John Isherwood

I ordered one of these and it has now arrived. I can confirm that is is smaller and lighter than the Eclipse blackened pin vices that I have used for years, and is of excellent construction, closing right down to zero. If you need a small pin vice for those tiny drills - this is the one to get! John Isherwood.

Seven busses, yes. 2 x 2 for the two low voltage AC feeds and returns to the two plug-in controllers / rectifiers; 2 for the two low voltage DC outputs from the two plug-in controllers / rectifiers; 1 for the low voltage DC common return from the two plug-in controllers / rectifiers; total 7. Regards, John Isherwood.

Surely, by having the DC supply for each track section switched between the two controller circuits via a single pole, two way, centre off switch; with common return to the transformer / rectifier, it is not possible for a track section to be connected to more than one of the two controller busses? ..... or am I missing something basic? John Isherwood.

Firstly, the baseboards will be built by a professional, and he is well aware of the need for consistency and rigidity. Secondly, once the wiring, etc. is completed, I envisage clamping adjacent baseboards together using bolts and wing-nuts in close-fitting holes, so as to avoid differential movement between boards. Thenceforth, any work below a baseboard will simply require the removal of four bolts so that the board can hinge up. The baseboards will be supported by kitchen unit carcases, with kitchen wall cupboards above, which will restrict the angle to which the boards can be raised on the two long sides of the layout. However, it will be relatively simple to support the raised boards with some form of attachment to the cupboards. Lighting for the baseboards will be LED strips mounted beneath the wall cupboards, with LED downlighters elsewhere. I may well use plugs & sockets on the inter-baseboard jumper cables, simply so that an individual baseboard can be disconnected and raised up for problem isolation purposes. John Isherwood.

Yes - but at my age, indoor exercise is positively encouraged! (Anyway, with a well-oiled office chair on castors, getting around could be positively exhilarating! Regards, John Isherwood.

All, Thank you for your respective inputs - much appreciated. What I conclude is that my (very) basic understanding of cab control and common return - foraged from innumerable sources over fifty years - is essentially correct; (miracle)! I think that the way forward is to use 'chocolate block' connectors to support the seven bare copper bus wires, under the slightest of tension; with plug and socket jumper leads between individual boards. With locally sited section switches, no sections spanning adjacent boards, and on-board point control, no other inter-board wiring or mechanical connections should be needed. This implies no centralised control panel as such, but with several sockets for plug-in controllers around the layout, there should be flexibility as to control position; albeit at the expense of some initial movement around the layout whilst route-setting. (Got to get the daily exercise somehow)! Effectively, there will be several independent layouts butted together to form a circuit, each with their own section and point control switches, but with the ability to control a train around the combined layout from one or other of two controllers. I'll let you know if the theory works in practice! Thanks again, John Isherwood.

Thanks for that - greatly appreciated! Tedious I can do - lying on my back inside a kitchen cupboard carcase, dripping hot solder onto me is, nowadays, a step too far !! That is why I will have seven , well separated, labelled, substantial bare bus wires along the back edge of the underside of each board. The bus wires on each board will be linked by slack jumper cables. A standard seven-core jumper cable with plugs and sockets at each end, with a couple of spares as insurance, should do the trick. All control within an individual board - two-way, centre-off section switches, and mechanical point actuation / frog polarity slide swiches - will be locally located on that board. The controller interfaces (A & B) between the low voltage AC supply bus wires and the low voltage DC traction bus wires will each be capable of being plugged in at any of four pairs of locations. Please - input from any wiser heads than mine; (and there are many!); will be gratefully received. Regards, John Isherwood.

