Pete the Elaner

Glad to hear you were patient enough to try both out before buying.

Hi Baz, Why not visit a real location which meets your description? It is easier to copy the real thing than a layout. Where are you located? I am sure someone will be able to suggest somewhere.

You are joking, right? It is a full 102 page magazine. I too have skimmed through it...for now. It deserves a proper read later.

Nice work. Finished off very tidily. There is something about it which reminds me of 6399 Fury. I disagree about it being ugly. I can think of lots which I consider far uglier but I would upset others modellers by mentioning them.

I don't know much about the specifics you are asking about, but your way of thinking sounds good to me. You seem to have thought about what trains/services you want to run & designed the layout to accommodate this. The real railway develops the same way. The other way of thinking is to start out intending to fit certain things in then work out how to run your trains on it. I have fallen into this trap before & find it less satisfying than the way you have started.

I don't know how they are allowed to get away with calling it a 225 seeing as it has never been allowed to do 225kmh in service. IC200 would be more accurate.

'Having your say' was a fully moderated forum. The full moderation made it slower than a live forum like RMWeb so on that level, it was unable to compete. I have said this before but there are gaps in the market. Printed magazines are all well & good but lack a decent search. An example is an article on signal placement. When you build your next layout you decide to check this but where was that issue? Either in the pile of magazines you threw away a few months ago, or if you are a hoarder, somewhere in the 100+ back issues. It may have only seemed a few months ago that you saw it, but in reality, it was 2-3 years...but was it in Hornby, ModelRail, BRM or Railway Modeller? A true online magazine may be able to offer a search facility. It will take time to build a collection of such articles. I am not involved with MREmag so cannot say whether or not that this is what they are planning. I remembered similar negativity about last year's Chiltern show being the last in St Albans...how sad that was & how it would never be as good once it moved to Stevenage. I looked forward to the move because St Albans had a lot of issues due to the venue & its accessibility. We have now seen the first Stevenage show & all the comments I have seen agree with me that it was a very positive move. Have faith & be patient. The second edition should not be very far away now.

No, that is wrong. It reboots itself when a short is detected. I have seen mine do it. This is why many people refer to "wiring a point for DCC". With DC, you get a brief spark & the train continues on its way. With DCC, the command station (or in the case of PowerCab, the combined unit) stops the entire layout. You can break your layout down into separate power sub-districts each protected by their own circuit breaker. You don't have to do this straight away; you can wire the layout for it & connect the sub-districts together until such time (if ever) you want to split them. A proper circuit breaker reacts more quickly than the command station so only the affected power sub-district is shut down. Splitting into sub-districts makes it easier to find wiring faults.

It may be worth considering the size of your layout. Probably 5-6 light running or 1 double-headed on full power. You would need a big end-to-end layout to cope with a heavy train on maximum acceleration so depending on your layout, it may not be possible to run anything on anywhere near full power. A circular double track main line with a yard would be different. You could run multiple long trains on this which would draw a reasonable amount of current. I had 5 running at the same time on my home layout recently. The PowerCab has a built-in ammeter. I usually drew less current than I thought I would be doing. I doubt this feature works when you add an external booster. It is certainly missing from the PowerPro.

If not suppliers near you, how about shows? Maybe someone on here lives be close to you & would let you loose on their home layout? At shows, many layout owners would be more than pleased to assist you driving their trains on their layout so you can get a feel for their system. I think most of us on here would prefer you to start with a system you are happy with.

As mentioned, NCE is fully upgradeable so you can start off with the Powercab (which is very well featured for its cost) then if you want to upgrade it to the same Spec as the PowerPro, the total cost is similar to buying the full PowerPro in the first place so you don't pay through the nose for upgrading the slow way. As above, I am just a happy user. It is always worth checking Ebay for used ones. Powercabs are hard to find on there. I assume this is because users like them enough to keep them? Hopefully a Prodigy user will be along shortly to balance the argument.

