Suzie

There are fake SG90s on the market, so if you really want an analogue servo (some controllers muck about a bit with digital ones) you probably want to find a reputable source. The fake ones are digital due to being cheaper to make.

The circuit puts AC across the capacitors so if polarised they will behave a bit non-linear like having a capacitor with a diode in parallel! I guess it depends on how much fidelity you expect from the circuit. If it is a fuzz-box then fidelity will not be too important.

C102, C103, and C105 should all be non-polarised. If they are polarised (with a negative marker by one of the legs) that will explain the crackling!

Peedie Models https://www.peediemodels.com/proddetail.php?prod=SB1

The Signalist servo point motors are about 40mm high. They fit in the same footprint as a Peco PL10 solenoid on a PL9 or PL12 base and have the provision for two microswitches for end position feedback or frog switching.

You can fit a BM1 to either rail, but it has to go the other way round if not following the Lenz advice. They are just trying to avoid confusion.

The lower the voltage the higher the current. While LED lighting will reduce the power consumption tenfold, reducing the voltage to 12V will double the current, and therefore require fatter cable for LED lighting, than is required for incandescent bulbs. I suspect that doubling the current will increase the potential for fire hazards to be created. Reducing to 5V will further exacerbate the current problem. Perhaps -48V DC like is used in telephone exchanges might be a useful compromise between current and voltage - but I cannot see it catching on somehow.

I have a sideline in cleaning up PCs after virus attacks. Half of them have Avast installed, and the other half have AVG. This rather tells how effective both products are in the real world. All other products appear to do the job, but many have side effects of slowing down PCs to be unusable. Microsoft may not be the perfect solution, but it does appear to work and does not slow down your PC.

AVG is no better than Avast and far worse than doing nothing.

Uninstall Avast - it is unlikely to stop anything other than windows defender from doing its job!

Could also be a socket issue or a fuse issue, so well worth checking out.

My experience with Peco 009 track in my plastic roofed shed was not good. The track base decomposed very badly. That was a couple of decades ago so things might be better now.

I found it quite interesting that they had chosen colour light signals for the busiest railway scene, just a little unrealistic when one went green and then the points changed subsequently!

You have not shown any of the other track feeds, that might help.

Are you using fat enough wire? It needs to be fat (2.5mm2 or similar) all the way from the booster output to the track with the exception of a short dropper section. I suspect that the problem that you have is that the resistance in the pickups added to the resistance in the wire is too great for the auto reverser to switch fast enough. The increased pickups in the 6-wheel bogie will make for lower pickup resistance.

Sadly Colchester tram depot has succumbed to the bulldozers in the last week or so. It had a nice art-deco frontage.

It is worth trying any ExpressNet or Xbus options such as Lenz as they will possibly work with the Hornby systems

Presumably the tracks in Ipswich tunnel were put as close together as possible to reduce the amount of floor lowering required for the last lot of gauge improvement work to take containers. Apart from taking ECS trains to Marks Tey (or presumably Colchester now if the new trains are fast enough to run between existing services) for the Sudbury line there should not be any need for bi-modes to go through Ipswich tunnel so it should really be a non-problem for the most part.

Looks like if electrification from Felixstowe to Peterborough occurs (electric spine still happening at some point for intermodal capacity increase?) then there might then be a few bi-modes that don't require Diesel and car 'B' can be swapped out for a new passenger body. By that time the recovered Diesel engines will probably be required for spares anyway to keep the rest of the fleet running.

You are going to have to do a lot of work in Traincontroller to implement UK signals, and this does require the gold version too. If what you want is to have the trains running under automatic control, then you have probably done best by buying Traincontroller and the effort of creating the signalling might be worthwhile, but if you want to do signalling easily you will be better off using JMRI, and then putting the work in to get the automatic train running. As a compromise it might be worth looking at Rocrail which does both reasonably well once you get the hang of it. When using this type of Software there is little restriction as to which feedback sensors you use - just decide on a feedback bus, get an interface for it, and buy the sensors that work with that bus. Hornby do not have their own feedback bus.

When perusing the catalogue I could not decide which Chrimbo train to buy for round the tree, so I bought all three! They proved quite popular and I have just been left with one of them, but I guess that the little one fits my tree best... The middle size one has the best track and the best sound

Acid cored solder tends to suffer from the flux decaying with time, especially in damp conditions. Rosin cored solder will probably be OK for decades. If starting out you might as well learn how to use 4% silver lead free solder. It just requires a higher temperature and a therefore a higher powered iron than leaded solder, but is just as easy to do when you know how. There is a lot of lead free solder offered that does not have any silver in it - you need to avoid it as it is very difficult to use. If you are soldering anything that is not perfectly clean then using acid cored solder or fluxing with phosphoric acid flux (Bakers Fluid or similar) is recommended - but you must clean the flux off afterwards very thoroughly to avoid corrosion.

If you put 2.5A through that old motor with a poor magnet it will burn out.

If the magnet in the motor has lost magnetism you are more likely to burn out the motor than the decoder. Get the magnet restored, or replace it with a new rare earth magnet to get previously unthoughtof performance from the old motor.

A lot of alpines are nice small plants that don't get too out of hand, and plants like stonecrop or sempervivum that don't require soil are good because without soil there are few weeds!