Freelance 00 layout

Hi Phil and Colin, Many thanks for your feedback.
I have been using IPA for many years and decided to try out  Inox to see if it works any better.
Its more an experiment and definitely not a recommendation.
I am spraying it on the pad of the CMX tank rather than using the tank as it only requires a little - as Colin pointed out, it doesn't evaporate.
As I have only been using it for a few weeks its too early to tell if it will better in the long term and from my perspective will not reduce the amount of time I spent on track cleaning. 
I will post my experiences as time progresses.
 

[user=434]John Dew[/user] wrote:

Thanks Dave

I have good news and bad news:
The good news : I can buy 100 gm of INOX in Canada for $15
The bad news :    It will cost $45 for delivery etc etc. :shock:  Alternatively Amazon Prime will deliver it FREE for $65  :twisted:
A combination of this and Phil's comment mean I am having second thoughts! Although I will be interested to hear how you and Pete get on with spraying it on to the CMX pad

Another question is about the preferred method of propulsion:

 PeteM pushes    PhilC pulls   You push AND pull       are there any other bids?

Looks like you have the same issue as we do in Australia when you try to buy something from overseas via Amazon and a few big name online stores -
 I agree that you should give experimenting a miss and stick to the tried and trusted.! 
In the past I have experimented with liquid track cleaners - one in particular comes to mind that smelt of oranges - it was sticky and I only used it once!!
 So far with INOX in conjunction with the CMX truck the results have been good and to date I have not experienced any dust/ hair etc  attraction - but it is early days yet!  I have noticed that my small locos and sound locos are not prone to the same cutting out that I occasionally experience if the track is not spotlessly clean but again this may be a coincidence.

In regards to the push and pull - I'm sure you had your tongue planted in your cheek - but for the record before I "discovered" the two American locos I used a single class 33 Heljan that was strong enough to push and pull the CMX around the track . I guess the optimal way is to push so that any crud is picked up before it gets to the loco wheels but this is not always practical especially if RR&Co is controlling the loco and sending it along all clear tracks.

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

Yes Colin,

I got stuck in yesterday. Cleaned track with IPA and then applied Inox. No difference and I did think the dust attraction might be a complication.

Back to IPA after a wasted hour and a half!

John,

Don't bother! I can't see where all these adoring comments come from on his website, but I won't be adding to them. Inox is made in Australia, so might be hard to get hold of anyway.

Hi Peter,
Sorry if I wasted your time - I'm finding that with the CMX wagon a small amount of Inox sprayed on the pad is cleaning the track and there is no need for the IPA.  As for the dust attraction - the jury is still out.

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

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

Yes Colin,

I got stuck in yesterday. Cleaned track with IPA and then applied Inox. No difference and I did think the dust attraction might be a complication.

Back to IPA after a wasted hour and a half!

John,

Don't bother! I can't see where all these adoring comments come from on his website, but I won't be adding to them. Inox is made in Australia, so might be hard to get hold of anyway.

Hi Peter,
Sorry if I wasted your time - I'm finding that with the CMX wagon a small amount of Inox sprayed on the pad is cleaning the track and there is no need for the IPA.  As for the dust attraction - the jury is still out.

No not at all. You supplied a link and I chose to dive in. Maybe I overdid it with the Inox. I might even run round with a clean rag to wipe off any excess I might have put on.

I enjoyed the rant, at least he got the bit about abrasive cleaning pads right. They just create scratches that gunk collects in. Plus there is a significant decrease in adhesion and traction. 

IPA 70% and above does not leave water on the track. When evaporating the IPA takes the water with it (the IPA reduces the surface tension allowing coevaporation). An OWT. 

MX3 is light mineral oil with an unspecified ketone in it. Cleans the track and leaves a layer of oil which evaporates very slowly and will attract dust and gunk from locomotives. Wonder what does to the traction? The GWR used to lube up a siding at Fairford and run stationary steam locomotives on it to determine the speed at which wheel lift (from piston throw) occured. 


Nigel

I did a bit of research on INOX MX3 - it's basically white mineral oil with some proprietary (secret) additives, including an unspecified ketone. If left it dries to a hard finish. I suspect once you start using it you can't stop and let it dry out.

White mineral oil is around $8 for 16 fl oz (473 ml) from Amazon US. INOX MX3 is $7.95 for 125ml.

IPA solutions leave no residue (unless you inadvertently use rubbing alcohol). MX3 apparently will.

It sounds interesting for treating electrical connections and the like, but I'll stick with the prototype for the rails - metal to metal.

