Pete the Elaner

I like that. A nice, simple modification. Kadees work well & are not very expensive. You will need to change your couplings & they come in different sizes. Spratt & Winkle also work well. These are effectively an upside down tension lock with a wire between the buffers. A spring holds them up & a magnet can release them. The method described above has the advantage of being a modification to what you already have, giving you have better compatibility.

Yes, a system like that should provide 5A. A loco will probably draw no more than 1A under full (stalled) load. Once running, they will draw a lot less current so a 5A system will go quite a long way. To answer your previous question, you only need 1 of those. It can be broken down into 3 components; a command station, throttle & booster. You need 1 & only 1 command station for a layout. Boosters are normally 5A. If you have a large layout, you would split it into separate districts, each fed from a booster but all controlled by the same command station. You can have multiple throttles (handsets) but these are usually capable of controlling more than 1 loco. More handsets would be useful if you have friends round for an operating session.

DCC does not limit you to isolating sections. I have seen it argued that you should plan these in advance of laying the track, but a movement which is not initially considered may prove useful at a later date. The real railway never kept things the same so it is entirely prototypical to run locos the way you never intended to. Even with all the extras like simpler wiring, lights, sound, double heading, acceleration etc., driving trains instead of the track is still the biggest appeal to me.

TTS has limitations but depending on what you want, they are acceptable. You cannot sync exhaust beats with wheel revolutions. It can only play 1 engine sound & 1 'spot' sound (injector, coal shovelling, compressor, spirax valve, horn etc.) I have not found this a limitation with steam but I do with Diesel. With a compressor running, this fades out for the horn then fades back in. TTS is effectively an R8249 with sound, so features such as advanced consisting are unavailable. The standard speaker is not great. The standard speaker can be replaced with something better. Richard Croft has done this & uploaded some videos in his DCC Sound thread on this forum & they sound pretty good.

If their previous release had looked this good, I would have bought about 5. Hopefully this will sell well enough for them to re-tool later versions of the class.

DCC allows you to change your mind about accessory control at a later date. I was going to control accessories the traditional way but I had a few spare connections which allowed me to change my mind.

You mis-understood. Modifying an electrofrog point has nothing to do with DCC & everything to do with reliability.

Nice try for getting the thread back on topic. It seems to have immediately drifted back to irrelevant drivel again though.

You do have a choice with switching the frogs. The dead part of the frogs are so small that many do not have to bother providing power to them at all. This requires no modification either. As long as you feed that wire to below the board, you can leave the switch for if & when it is required. Using points for isolation can quickly get out of hand, especially when loops are involved. Isolating & re-feeding keeps things simple as layout design grows & eliminates the reliance on rail joiners for good electrical contact.

What you would do & what you feel is right to recommend publicly are not always the same. You may ride a bike on short trips without a helmet but would you recommend doing this to others who you may not have met? Wiring is no different. Some may get away with using point blades & rail joiners for electrical continuity but with larger, older layouts, point blades become unreliable & resistance builds up in rail joints. If you want sounds, then you will want your sidings live all the time. You will therefore need to isolate & re-feed every siding, which I would recommend doing anyway whether the layout is powered by DC or DCC. By isolating & re-feeding, you effectively break the layout up into small sections & will make it easier to understand than feeding a siding from 3 points away, like you could get away with on the bottom siding on your layout. You can expand this method to a larger layout simply by using more sections & it does not get a lot more complicated. I wish people would stop recommending modifying an Electrofrog point "For DCC". It is for better reliability & to help prevent shorts from wheels with poor clearance. DCC is simply less tolerant of a short circuit but I would also recommend modifying points in this way for a DC layout. Apart from that small technicality, I would agree that everything John has recommended is good practice.

I saw them at Glasgow. It was the first time I had seen them with a pan, albeit in the lowered position. This is a very fragile prototype to model. I will be intrigued to see how well this works but the model does look very good.

It is your layout. Set your own standards & document them. If you ever have to trace a fault, documentation make this much easier. I would disagree that track wires should be re & black. That sounds more like a limitation than a help. When starting to wire a layout, I usually look to see how much wire I have of each colour then use what I have most of for what I think I will need most of. Document what you use. I know I said that already but it helps when doing further work or troubleshooting.

According to the synopsis on the website, DOGA are involved, preparing & presenting a layout at GETS last October.

I think many modellers could benefit from getting back into this way of thinking. We all started out with something simple. Some of us may be happy to stay with these but others have moved to something a little finer. Who is to say which is right or wrong? It doesn't matter how much we pay for models or how long we spend making them look or run better, they are still toys..even if they are P4, S7 or Gauge 3 live steam. As for the programme itself, It clashes with club night so I will set my timer for it.

This suggests you may have instructions for DCC. Switching a point is exactly the same.

Regarding the grille nearest to the driver's door which sits entirely inside the red swoosh: On the model it looks like a parallelogram. The real one looks slightly wider at the top than the bottom & the red swoosh follows this, also being wider at the top. I wonder is this was deemed an error & 'corrected' when turning the 3D scan into artwork, or maybe how the grille has been painted to show it in the proof print?

This is true for older points but Peco changed the design some time ago. I think they may still use the older design for 1 point because the tooling has not worn out yet. More modern Electrofrog points have a cut-out in the webbing allowing the user to solder a wire between stock & switched rails. If you do this, you need to snip 2 small links from the switched rails to the crossing then power this by a switch. They are supplied this way for those who want to buy a point & use it straight away. It would not be RTR is you had to fit a switch before it works.

Why have you used a speaker more suited to the limitations of 4mm scale? The double cube speakers are good for their size, but with 7mm, you have more space than 4mm, so surely a bigger speaker would have sounded better.

Cramming too much in makes the layout look compressed, which is something I find unsatisfying.

This may help, it may not... It sounds like you are trying to put a little too much of everything you want on the layout & are having problems because it simply won't fit? Maybe you could stop for a while & go back to planning something from scratch. Make a list of the items which are important to you, like having a station which can accommodate 4 coach trains, the ability to run expresses, a yard. Here is an example.. 1 Express trains 2 Stations serving 4 coach trains 3 yard 4 level crossing 5 Working signals Then work out a way to fit them in. 1 No problem. These can run anywhere. 2. Not enough space, so an access road/building across the tracks is used as a scenic break. Only part of the platforms is then visible, which is all you need to model. This would place the layout in a cutting. 3 Yard will fit. You could make it a high level one if the station is in a cutting. 4 If the main layout is in a cutting, a level crossing would not work with it, so you cannot use it. 5 No problem. You do not need to use the same aspects. This is just an example of the thought process I would use. Would this be better? If it will, then take lots of photos before re-starting a new layout from scratch. It it will not be better, you will be happier with your current layout.

That's in Ipswich isn't it?

Surely you would need to if you wanted to run locos together in a consist? I assumed that locos running at different speeds was why I have always been advised against double heading on DC & this is one of the advantages of DCC.

I am also interested to know how you have done this. I have found lots of unusual settings & commands in the manual, but not this one.

Modelling an urban cutting requires a lot more work than open countryside. Have patience. It is rewarding when it starts to take shape.

Looks like it will be mainly in cutting? I am also modelling the WCML, but in London & c1940 & c1990. I also felt that the only way to model the line was to choose a cutting location 'framed' by tunnels, bridges or both.