SRman

I can confirm what Tim said: there was no accessory pack, and all the pipes and couplings were already mounted in place.

Doug, I wasn't sure whether to click the 'thanks' icon or the 'funny' one!! Trains running on the other end?? Ha ha!! Actually, I do want to get some carpentry done during this holiday, if the weather permits, and also my shoulders and back. Once I get the church hill properly sculpted (another job for this holiday), I will take you up on the kind offer for the static grass applicator. I would like some longer grass in the cemetery area and the rougher slopes of the hill. Many thanks for that offer. Mrs SRman and I will try to catch up very soon with you, Mrs DougN and Miss DougN (in the absence of Master DougN - when is he due back?).

It could also be Charlie's clever sales pitch, aimed at getting you to buy more Pacers!

Hi Rodney. The church is approximately 20 cm along the side (facing left in the photos) and a shade under 19 cm across what I have as the front, where the access road and car park is. The rear part is narrower without the tower. From those dimensions you can judge roughly how much land is around it. The church itself was the second one produced in Hornby's Skaledale range. I think it is the largest church they have produced, to date, but there have been others in the range. I hope that helps a bit.

Methinks Derek has been sniffing the glues again!

There is still much to do with regards to tracklaying and scenery on Newton Broadway, but most of it is dependent on doing things in the right order. However, a few bits are half ready. Some time ago I made up the 'skeleton' of Newton Church Hill, and left it painted dark brown, just before a BRMA meeting. I seem to be hosting one BRMA meeting per year, usually in August. For the following meeting (last year), I added some road textures from Scalescenes and pavement from Superquick, with a very small amount of grass and a couple of trees, just to "beautify" it a bit. For this year's meeting, I did nothing new apart from tidying it up a bit. It looked a bit dreary, but I haven't really finished the landscaping yet - it needs some more packing and a bit of plastering to do it properly - but I don't feel like doing the messy stuff at the moment, so I decided to do a layer of grass material to liven it up a bit until I am ready to make a mess again. The results to date are shown in the photos. There is a staircase to go in leading down from the church and upper car park to the access laneway below, and I plan to do some rough stone retaining walls where the cutting is, and also at the edge of the drop from the upper car park. The lower level will become part of the cemetery.

Now for a simple task (albeit, requiring steady hands): fitting further etched nameplates to a few more locomotives. Two more of my class 73s have now had the printed plates covered with proper etched versions: 73 004, The Bluebell Railway, and 73 129, City of Winchester, both look much better now with their Fox Transfers etched stainless steel plates. Both are on Hornby chassis, but 73 004 has a Lima body. I mix and match bodies on the Hornby chassis - I have eight of the chassis but around 12 bodies of both Lima and Hornby origins. A banger blue Heljan class 47 also got the treatment. 47 508, S. S. Great Britain, now sports the Fox plates.

There are many examples of wagons being used because they happened to be available, rather than being totally suited to the items required to be carried. The converse of Conflats being used for non-container traffic is non-container wagons being used for containers; things like Lowfits, clearly labelled "Not to be used for Containers" being used for containers!

I don't think I've ever had a truly quiet Lima model, although I have had a couple of really good runners - one I still have was good enough to convert to DCC (a class 31). For the most part, I haven't considered Lima locomotives worth the effort to convert, but every so often a good 'un comes along. The wheels and electrical pickup arrangements also play a part in my decisions; none of my pure Lima class 73s passed my criteria, and even this one with the ModelTorque motor only just got in. Having added the Hornby bogie, it has now become far more acceptable. One other thing I have not mentioned before: an added bonus of the Hornby bogie was the NEM pocket and much smaller coupling.

I bit the bullet and took the old decoder out, and added a Lenz Standard+ v.2 in its place. This decoder has improved the running out of sight, although it looks like I'll have to add an extra resistance into the line, as even on the lowest settings, the locomotive jumps forwards. The running itself is now extremely steady, so having BEMF controls seems to be part of the answer with this motor. I used JMRI Decoder Pro to create a speed table and limit the top speed to something reasonable (the real locomotives had an official top speed of 90 mph, although at least two have been clocked at 107 mph on the Bournemouth line). There is more to do, but I am now pretty happy with the quality of the running of this locomotive. I have been progressively fitting etched nameplates to all of my locomotives, but Broadlands has eluded me as none of the plate manufacturers that I can deal with from here in Australia seem to offer them.