Nigel

Its been a while since I posted an update on NotMutley.
Apart from my purchase of the Dapol Manor and the hassles of trying to program the Dapol Imperium decoder to get really good slow running ( still working on that), I have been working on tidying up the mass of wiring under the layout with the help of  Double row , 12 position terminal screw strips  which has helped enormously in sorting things out. Its still a work in progress ( I have installed 6 of them so far).
Inspired by tidier under-the-board wiring I have also been putting lighting into the houses, shops and streets using the xmas LEDS I purchased 4 years ago] :oops: .  link

As you all would have experienced one thing leads to another and in the course of putting lights into the existing building I decided it was time to tidy up the town area of the layout - an exercise that quickly showed that I did not have sufficient buildings. So for the past two months I have been using Scalescenes high street shop fronts T005 and  backs T005a. Low relief department store T006 and Low relief house front T008 to build up enough shops etc for the main road.
I use cereal packets for the cardboard and fortunately had kept a large number so I didn't have to eat cereals at every meal to get the necessary empty boxes  

This is a photo of the high street shops  on the kitchen benchtop whilst I tested the lighting.  - I found the claim that they can be used in conjunction with the high street backs to make a stand alone building as being very simplistic and building them as a realistic stand alone building(s) would require a lot of modification to get the right depth, roof pitch and the chimneys located correctly.


These are the shops built from the low relief house front templates.  I am tempted to replace the chimney pots as they look oversized …. maybe…  A photo of the back of these building would reveal the names of the many cereals I eat!!


Now I have to get them installed on the layout and connected up to an ESU switchpilot so that I can control them via the train controller software as I use TC as a control panel.  As the output from the ESU is 12volts I have to make sure that I connect them via resistors to bring the voltage down to 4V that the LEDs run on. ( testing is done using the original battery supplied voltage that came with the LEDS)

Re TC - I bit the bullet and upgraded to V10 of TC - not yet installed it but received the activation code almost immediately so I'm not sure when the USB destruction comes into play :???:

Nice shops Dave.   :thumbs

When the time comes, (soon…)  I need to start getting my head around Scalescenes modifications although I'm currently thinking of using 5mm foam board for the carcass…………….. :hmm

I'll then need to understand LED lighting…….. :???:  You say yours run on 4 volts - is that from choice or are they rated at 4 volts ?  Similarly, when running several of them together, does each one need a resistor or is it just one resistor for the whole circuit ?

Hi Dave

As Peter said, the shops look very impressive - nice job!  :thumbs

I looked at marrying parts of that high street rear kit with the hotel. I rejected it as being too complicated and finished up scratch building the rear but embellishing it with detail from the kit.

Congratulations on your TC V10 purchase! . I think you will find that the USB destruction process starts after you enter the activation code - have fun!

Best wishes

[user=6]Petermac[/user] wrote:

Nice shops Dave.   :thumbs

When the time comes, (soon…)  I need to start getting my head around Scalescenes modifications although I'm currently thinking of using 5mm foam board for the carcass…………….. :hmm

I'll then need to understand LED lighting…….. :???:  You say yours run on 4 volts - is that from choice or are they rated at 4 volts ?  Similarly, when running several of them together, does each one need a resistor or is it just one resistor for the whole circuit ?

Thanks Peter.
Before you load up with 5mm foam board I suggest that you have a go at a simple ( and free ) download - Coal office  from the Scalescene website.  I have a number of them on the layout as trackside huts. 

I suggest this as the kits are built from three thicknesses of cardboard  Thick, medium and light which in cereal box talk is 3, 2 and 1 layer of cereal box cardboard.  (I paste the cardboard together with PVA and weight them down as I empty the contents.) The heavy card is only 2mm thick and the kits come with internal detail so 5mm foam may be more trouble than it is worth. Once completed I have found them to be very robust ( except for chimney pots !)


The LEDS I am using for the shop and street lighting use 4.5 volts as that was the max output of the 3 batteries that would normally illuminate them on a Xmas tree.  I use the battery power pack for testing but will run them via a 12 volt power supply from the ESE switchpilot decoder. 

 To drop the voltage to accommodate LEDS I used to always use resistors but now I use a Gaugemaster product that eliminates a lot of the guesswork and fiddling around with small resistors. Originally sold by DCC Concepts the product is now sold by Gaugemaster  GM995 Light Control  Light]https://www.gaugemasterretail.com/magento/catalogsearch/result/?q=gm895]Light control   It has separate outputs for incandescent lamps and LEDs  plus it has a built in rheostat that allows you to control the light intensity once the lights are wired up - this is very useful in getting consistent lighting across the layout.
In the case of the Xmas tree lights I have found that the rheostat will drop the output voltage to 4.5V  but other LEDS may still require a resistor at each lamp.  I have forgotten most of my high school physics - ohms law etc - so I revert to experimenting and checking with my voltmeter before I connect to the power supply. 
 

[user=434]John Dew[/user] wrote:

Hi Dave

As Peter said, the shops look very impressive - nice job!  :thumbs

I looked at marrying parts of that high street rear kit with the hotel. I rejected it as being too complicated and finished up scratch building the rear but embellishing it with detail from the kit.

Congratulations on your TC V10 purchase! . I think you will find that the USB destruction process starts after you enter the activation code - have fun!

