Pete the Elaner

Not books. I look at the real thing & try to work out how it is built. I struggle with platforms too. There are some good commercially available ones but they don't provide the look I am after. I cut some coping stones from plastikard for my last layout but these were not consistent enough so this was something I got stuck on. I ended up aborting that layout anyway. I have tried a couple of methods on my current layout: I first tried laser cutting the entire surface, including coping stones. I had several issues. Anything less than 2mm acrylic distorts from the laser cutter's heat. 2mm bends slightly & it difficult to pull flat. My laser cutter also does a maximum of 300mm, so the join between sections looks awful. Just last week, I tried cutting coping stones with the laser. I thought these would be perfectly consistent in size, but there seems to be more variation than I expected. As for buildings, I found that it was difficult getting the window frames correct. A friend suggested I buy Peco or Wills ones then create the building around these. Another friend showed me his method for cutting windows from plastruct. I found this extremely tedious but need to do it this way to get my building right. I got about 1/4 of the way around the building & have not touched it for months. Maybe you could start by looking around for some windowless structures. Retaining walls, small electrical buildings etc?

There are 2 alternatives I am aware of: Airbrush your brickwork like you have done but, instead of using chalk, use a thinned paint to represent mortar. This can be wiped off when partially dry to clean it off the brickwork a little like you would clean grouting from tiles. Varnish should not wash this away. I have heard of this being done with great effect, including by somebody I know whose weathering I am very impressed with. A friend of mine came up with a different idea for my layout: Paint the lot in grey primer, which is close enough to mortar colour, then dry brush your brick colour over the top, painting the raised surface rather than the mortar itself. You can see the results of this on my layout thread. We used acrylic paint for this, so it dried quite quickly. I think that the first of these methods probably gives better results but I will stick to the second way on my current layout for consistency.

I may be completely unjustified with this but I would be concerned that an inductor (coil or bulb) or capacitor on a DCC circuit could distort the wave. An inductor would cause back emf spikes & a capacitor would smooth it out a bit. Why not power the lighting from a decoder & treat it just like any other DCC device? You could then turn it on/off & even dim the lights with the throttle. You could even adjust the speed curve to prevent the lights being set too brightly.

The initial list seems focussed onto getting things running. Nothing wrong with that. Making them look good is another side of it. How rewarding is it to scratch-build a replica of a building & get it as accurate as possible. Lately I have taken a lot from scrapping a structure which is is below par, because I know I can do it better. Photography is another aspect completely. Making a photo of your model look as close to the real thing as possible.

TTS chips are good value but they do lack some features compared to fully featured ones from ESU or Zimo. They do not support advanced consisting They cannot be re-blown, so you cannot upgrade a model & move your TTS decoder to a different class of loco. Also if you do not like the sound, you are stuck with it. The TTS sounds seem to be pretty good though. If a new feature is developed at a later date like active brake or Drivelock, you can't add this. You can with a standard Zimo or Loksound v4. There is no way to synchronise sounds with wheel revolutions. Not a problem for diesel sounds but a drawback for steam. TTS only supports 1 'spot' (non-engine) sound. If for example you are running a compressor sound on a diesel & want to sound the horn, the compressor fades out to sound the horn, then fades back in again. Zimo & Loksound provide more (4 I think) 'spot' sounds so you can play these together. If any of the above features are important to you, then you may feel it worth the extra for a Loksound or Zimo.

It is more involved than that, but maybe simpler to wire depending on what you want from it. The frog itself is by default dead. The similarity with an insulfrog point ends there. Insulfrogs self-isolate & Electrofrogs send the same polarity to the 'not chosen' route, effectively isolating it. Unifrogs provide a live feed to both exit routes. This is great for DCC but DC modellers who use points for isolation will need to learn new wiring practices. The dead part is very small with Unifrog so you may be able to get away with not connecting it. Unlike Electrofrog, if you want to switch the frog feed, there is no cutting to do. As long as you route the frog feed to below your baseboard, you can not bother connecting it straight away. If you later find that you need a live frog, you connect this at a later date.

