Progress (or otherwise) on Jeff's new layout

Sounds good Jeff. Probably a lot noisier in real life than the '50's and '60's ones that I mentioned.
I see you're using an OPPO phone. My wife and I have just bought a couple of A15's. No way to justify buying iPhones at their stupid prices.

[user=1120]peterm[/user] wrote:

Sounds good Jeff. Probably a lot noisier in real life than the '50's and '60's ones that I mentioned.
I see you're using an OPPO phone. My wife and I have just bought a couple of A15's. No way to justify buying iPhones at their stupid prices.

Having had to use iPhones at work (the school owned them), I have never wanted to own one! 

The Oppo has a very good camera (actually four cameras in one), but battery life isn't as good as I like. It's still not bad, but I prefer a phone to go for four or more days between charges, whereas this one only lasts 2-3 of days, but at least it has a fast charging capability and doesn't take very long to get back up to 100%. Those school iPhones were lucky to last one day before going flat.

Yes, my Oppo charges pretty quick and the camera is pretty good too for the price.

Hi Jeff.  Thank you, but, I have, always lived and still do live south of the Thames . Not as you could have known. The only line to venture south of the River Thames was the “East London line “ which was rather inconvenient most of the time. It has in recent years made more convenient with the London Overground.    Best wishes Kevin 

And now for a little bit of Christmas fun. A short video of the Santa Special running around Newton Broadway today.

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In addition to the works posted in my workbench topic, I have been running a few trains again. I am moving the time period forward just a little, so crimson and cream coaches and the blue Merchant Navy are off the layout, while a maroon Warship and green mark 1 and Bulleid coaches are on (I intended to put a blue and grey mark 1 in as well, but that was when I decided I must do something about the mismatched coupling heights on the Bachmann versions). I must get some more of those Keen coupling replacements (see the workbench).

The Q1 33009 has replaced an N class on the long goods train, while my Bulleid 'tin' 2 HAL unit 2694 had a run on its own.


 











While talking to a friend, we chatted about the class 22 and 21 variations, so I posed my two Dapol 22s side by side with their class 21 model. I have a third 22 which has a Silver Fox resin body mounted on a Bachmann class 20 chassis.

Love the Hydraulics  - how do you find the running of Dapol 22?  Any issues?

[user=540]gdaysydney[/user] wrote:

Love the Hydraulics  - how do you find the running of Dapol 22?  Any issues?

No problems at all with the running qualities on any of those three. The green 22 has an ESU LokSound fitted with Howes' sounds, the blue one has a Zimo MX645 decoder and the class 21 has a Dapol Imperium decoder.

I have been quiet on here for a while, but I have been doing things: my wife and I recently spent five weeks in Denmark, with excursions into Sweden and northern Germany. In Copenhagen's suburbs we found two well-stocked model railway shops; Togcenter in Gentofte, and Kystbanen in Vanløse. Kystbanene didn't seem to have price tags on most of its stock, and the staff didn't take much interest in us, so we browsed for a while and moved on. Togcenter, on the other hand, had price tags and a friendly, helpful owner and staff. They also had tea and coffee facilities for customers, so Agnes was able to sit and enjoy a coffee while I browsed. The result was that I bought some scenic items for Newton Broadway and a European diorama I'm working on on the first visit, and the second-hand DSB suburban coaches on a second visit.

The above-mentioned acquisitions from Togcenter add to my small DSB fleet, and backdate things just a little. The three 1970s/80s/early 90s style suburban/regional coaches which form a push-pull formation were all AC versions. I have replaced the wheels on the two Heljan red/brown cars with Steam Era 10.5mm wheels on 25mm axles, but the McK driving trailer already had insulated axles, suggesting that it would be easy to convert to DC/DCC. This proved to be the case when I got it back to Australia and opened it up: there was a 3-pin connector with a jumper over two of the pins. Moving the jumper proved to be the right thing as it then worked on 12V DC. I removed the AC pickup skate under the leading bogie and snipped the wire from that. There is a decoder already built in, so a quick check on the programming track proved it to be readable and able to be reprogrammed, followed by allocating an address. All the lighting functions worked perfectly. Taking the risk in buying the AC version paid off as I got them all for nearly half the price of brand new versions, even though the McK coach had obviously never been out of its box. The three coaches are close coupled and have no gaps between the corridor connections on straight track. They are pictured here actually on their first test run with a DSB ME diesel electric pushing them. The YouTube link shows the lighting functions (apologies for it being a little out of focus).

F0 = directional head and tail lights at the driving endF1 = flashing orange lights behind the cab side windows
F2 = cab lightingF3 = top headlight turns off
F4 = tail lights at the non-driving end
F5 = interior lights, bright
F6 = dim interior lights (needs F5 to be on)

I have also included photos of Togcenter's shop: I have no connection with them other than as a very satisfied customer.








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[user=321]SRman[/user] wrote:

I have been quiet on here for a while, but I have been doing things: my wife and I recently spent five weeks in Denmark, with excursions into Sweden and northern Germany. In Copenhagen's suburbs we found two well-stocked model railway shops; Togcenter in Gentofte, and Kystbanen in Vanløse. Kystbanene didn't seem to have price tags on most of its stock, and the staff didn't take much interest in us, so we browsed for a while and moved on. Togcenter, on the other hand, had price tags and a friendly, helpful owner and staff. They also had tea and coffee facilities for customers, so Agnes was able to sit and enjoy a coffee while I browsed. The result was that I bought some scenic items for Newton Broadway and a European diorama I'm working on on the first visit, and the second-hand DSB suburban coaches on a second visit.

