SRman

I agree with using the Replica chassis (when available). I now have three in service, under a 4 EPB (DC Kits), class 455 (Bratchell Models) and a 319 (also Bratchell). For the Hastings unit: I built a DC Kits 'Tadpole' 3R unit, with a Black Beetle under the Driving Motor car. Unfortunately, this one is on the short underframe so not suited to the longer Replica chassis. Replica were going to produce the shorter underframe length, but I'm not sure if it was actually released.

Before the BRMA meeting, I wanted to 'pretty' up the Church Hill. However, circumstances worked against me, so I had to minimise standing up for a while. As a quick fix, I used some of the Scalescenes road and pavement textures just as plain printed paper laid over some of the expanded foam. Today, I re-did some of it, using the same printed bits attached to some card, then glued to the scenery properly. I ran a small amount of extra glue along the edge and put some grass material there. This is by no means finished but it still improves the look considerably. The lower road section is the access way to the cemetery. There will be more land sculpting and filling, plus stairs and pathways in the future. Now: where did I put that Oxford Diecast hearse? Of course, I will have to add walls and/or fences along the edge of the car park, otherwise some careless reversing could result in adding a few more occupants to the cemetery below.

Hi Peter. I forgot to mention: the speaker is loose in the green 33! I have been meaning to remount the speakers in that 33 as it has been rattling a bit. I like the pic of the 450s. I won't be able to run 12 cars but I will be able to recreate an eight car set in the not too distant future, with both units having sound. The 450 we had running on Saturday also needs its speaker reseated slightly as the sound from the other unit with the older v3.5 and 100 ohm speaker is actually slightly clearer, especially the horns. You are always welcome to call in again and we'll run the 37, and retest that decoder if you want, seeing as I didn't get the programming track fixed until too late.

It did go well today. Thanks to all who came and especially to those who helped with operating the layout later in the afternoon, giving me a chance to sit and rest, and also time to trouble-shoot and fix a broken wire to the programming track.

Bad news. One side of the DC feeds has decided to stop working! That leaves me with one track live for DC but everything still fine for the DCC side. As I am hosting the BRMA meeting this afternoon, it will just have to remain that way until I have a little spare time to go over it properly.

Looking good, Peter. Your expertise in operating the NCE system may be called upon tomorrow, as my foot is still very tender (gout attack) so I cannot stand on it for any length of time. Don't tell DougN, but he may be roped in as well!!

Your question is very vague indeed. It depends on a heap of factors, the main one being that the motor brushes are totally isolated from the chassis. You don't specify what sot of kit you are referring to - steam, diesel, electric outline, and so on. Diesels and electrics may be motorised with power bogies or with central motors driving through cardan shafts. The electrical arrangements may vary widely between these types. Steam locomotives may be built with live chassis providing half of the electrical path between track and brush. To convert any of these to DCC, you must ensure the brushes are completely isolated from any feeds from the tracks. Orange and grey wires go from decoder to brush. Red and black wires go from decoder to wheels/track feeds - convention says that the red wire goes to the right-hand track feed when the loco or unit is facing forwards.

Thanks for that - extremely useful to know. I was thinking in terms of using a letter code.

I have now labelled the rotary switch on the LT control panel, so any visiting operator can see at a glance what it is doing. I still need to label all those signal switches. I added an extra signal in the tunnel after making up the diagram, so the switch for signal #1 is actually the second one from the left. Most of these are as yet unconnected: only signals 1, 2, 8 and 9 are connected, plus the extra one in the tunnel (not sure how I label that one without renumbering all of the signals!). Underneath, the wiring is still messy. I need to tidy it up but it works for the moment. The black wire cutting across from the 8-way 4-pole switch to the left of centre in the photo is actually cut too short and limiting the amount I can hinge the panel upwards, so that is another job for me to do ... later. I have also added labels for the terminal block with the track feeds out, 12V DC feeds in and DCC feeds in, making it a little easier to fault-find ... hopefully, that won't be necessary, though! Again, much tidying up is needed. The track wires leading downwards at the left-hand end of the block are inadequate for DCC. At least using screw terminals makes it a relatively easy job to fix this.

Yes. It would have been nice, pizza with you and the kids. I did make good progress, and today will be devoted to clearing up more clutter. A sharp gout attack last night has slowed me down a bit, but I'll get there before Saturday ... maybe not with extra track laid, though!

A quick update to say the DCC side is now working successfully and reliably. I decided to hook up a second DC controller temporarily to the DCC connections so I could be sure I had the polarities correct for the two track feeds - the locomotives on the tracks each went in the same direction when the controller was connected, firstly to one track at a time, then to both tracks. Once I was sure all was as it should be, I connected up the command station and turned on the power (with just a little trepidation, still!). I have just had a half hour running session with several DCC locomotives running on both tracks, so I am now happy and, especially, feeling secure that no one can accidentally switch anything across from DC to DCC on adjacent tracks.

The brake van is the Cambrian Kits SECR 'dance hall' van. I also built one as the ballast brake, as Cambrian include the parts to do both - there are more details about building them in my workbench blog. I'll be very interested in the plough brake van. Good luck with the build.