Some years ago, I decided to try and improve the running qualities of one of my Lima class 73 models by replacing the Lima armature with a ModelTorque motor (available from the manufacturer just a couple of kilometres up the road from me at the time - sadly no longer available since the passing of the man responsible for them). This was almost a drop-in replacement but promised much better, smoother and more responsive running. It still used the Lima gearing and did deliver what was promised, although the Lima gearing did it no favours, but it would go from a crawl to around 350 mph. The top speed was later tamed a little with a diode pack supplied by the manufacturer. At this time I was still using analogue DC. It was still totally dependent on the Lima brass wheels and dodgy electrical pickups, however. That remained the achilles heel for running qualities. Hard-wiring a Bachmann decoder allowed much finer tuning for the motor speeds and also tamed the acceleration and deceleration using the inertia/momentum settings, but still those brass weheels and poor electrical characteristics prevented reliable running, with the occasional prod from a large finger being needed. A partial solution has since become available in the form of a Hornby dummy bogie from Peter's Spares. The Hornby bogie not only has better wheels but also picks up from both sides of the bogie, where the Lima one only picked up from one side. Fitting the bogie required the hole in the chassis for the original Lima one to be enlarged a little, using a round file. The Hornby bogie could then be clipped in, after first threading the two wires through. When I originally rewired the Lima chassis for DCC, I followed the convention of using a red wire for the right-hand track feed from the power bogie (which is always the number 2 end of the Lima/Hornby models). Hornby have very kindly marked one of the two black wires from the new bogie with a red patch - this also goes to the right-hand side of the bogie. I simply soldered the red-patch wire to my existing red connections, and the black wires together, then tested for short-circuits before putting the loco on the programming track and double-checking that all was well. Doing this modification means that I have electrical pickup from four decent quality wheels on the dummy bogie, and two (on one side only) through the Lima brass driven wheels. I could wire up extra pickups for the remaining two wheels on the motor bogie but these also have traction tyres, so the benefit would be marginal, to say the least. Anyway, the running, while not perfect, has improved considerably, to the point where 73 142, Broadlands, can now rejoin the main fleet and not be parked languishing at the back of the drawer. In the photos, the motor bogie looks like it has a standard Lima 'pancake' motor, whereas, in fact, the ModelTorque motor is installed from the other side, away from the camera. The first photo shows the new bogie clipped in place after opening out the hole, with the two wires floating loose, and the original Lima clip arrangement also detached, awaiting removal. The second photo shows everything soldered in place and all joints covered with heat-shrink tubing. I had to use a short stretch of red decoder wire to extend the reach of the Hornby wire to the original wiring. I'll post a short video to demonstrate the improved running in a short time - I'll edit this post to include it. EDIT: OK, video delayed - it ran smoothly enough until I got the camera out, then the main drive gear started slipping! I'll try again when the glue has set properly. 2nd EDIT: I finally got the video, edited it and then uploaded it to YouTube (even that took ages, for some reason). I may have to consider putting a newer, better decoder ... I'm not even certain that the existing one has BEMF facilities, it's that old!

Having bought a Zimo MX645 sound decoder with YouChoos's S15 sounds installed, I have updated the speaker installation in the Hornby S15 now, after initially fitting a smaller speaker a few days ago that was easier to fit. I had to trim some of the square base plate from the QSI 28mm hi-bass speaker to then fit it below the tender weight, which still sits a little higher than it used to - I have used some Blu-tack and black-tack to anchor it in place. The speaker itself has had all the edges sealed against the grille in the tender's baseplate so that the tender body acts as the sound chamber. It was all a very tight fit, and I thought I might have to cut a hole in the coal space to allow bits to poke through, but I *just* managed to get it all inside without any modifications. I was so busy soldering wires and seating everything that I forgot to take any photos of the internals to show how it was all done. I have done a new video to show off the slightly better bass response for the YouChoos sounds. Also in the video is my Hornby Q1 with a fairly recent iteration of the Howes steam sounds, which has coasting, light and heavy power sounds according to the throttle settings. Forgive a couple of slightly shaky camera bits, but I was using my phone again. It's picture quality is not as good as my proper video camera, but it does have two microphones which give a rather nice stereo effect, and this vid is more about the sounds than about the visuals. [url] [/url]

Legomanbiffo (also through DC Kits) has some projects that are suitable for v3.5 decoders. You can email them to request a list of those projects they have.

Swindon class 123 in first and second photos. They were sent 'oop norf' to work intermixed with the remains of the Trans-Pennine class 124 units, one of which is seen the third photo. I hope Peter doesn't mind me chipping in first.

p.s. I hope no one took my comment as being a criticism of the video lengths - it wasn't intended that way. I, too, noticed the scale model flying 'birds'! At first when one of them was on the ground i thought Phil had one of those animated figures that can be bought from time to time.

