Pete the Elaner

That would be nice but I was told that there is something about the modifications made to bring it into gauge have made it impossible to steam. As for 6235: It was the first to be de-streamlined & the only one of the class to carry wartime black as a semi. I guess I am in a minority wanting to see it like that?

I like 86401, especially with the old MU jumpers. I may be wrong but I thought the newer (yellow) style of warning flashes were introduced in the mid-90's. Edit: I have just looked at some old pics of 86401 in NSE & it never had warning flashes. I wonder if they omitted them from overhead Electric locos because it was just stating the obvious? I also noticed that the TDM cable stowage receptors are set in their newer orientation. The cables used to plug into them from below, but around the same time as they removed the old MU jumpers, they shortened the TDM cables & plugged them in from above. The res 86 (416) illustrates what I mean. 86213 & 86502 have the older TDM cable configuration.

I think I'll stop short of re-creating that I do pass through the real place on my way to work some days. Fortunately not today though.

Lots of photos of 86's & 87's in IC Swallow livery there. Interesting to see the variations within the livery: colour & position of nameplate. Position of INTERCITY logo, full/half yellow end & with/without swallow logo.

Sound fitting a 37 was on my wanted list. It has just moved up a few places!

Scratch-building buildings is not my strong point, but to create a real location, it is something I have to work on & I am enjoying getting there. It is good to have a friend nearby who can help. I am learning a lot but Charlie has probably done more of this than I have. I spent yesterday evening at Charlie's working on the station building together. It has taken us 4-5 months of working 1 or 2 evenings a month just getting the roof right. There is no time limit on modelling & I have been getting on with other things like wiring the fiddle yard & building retaining walls. This is the building before the station was rebuilt in the 60's. All I have is 4 photos to work from. Each of these must be 80-100 years old & do not show the building in great detail, but give me a good idea of the shape of it. The roof has some quite complex angles so it was always going to be the trickiest bit. Apparently I could have chosen something easier for my first building! The card prototype for the roof is in the background, but there were dimensions which were not quite right so we needed to change a few things when building the proper one. Last time I saw it, the plastic roof was slightly twisted but Charlie tweaked it a little before yesterday & managed to straighten it up. I made the last abutment & we got on with making up some rain strips, which I had never even considered. The walls should be slightly easier & the building will be lit so needs to have a detailed interior. Still plenty to go but this should be the most difficult building & certainly the most prominent because it sits right over one end of the scenic section. I don't want to rush it & end up with something I am not entirely satisfied with. 20170412_225043 by rip, on Flickr

The decoders should give you more detail which you can query with your PowerCab. I'll assume you have not read the instruction book. With only 1 loco on the layout, press PROG/ESC until the throttle says 'use program track'. It will then ask what program mode. Choosing 1 for STD mode will read the manufacturer & model code from the decoder.

I think you mean "I don't indicate because I know where I'm going". I have heard that several times.

It is more complicated than that. According to https://www.gov.uk/speed-limits , the national speed limit FOR A BUILT UP AREA is 30mph, but there is no definition given for 'built up area'. Street lights are usually accepted as indicating a built up area. The 'black bar sign' indicates that the national speed limit applies, but this varies according to what type of vehicle you are driving & what type of road you are driving on. For a car or motorcycle, these are 30 for built up area, 60 for a single carriageway road & 70 for a dual carriageway/motorway. I was horrified at how few people knew this when I did a speed awareness course. Most know the first & last but few know 60 & 70 for single/dual carriageways. For a goods vehicle below 7.5T, the limits are different: 50 for a single carriageway road, 60 for a dual carriageway & 70 for a motorway, so be mindful of this when hiring a van to take the layout to a show. There was a legal minimum distance for speed limit repeater signs but I understand this was repealed after someone escaped their sentence after proving that the repeaters were slightly too far apart in the area they got caught.

I know how you feel. There comes a time in the life cycle of many layouts where we 'would do that different with the next one' for enough aspects of a layout that deep down, we know that starting from scratch would be more rewarding. The first thing you do differently will hopefully justify the rebuild. What was it were you disappointed with?

A friend of mine wired up a Relco without the capacitor. I think he just experimented until it worked. This was on a Underground layout with limited access. It gave me a painful shock with an accompanying expletive every time I tried to re-rail a loco.

Hi, It sounds like you've read about & got carried away with talk of bus & droppers. 2 wires will work for a small layout for any DCC system. Put simply, you need a clean, low-resistance connection to all parts of the layout. Nickel silver is not the best conductor. It is used for rails for a combination of its appearance, cost & resistance to oxidation. Expecting current to pass along many yards of rail & across several joins with paint & glue trying to separate them is when you may experience problems. Ensuring all connections are clean & low-resistance is also good practice for DC but, instead or erratic control, you would see the problem as a drop in speed.

Depending on how they have tooled the 87, an 86 may be a relatively cheap modification. Body sides are the same. An 86/1 just needs a different front end & roof components, 86/2,4,5,6 also need a different underframe & new bogies. Older versions would need a few more changes.

WR never had proper locos because they are only just getting OLE now.

