I applied some weathering powders to the 13T Medfit wagon. I also realised that I didn't have any photos of my green Heljan 07 diesel electric shunter, so I killed two birds for the price of one, so to speak. D2990 has the same modification to its forward pickups as the blue D2989 in the previous post.

After a bit of a hiatus on the resin Merchant Navy, I have now filled the daylight under the firebox area with some white metal ashpan castings from RT Models, intended for Bulleid Light Pacifics, but more than adequate for the MN, seeing as I really don't want to scratch build them to the absolutely correct pattern. Being white metal, they have the added bonus of adding a little more weight over the rear driving axle.

The photos show the items glued into place, and after a first coat of black paint.

That looks much better Jeff.  :thumbs

Is the firebox just fixed with superglue ?

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

That looks much better Jeff.  :thumbs

Is the firebox just fixed with superglue ?

Hi Peter, yes, at present there is only superglue holding it. The side in the photos actually broke, so there is very little contact area. I will be reinforcing the joints on both sides with either some hot glue or some Araldite. Both types of glue have a bit of 'body' to add some mechanical strength to a joint.

Recently received from Modelu were these figures which are 3D printed, and represent loco crews from the Edwardian and 1940s-50s period, plus some Edwardian seated passengers. There are also a few of the Hattons crews left over from a previous purchase on my rather dirty workbench as well, all in the process of being painted. The Edwardian ladies costumes are going to benefit from some fine detail painting. All are at present only roughly finished, and the colours I have chosen are rather arbitrary as there are no period photos in colour to give me any clues/ideas. All of these figures had an initial coat of black applied before adding other colours.

The aim is to populate some of the pre-grouping locos with fairly open cabs, and also the Stephenson's Rocket coaches with the passengers.





 
The Hatton's crews come up as looking quite natural in their poses, and the Modelu ones will be just as successful - I think that Modelu might have been responsible for the Hatton's commission. Here's a photo I have posted before, with one of the Hatton's figures in a Dapol B4 0-4-0T.

   

I tried running my Hornby SECR H 0-4-4T the other day, and it was very hesitant. The balance was right out, with it leaning back on its bogie, and the front drivers barely touching the rails. I decided to insert a washer above the bogie, which meant dismantling it somewhat to get at the bogie retaining screw from above. I tried a plastic washer - too thick; then a paper washer - too thin; so decided today to make a brass shim washer, which actually seems to have worked nicely. The H has been trundling around for quite a while now without stalling or trying to leave the rails.


While I had it open, I took out the Hattons direct decoder and put in a DCC Concepts one, which has given marginally better motor control. I must try to get a better decoder for it, but the choices are limited because there is very little room inside.

Interesting problems Jeff given that the loco is not from the dark ages.  Did it run OK out of the box ?  Not a particularly good advert for Hornby…….. :roll:

Regarding decoders, I have no idea what size the Hattons one is but had thought they were manufactured by DCC Concepts …….. :hmm   If that is the case, there's not likely to be much difference between the two I'd have thought.

Have you looked at the Zimo range ?  I'm a big fan now although I do admit to being a total novice on such things.

Agreed regarding Zimo, I have them fitted in a Hornby Terrier (MX622N) and Peckett (MX617N). Then the remaining issue I have is not the Chip but the attendant stay-alive gear. 

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

Interesting problems Jeff given that the loco is not from the dark ages.  Did it run OK out of the box ?  Not a particularly good advert for Hornby…….. :roll:

Regarding decoders, I have no idea what size the Hattons one is but had thought they were manufactured by DCC Concepts …….. :hmm   If that is the case, there's not likely to be much difference between the two I'd have thought.

Have you looked at the Zimo range ?  I'm a big fan now although I do admit to being a total novice on such things.

The DCC Concepts one I have used is slightly smaller, and seems to behave better, but as I said I do want a better one still. It needs a direct plug-in 8-pin decoder. Even the TCS DP2X-UK looks to be too big for the space, although I could try one to see if it fits and works better. I have found that particular decoder to be variable in quality, with some working beautifully and others having odd quirks. 

Then again, I think DCC Concepts have borrowed some of TCS's technology for their designs, and then passed that onto the badge-engineered versions for Hatton's and Rails.

[user=2170]Colin W[/user] wrote:

Agreed regarding Zimo, I have them fitted in a Hornby Terrier (MX622N) and Peckett (MX617N). Then the remaining issue I have is not the Chip but the attendant stay-alive gear. 

I do like Zimo, and will have a look at the range on YouChoos's site to see what might fit, next time I'm ready to buy some decoders and/or sounds from them.

I have equipped my H with a Lenz silver mini with which it runs extremely well. I bought the wires-only version and soldered (and shortened) the wires to an 8-pin plug to give me the flexibility of replacing it. What surprised me was how big the interference supressor was! It's actually slightly bigger than the Lenz decoder, so when removed the decoder sits in its place on top of the motor held firm with a small piece of double-sided sticky pad. 

[user=1238]RFS[/user] wrote:

I have equipped my H with a Lenz silver mini with which it runs extremely well. I bought the wires-only version and soldered (and shortened) the wires to an 8-pin plug to give me the flexibility of replacing it. What surprised me was how big the interference supressor was! It's actually slightly bigger than the Lenz decoder, so when removed the decoder sits in its place on top of the motor held firm with a small piece of double-sided sticky pad. 

