Pete the Elaner

It is unlikely that many long distance services would call at Northampton. That is considered a diversion away from the main line.

I find Dettol work well for removing paint. Cheap, doesn't damage the plastic & removes factory paintwork too. You'll be down to the bare plastic but at least you can start again. I remember speaking to someone years ago who resprayed locos for customers. He left it a week between coats for the paint to go hard.

I just found this after seeing a comment you made on another thread. I hope you got your electrical fault sorted, but he is a thought for your next layout. Modelling DCC with electrofrog points has made me change my wiring methods but this can be applied equally to DC: Past experience with dirty point blades & rail joiners has taught me to never rely on them for electrical conductivity. I solder link rails between them & the stock rail (which Electrofrogs allow you to do very easily). They also require you to isolate then re-feed the siding. Dirt at rail joiners becomes a problem on larger layouts. For these reasons, I always isolate after every rail at the frog end of each point. Since you have every siding switched, you would not need to rely on point blades for feedng the sidings. I helped wire a friend's layout fairly recently & he did not isolate after every point (although his were electrofrogs). It drove me crazy trying to work out where things were being fed from. Far from being easier to use the point for feeding the siding, it made the layout difficult to understand. Regarding your other issue about running over pointwork, I have found that most RTR back to backs are wrong. I think it is quite poor from the manufacturers, but it seems we are stuck with it for now. Did you get a gauge for this?

That's great. I have caught a bit of a bug for assembling electronic kits right now so I'll probably give this a go.

That's interesting. I like the way you've hidden the switch beneath AWS ramps. I can't do that because my layout is pre-war 4th rail, but the 4th rail & some 'grot' in the 4 foot could hide it a little. Would this make the switch too far from the passing magnets for them to work?

This is wandering from the topic a little & will be impossible to find when I want to refer to it! How about another thread? http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/140465-conductor-rail-spark/

This was brought up in another thread but I think it deserves its own. I am interested in producing a spark when a 3rd rail trains passes a certain rail junction. These are caused by the shoe breaking contact with the conductor rail, so it happens at the same point on the track. I am therefore looking at mounting a bright LED in the baseboard & finding some way of firing it when the shoe of a 3rd rail until passes over, but not when a diesel does. Firing the LED should not be a problem although a suggestion of how to do it will save me from having to work it out but does anyone have a recommendation of a cheap, reliable, readily available way of detecting when a conductor shoe passes over so the LED fires at just the right time? Although I use DCC, I don't think this is relevant.

I am not sure the decoder is the best device to do this. From what I have seen on the underground, 3rd rail sparks seem to occur at a particular place on the rail, either as the shoe makes/breaks contact or on the weld between conductor rail & the skid block (I am sure this has a proper name but I don't know it) at the end. It may therefore be easier to generate the spark from the layout itself, activated by something mounted in the shoe rather than the other way around. I will have 3rd/4th rail on my layout but had not considered this until now & recreating this is the type of thing which appeals to me. Thank you for inspiring me to consider it.

I read (In BRM I think) that Dettol can be used as a paint stripper. I tried it with success on some old Lima bodies & some painted WIlls kits. It needs a couple of soakings to get a fairly clean bare plastic but it does not seem to affect the plastic itself or the glue which the Wills kit was held together with. Fairly cheap & easily available too.

Oops. I did describe that a bit sloppily, but I did actually mean to build a suitable box. You didn't even need to twist my words or 'selectively' drop some key ones either.

There are lots of options for this which are rarely exploited by the teams. Different coloured numbers on the cars.Mercedes this year is 1 example & who remembers Mansell's 'Red 5' at WIlliams when Patrese's 6 was white? I don't remember any other team around that time doing this. I remember the camera mount above the air intake being a different colour a few years ago. Why not colour the halo itself?

