Suzie

You can slave the ZTC kit to the ECoS sniffer port and still use them.

Perhaps they will be investing in capacity improvements Ipswich to Felixstowe (what would probably be a very short short line in North America). Double track would be nice instead of what appears to be the current policy of "Its full up, use the A14!"

That was quite a find!

The LDT RM-GB-8 is all you need for occupancy detection, You don't need the LDT HSI-88-USB because that functionality is already built into your ECoS.

No,    but,

 

Over a period of time, I have been looking at led signal control for DP.

 

There are a multitude  of components' and method's.

 

I am looking for something, just up from a (several) rotary switch(es). Infra-red detector's appeal to me.

 

Even though,I have an ESU command station,I don't really wish to use decoder's.

 

These, are the type of signal's, I wish to represent.    

 

P1180534(1).JPG

 

P1180573(1).JPG

 

They are,     1-Aspect, 3-colour. Leds.     

 

They are definitely not, commonly made, in the model railway world. 

 

Control, I have found,can be done.

 

But,  there are tri-colour leds, around,      but,again, apparently, not the correct colour  yellow...

It might be worth having a word with Absolute Aspects, they showed me some castings they have of that type of signal head at one of the shows. Although they are not showing on the site they may be able to do something for you.

Using a decoder to drive searchlight signals does make life easier because you have full control of the brightness of each of the red and green LEDs to get a good mix for the yellow. Careful choice of the LED (RGB PLCC4 surface mount types tend to be quite good) and you could have true green as well rather than the wishy-washy green often seen in older colour light and searchlight signals.

It should not be too hard to create a bit of automation on the ECoS to set the aspects of a couple of signals based on HSI88 occupancy detectors.

Perhaps it is time to rebuild Watkin's Folly to drum up some tourism! There won't be any need to go to Paris then.

The use of Marylebone rather than Paddington is more of a historical and political decision than one based on sensible planning. Amersham to Aylesbury and Neasden to South Ruislip would probably be more sensible as Metropolitan destinations rather than maintaining Marylebone as a separate terminus - but the franchising put the stations as part of the franchise and Chiltern being a successful franchisee has made Marylebone appear to be the cause of their magical success - they would have succeeded just as well or maybe even better at Paddington with the improved connections. Marylebone is not a key part of the infrastructure - just used as such - and is not easy to get to if you are not on the Bakerloo!

Forget the coachway - use the lines in to Marylebone to improve the Metropolitan and how about extending to a new Metropolitan terminus further south, or a tunneled link to Charing Cross perhaps for Thameslink style services Harrow - West Hampstead - Bond Street - Charing Cross - London Bridge?

I am surprised they did not take the coach solution to its logical conclusion with smaller coaches, perhaps with four or five seats each, and to save manpower one of the passengers could drive...

Late '80s north of Shenfield peak you might see 12-car 309 (three sets any mix refurbished), 12-car 312, 12-car 302+305+302 and 86+Mk2 aircons going one way with the same going the other way but 4-car 312, 4-car or 8-car 309 and 8-car 302+305. Freight was very rare during the peak and would only be containers behind an 86 (or two).

Off peak the EMU formations would be reduced to 4-car sets with most of the 302 and 305 being parked up in Thornton Fields (just the odd 302 doing the Colchester stopper), and freight would still be rare.

I don't think it was safe to let the 305s out on their own other than the Braintree branch and it was rare to see an all 302 12-car set, and I have no recollection of seeing a 12-car 305 set. 305 and 308 look similar at a glance unless you know what to look for as do 302 and 307 so might be in the mix.

Later than this there would be 321s added in to the mix ultimately replacing the 309s and cascading some 312s. Livery went from total NSE and IC executive to total GE and Anglia apart from the Mk1 catering cars that remained IC Executive with the exception of the Great Eastern experimental livery on one of the 321s in NSE days and I recall a 3M advertising livery in Great Eastern days.

312 was always a poor substitute for a 309 as far as ride was concerned. Hard to believe it was a Mk2 because the ride was nothing like a Mk2 loco hauled coach.

Surely they are only a seller?

Following your link to UKmodelshops shows their web address as an ebay shop which doesn't exist anyway!