It is interesting to see David recommend DCC it even though he does not use it. With DCC, it is normal to leave all sections live so you can leave loco lights on or leave engines ticking over when parked. If you ever get tempted to go down the 'sound' route. I was sceptical about sound at first but it has drawn me in. The amount of wiring is reduced significantly & it is surprising how quickly decoders seem to multiply when you buy them 1 or 2 at a time. DCC also allow you to easily do things you never planned: stop locos in places you never thought & still control them independently. Add signals or building lighting without masses more wiring; just connect them up to the bus with a decoder & you can control them. As for Insulfrog/Electrofrog wiring, it is normal to let insulfrog points feed their sidings. I choose the 'electrofrog way' (isolate & re-feed) regardless of what points I use for several reasons: It makes wiring very similar to that for electrofrog & DCC so you don't have to use different techniques for different layouts. This particularly handy when working with others, like at a club. It is very scalable. You can electrically break the layout into small chunks making problams far less likely & easier to troubleshoot if they do occur. High resistance track joints & poor connections from point blades have caused me enough trouble in the past that I distrust them. What works well when the track is first laid may not work so well a few years later after weathering & ballasting have helped oxidation to get into to all the track joins. Isolating & re-feeding provides much better conductivity.

I agree with them. My view is that O gauge lends itself to modelling smaller scenes: country stations & parts of yards. Even today, wooden/bullhead is suitable for both locations. Those of us who have the space & desire to model a modern main line in O gauge which demands concrete/fb track are too few to make it sell it in sufficient numbers.

Do you have a choice? I thought Uni is Peco's compromise between Insul & Electro so will replace both ranges once the existing tooling has worn?

I was not happy with any commercially available ones. Most were too short & fat. None had the arch itself correct, the closest being concentric arches of bricks which aligned with each other. This may sound fussy but it bothered me because I felt it important to get my tunnel portals & bridge arches right. Designs can be produced on a PC & printed if you are happy with card or laser cut if you want some relief. You need suitable software & more importantly need to know how to use it. I was lucky because a friend helped me with this bit. In 4mm, I believe that any relief is usually too much but flat looks too flat so you cannot get it quite right. My chosen compromise was the (too much) relief option, buying a laser cutter to produce them. The structures are on my layout, a link to which is in my signature.

But the OP stated steam loco.

Are you looking for gauges to build track or to space adjacent tracks at a consistent distance apart?

The problem is that a scale model of a Brecknall-Willis pantograph is extremely fragile, which is why the metal one is overscale & robust. Hornby have done 4 versions of this pan, all with good & bad points. The metal version, which I believe the 92 carried was also fitted to most 90s, 91s & some 86s. They did a grey plastic one which could be raised & lowered. I have seen these as spares but never on a model. They also did a plastic grey one which was moulded in the lowered position. I only saw these in sets. Lastly they have modelled it again on the class 87. This is again plastic. The 2nd & 4th models above are very fragile & readily pull apart to prevent the plastic from fracturing. I mean no criticism with the above comments & completely understand why these compromises have been made. Hurst models made a brass kit but this has been discontinued. You could try to search for these but I doubt you will find any. They are not easy to build & break apart very easily. Bachmann are set to introduce a version on their forthcoming class 90 but have shown no sign of releasing it as a spare. I have not seen any photos of this part yet & expect it will delay the model. I am interested to see what compromises they will make in its design.

I made my last few from 3mm acrylic which is nice & rigid but I have had to use thin tape to mark the tracks after laser cutting the switch holes. This splits far too easily when drilling even if you are very careful. I do notice other control panels at exhibitions. I see some rough ones but also some which are very elegant. I would like to better what I do now but have not got around to asking any of the layout owners how they have achieved it. I think your idea of effectively laminating a printed diagram between 2 layers is excellent. Be careful with the thickness of it though. Many electronic switches only mount into panels of up to about 3mm thick.