Rail gets rusty on the real railway long before it is laid. With use, the rust darkens & seems to spread around the ballast a little as Mike describes. Whether you can get away with airbrushing depends on the standard of your airbrushing & also exactly the condition of the track you want to portray. If you airbrush fresh track, you need to do it very heavily to stop the bare metal from bleeding through. It is a tedious task but a coat of brush-painted dark rust first can be weathered less heavily for a nice effect.

Open transformers don't cost much. I bought a couple from www.rapidonline.com recently for about £8 each. You'll need to mount them, typically in a control panel or under the board then you will probably want to cover with some bits of wood or plasticard for safety.

I completely agree with this. The Zimo really is that much better than any of the 'budget' ones which are only about £2 cheaper. I have not tried the Lenz Standard though. I will have to give it a try although I don't seem to buy decoders very often lately.

2 thoughts here, but both well short of replacing the system. It sounds like one of the pins has become disconnected. Check the pins inside the sockets on the cab & panel. One of mine bent almost flat & had to be teased back into shape with a tiny screwdriver. My flat cab-panel cable was never terminated securely. The cable's sheath is not held firmly in the connector at one end & I have occasionally found that it does not connect properly. Try wiggling the cable gently at each end.

That sounds very likely & from another point of view, very reasonable. I was brought up in a small village with a closed pit nearby (I think it was a sand extraction pit). This was accessed by a single track road with passing places. I think the poor road was the reason the pit closed in the first place. My parents still live there & told me that since I moved out, a company proposed to re-start operations at the pit. This would have generated a lot of heavy road traffic along a road which simply could not cope, then these lorries would pass through the village. This generated a lot of opposition within the local community. My suggestion was to welcome the extra business, providing they built a rail head & this was used to transport all the product away. The nearest rail line was & still is about 2 miles away & the required route would be to pass through undeveloped land. If they refused, then it would be the company's decision & they would never be able to claim that their plans were opposed. If they complied then this should generate local employment. I thought that was a very reasonable suggestion, but my father disagreed. I do not understand why. So I can completely understand why all coal must be transported by rail. It is difficult to make exceptions. Once you make one, you have opened the door for others. It is disappointing that Brecon finds it cheaper to import coal rather than buy it back from the distributor who bought it from the local supply.

Quoting half of my paragraph has twisted my meaning. Here is the whole thing with the significant part enlarged for clarity: Anyway, back to the Duchesses..I quite like them in wartime black. Hornby produced 6241 as a streamliner (which I have renumbered 6243 because it lasted until after nationalisation), but I don't think they have ever produced a non or de-streamliner nor do I expect them to. I just don't think the market is there for them. If there is a plain black one due out, I want it!

How badly do they rock & where? If they sink into the gap at the frog itself, then this is a trait of the loose tolerances of the major gauges,N OO, O & even EM. For 4mm scale OO-SF helps & P4 eliminates it completely. For 7mm, then S7 is the answer. They all involve building your own track & P4/S7 involve a lot more work on top of that. What gauge & size of rail are you using?

I agree. I don't know much about the Brighton Belle or Blue Pullman, but I do know a little more about the HST: There were about 100 HST sets, with a fairly decent scope of operation: GW, ECML, MML, XC & WCML & ran in a variety of liveries with few external modifications for over 40 years. Both Hornby & Lima modelled the HST with buffers. Only a handful of TGS coaches ever had buffers to work with Class 89 & 91 in the late 80s. The buffers were fitted to the models to make them a little bit more compatible with WCML Mk3As. These should have had other differences too, but these were ignored for the sake of production costs. There were several variations of buffet car. Until recently, only the TRUB has been produced. There were not many Coronation Scot sets (3 or 4?) & these were split after about 3-4 years service. They only ran on the WCML too. There cannot be too many who would like to model an authentic Coronation Scot train & run it in a prototypical layout (although I can). Its appeal will be much less widespread than an HST, which makes it much more of a risky set of products to manufacture, so I really do not expect it to be available RTR. I but I understand & accept that if I want an accurate CS set, I will need to perform major surgery on some coaches. Anyway, back to the Duchesses..I quite like them in wartime black. Hornby produced 6241 as a streamliner (which I have renumbered 6243 because it lasted until after nationalisation), but I don't think they have ever produced a non or de-streamliner nor do I expect them to. I just don't think the market is there for them.