I shall not bother telephoning Barnstaple to ask if they exist or not, but they are registered as a manufacturer with the NMRA and I cannot imagine who else would be making Tawcrafts DCC decoders.

We are the only UK based DCC manufacturer...

Not even the only DCC manufacturer in the west country...

http://www.ukmodelshops.co.uk/suppliers/41693-Tawcrafts

As long as you stick to the timetable it is being done correctly, and a UK modular layout is going to have a timetable even for the freight.

Only potential problem is: If it's on the main line, and in the outer track of a double track curve, it has to adhere to the minimum radius of 36" +50 mm.

 

Andy

As does the diverging curve on the point connected to it which will be the same radius.

This is where a curved diamond comes in jolly handy since it will probably loose about a foot off the length of the junction.

Had a nasty one this week, the winning bidder was a 100% positive feedback and I tried to contact by telephone when no response (details posted were for a business in Sussex) but they just pretended to not be able to hear me on the telephone. All the feedback comments indicated that he never pays for anything which seems odd for a 100% account but still.

Offered the item to the second chance bidder who when he answered the phone appears to be the same person as the top bidder by the poor grasp of English and same chavvy accent, but claims not to be but knows about the top bidder who always out bids him and never pays. Second chance bidder gets very uptight when I ask him where he is! Second chance bidder then does not want to pay what he has bid and makes threats of violence if I do not offer it to him for a much lower price.

It looks like the bidders tactic is to bid a high price that freezes out other bidders then tries to get it at a lower price knowing that he has both the top bid and second bid and that no one else will have bid and using intimidation. Needless to say I popped into the constabulary today...

I'm sorry, British is totally different. What was I thinking. American modelling never ever features multiple sound fitted loco's on a train! 

North American has moved on recently and you might find a train with eighty sound fitted reefer cars gobbling up the juice now even more than twenty four lit coaches, but American trains will tend to meet at an interlocking where there is likely to be a power feed whereas British trains will probably be passing out in open country with the greater likelihood of double track. :-)

I've looked at "booster units" - although I have no need for one myself for any of my DCC layouts I did consider buying one simply for "modular setup usage" but they all appear to be over £100 which is money I suspect many of us could easily spend elsewhere.  I have a Lenz setup at home but assume that any booster could be used with any system as it's two wires in, two wires out?

As well as thepower input (U and V on Lenz), inputs (C and D on Lenz) and outputs (J and K on Lenz) you also have a common wire of some sort to prevent asymmetrical pickup locos stalling at the break between booster sections when they will take current from one booster and return it via another. On Lenz this is the inverted T terminal next to K that has to be commoned across all boosters, but on other systems it can be one of the track wires or one of the power input wires. On some systems commoning can involve loosing a case screw and using that as a common terminal - it varies a bit between makes but only one method should be used. The other wire to worry about is the overload detection (E on Lenz) which informs the command station that an overload has occured. On modular setups this will probably be left disconnected to prevent total system shutdown in the event of an overload.

Just as an aside - we'd not be trying to feed any modules with 10A, that's overkill for HO scale even with multiple sound loco's (so I'd presume OO too) - and I suspect we also wouldn't be trying to power a 100' run of modules from one booster located at one extreme end of the run...

 

Whilst those things are possible, i'd have thought them unlikely, and/or unwise.

Gaugemaster boosters are 8A so limiting to 5A eliminates using a MRC/Gaugemaster control system for a start. It is reasonable to say that 10A will be the max in order to be inclusive.

The precise current figure that will be used is not important, what is important is minimising voltage drop because of the large number if interconnections that are likely to be used. You do not want to be in a situation where trains start to slow or stall because of voltage drop in some of the modules. I suspect that boosters will not be particularly easy to obtain in large quantities for meets with most DCC operators not using separate boosters on their home systems so employing good DCC practice when wiring modules is going to be imperative in practice. Having to fit extra boosters to ostensibly plain track sections will be a chore - you want to feed where the concentrations of locos are likely to be

We probably need to draw on the experience of European meets - how many metres between booster feeds on European setups? With fifteen people coming together for a UK meet each with an activity module and a straight module you are going to be hard pressed to find more than one booster between them for about 120' of run - they are very rarely needed for home layouts nowadays. Setting good wiring standards will minimise any need for boosters.

