I've had my house in Cheltenham since September, and Bad Horn has pride of place in the living room. It's running reasonably well, and survived the journey from New Zealand very nicely- the only damage was a wire that had come away. Now I'm fairly settled, aside from the question of the next project, I'm undecided on whether or not to exhibit or not. Bad Horn is very easy to transport, fitting in the boot of a family sized car and only needs three people to make a full day/weekend of running an easy experience. I'm uncomfortably aware of how high modelling standards have become though, and I'm not sure whether my little BLT would stand up to scrutiny amongst the discerning crowd here in the UK. There are many missing details and a few anachronisms. If I run with my ex-DR fleet, the signalling is plain wrong.
There's three questions really- firstly, whether exhibition managers would actually be interested in it or not. I know German doesn't pull a crowd the way a British outline layout does. Secondly, whether I am willing to spend to buy the couple of locomotives I need to ensure I can operate realistically and reliably over a weekend. And thirdly, whether I really want to get tied up in the "scene" again- I've found much greater satisfaction the few years I've been out of things. The first question is easily answered, I just have to ask around. The second- well, if someone wanted to have Bad Horn on display, I think I'd jump at the excuse to buy a couple of locos. The third is tricky. I really enjoy anonymity, and going to Warley without having anyone talking scene politics at me was great.
If I don't exhibit, Bad Horn doesn't really have a future with me. I'm itching to build something new to a higher standard, rather than the budget approach I took when building BH. I've learned rather more about work order, and about the finer details of German railway as well. I don't have the space for multiple layouts at the moment, and as Bad Horn was not expensive to build I'd lose little sleep over scrapping it. But I can't forget the fact that it's the first layout I've built for exhibition with no-one else's help, and for that I should be proud. And it would be quite a buzz to say that I've exhibited it in both hemispheres!
Anyway, I've recently attempted to address an issue with running Bad Horn. The trackwork is Piko A-Track, which has plastic frogs. The double slip is troublesome for my Roco BR 364, as it is possible for half the wheels to be on plastic at any one time while crossing. Stalls were frequent, and I'd pretty well given up on using it. This left me short for my Epoch IV fleet (that which Bad Horn was built for!), so I really did want to try and sort her out. At Warley I picked up a DCC Concepts decoder with a Stay-Alive module, and installed it in the 364. After a little head scratching, I realised there was space alongside the cardan shaft without risk of fouling, and so got it fitted.
Then came testing. I did film it before and after fitting, but I'm afraid the "before" film has terrible heavy breathing on it, so I won't share that. Anyway, I'm not totally sold. Although not as prone to stalling as before, there's still stuttering over the slip and it can stop entirely. I'm aware that I can add further Stay-Alive modules for enhanced performance, but the enhancement falls some way short of demonstrations that I've seen of Lenz USP with Power 1. That said, it's a lot cheaper. The video below is with Stay-Alive.
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