I do not like to see shows forced to cancel. I know it is beyond anybody's control but somebody loses out.

They ran in EWS for some time, so I think it is a sensible livery to produce & I would therefore expect to see it at some time. The EWS 66 looks like it will be with us first. Do you want something which looks ok anywhere or do you want something a little more unusual? There are a lot more 66s than 59s & their scope of operation is a lot more diverse.

Hi Mark, Welcome to the chaos..I mean forum. You could get several different answers from as many people. At the end of the day, it is your layout so the more you understand it, the better it will run. Is this effectively a first layout? A trap many of us fall into is to build big. It is challenging, takes an age & many lose interest before they get something running. Are the sidings in the top left fully isolated & re-fed? It is fine to do this & I prefer it because it does not rely on point blades for conductivity, It creates more wiring though. Partially isolating then re-feeding will cause sidings to be live when they shouldn't be. I got involved with a club layout when someone had used common return on a set of sidings like this, which caused runaways. The section at the bottom looks very complex. I have seen that relying on minimal power feeds & insulfrogs can allow shorts to be created often by a point which you think is totally unrelated to the problem area. So why not split it into many smaller sections? It will allow you to understand what is going on. If you get a short on that, it is very unlikely that you will get an accurate answer as to where the cause is. Adding lots of sections breaks is helpful. It will break the layout up into smaller, more manageable sections which will be easier to troubleshoot if so It is much easier to connect the tracks together at a later date than it is to isolate sections which have been joined with metal rail joiners. It will also allow you to build it bit by bit. You will get a lot of motivation & encouragement in seeing trains run which will spur you on to build more.

I use the OLE warning flashes as a guide. None before the 60s then red before they changed to yellow in the 90s. This therefore matches their era codes to Bachmann's. Ploughs usually ran in pairs, 1 each end of the clearing train to prevent it from getting stuck. I was unaware of this during Flangeway's original production run so I am glad to be able to complete my pair now.

It should do. Think of your system in 2 sides with the command station in the middle. Everything 'Throttle side' is proprietary, so for example you cannot use a Gaugemaster handset with an NCE PowerPro (although I seem to remember 1 exception to this). Everything 'Power side' is NMRA compliant, so just like you can use any loco decoder because it pulls everything from the power bus, you should be able to use any accessory decoder because it connects in exactly the same way.

Get the brush out!

I think most criticism of TTS is unfair. They do lack some functionality of an ESU or Zimo, notably less fine motor control, less concurrent sounds & no advanced consisting but they are also less than half the cost.

I think I should buy you a big key so you can wind people up more easily.

I remember a colleague buying a 13GB hard drive in the late 90s & getting told he "will never use all that", so what is ample by today's standards will not necessarily be a lot in the future. Maybe some decoders can be upgraded? Maybe some will need more memory to access more functions? 28 seems a common maximum for command stations. It is possible that these can be firmware upgraded to support more 28 is not a binary power (2,4,8,16,32 etc), so I agree with the above that this is unlikely to be a limit within NMRA's DCC standard, but many more would be awkward to access without bigger control panels.

I assume this is OO? I have heard it argued that embossed plastikard gives too much relief. I tend to agree. But on the other hand, printed card gives too little relief. Somewhere in between is probably ideal, but it does not exist. It is one of the many modelling situations where if it looks right then it is right, so there are probably buildings which look better in plastic & others which look better in card. I do not see a problem with mixing plastic & lasercut wood. You will probably be painting each of these, so the finish will be acrylic or enamel paints regardless of the material beneath.

I am not sure who designed the GC's bridges. Hamilton was in disguise in the US, which I don't have. I know someone who does though. I do have Coronation masquerading as 6229 in blue & my turbomotive is currently unfinished. I need some tiny bolts for the connecting rods.