SRman

I used a bit of black-tack (Blu-tack would do just as well) to stick the coupling pocket shaft back in. It only has to be strong enough to stop it dropping out, as the pulling or pushing forces on it will bear on the front and rear sides of the socket, not forcing it downwards.

I have to give a huge thank you to Simon at Accurascale as he helped me getting the settings on a locally bought LokPilot decoder going correctly for the class 92. It now works nicely with all the (non-sound) functions available. More kudos to Accurascale's team for sheer helpfulness as well as great P.R. work.

The earliest releases didn't have the pipes and bits fitted, and they were a bit of a pain to fit because not all of the holes were the correct sizes. They are damned if they do and damned if they don't fit the bits. I simply snip off any pipes that foul the couplings level with the bottom of the buffer beam. It's a compromise, but looks better than a bare buffer beam with holes in it, but not as good as having the whole pipe in place. Incidentally, I have eight Heljan class 33s of various ages and types.

A side benefit of JMRI software is that you can create extra throttles on screen, and are not limited to the Power Cab's number of throttles limit - I once tried a Power Cab attached to the JMRI software on computer with eight virtual throttles - Power Cab is limited to two or three extra physical cabs, depending on the version. As everyone else has said, you don't need to know the CVs when changing settings on Decoder Pro, and adjusting which functions do what is as easy as ticking or unticking a series of checkboxes on screen.

That looks more like it should be something for April 1st! 😅

That brings back a few memories. I bought a few tyres and batteries from Olympic Tyre and Rubber over the years. Going back to earlier times than that, I remember my father visiting Brisbane from Rockhampton and wanting to turn into Logan Road at the Fiveways: he sat waiting for the lights to go green, not realising why everyone else was honking at him ... they were the tram controller lights! The Fiveways didn't have traffic lights at that time. The old Paddington tram depot became a shopping centre.

I think the bogie wheelbase variance was due to the longer wheelbase one having the traction motors while the shorter one was unpowered. Black Beetles are available in different wheelbases if you want to power both bogies on the model. Just be careful when ordering them to ensure you get the same gearing in both as they also offer different gear ratios. AFAIK, you can only buy the Black Beetles direct from their manufacturer, Steam Era Models, which is based on Phillip Island, not a great distance away from me.

X6325 - at least that's what's from the Service Sheet I looked at.

Livery experiments have been continuing on the Hudswell Clarke loco while all the other stuff has been going on. I did try some thin orange lining to separate the green edging from the yellow of the main panels, but it doesn't show up very well. I did want to use red, but all my thin red lining transfers must be too old and were breaking up as I tried to apply them. The orange doesn't show up very well (applied to one side and to the rear of the bunker), so I tried drawing some red on the other side with a Sharpie pen. This looked better, but the colour density of the Sharpie is not good enough for a proper job. I then hit on the idea of using some BR mixed traffic lining, and that actually looks quite good, I think. I have done one side only, side tank and bunker side so far, but I think I'll extend this to the rest of the loco. Photo 1: The LH side with orange lining. Photo 2: The RH side with some BR lining added, and some of the Sharpie red visible on the bunker/cab side. Photo 3: The RH side again, this time with the BR lining completed, with just a couple of small fixes required.

This train formed of three Bachmann 2 HAP units is not quite what it appears to be. Only one of these was bought as a 2 HAP, with the other two being 2 EPBs bought at half the price of the HAP. They are numbered as 4308 + 6034 + 6063, with only 6063 being an original Bachmann unit. The other two have had DTC trailer bodies bought from Bachmann spares (together with other spare components that helped spread the postage costs), placed on the ex-EPB chassis. I have not altered the seating units at this stage (they are barely seen anyway, especially while in motion), but I will add partitions to form the toilet compartments later. I have renumbered the blue and grey unit that is now 6034, including the carriage numbering on both the ex-EPB DMBS and the HAP DTC, but for the NSE liveried unit, I only changed the unit end number to match the DTC. I will have to fix up the lighter NSE blue used on the EPB vehicle to match. This has still worked out as a slightly less expensive way to add more HAPs to my fleet, while taking advantage of some reduced price EPBs that have been available. A quick video clip appears in the next post due to size limitations in any one post.