I agree. I understand their previous Coronation coaches were all incorrect designs. I will learn more when I get around to modelling a set. Coaches are less noticeable & there are many variations so I believe Hornby are less willing to re-tool for them all & are happier to re-livery existing models. To illustrate this, if I ran a set of coaches 1 way on my layout behind 6220 Coronation then quickly changed the loco for 6224 Princess Alexandra, would you notice it is pulling the same set of coaches, or would it appear like a different train? I also model 1990 too & some of the modellers of this era complain on here that manufacturers short-change modern modellers with 'error-ridden modern coaches which they 'simply wouldn't get away with when modelling older stock'. I think the lack of an accurate Coronation Scot set proves this not to be true.

No Mk2 full buffets were built. Buffets were either Mk3A (WCML) or MK1 (elsewhere). Some cross-country services had Mk2 miniature-buffets which were converted from full open coaches by the removal of a seating bay.

No. That is like using 15A cable for track current which you never expect it to exceed 1A. This is not a problem at all since the wire itself cannot introduce any current. It only allows more to flow & bigger cable = less resistance, which is why some use chunky cable for their DCC bus. The only voltage supply in your case is the supply itself. If this is 13.7v & your LEDs are 12v then in theory you could have a 1000v capacitor & this would do exactly the same job as a 25v one because it can't introduce any voltage. It would be a lot bigger though, probably impractical to fit into a OO coach & awkward to hide in a O gauge one. On the other end of the scale, you don't want to use components rated at lower than the applied voltage or current. These would run too hot, which can cause them to melt plastic and/or fail. This can be useful in some circumstances. A safety cutout could be a bi-metallic strip which bends when hot to break the contact. A fuse wire is designed to melt at its capacity to protect the device I understand that electrolytic capacitors bulge then explode when overloaded, leaving a sticky mess. I have seen one bulge but I don't want to see one explode!

I have found the following online: Youchoos & Paul Chetter for Zimo Wheeltappers & forthcoming release from Locoman for LokSound. Recordings off all are available on the internet. I have a Wheeltappers one & am very happy with it. It has light, normal, heavy loads, with coasting, active braking & 2 different whistles. The Locoman one has been developed for well over a year (I spoke to Charlie about it at DEMU showcase, which I missed this year). I expect this to sound good & if it blows me away, I can blow this onto my Wheeltappers one. Both the Youchoos & Paul Chetter have all the features mentioned above. I have other projects from Paul & am pleased with them. I don't have anything from YouChoos but have spoken to others who are happy with their projects. I think it really is a matter of what you think sounds the best. When listening on the internet, remember that speaker type, fitment & the recording of the video will have a massive influence on the bass/treble of what you hear, so you should be able to deepen anything which sounds thin. I expect all of these will sound significantly better than any project which was compiled 5-10 years ago, regardless of vendor.

Speedway season is definitely over. It is a sport I have followed ever since I can remember. They seem to have a rule which prohibits any racing after the end of October, even if it does leave some leagues unfinished. You should never have a clash at Peterborough anyway. I could explain why if you want to be bored!

Is there any reason why East of England Showground is not included in the official address? This seems a bit silly because the showground is clearly signposted from the A1. The East of England Arena & Events Centre is not. You would expect them to be somewhere near to each other but not necessarily in the same place. The speedway track (visible from the show) has always been known as the East of England Showground. GETS was the same. Advertised as Arena MK, which is not signposted from anywhere & could be anywhere in Milton Keynes. It is part of the Stadium:MK which is clearly signposted at many locations around the town, so why not add this to the address?