SRman

While agreeing with you, Steve, regarding the excellence of the weathering on the Westerns, I cannot recall seeing any photos of class 71s with anything more than light weathering. It would have to be done accordingly, otherwise we will have a similar situation to the debate on another thread about the forthcoming Bachmann weathered class 450. My own recollections of seeing them in green in the earlier 1960s were that they were fairly clean and shiny machines (usually followed, in my case, by clean and shiny Pullmans on the Golden Arrow!).

Interestingly, the one without gutters (1963) is two years later than the one with gutters (1961) - assuming the dates given in the captions are correct. The process of adding them must have been spread over several years.

Ever since I put in the brickwork for the overbridge at the end of the station loops, I have been aware that if this was real, an engine driver would not be able to see the signal for the through loop. I recently ordered a Berko 2-aspect signal with a right-hand cranked head, and this arrived two days ago. A quick bit of soldering to extend the wires, and a quick swap of wires in the 'chocolate block' terminals connecting the wires to the switch on the control panel has resulted in a signal that can now be seen by my 4mm scale train drivers. It's the red one on the left under the bridge!

I can't help wondering whether the change to silver/grey may have been delayed because of the war. Silver (or any light colour) would be somewhat more visible from the air, so repainting may have been deemed to be undesireable at the time. I hasten to add that I am only surmising this and have no hard facts to contribute to this suggestion.

I thought this one might just pass in present exalted company.

Just a teensy bit more progress with the level crossing. It is not based on any real level crossing but is a bit of a hash up of several bits and pieces I have seen in photos. The major parts are Wills wood planking, with a little bit of Wills cobbles leading up to the planking. The one 'tween rails bit I have done has a layer of card under the planking to set it at the right height above the sleepers. I need to put a little packing under the outer bits as well.

I don't think this was answered earlier, but yes, there should be barrier wagons between class A tanks and the guards van as well. I believe that once diesels were in charge, as well as having improved the valves, brakes and safety of the tanks themselves, the need for barrier wagons was eliminated. With most of the diesels, there was a length of bodywork between the cab in use and the train, as well as the greatly reduced danger of sparks being thrown from exhausts.

The A stock was about an inch wider than the S stock, but as the profiles are quite different, the widest parts of each stock may well be at different heights.

As described earlier (it probably would have been better in the workbench blog!), I swapped chassis and cab interiors around between Bachmann class 150 units, so that the new First Great Western unit now has the old solid block chassis in the motorised coach, while my Silverlink unit now has the new chassis with lights. I also swapped the sound decoder back into the Silverlink unit, with a new 100 ohm speaker installed as I didn't feel like dismantling the old chassis to extract the speaker from under the motor! The result is that I can run the two First Great Western units in multiple without the oddity of having one with an opaque motor coach and no lights and the other with lights in both coaches. The FGW units, 150 128 and 150 219 (the one I added the Electra Railway Graphics vinyls to) are seen in the storage loops, so not a great photo, while the Silverlink unit, 150 123, is shown in all its new glory on the tracks below. Meanwhile, my order for some transfers and etched plates from Modelmaster arrived a couple of days ago. The first candidate for improvement was my Hornby Gresley P2, Cock O' The North, which now sports etched nameplates. I think these are an improvement over the printed ones, and even more so compared to the plastic ones Hornby supplied. Finally, for this session, I have been adding coal loads (Wagon Essentials drop in loads from Model Railways Direct) to a few wagons and weathering some of them as well. The photos below tell at least some of the story. The Dapol Saxa Salt wagon was already weathered, but any others are ones I have done. All of the bright red ones were particularly lurid to start with. A wash of dark brown and some matt varnish have helped tone them down a bit.

That's what I do: "I pre-ordered this last year and it's just arrived now." Going back to the solid ends on the S stock models, I would prefer this solution rather than being able to see into them from the gaps between coaches as they go around curves on the layout. If they had a gangway arrangement that ensured no gaps between cars, I might feel differently; perhaps some sort of swivelling connection that fills the gap completely as used in a few of the more expensive European models in the past ... but they haven't done this so I personally prefer what they have chosen to do.

