harkins77

Hi I’m after either the body with the lighting bits inside or the full model with the new tooling 6 pin chassis for a conversion job I’m wanting to do. I know they are discontinued and I’ve had no luck ringing around various model shops for one in their stores. I’d prefer boxed but I’ll listen to anything you have. Thanks

Well the layout has taken a back seat of late one due to money and the other being my illness cropping up again. I've had some more surgery where they did some monitoring of my condition for a few days where I was wired upto a laptop again. Just waiting on a decision from my surgeon if he is going to do more to me before I start back with the layout. I have however since my last trip to the hospital been back to work which means I'm back to being able to buy things so I wasted no time in ordering one of the new Dapol class 67's 67008. I've got it running in on my rollers as we speak and I've also sorted the 156 problem as well after some good customer service from Mike at DRM. As I got a replacement 156 with the settle one blowing decoders. With regards to the layout nothing scenic apart from that archway has been done as yet as I think it might be better to do when it's wet and dingy outside. I'll keep you updated on how I get on when I get back into it.

Well after a week or so of no activity or updates there seems to be two in short succession. From the previous update you saw that I started the Scalescenes arches wall to divide the upper level from the lower level. Needless to say I think I'm done and all I need to do now is fix it to the board. I decided not to put the top parapet in place as I'm happy with the height that it has come out at. I've taken a pic of the finished walling in place but not fixed in place so if it seems a little close to the track it will be moved back slightly when fixed in place. I might even raise where the wall is going to sit by 1 or 2mm using some card and create a kind of bank leading down to the lineside where the catenary is going next to the track. Ideas and comments welcome.

After a little bit of a lull on the layout after the excitement of getting things moving on the 3 boards I've made a start on the scenic part of the layout. Starting with the dividing wall between the lower and upper lines. I made the decision to use the Scalescenes archways for the first time and apart from fingers being covered in UHU glue I'm enjoying the kit so far. I am thinking that before I put the archway onto the back picture is it worth just running the sandpaper over the cut out archway to make it a little neater and get rid of any rough edges. Here are some pictures of what I've done so far. Suggestions of what I should do appreciated.

As the title suggests since my last update I've wired up the 6 lines with doppers on the new board and I've connected them to the Bus wire and then connected it to the existing boards after having to order some new clasps as I couldn't find the ones I thought I had. Anyway I am that pleased with the work so far that I did a short video and I thought I would share it with you. Comments welcome as always

I realised when testing the locos back and forth that when the locos were pulling into the station that at one end they had no where to go and left me a very short running length so whilst the family were out I found another spare shelf from the wardrobe that was thrown out and created another frame to fix to it to create another run off off area but on the other side of the main scenic board make it effectively have 2 fiddle areas one at each end. I've also made the raised area out of foam board and I've laid the 6 lines of track down temporarily and I'll hopefully be doing the droppers and adding the bus wire later today as well. I've taken a pic of the new board. The one thing I will need to do is try and locate some more brackets I thought I had to be able to connect the board to the existing boards but as usual you can never find what you want. Here is the picture anyway. Comments as always welcome.

I went out the other day and got some more foamboard to be used as the backboard material to keep the weight down on the 2 boards. I've taken the advice given but after looking at it I thought 12" back board height was too much so I tried 6" and to be honest I'm happy with the look of it. I still need to cut out of the dividing wall gaps so that the locos can go from one board to the other but apart from that and some filling of the gaps between the different boards the backboards are done. There is one idea I've got though with regards to the board that is hiding the fiddle yard board. I might replace it with some clear 1mm thick plastic so people can see inside the fiddle yard if I decided to take it to a show in the future once complete. I'd like to find out what people think of that last idea or what they think of the way it looks. Anyway here are the pics. With this last picture below it shows what will be the view of the front of the layout. And that's your lot for now. Any comments or suggestions welcome.

The soldering and wiring isn't that bad it just takes time and you need 4 hands spare. I just stopped concentrating for a moment but it was easily solved just have to remember now that instead of the plugging in the wires red to red I now to have wire it red/black.

After the problems of the track testing and problem finding update I last put on I left it for a day or so but did have 1 or 2 comments from friends who told me to check and check and check again my wiring. Ok so I'm a numpty as when I went to check the wires I found that the positive bus wire droppers were wired to the + point on one board and I thought I had done the same on the other board but to my surprise I found that on one board I had done it to the red bus wire but on the 2nd board I had wired the same but to the black bus wire. I've crossed them wires over so I have red/black and black to red and it now works now without tripping the system. I feel like a right dunce. Anyway I went round and rechecked all my soldering of all the droppers to the track and found only 2 dodgy soldering joints which I have now fixed and it runs perfectly at all speeds. So now red faced I'm ready to do some scenic work.

As I mentioned in my update last night I've been testing out the tracks on both boards. I wanted to work out any kinks or potential problems before I fixed the track down in place. I started off on one of the upper level scenic board tracks and soon came to a problem where the boards join there was a slight height difference on some of the tracks something I thought I had accounted for before I wired up tracks. Any how I put that to one side and tried running the test loco on what would be the fiddle yard board. It seemed to run ok on the lines apart from some slight jittering probably because of dirt on the track which can be easily fixed. I'll clean the track once it's been fixed in place to try and rule that out. One of the things I found when I was moving the loco over the board join was that when the back bogie was on the scenic board and the front bogie was on the other board I found the loco stopped and the powercab controller flickered and the loco stopped. I've checked all the wiring and it is all wired up correctly + to + and - to - and I've made sure that the track from both boards are not touching each other and that it is aligned up correctly so I'm kind of stumped on what it could be and will make some other power checks in the next day before running anything else. I've fixed the track down in place on the boards and the alignment checked again and the blu tac was also removed which seems to have cured the height issue between boards so that is one thing ruled out. Well that's the update for today if anyone reading this has any suggestions as to the reasons I might have missed for the tripping of the loco then by all means gimme your thoughts. Comments Welcome.

As the title suggests it feels as if time has stood still all day as I've been wiring the track and putting the bus wires in place as well. Seriously I'm glad I didn't do a layout any longer than I've done as all I've done all day is cut, strip, tin and solder together. At the end of it though assuming I've done it all correctly and my soldering has been upto scratch I should be able to test the boards out tomorrow. I would have done it tonight but I'm struggling to sit up straight as my back is killing me and my hands are cramping up as I speak. I don't think I have ever wished for ballasting so much but now the track wiring is complete I bet I'll be wishing for more wiring once the ballasting bores me. lol. No pictures of what has been done as I'm sure you've all seen wiring before. Hopefully my next update will have some pictures.

Another quick update. I've been busy so far today wiring the droppers onto the track and then testing them. So far so good as far as the soldering has gone. I've had 6 successful lines wired and tested using the loadhaul 60 as the test loco. No pictures of the running. I just have to put the Bus wires in place now and then make a decision on what to use to transfer the power from one board to the other. I still can't work out how I'm going to get a flush join between the 2 boards and still supply the power.

Should be a few days before stuff is running. I need to work out how to get the power from my bus wire on one board to another but have no idea which connector to use to transfer the power. And then I need to fix the track down in place. Once that has been done there will be no stopping me.

Quick update I've been busy today drilling the holes for the dropper wires to go through and I've also installed the panel for the Powercab to plug into when it's up and running as well. I should have the droppers wired in and connected to the track in the next few days and then I can fix down the track it's then onto the Bus wire fitting and how to move power from one board to the other.