra dimensions!).

A much larger job has been set in train: I bought the laser-cut wood viaduct kit from Key Publishing, with a view to rearranging the viaduct along the front of the layout. I have had some difficulties with the fragility of the girder overlays, but have hidden the worst parts in the centres of the spans. I have laid out the two main spans upside down on the existing Wills stone viaduct too illustrate where it will go, allowing just a little more of a view of the Underground platforms and trains from the front. While I really wanted brick viaducts along the side, the Vollmer ones I have used look great but the narrow arches are really limiting the views from that angle, so the Wills viaduct will have to be cut down a little in length and number of arches to fit that stretch. The completely cobbled-together span between the girder bridge over the Underground lines and the new spans will also have to be reduced in length. That might be the hardest bit of the exercise because that's the only bit involved where the track has been ballasted and glued down. Also, what will slow progress down a lot is the fact I have to reduce the height of the piers on the new bridge to suit the existing location. One side of the central pier is posed in front. At least they will increase the clearances on the nearest Underground track as the piers and viaduct are slightly narrower overall than the Wills one. The last complication is that I am hosting a meeting here in April, so any uprooting and rearranging of the bridges and viaducts has to be completed and operational by then.

I meant more that Echuca police might be more lenient on NSW drivers doing the wrong things under Victorian rules, rather than U-eys.

It is confusing, and I wonder if the Echuca and Moama* police might tend to be lenient on these things. I know that Moama follows the Victorian school terms rather than the NSW ones. Our honorary granddaughter lives in Echuca but goes to school in Moama. * For those outside of Australia, Moama's "oa" is a dipthong, so it's pronounced Mow-AM-ah.

Soundtraxx Econami UK steam or diesel decoders, 1 amp and 2 amp versions available. Dearer than Hornby's HM7000 decoders but cheaper than Zimo and ESU. They have multiple selectable sounds for the main engine or steam sounds, and horns and whistles. I have used a few for diesel sounds with Sulzer (used in class 47 and D0260, Lion) or English Electric (used in LMS twins using class 37 sounds as being close) types, but am not that impressed with the DMU sound (based on Derby lightweight Test Coach Iris, I believe). Also selectable are classes 20, 31 and 66/67.

I haven't received my 2B in NSE livery yet, but I have no doubts I can slip it into my set of Bachmann Mark 2As, a Hornby Mark 2A, and a couple of Bachmann Mark 1s. The Hornby Mark 2A has been flush glazed, and while it is cruder than the Bachmann examples, once moving around the layout, one is hard-pushed to tell the difference. I had three visitors yesterday, and asked one of them if he could pick the Hornby interloper, and he couldn't at normal viewing distance.

It's the simple things in life! 😜 🤣

Even more ironic if they go to Queensland where the banana-benders are! 😁

Personally, I'd like to see the British models move to the PLuX format as many of the European manufacturers are doing for their European-based models. There's only one standard for that, and it can be scaled down to fit smaller spaces (PLuX12 or 16) while allowing full functionality in 22 pin format. The PLuX22 format doesn't really provide any more functionality than the 21-pin allows, but the problem I, and many others have had with the 21-pin form factor is that there are four different standards involved, meaning it is buyer beware when buying a 21-pin decoder. In a private discussion with a manufacturer, they said that ESU have a problem getting the PLuX22 decoder supplies, though.

Catching the cure adds to the cause! 😂

Again it's not quite that simple. There are at least a couple of standards (possibly more) for the 21-pin format. There are differing standards for which outputs are full-powered and which are logic functions (i.e. low-powered). that has caused a few problems with different decoders in other models too - see the Heljan 10800 topic*. Zimo's 21-pin decoders (MX634 and MX638, plus the newer versions) allow one to switch between the two standards by putting values into CV8 to act as a switch between them. * Edit: also look at the Revolution Trains Caroline problems with decoders. And have a look at this: https://sites.google.com/site/markgurries/dcc-welcome-page/dcc-decoders/decoder-plugssockets/21-pin-plug-issues

Not necessarily. Bachmann confused the issue by using two different brands with the same 36-557 catalogue code. If the decoder is green, it's a rebadged Soundtraxx, if it's blue, it's rebadged ESU. Personally, having used both, I prefer the ESU any time.

Another small job done today with the Bachmann London Transport wagons having some 'dog ear' door bumpers added. these were 3D printed parts from Kim Durose. The greys I have used to paint them are not exact matches to the Bachmann colour, but once I weather the wagons this will not be so obvious. Because all three were from the same train sets, broken down by a retailer, all three carried the same running number. I have painted out some of the numbers, but will have to add new numbers later.

Weighing in here on the subject of colours: besides what has already been said (most of which I agree with), looking at the pre-production models, the Bachmann green is more pleasing to my eye, but the Accurascale green is probably nearer a well-used example of an in-service locomotive. As far as the standard of the models goes, both look superb, so for me it comes down to price and features for that price, which is where Accurascale nudge ahead. To get all the features on the Bachmann one, we have to pay a premium. Once discounting starts, the gap will narrow.