Next Saturday, the 15th August, I am hosting a British Railway Modellers of Australia (BRMA) meeting, so besides frantically cleaning up all the clutter around the house (or at least, that which will be in the "public" areas!), I am also trying to clear up the layout clutter and 'foolproof' the electrics. To fix the latter, I am replacing the old double switches that allowed either inner or outer circuit to be switched between DC and DCC. this had a small risk attached in that if someone not in the know switched one circuit and used one of the crossovers, there was the potential for the two systems to meet, with possibly disastrous consequences for the DCC command station. I needed a four pole switch, so shopped around on eBay and ended up with an eight position four pole rotary switch (actually, two of them, to allow for the upper circuits to be done the same way). Now, eight positions is way overkill, three or four positions would have been better, but these were the most suitable ones I could find, and they were very reasonably priced. I only want two 'live' positions and one isolated one. After figuring out the wiring to allow the two track circuits to be powered separately by two DC controllers (actually an H & M Duette), but the whole layout to be powered at once by the NCE DCC system, I made a start this morning. It has involved a bit of rewiring but it is progressing. I have completed the DC wiring up, and am taking a short break, but when I go back to it, I will complete the DCC wiring to the switch. While rewiring, I have also moved the two circuit breakers from their temporary positions to the main control panel. This was the old temporary switch panel. And this is the new arrangement, as yet unlabelled. I have put a mark where the DC live position is. Doing it this way means that no one, not even I, can short it out or cause other problems. The whole LT part of the layout can only be DCC or DC at any one time.

1 suggestion: perhaps you should have a doZe and sleep on it for a bit!

A bit of both. JA have an extra jumper cable on the front ends, and slightly different grille and window arrangements on the sides. Traction motors and gearing are different. Some of the underbody gear is different and there are differences in the bogies as well. The JBs were built entirely by English Electric. JAs were delivered in green, with some variations (grey or no grey band, yellow or no yellow panels), with the first three having oval buffers (I'm not sure when they lost these ... possibly when shopped into BR blue). The first JBs were delivered in matt BR blue (or English Electric's version of same!) with grey roofs and lower bands and no BR arrows, with later deliveries omitting the grey band, and later still delivered in BR blue all over with full yellow ends. That's a quick summary and not intended as a detailed description of every difference between the types.

It does look good, although it also shows the slight dimpling of the cab roofs. If they are going to issue it as E6003 it should have oval buffers. As others have pointed out, these are pre-production models so hopefully these things will be corrected for the final production. While they are not insurmountable for an average modeller to fix, we shouldn't have to do these things for the price point they are selling at. The bodies don't really look to be much of an improvement over the Lima/Hornby 73s (although I'm sure the separate grills and things are a bit better), but the bogie and underframe detail looks vastly superior compared to the older model. I am waiting to see what the final models are like before I buy one. In the meantime, I have several Lima and Hornby ones, all with the newer Hornby chassis running on my layout. From viewing distance, they do the job perfectly well.

That really is looking great, Neil. Catenary on models always has to be a compromise between practicality and appearance. It does add a whole new dimension to your layout, and there are some lovely, fascinating and archaic-looking electric locomotives in Europe.

Ha ha! Thanks Ivan,

I gave the blue 08 a second coat of paint, then later touched in the white cab handrails and under-runnng board pipes. I gave it a quick test run on the layout and it completed one circuit before coming to an abrupt halt with one coupling rod detached. To see if I could recover the missing crankpin, I sent another 08, green D3963 around with a neomagnet (intended as a Hornby Dublo ringfield replacement magnet) attached with some Blu-tack. It came back with two track pins and a few bits of magnetic detritus attached! In the absence of the correct crankpin, I quickly ascertained that the thread for the pin is 12BA, so used a short 12BA countersunk head screw to secure the coupling rod. I put a small smear of glue on the thread beforehand to ensure it wouldn't unscrew accidentally. The screw head is a little on the large side but once it is painted it won't be all that obvious. Incidentally, D3963 is also a candidate for possible renumbering. I haven't checked where the original was based at this stage.

I have just given the model a second coat of BR blue and it is coming up OK. A bit of digging for Southern allocated 08s has revealed a few that didn't have the high level connections or a box in front of the fuel tank on the left side of the bonnet. One candidate had no box at the front on the right hand side, so I tried removing the one on the model (they are separate mouldings) but it would mean I would have to remodel the doors and fill the gap. D3272 looks close to the model's specifications and was based at Eastbourne for a while. It would appear to have the framed droplights on the cab sides (not too difficult to model if necessary) and rather oddly, appears to have had red buffer beams when in BR blue around 1969 or so. If anyone has any better candidate numbers for me, I would appreciate a quick line to let me know. I'll post a question in the main forums as well.

Hi Olivegreen. The 71s were not equipped for multiple operation with EMUs. The jumper you are looking at may have been the electric train heating jumper. However, when some of the 71s were converted to class 74 electro-diesels, they also gained the jumpers for working with EMUs (and TCs), thus they could work in push-pull mode under the control of a remote cab. Edit: It looks like Rick and I were both typing out the same answers at the same time!!

Thanks for that. I'll have to give that a go.

I decided to resurrect my Hornby Stanier Black 5, which had been playing up last time I ran it. I tested it on DC analogue after removing the Hornby decoder and it ran perfectly for several hours on the rolling road. I added a Hattons decoder and that ran perfectly. Next, I decided to continue with the weathering process I started before it played up. Doing the dirty bits is not difficult; the problem I have is with matt varnishes not drying matt. I have used several different brands, all shaken and stirred thoroughly, but the results are very unreliable. At present, it is still not right but looks reasonable (only reasonable, not especially good!). Here it is on the late 1950s/early 1960s parcels train at Newton Broadway.

Humbrol Clear Fix should work just fine. I like the Micro product because it is easy to get over here in Australia and it is water-based so easy to thin or clean off if necessary.

Plastic soft drink bottles: these can be cut with scissors and have the compound curves required for many windscreens. I glue mine in with Micro Krystal Klear, which hides any gaps and blends in invisibly with the plastic material. The idea originates (for me, anyway) with Bernard Taylor of TPM, and works a treat.