I am - after some fifty years procrastination, about to embark on what will be my first - and last - substantial model railway. NOTE : This is the final iteration of the layout design - it was originally intended to incorporate cassette units in the fiddle yard. I intend to use common return cab control, via two adjustable voltage regulator or H&M Walkabout controllers; (A & B). Each of the baseboards, (shown edged in thick blue in the drawing), will be hinged to the wall so that they can be individually raised at 45 degrees to permit under-baseboard work. (This is an essential requirement once you reach the age of 70+)! To permit the hinging, inter-baseboard wiring is to be avoided except at the rear, adjacent to the wall and hinges. It should be possible to run bus wires along the back edge of the baseboards, with slack inter-board links to allow for raising individual boards. Each electrical section will have a two-way, centre-off switch mounted locally at the baseboard edge, so that it can be driven by either of the two controllers. The four edges of the baseboard nearest to the centre well will each have a pair of sockets for the controllers to be plugged into, corresponding to the two controllers A & B. Point control will be mechanical from locally sited baseboard edge slide switches, which will also determine frog polarity. Track will be Peco Code 75 bullhead in the scenic upper half of the layout, and flat-bottomed track for the lower, fiddle yard half. Now I understand that cab control involves a common return serving two or more controllers, with separate feeds to the other rail, which is divided into sections that can be switched between the two or more controllers. My deduction from this basic understanding is that, on the DC side of the controllers, it will thus be necessary to have two individual DC feed bus wires - one for each controller; and one common DC return bus wire. However, I am somewhat less than clear how things would work with the low voltage AC feed from the two, separate mains transformers - it is my understanding that there have to be two completely separate transformers, rather than two low voltage outputs wound onto a single transformer core. Can the low voltage AC feeds from the separate transformers have a common return, or must they have entirely separate feeds and returns? The answer to this will determine whether I need three or four low voltage AC bus wires. My current wiring convention for my test track is to use five pin DIN plugs to connect walkabout controllers to the baseboards - two pins for low voltage AC input to the controller, and two pins for DC output to the track via section switches. I wish to perpetuate this convention on the new layout. I apologise for asking these very basic questions, but I have never before, in the last fifty years, needed to do anything more complex than to wire up a single test track board! I would be very grateful for comments, criticisms and corrections concerning the foregoing - I would like to get it right first time, given the rate that time flies by nowadays! Thanks in anticipation, John Isherwood.

A genuine question - not a contradiction. How do you identify this as vacuum-fitted? What I see below the buffers are the coupling hook and the Instanter coupling links - no vacuum bag; I can see no feature that says vacuum-fitted. I think that the somewhat rustic, brick-built, second chimney is a less than common variant, too !! John Isherwood.

I can tell you that my Heljan 1366 runs quite happily when powered by an H&M Walkabout controller or a Hornby trainset controller. John Isherwood.

...... and the enclosed double-deck car carriers used on the ANGLO-SCOTTISH CAR CARRIER service. John Isherwood.

Duly purchase - thanks. John Isherwood.

I know all about global warming and sea levels rising - but the thread title suggests that this is happening faster than I thought! John Isherwood.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ECLIPSE-PIN-VICE-SET-121-122-123-124-PIN-VICES/283964795444?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 John Isherwood.

Thank you very much. John.

Good - just my aging eyesight, then! John Isherwood.

Surely those are not single orange lines on the boiler cladding bands? If they are - surely that kind of thing was abandoned years ago? John Isherwood.

I have received a BACS payment from a Mr. S.C. GRAND, but no accompanying e-mail. If you are Mr. S.C. GRAND, or know him, please contact me via PM ASAP. Thank you in anticipation, John Isherwood, Cambridge Custom Transfers.

Oh - I don't know; a set of 121, 122, 123 & 124 for £9.99, with free P&P, is an absolute bargain in my book! John Isherwood.

A simple expression of my own experience / view - as you say, each to their own. Nothing combative about that - just a different point of view to your own. For what it's worth, I note that the majority of comments above refer to Hornby's green being too flat. John Isherwood.

Really?!? My experience is that Hornby are all too good at doing matt finishes themselves - usually on entirely the wrong shade of green. Certainly, the very few Hornby BR green locos that I have bought have all had to be repainted with Phoenix Precision green, and relined / lettered. John Isherwood.

No mention of any for the allocations that I have produced in the source document - and it did list them for other allocations. John Isherwood.

My mistake - I misread my own web-site! There are : - Sheet BL166B AA19 - W114939 - BULLO PILL R.U. Sheet BL166H-L AA3 - W56034 - LYDBROOK R.U. AA13 - W17808 - LYDNEY R.U. Not sure what you mean by "the end panel markings". John Isherwood.

The allocation was LYDBROOK & LYDNEY. John isherwood.

See the several variants of my transfer Sheet BL166 at https://www.cctrans.org.uk/products.htm These numbers / allocations are taken from a list of prototypical brakevan numbers / allocations. Regards, John Isherwood.