I suspect that you will need to allow 250mA per running non sound loco, but how much for each sound loco running or not? average current consumption is likely to rise in time with increased use of sound and lighting - this is a new specification and it can be future proofed now with good practice that does not really cost anything. Plan for the extremes and everything else will just work. A couple of lit and sound fitted 14-car MLV/GUV/CEP/BEP/CEP boat trains passing on a SouthEastern setup would probably draw a fair bit of current alone with eight motors between them as an example of things likely being a bit different in UK modular world from other areas.

2.5mm² bus wire is a good specification. This size of wire is readily available and cheap, you can buy it as single conductor from electrical distributors or strip it from some old 25A twin and earth (colour is not important when used within your module, but probably best to avoid green/yellow striped), you can buy 2.5mm² flexible wire as speaker wire from places like Maplin or Rapid which are handy for module interconnection jumpers. Jumpers must be flexible stranded wire.

There is a need for quality in the connections because there are going to be a lot of them and they need to take the full booster output current (and a bit during overload conditions which for practical purposes should be taken as 10A, not 5A) while not introducing significant voltage drop. Bear in mind that you have a connector for approximately every track foot (assuming average module length of 4') so by the time your train has run 100' the bus feed has gone through 100 connectors, fifty jumper cables and fifty sets of module bus wiring.

Connectors need to be designed for the job with proper contact material, not any old brass that will oxidise, while jumpers and module wiring needs to be 2.5mm². DCC people on the whole will be quite used to the discipline of good connectivity, but DC people will not be used to it and will of course not need it when the module is used at home but it must be done right for DCC modular use. This discipline is just as important on intra-module connectors too.

The currents involved are similar to a modern kettle, so when choosing wiring and connectors think carefully would you use that wire and those connectors if you had to have a hundred of them cascaded in series with your kettle, if the answer is no then you probably need to think again. Fortunately the voltage is lower so failure will not cause death, but implications for reliability are the same.

Yes. Electrical connections made in the time it takes to push two plugs into two sockets.

 

Versus, cut a wire to length, unscrew, unscrew, screw, screw, drat the wire dropped out, unscrew, unscrew, screw, screw screw...

... replace terminal block because the thread has stripped...

... spend hour looking for short because stray filament of copper from super flexible wire has gone astray...

The Signalist SC2 is an easy alternative if you want a DCC solution. It has the decoder and frog switches all integrated in to the controller module to make life a lot easier from a wiring, installation and trouble shooting perspective. Just wire two wires to the track, a wire to each frog and plug in the servos for a minimal installation.

Servos are good for this because they are cheap and reliable. There are a few alternative mounting arrangements available now for servos so you can probably find something a little better than Peco's PLS125 arrangement. Exact setting of the endpoints should not be too critical if you use an omega loop or springy wire in the linkage to take up a bit of slack. While you don't want to stall the servo you do want it to apply a bit of closing force to the switch rails and with any slow motion drive you need to remove the over-centre spring from the point.

Using servos should not be either difficult or unreliable when suitable equipment is used.

I don't get this 36" vs 24" radius problem. It's not a problem, even long wheel-based 6-axle US diesels (AC4400's et all) will negotiate 18" effortlessly If any UK stock needs more then 18" radius, it's not suitable for modular use Again, it's another thing that distracts from the "as-many-people-as-we-can-include" standard Andy aims for. KISS folks, KISS!! Don't complicate things too much, just start building, especially if you want to miss the Commonwealth Games

It is not about running US stock or light engines without buffers designed for set track - it is about running UK stock with buffers and corridor connectors that look better close coupled, and if the minimum radius is larger they will look better because they are closer coupled.

Right; curves and minimum radii.

 

PaulRhb put forward a sensible suggestion to me that the minimum radius for the mainline should be 36" which corresponds with Peco Medium Radius points and for sidings 24" which corresponds with Peco Small Radius Points.

 

Would this be agreeable?

 

If we can agree on this over the next couple of days I'll create a new sub-forum and pin the standards and then we can move onwards.

Modules which have the tighter 24" radius sidings will have to be noted with 'route availability A' or whatever so that the restriction can be planned for when operations are planned.

We just need to know what the track separation on curves is now - presumably two figures required, one for 36" and one for 24". Do we know enough about the APT-E do do the sums yet?