Where you been, boy? Them thar is them new-fangled steam railmotors! p.s. There are some cracking shots in this topic. I like the Marsh Lane photos and there are some interesting combinations shown. I only have any memories of Marsh Lane and Neville Hill from the mid-1980s onwards, and even then, only from occasional use within fairly short periods of time (my mother was living in Barwick in Elmet and I was using trains to Crossgates on my occasional visits to Leeds).

A slightly gratuitous short video showing my 'other' two Hornby modified ex-LSWR coaches in crimson as loose coaches attached to set 105 (in green), hauled by my newly converted to sound Hornby S15.

I always like your videos, Phil, even though i can't always find the time to watch them right through. Keep them coming, I say.

Could you tell us whose sound you have fitted into Hogwarts Castle, please?

A new one from me, with a sound supplier I hadn't tried before. This is a quick video done on my HTC phone to give a taster for YouChoos's SR S15 sounds. The 23mm QSI high-bass speaker I have used is adequate but no more than that. I will be trying out a 28mm high-bass one soon, and sealing it in better too. Once I'm happy with the sound quality, I'll post a better video with more of the sound functions featured. I do like the YouChoos sounds though; it's just the speaker installation that is not doing it justice at present. I chose YouChoos after hearing DougN's LNER Q6. I have to say that John, of YouChoos, was extremely helpful and friendly, with lots of useful advice regarding the installation. [

For those who haven't seen Kernow's latest newsletter, I'm sure they won't object to me posting the latest details on deliveries to date (this is simply copied and pasted from their email): "The current position is 1st sweep completed on MR-101, MR-102, MR-107, and MR-108. 1st sweep in progress on MR103 and MR-104. Yet to be delivered are MR-105, MR-106, MR-109 and MR-110. The number of orders awaiting processing as of this morning was 46 remaining for MR-101, 146 remaining for MR-102, 372 remaining for MR-103, 487 remaining for MR-104, 20 remaining for MR-107, and 78 remaining for MR-108. The 1st sweep is where we process as many orders as quickly as possible, which means skipping any orders with invalid or expired card details for example. On the 2nd sweep we then take each order in turn and contact the customer to update card details. We do it this way to get through the orders as quickly as possible - it takes four times as long to process an order with an invalid card compared to an order which has no issues." I am awaiting my green MR-104, but it looks like I, together with quite a few others, will just have to be patient for a little longer.

Sorry about coming in late, here. Most DMUs were blue square; blue star applied to most classes of diesel electric locomotives. At least some of the 79XXX Met-Cam units had the rubber panel, but I have no idea whether or not that was applied to all members of the type.

I'm getting to the stage where I am going to pull the lighting units out and hard-wire them. I can get intermittent contact when replacing the body but they won't stay lit when the body is screwed down. the spring contacts are aligned properly with the floor contacts, so I'm beginning to suspect the contacts from the springy bits to the actual lighting pcb. I know the lights can work because all of them have been able to light up while I juggle the body and contacts around. I may leave the red lights out at one end, since I only have a coupling fitted at that end, so most of the time the red lights won't be needed at that end. I have some 2- and 3-pin connectors i can use so the body can still be removed when necessary.

It's like a box lid, with those sort of wings attached too. I levered one of the 'wings' outwards, with a screwdriver very close to the bogie tower, pointing downwards towards the track. This then released the 'lid' so it pops off and upwards.

Nicely summarised there, Kubes. Kevin: There were many minor variations in various builds of Bulleid coaches, and a couple of major ones. The BRCW ones were, as mentioned, distinctly different, with their shallower windows. The earliest builds were what we tend to refer to as 'multi-door' stock, with doors to each compartment, and to every second compartment (roughly) on the corridor side. The first sets were on 59' underframes (eight sets), while the last four sets were on 64' frames and had an extra compartment in each coach. All were originally 3-sets, but many were split up in the last days. These also lacked ventilators on the large corridor side windows, and also had shallow windows like the BRCW sets, but the compartment sides more closely resembled Bulleid's suburban EMU stock. To the best of my knowledge, the Bournemouth 6-sets never lost their deeper side panels. I recently saw a photo in one of my books with one of these coaches mixed into a train of assorted Bulleid and BR stock, once again towards the end of their lives when sets were disbanded. The other obvious but more subtle difference between designs was the depth of the window vents, with SR-built stock having 10-1/2" deep vents and BR-built Bulleid designs having 15" deep vents, as modelled by Bachmann. Minor variations occurred in the lengths of roof water tanks, and lengths and numbers of step boards, particularly at the brake ends. Most of this is covered in the old Model Railway Constructor Plan Book (Bulleid Coaches in 4mm Scale, by S. W. Stevens-Stratton), which also includes details of set numbers and 4 SUB EMU stock variations. All of the Bulleid designs had the small lozenge shaped windows over every door droplight.