I have spent a good part of this weekend fiddling with new stock and the layout itself. I have received several new models, in addition to the class 143 mentioned in a recent post. The most challenging one was the new Bachmann First Great Western class 150/1, with the new style chassis and interior lights. This was run-in on DC using the rolling road and worked perfectly, as far as I could tell. The problems began when I went to fit a decoder. On placing the motor coach on the rollers and switching to the Power Cab programming track, the interior lights and red tail lights came on instantly and stayed on. That was suspicious for a start. The decoder, a Bachmann 36-557 (Soundtraxx) one, programmed fine for the address but when I switched the track to normal DCC mode, the lights remained as before, refusing to respond to the F0 key. I removed the decoder and placed the coach back on the rollers with no blanking plug and the interior lights and tail lights again came on. I switched to DC power and the red tail lights only came on with one direction's polarity. Very odd! I dismantled the unit completely and looked at the PCB carefully but could see no obvious problems. I put electrical insulation tape between it and the metal chassis, and ran the same tests with no blanking plug or decoder fitted, with still the same results. At this point I got fed up and emailed Bachmann support to ask for advice, and the original supplier (Amanda Jane Models) to advise that I may have to make a warranty claim. Both replied very promptly (with due regard to the 9 hour time difference between me and the UK): Bachmann support suggesting that I should check pins 21 and 22 or pins 7 and 8 for possible shorts, and Amanda offereing to pay the return post and packing for the model if it did need to be returned, so I would like to compliment the excellent follow up and service from both parties here. I examined the PCB and the 21-pin carrier board for the cause of the problem with a strong light and my optivisor magnifier. The soldered tracks at the bottom of the carrier board had a small sliver of solder bridging the tracks from pins 21 and 22. Scraping that away with a sharp, fine screwdriver fixed the problem and I was finally able to feel safe in fitting a decoder. As this unit is intended to run in multiple with my FGW class 150/2 (described in my blog with the Electra vinyl overlays), I thought it would be a bit strange with one unit lit and the other (with old style solid chassis block in the motor vehicle) unlit. My plan had been to see if I could swap with the Collectors Club Silverlink unit, also with older style chassis but fitted with sound. I can report that this is perfectly feasible, with the proviso that the cab interiors have also to be swapped to remain with their originally fitted chassis. The two FGW units are now running around on matching old style chassis, while the Silverlink one now has interior lights as well as sound. Going back one step, while awaiting a response from Bachmann's support, I fitted the new LBSC E4 0-6-2T with its CT Elektronik decoder, which worked perfectly well straight out, but with the high pitched whine I reported from the BR version as originally fitted. I connected the programming track to the computer and JMRI Decoder Pro, put in the settings from 32500's set up and presto, no 579 now behaves more quietly as well. I have set up three pre-grouping trains to run and took a few photos, although I forgot to hide the Silverlink 150, so that is lurking in the background in a couple of the shots - I cropped one to eliminate all the anachronisms I could. While fiddling with the layout itself, I have started cutting some Wills planking to form part of the level crossing. I haven't done the bits between the rails yet but I think I'll use more planking but formed into sort of chevron with curved edges to follow the rails - that is, I'll form each bit from two halves cut at an angle to each other, as I think this would look more realistic than having the planks completely straight with their edges following the inner and outer rails. I'll post pictures of this when it is done.

There was a time (and not all that far in the past!) when Southern Electrics were considered a niche product!

Does this mean you'll include DJ in the choices??

As I said in another thread, there have been some very vague rumours for some time that Bachmann were going to produce something LT. Now we know! The models look very interesting, if a little on the dear side. I will be trying to find the funds to perhaps do a five or six car set (the length being dictated by my platform and loop lengths, not the accuracy of the train formation).

It would be nice to have a selection, rather like Heljan have offered in the past. If you must have fixed headcodes, I agree with Titan's suggestion of one passenger and one freight code. Hither Green is a logical one for freight, Dover or Newhaven for passenger. The Golden Arrow headcode would also, to my mind, necessitate supplying the headboard and regalia for that train.

The running is fairly good with the Bachmann/ESU Basic decoder ... not up to the standards of a really good decoder but more than acceptable. I have a box for it somewhere too - that may take longer to find! Give me a call when it suits you and we can chat. I'm not really sure what the value of these 37s is nowadays.

I have a surplus 37 057 Viking, in large logo blue, if you are interested, Peter. It currently has a Bachmann 36-554 decoder in it (it gave up its sound decoder some time ago to another project!).

Some great stuff there. I have downloaded them to watch properly later, but a few quick previews have whetted my appetite.

I had to make a small modification on my 143 618 to allow it to run over my track with third and fourth rail. The main problem was the extremely small clearance under the 'boxes' that retain the axles and the gear trains dragging on the fourth rail. With the float allowed by the springing, I also found that one of the boxes on the trailing car was snagging slightly on one of my points' blades. My solution was to file a groove along the length of each box, as per the photo. Charlie and Arran: While not too many people will be affected as I was (there aren't many with fourth rail), I wonder if you could modify the design slightly for future production runs to allow more clearance under the units anyway. From what I can see, the "lids" (or baseplates) of the boxes don't need to be quite as deep as they are currently. I present this as a suggestion only, as only you two know the real costs and practicalities of making such a modification. I agree with everything that has been said in praise of these models. The finish is superb and the running is faultless (I'm not blaming the unit for the problem with my fourth rail!). Well done, the Realtrack team.

A quick photo showing the modification to the 'boxes' under the class 143.

Not so much electronic as electro-mechanical. Essentially they were large flywheels attached to an electric motor/generator. As long as they were "on the juice" the electric motor spun the flywheel up at high speed. As soon as the locomotive was "gapped" and there was no external power, the flywheel would keep spinning the motor, which became a generator and kept supplying the traction motors for the short time needed to clear the gap. That's my simple explanation for it, although there was a bit more to the setup that we don't really need to bother about here. The class 71s had one 'booster' set, where the Bulleid-Raworth machines (later class 70) had two such sets. Dave: I would particularly like a green one with stripes and small yellow panel (at whatever height and size!!). I'll keep my eyes peeled and also hope that someone else may find an example.

Further to the entry on the new Realtrack class 143, I found that it didn't like the sections of track with third and fourth rail fitted. I suspected that it was the very low slung 'boxes' containing the axles and gear train, between the wheels dragging slightly on the fourth rail, especially as the whole arrangement is also sprung and can float just a little. The plastic 'caps' for these boxes just clip on and off, so I removed each of them in turn and filed a groove along the centre-line using a round file. A quick track test proved I was right. The unit can now complete a circuit without assistance from the giant hand from the sky. There is still a small amount of drag at certain points (yup, you guessed it, the points!) but the unit was still able to negotiate these without any assistance. If I widen the groove slightly to allow for the diverging bits of fourth rail within the points the problem will be all but solved. Of course, this also means I won't have any such problems when I add third rail to the upper level tracks. Even more incentive for me to get a move on and get the upper level running!

Those yellow panels are a veritable minefield for Dave (and Hornby, for that matter)!

Funny and, alas, true, Doug!

Yes, I must get the upper level going! Even then, I would like a bigger layout, but ...