The later IC3 units which I have had an upgraded, proper centrally mounted can motor with flywheels driving bogies at both ends of the centre car, so that bit of it ran beautifully and had plenty of power. The problem lay with the cardan shafts and bogies not being anchored to the motor or the centre car. That's what the small screw is doing in my previous photo. I also added some extra lead weight into the driving cars, and some plastic tube onto the locating pins at the tops of the bogies to stop the end cars floating around too much. They also offered unpowered units to go with the powered sets, but the coupling arrangement is rudimentary, to say the least, and the dummy units don't even have head/tail lights (or DCC sockets to which would have been connected if there were lights). The last one I bought was missing the pins to hold the inter-unit coupling in place, and Heljan were unable to supply any, which is really not good enough on their part for customer support. As for the SJ X2/X2000, again I had a few lovely trips on the real ones, so treated myself to the Jeco (Swedish) model, which was expensive but has a decent mechanism and runs perfectly.

I have to agree with some of the comments above about the rather hit-and-miss quality of some Heljan products, both in their British and in their Continental ranges. I have several of their Danish IC3 DMUs, which have a known problem with their mechanisms, as well as rudimentary detailing and no interiors. They can be made to run well with some modifications to the shared bogie retaining system (there is none on the originals!), but these are things the customer should not have to do. Miniatur Wunderland in Germany were not running the Heljan Danish locos and units because they found them too unreliable to be left running for long periods. I did send them details of my modifications to the IC3 units but heard nothing back. I wanted models of the IC3 units because I have ridden in quite a few of them, with Heljan being the only manufacturer to offer models of them at all (McK have advertised a more recent model but it has yet to appear), meaning I had the choice: buy models with known but fixable (with effort) problems, or do without. Apart from the motor problems on the class 17s, the British diesel and electric mechanisms are generally good, although there have been many reports of running problems with the British steam models. Shape issues have applied to the previously mentioned Westerns and class 47s, and also to the first 33/0 locomotives (since revised), plus the too-high cab on the class 15 (easily fixed with a file, but again, why?). I do like my Hymeks and the 33/1 and 33/2 models, among others, with all being excellent runners. I think the biggest problem is that Heljan don't seem to listen to feedback from customers. When they get it right, they are very good, but they continue to release models with the "let's suck it and see" approach.

I actually had a maggie steal my pie from right under my nose recently. I grabbed it back, and kept it even closer to my chest after that. 😆

I should add to my earlier posting that I don't use the subscription versions of Office 365. I bought perpetual stand-alone licences for Office 2019 and 2021 for the separate computers.

The offset may also reduce the sideways throw of the cardan shafts where they enter the top of the bogie towers. Probably not much of a problem in most of the locomotives mentioned, but could be an advantage in the narrow-bonneted class 17.

I did something similar with some Farish coaches, converting them into a BIL and a HAL, using some slightly adapted white metal fronts and a cheap motor bogie fitted in the BIL, leaving the HAL as a dummy unit to be hauled. I still have them somewhere but no photos of them that I can find.

There are a few freeware Office programs available. While I use MS Office on my laptop and main desktop computers, I didn't need or want to pay for a licence for my train room computer: for that, I downloaded and installed Libre Office, which includes a word processor compatible with MS Word documents, and also a spreadsheet which I can use to open MS Excel spreadsheets. It's worth a try and if you don't like it, uninstall it again and try a different one.

Replica still have the kits of parts showing on their website (pre-painted but needing decoration with running numbers, etc.). I don't know the availability, but it would be worth asking them. http://www.replicarailways.co.uk/menusep3/menuselfassem

Yes: if you are prepared to renumber E6012, that is currently available.