Best wishes

Thanks John, 
I find that lighting in buildings makes for good "eye candy" and distracts from any flaws in the building

I started the V10 activation process but stopped and reverted back to V9 until I have finished my current project of installing the new buildings, connecting them to the stationary decoder and updating the switchboard in TC to make sure it all works. That done I will then restart the activation process as I understand V10 will not work until Freiwald has viewed my destroyed USB and okayed the activation which I assume  will not be a quick process if his IT department is like most!. :twisted:
The delay will also give me time to hunt through the garage to find my hacksaw!!  - or did I lend it to my son !  :shock:

Apart from the fact that I couldn't find the hacksaw and ended up using a Dremel the upgrade went OK.  Although there appears to be a trap. This was my experience - I started the activation process but then decide I would do it later and shut down everything including the computer.  Later, which turned out to be the next day, when I tried to activate it didn't   automatically send me to the "show me the dead USB page" that it had gone to the day before instead it just gave me a message saying activation was not complete.  
After a fe w seconds of panic - I called up the web browsing history for the day before, found the webpage and clicked on it - voila - problem solved.

Now I'm using V10 I have already found that the ability to input slow running values is a god send.  No more spending hours and hours fine tuning the speed profile and decoder settings !  Brilliant. 

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

Now I'm using V10 I have already found that the ability to input slow running values is a god send.  No more spending hours and hours fine tuning the speed profile and decoder settings !  Brilliant. 

Glad you got it activated ok Dave!

Could you expand on "input slow running values" - I havent come across that yet or is it just applicable to sound decoders?

[user=434]John Dew[/user] wrote:

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

Now I'm using V10 I have already found that the ability to input slow running values is a god send.  No more spending hours and hours fine tuning the speed profile and decoder settings !  Brilliant. 

Glad you got it activated ok Dave!

Could you expand on "input slow running values" - I havent come across that yet or is it just applicable to sound decoders?

Hi John,
It can be found in the Engine set up  under "speed"  Click on "Automatic Sped and brake " and you will see the usual tabs plus a new tab called Start Behaviour" 

I was checking out the software and happened upon it and threw some values into the first 5 steps to see what impact it had when starting a loco in a schedule - big difference !   It looks like it can be triggered? ( enabled) by a function so even more to discover!

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

[user=434]John Dew[/user] wrote:

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

Now I'm using V10 I have already found that the ability to input slow running values is a god send.  No more spending hours and hours fine tuning the speed profile and decoder settings !  Brilliant. 

Glad you got it activated ok Dave!

Could you expand on "input slow running values" - I havent come across that yet or is it just applicable to sound decoders?

Hi John,
It can be found in the Engine set up  under "speed"  Click on "Automatic Sped and brake " and you will see the usual tabs plus a new tab called Start Behaviour" 

I was checking out the software and happened upon it and threw some values into the first 5 steps to see what impact it had when starting a loco in a schedule - big difference !   It looks like it can be triggered? ( enabled) by a function so even more to discover!

Thanks Dave

Do you know if these speeds can be activated in a schedule at any time or only at the start? I was thinking about limited distance moves for instance.

[user=434]John Dew[/user] wrote:

Thanks Dave

Do you know if these speeds can be activated in a schedule at any time or only at the start? I was thinking about limited distance moves for instance.

Hi John,
I haven't had a chance to have a good look at them yet. There does appear to be a link to functions though.

 OMG!!  Its been 14 months since I last posted on NotMutley.  !!
As mentioned in my last post on the forum SWMBO has been talking about downsizing and the thought of having to dismantle the layout sent shivers down my spine and all work on the layout came to an abrupt halt.
The talk about downsizing continues as I was recently diagnosed with Mammalian Meat Allergy which was the result of me being bitten by too many ticks whilst gardening. ( You wont find them mentioned in a tourist guide to Australia) I now have to avoid getting bitten by the little buggers and I have to avoid any meat from marsupials and mammals. ( Although the immunoligist tells me that human meat is Ok - just in case I feel like biting SWMBO's head off  )  Not only does he have a weird sense of humour but his solution was to sell the house and move somewhere that doesnt have ticks - like an apartment.!!
Anyway despite that all talk of downsizing has been put on hold as the grandkids dont want us to move as they love our swimming pool.!!

I have however started working through all the rolling stock I have acquired over the past 20 years and have made a list of the ones I should get rid off. I am embarressed to say that I have almost 250 locos thats not including ones I ordered almost three years ago and are still to be delivered. ( An Accurascale Class 37 arrived three weeks ago and the Kernow Models Steam Coach arrived lat week - both beautiful models.   What do they call it Stuff acquired beyond life expectancy -  SABLE.  To date my SABLE has been very stable!!

My goal now is to tidy up the layout and get rid of surplus gear and play trains -
 

Good to hear from you Dave and sorry to hear about the allergy.

Good luck with trying to decide what's surplus, lost count of how many times I've thought 'I wish I hadn't got rid of that'  




Ed