Are you measuring the track voltage with the motor running? I get the feeling you are. The voltage is shared proportionally across all resistances: The load (chip/motor), wires & the power supply. When the load resistance is fairly low, the internal resistance of the power supply becomes significant. You may have 16v in the circuit but 6v of this is being used to push the current through the supply & the wiring, which leaves 10 across the motor. When you are just measuring the voltage with no load, the voltmeter's internal resistance is very high so virtually all the supply's voltage is applied across the meter. This may sound strange at first but it explains why just testing all parts of a layout for voltage is a poor test of conductivity/reliability.

I had to read that twice. The first time invoked images of running an 86 or 87 on the layout. I hope the shed is well insulated. It would be heartbreaking to have your hard work compromised by damp.

I had missed this until now & since I am modelling South Hampstead, also in 00, I am very interested.

You have talked me into it. My layout thread

For a long time it has been a desire of mine to build a layout based closely on a real prototype. My 2 interests are AC electrics in the 1990s when going to Euston was an outing & also late 30s & 40s LMS. The WCML is the only place I could model where these could look at home but the space required would be too much. Then one day I went to photograph 6233 Duchess of Sutherland on a run out of Euston. I went there with a friend & chose to shoot it from the first station out, as it accelerated out of the tunnel. We took a sprinter round from somewhere on the NLL, passing through the closed Primrose Hill & as we got out at South Hampstead we both looked at the tunnels, then round at the bridge which carries Loudoun Road over the station. At the same time, we said to each other 'this would make a great layout'. That was around 2001 & it took me over 10 years to get started. 2014-01-19 05.57.11 by rip, on Flickr The scenic section looking south east. The 'northbound' WCML is actually heading slightly south at this point, but mainly west. The 2 locos are on the fast lines. I was working a lot from Google Maps at this point. The DC lines were under exposed near the tunnels & appeared to diverge. I later found out that they should be dead straight & further apart. I eventually re-laid the far end of the down DC & all of the up DC. The black line across the bottom of the nearest board marks roughly where Loudoun Road is. 2014-01-19 05.55.52 by rip, on Flickr One of my biggest problems was building a fiddle yard big enough to run a decent WCML service. A bigger problem was getting 6 tracks all round into it. I have 4 storage lines & 2 through lines each for fast & slow, then the DC lines merge as soon as they get off-scene before splitting into 2 storage lines. This photo was taken about 2 years after the previous one. 20161130_155050 by rip, on Flickr This is the London end of the station. The tunnel mouths for the fast & slow lines are a lot narrower & taller than any thing I have found commercially available so I am going to have to scratch build them. I may be able to get the portals etched. The DC line tunnels are small too. The real ones look way to small to cope with a standard train but they seem to fit. The DC lines are now straight & set further apart than they were in the first photo. I feel that Peco track looks a lot better with the sleepers spaced out & I have also narrowed the 6' by 5mm from standard streamline. The line across it is the Great Central with Marylebone to the right. I have no space to run the tracks off to anywhere so I will not be able to run anything across. These should also run into tunnels at both ends which should be set back off the layout. Bringing these inwards is one of the few compromises I have to make. 20161129_212400 by rip, on Flickr The view to the country end, showing the Loudoun Road bridge. The track should re-appear at the other side of this bridge but I need to get all lines into the fiddle yard so I will distort the surrounding area a little. 3 out of those 5 platform faces have been disused since around 1916. I can't remember the actual date. I don't like seeing a huge space between train & platform but I think these are just a bit too close. The AC electric era scenic boards are still sheets of ply which I had cut at the same time as the steam era scenic boards. It will be some time before I start on those. One of my friends frequently complains about the lack of pointwork. If it had points, it wouldn't be South Hampstead would it? & here is the real location in 2015: P1180068 by rip, on Flickr

1930s/40s, which I am working on now. I have a 2nd set of boards for the scenic section so I can model it in early 1990s too. I always intended to do both. I was going to do this one first but took the easy path by doing LMS first because there is no OLE. If it was not for the scale difference, it really would be ideal to link the 2 layouts together. We would just need someone to do Primrose Hill shortly before closure.

I am certain you will find it well worth the effort. Watford Junction in 4mm? Nice, but I don't have the space. I am modelling South Hampstead. I don't have a layout thread but maybe I should start one.

Nice work. Big, ambitious projects like this are always hard work. You don't reach milestones very frequently but when you do, they are hugely rewarding. I doubt you will ever do something quite like this again. My project has similarities...It is based on the next station along the line, but in 00. Enjoy sending time with your young family. Don't be afraid to put this project on hold. You will come back to it with more enthusiasm.

That's why you go to shows & why there is always a scrum around Biff's demo area. I hope you get a decent return from it. I assume it does otherwise you would not continue to do it.

My Hornby R8249 & Zen (218 I think) decoders show as unknown. I manually selected the Zen & could read back the CVs successfully. I have not tried this with one of my R8249s yet but I will try it. It wouldn't read my APT-E either & that is a Legomanbiffo chip (Loksound v4 I believe).

Swallow HST with Biff's sound. I have exactly the same. It sounds rather good on the layout & I have yet to re-position the speakers to give their best. You sound like you are racing the arrival of a new item. This time last year, I was racing to get my layout live before my APT-E arrived. The APT was delivered 2 days before the layout was ready