Only 7 in our capital city? That's disappointing.

Mine failed last week too. The first time it ever stalled, I gave t a gentle shove & the gear broke. Is this a common failing? If so, is it possible to persuade someone to make brass replacements? I searched ebay & bought one from a store called expressly-trains. Ordered on Dec 22nd & it arrived before Christmas. I was more than happy with that.

This seems to have been forgotten by many. One of the 'facts' being argued against it back then were that you would suffocate if you travelled faster than 20mph. Our Victorian railways were ahead of their time & changed the country beyond belief. HS2 is 21st century progress.

The original Wood Lane station on the Central Line was opened with 2 platforms on 1 line; 1 for alighting & the other for boarding. That was closed many years ago (in the 1940s I think). Platform 17 in Euston has faces on both sides of the track. I think it may have had something to do with it being the old Motorail platform. I seem to remember only once seeing a train open its doors on the side facing platform 16. Platform 18 (west) is the usual side for operation.

I agree. When they were first announced, there seemed to be a lot of praise about them. I thought this was unjustified for something unknown. Having just seen photos of some pre-production models for the first time, I think they look very promising. If the production models look as good, a rake will appear on my WCML layout. I hope they don't make the same mistake as Bachmann by producing too many buffets compared to TSO's & FOs.

'Having your say' was always a fully moderated forum. I agree with the above inference about how many forums do we need (or want)? I imagine this was a question asked internally within the mremag team which prompted the change of format. I spoke to one of the team a few months ago & they were excited about the change, particularly with the 'turn the page' magazine feel. I forgot all about this until I had already swiped a dozen or so pages on my tablet. It felt like the natural thing to do. The first issue was much bigger than I expected & I thought the quality of the articles was very good too.

I think 'whatever' is the problem. The old fashioned 'station with goods yard' had gone by the 80's. Anything left would be dedicated to 1 type of traffic, probably 1 company's sidings. Sidings on the prototype there for a reason, not so the operator can decide what to do with them later. I find this is a good thought pattern to follow with a layout too. Try to decide what the yard is for, then plan for it to serve a purpose. Acton & Bletchley have aggregates yards close to their stations but they are a bit on the large side so they will not be of much use to you. Colchester Hythe had a small Charrington's coal terminal both sides of the running lines (now gone) but this is the only one I can think of. The 08 from the main line's station used to pop over & move things around once in a while. There were usually around 6 HBA/HEAs scattered across 3-4 sidings. They looked like they were parked at random but I am sure there was a logic to it.

There seem to be a lot of people pinning track. This provides quieter running than glueing. You can get away with it in wooden sleepers but not in concrete sleepers. Even holes or painted pins are an eyesore. I see Copydex has been mentioned earlier. Fixing it with this is my preferred method. It takes about 20-30 minutes to dry which is ideal. This gives you enough time to position the track without taking so long that it wanders again before it sets.

APT-POP parts everywhere? Many people would moan about the place being untidy. I expect you loved it!

Good question. From what I have heard, the MERG system is very well featured. Finding out for myself is on my list of things to do.

How about an article on how you did it? I assume it is NMRA compliant too? The advantages of the MERG system is the community support & its ergonomics.

I agree that the kit looks good. Why don't you build a couple of smaller Cambrian or Parkside wagons before tackling a bigger, more costly project like this?

I have read some criticism of the changes & in every case it seems the critics concerned don't want to lose having a frequent 'having your say' section. This was a moderated forum. We already have several forums, of which RMWeb is one. Being largely unmoderated, they will invariably be a faster form of communication but can be open to a bit of mud slinging. Give MREmag a chance. We have been told it will return in a different form. It is silly to judge anything before you've seen it.

If you prefer to buy one, then you are 100% correct to do so. This is a kit alternative to a RTR controller. Many of us have built wagon kits of made buildings from scratch & have taken pleasure in the knowledge that we have built it ourself. I don't see how this is any different.