The above-mentioned acquisitions from Togcenter add to my small DSB fleet, and backdate things just a little. The three 1970s/80s/early 90s style suburban/regional coaches which form a push-pull formation were all AC versions. I have replaced the wheels on the two Heljan red/brown cars with Steam Era 10.5mm wheels on 25mm axles, but the McK driving trailer already had insulated axles, suggesting that it would be easy to convert to DC/DCC. This proved to be the case when I got it back to Australia and opened it up: there was a 3-pin connector with a jumper over two of the pins. Moving the jumper proved to be the right thing as it then worked on 12V DC. I removed the AC pickup skate under the leading bogie and snipped the wire from that. There is a decoder already built in, so a quick check on the programming track proved it to be readable and able to be reprogrammed, followed by allocating an address. All the lighting functions worked perfectly. Taking the risk in buying the AC version paid off as I got them all for nearly half the price of brand new versions, even though the McK coach had obviously never been out of its box. The three coaches are close coupled and have no gaps between the corridor connections on straight track. They are pictured here actually on their first test run with a DSB ME diesel electric pushing them. The YouTube link shows the lighting functions (apologies for it being a little out of focus).

F0 = directional head and tail lights at the driving endF1 = flashing orange lights behind the cab side windows
F2 = cab lightingF3 = top headlight turns off
F4 = tail lights at the non-driving end
F5 = interior lights, bright
F6 = dim interior lights (needs F5 to be on)

I have also included photos of Togcenter's shop: I have no connection with them other than as a very satisfied customer.

Hi Jeff,Fantastic to see a little bit of Denmark in Australia  :doublethumb

[user=2172]Claus Ellef[/user] wrote:

Hi Jeff,Fantastic to see a little bit of Denmark in Australia  :doublethumb

Thanks Claus. We had a lovely time there, catching up with my aunt and cousins, as well as being tourists.

The Postman has been very kind to me in the last two days: yesterday a Danish item arrived and today, two British items.

The Danish one was an McK DSB MZ Mk IV locomotive, No. 1457, which is ideal for the push-pull set I showed a few posts ago. This was mail-ordered from Denmark, and is factory-fitted with an ESU LokSound decoder.




The British items were both also locomotives, spanning the extremes of diesel eras. The KR Models 1950s Fell diesel-mechanical locomotive, 10100, is in BR black with early crests, and running as a 4-8-4 (or 2-D-2).

At the other end of the time scale, the Hornby EWS class 67 was bought from an eBay seller at a reasonable price with reasonable postage costs, so I am quite happy with this one too.

The Fell took a 21-pin Zimo MX638C decoder (it was configured as an MX638D, but a simple CV tweak fixes that - the difference is in the higher outputs having full voltage or not).

The class 67 is more primitive in taking an 8-pin decoder and not having the head and tail lights separately switchable like the other two arrivals. I fitted a Zimo MX600 decoder to this one.

All run beautifully, although the Fell needs its pickups adjusted or worn-in a bit. None have had any of their extra detailing bits added yet.

Also in the last photo is a pair of Cavalex weathered TEA Barrier wagons, recoded KBA for their new role.

That Fell looks the business, Jeff.

[user=1120]peterm[/user] wrote:

That Fell looks the business, Jeff.

Despite criticisms on some other forums, it captures the looks and character of it, I think.

I forgot to mention that my example had lights that worked in reverse, that is, the tail lights came on in the forward direction while the marker light at the top came on at the "back", in either direction of movement. I have fixed this with a tweak in JMRI Decoder Pro, reversing the way the head and tail lights work on the function button press, but the real answer will be either to swap the wires feeding the light circuits, or to swap the brush wires, as this was apparent even on straight DC, before fitting the decoder.

Now if you're anything like me, you'll have it apart and alter the wiring. A similar thing with led's and resistors. I don't use the cv settings to limit brightness but use resistors instead. Not just because I'm fussy, but if there's a need to reset the decoder and you forget to set up the cv's to limit brightness… poof.

[user=1120]peterm[/user] wrote:

Now if you're anything like me, you'll have it apart and alter the wiring. A similar thing with led's and resistors. I don't use the cv settings to limit brightness but use resistors instead. Not just because I'm fussy, but if there's a need to reset the decoder and you forget to set up the cv's to limit brightness… poof.

Yes, I definitely prefer the permanent fix rather than relying on CV changes. I had to rewire my early Dapol class 73 electro-diesel because of the complete hash they made of their PCB. Swapped the brush wires, cut tracks on the PCB and soldered wires to feed the cab lights separately to make them switchable as well.

Yet another "new" item has landed: I ordered a TMC weathered special 2 EPB in BR blue with small yellow panels when they had a few bargains. This one was listed as used, and is a little more heavily weathered than I would really like, but it is well done and in a livery Bachmann have never released in the standard catalogued range. 

It arrived and I popped it straight onto the test track to try on DC first. It ran as I have come to expect from all of these EPB and CEP models from Bachmann, which meant I could fit a decoder straight away. As usual, getting the body off is right royal pain, and I managed to knock a little black paint off the edges of the footboards, but that is easily touched up later. Once I had got the body off and finished swearing, I fitted my usual favourite decoder for these units, a Lenz Silver+ 21 pin device, programmed that to my usual settings using the unit number 5739 for the long address, 0 for the CV2 voltage start setting, 25 in CV3 and 18 in CV4, so it will match all the other EPBs I have.

The final job before coupling the two cars together and running them was to put Kadee #20 couplings in the cab end sockets.

I can remember the Southern DMU's as usually being filthy, specially in winter. Yours looks good, Jeff.

[user=1120]peterm[/user] wrote:

I can remember the Southern DMU's as usually being filthy, specially in winter. Yours looks good, Jeff.

The weathered one contrasting with a clean ex-shops unit. They could certainly look like this when it was too cold to use the carriage washing plants.

A slight difference.  :)