Thanks for the suggestion. Quite coincidentally, I am in the process of ordering a Lenz Silver Direct decoder - just shopping around for the best price.  :cheers

My best-running Hornby rebuilt West Country, 34053 'Sir Keith Park' suddenly stopped and refused to move, with the motor humming. I dismantled it to check the motor and gear chain, and sure enough, the known weakness in some of Hornby's gears has reared its head, with both gears on the layshaft in the gear tower splitting.

I cleaned the gears in some IPA, then tried filling the gaps and supergluing them to prevent slippage on the shaft, but that still resulted in jamming, albeit with some movement possible.   Fortunately, I had a couple of spare sets of these gears in one of my boxes, so after a bit of searching I was able to replace the problem set.

Testing with these fitted showed it to be running better than ever, so reassembly commenced. Before doing that, I had to resolder one of the wires to the tender coupling that had come adrift.  Reassembly of these models is fiddly, but I managed to get it back together without damaging the plastic motion brackets or severing any of the wires.

Another test was carried out on the main lines, then it was reversed back into the engine shed roads.

   
  

I often wonder how much extra it would cost to fit metal gears instead of splitting prone plastic ones; I suppose they hope to make more money on spares and/or repairs

Well done Jeff.  :pathead


If that had been mine, I fear it would have become a static model pending construction of a scrap yard diorama …………. :oops:

[user=1397]Dorsetmike[/user] wrote:

I often wonder how much extra it would cost to fit metal gears instead of splitting prone plastic ones; I suppose they hope to make more money on spares and/or repairs

A friend of mine is a watchmaker, and also collects older model railways, so quite often turns up gears or axles or other parts to get his models running again. He actually saw my post on Facebook (Platform 1 MRC group), and suggested he could try turning some brass rings to sit over the projecting boss on one of the gears, but there is nothing to seat such a ring on the other gear on the same shaft. It could still be worth a try.

A new second-hand purchase for me, from Hatton's at not too bad a price was this Roco Swedish Rc5 locomotive in an obsolete but still around livery. I knew it was an older model so was not DCC ready, but a quick test on Dc showed all was very well indeed with the motor and electrics, so I set about wiring a DCC decoder in. This involved cutting the tracks on the PCB to separate the lights and brush feeds out, then soldering the appropriate decoder wires to the various components. This also involved adding a few jumper wires to connect the lights' return (blue wire) and the red and black track feeds from each end of the locomotive. I chose a budget Zimo MX600 decoder for the job.

Testing on the programming track again showed all was well with my wiring. I had to resolder one wire that had come adrift from its bogie pickup during my handling of the loco, but other than that it worked perfectly first go anyway. I have removed the weight at one end to sit the decoder on top of the bogie gear tower, held in place by a bit of black tack - there is plenty of weight in the chassis in any case. That black wire should have been tidied up and run along the side of the PCB; I'll fix that up next time I take the body off.

Now all I have to do is add all the handrails and other add-on bits that came sealed in their bag in the box, and choose a number from the transfer sheet that was also included.

Also on the workbench is my Rails/Dapol SECR D class 4-4-0, which has now had real coal added to the tender. I have almost finished painting up a suitable crew for that nice open cab.

They both look great Jeff. Great work on fitting the decoder. 

Thanks Chris.

:cheers

Next project:

While adding strengthening braces to the undersides of the drawers in an Ikea Alex unit with all my (heavy!) locomotives in, I had to remove all the locos as I took each drawer out. I found a good few little bits and pieces that had fallen off various locomotives and their couplings. Among those bits was a pair of air hoses from a class 73. I identified the loco as 73 141 in First GBRf livery, an earlier release Dapol model that had lighting faults built-in to the PCB through poor design and lack of quality control on Dapol's part. I had already fixed one early model, in (sort of) BR early blue, and decided I would treat this model as well while I had it out.

The problems with these models were that the headcode and headlights (where fitted for the latter) worked the wrong way when a DCC decoder was fitted - forwards for the model resulted in the rear lights coming on, and reverse meant the front lights came on. There were a couple of fixes for this: one was to swap the F0f and F0r functions on the decoder, another was to reverse the brush wire connections on the PCB (which was the one I chose). Either solution results in the lights working the wrong way again if the decoder is removed and the model restored to DC only working.

The other lighting problem was that the cab lights at both ends were permanently on when the model was powered; on DCC that's all the time! Dapol's so-called solution was to advise owners to put some tape over the two contact pads at one end behind the cab mouldings, which then left the cab lights permanently off. Someone quite some time ago posted the solution to fix this, which involved cutting two tracks and soldering two jumper wires. I did this with the previous model, and decided to repeat it on this one too. Once done, it allowed the cab light at No. 1 end to be operated with F1, and that at the No. 2 end on F2 (on a Zimo MX634 non-sound decoder). Once I had this successfully operating, I reprogrammed the outputs slightly to switch the cab lights off at anything above speed step 0. the pictures show the headcode and headlight operating independently of the cab lights, and combinations of both cabs on or off, and each one in turn on.












Now all I have to do is give it a really good run, as the pickups are a bit dirty so the loco is spluttering a bit on the tracks.