I've been shuffling trains around and changing over to modern image, with a couple of veteran or vintage trains remaining on the tracks for now. Every 1960s EMU or locomotive has been driven out of the loco shed roads then removed to the stock storage drawers, and a more modern counterpart placed on the tracks and driven in. There is a little bit of a spread of years still, though as the class 71 was probably scrapped well before any class 66 was delivered to EWS and other companies, notwithstanding that the 71 is wearing its TOPS number. Ditto the 07 shunter. Locos and units in the photo are 73 141, 08 844, 71 012, 33 108, 33 030, 33 212, 66 701, 66 725, 205 001, and 205 012. This is what the area looks like now. I have not got around to changing road vehicles yet.

F12 turns the rheostatic braking on. Even then, it only sounds as you brake to slow down or stop using F5.

And one more of the 92 "Hattie repairs": a little bit of Tamiya masking tape, some NSE orange mixed with a little white, and the 'R' is restored. It's a little rough if you look too closely, but it still looks better than before, I think.

This is 92 020 after I had attacked the scratches with T-cut. I have managed to erode a small part of the 'R' in GBRf, but otherwise it looks OK - better than having the scratches, anyway.

My second Accurascale class 92, 92 020 in GBRf livery seems to be mildly jinxed. I had a problem with one of the grilles going missing even before I had got it out of the packaging, but eventually found it clinging statically to the outer sleeve of the inner "ice cube" packing. I opened the box three times before eventually locating that. Anyway, I glued the grille in place, but another popped off while getting the body off to swap the sound decoder from 92 043 into it. I have been using Glue 'n' Glaze to stick them back on, and that seems to work. Any excess glue simply wipes off with a damp cloth or tissue. So, all very minor, so far. Running has been perfect all along and remains so. There was another problem to come. Our cats are not allowed in the train room. Both sliding doors have hooks to prevent unauthorised access from cats or young visitors. Hattie, in particular, always wants to join me in the train room when I am in there, and sits outside the door making squeaking noises to let me know she's there and wants to come in. She is also perfectly capable of opening quite heavy doors, both of the sliding and of the hinged type! A couple of days ago I was in the train room trying to reorganise the shelves to allow my new storage solution to fit in on multiple shelves (see my last post above), and Hattie sneaked into the room and hid under the layout without me knowing she was there. I finished what I was doing and left the room, closing and re-hooking the door. I went back later in the day and Hattie was squealing to be let out. She didn't do a great deal of damage but had obviously been on the layout, as she had knocked a few things over, including 92 020, which fortunately I had parked over the bridge over the Underground lines, so it only fell a short distance into the trees below the retaining wall. Said trees have wire frames, so that resulted on one grille going missing (again), and a few scratches along one side of the locomotive. It took me a while to find the missing grille, which had also had a little of the black paint scratched off. The black was easy to touch up, but the blue of the GBRf livery was another matter. I decided to try a little T-cut, gently applied so as not to remove too much paint , and applied evenly so as to give an even finish to the whole side when polished off. I also had to do this on the orange lettering as the scratches ran across them as well, but was even more careful not to rub too hard. On a different note, I decided to remove the sound decoder, a LokSound v3.5, from the redundant Hornby class 92, thinking I would have to unsolder the wires from the conversion, having forgotten that I actually soldered an 8-pin socket into it. I contacted legomanbiffo and ordered a class 50 sound file for the class 50 on a v3.5, and sent him the serial number of the decoder. The reblow went perfectly, so I swapped the decoder and the speakers I had attached previously (a bass reflex and a standard round one in parallel) into my Hornby 50 007, 'Sir Edward Elgar' in GWR 150 livery. I had previously removed the fan assembly from that so there was already plenty of room for the bass reflex speaker to sit. The Lenz Standard+ v2 from the 50 went straight into the 92. I may try to sell the Hornby 92 or I may try to find a spare class 60 body to put back onto the class 60 chassis which is under the 92. I videoed the 50 with its new sound installation, with just a couple of short clips, and while I was doing that, also videoed Accurascale 92 020 with its container train - the scratches can be seen on the side before I reduced their impact. I'll post those to YouTube and put a link on here shortly (they are too big to post directly here). Also a photo of 50 007, and of the delinquent Hattie. The video links will be edited in here shortly A photo of both delinquents - they are both just as bad as each other!