SRman

I have now bought most of the parts, with the exception of the coupling rods and the flywheel. At this stage, I have it sitting with the motor and Scale Link worm gear actually meshing with the Hornby gear on the 08 wheels/axle assembly. If I want to swap to the Scale Link gear wheel, I haven't yet figured out how to remove a wheel without damaging the fly crank. I was thinking of putting the diesel as a part of my industrial fleet, so have painted my grille mesh red and the body in BR express steam blue, although that has proved a little darker than I had in mind. i may try a coat of LNER garter blue instead. I am debating whether to have red or yellow buffer beams, or even some wasp stripes. I will post a few pics later, when I have made more progress, as I don't want to hijack TS's topic with multiple posts of my progress.

It may have involved a shelf company. OK - hat, coat, etc. ...

That's an interesting question. I don't know what the answer is going to be for Auckland, but precedents include Brisbane's trams which used to use standard gauge while the railways used (and still use) 3' 6". Melbourne, on the other hand, has standard gauge trams but broad gauge trains (5' 3").

I like the heading picture for the article; a Melbourne tram, "Made in Melbourne, for Melbourne"! I do like the idea of a link from Auckland airport to the city. Auckland's burgeoning population is causing very real traffic problems in the peak hours, so a means of bypassing said traffic congestion would certainly boost tourist satisfaction - tourism is NZ's biggest industry at present.

I have been doing various smaller jobs scenically lately, including adding more layers of static grass and a few figures. I really want to add fences but it is probably better to leave them a little longer until I finish having to lean over the layout edges to do more track laying and wiring. The first photo shows the results of adding some lighter grass around an area that will be fenced off. Static Grass - Lighter Colour Added by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr Next, some children with bikes playing on the public footpath that runs beside the siding. This also will gain fences on both sides (can't have the kiddies running onto the tracks or over the embankment and retaining wall on the other side!). I also intend to have some trees and bushes along the ridge, eventually. Children Playing Beside the Siding by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr On a different subject (probably more suited to the workbench blog, but who cares?), I fitted YouChoos sound into one of my Bachmann E4 0-6-2 tanks. There is a bit of a saga attached: I started by consulting with John from YouChoos as to the best decoder choice, and we decided that a Zimo MX648 with harness and 6-pin connector would be the way to go, with the proviso that it still may not fit the available space with the decoder socket and PCB in place. I found that while the decoder would just shoehorn in below the socket, there was no room for a speaker doing it that way. I had in mind fitting the speaker at the front in the smokebox, so had bought an extra sugar cube speaker with a rounded top at the same time. I had already drilled out the chimney to allow sound to come out that way. After juggling things and even removing the rather bulky chokes to give more space below the decoder socket, I eventually pulled the pCB and socket out, cut and ground the mounting spigot off of the chassis to give a flatter area, cut the 6-pin plug off and trimmed the harness back to allow hard-wiring to take place. I found that I could fit the decoder flat at the bottom, with the curved top speaker on top of that, and it would *just* squeeze in to the boiler of the E4. I added a layer of Kapton tape to ensure no short-circuits would occur from that source. I always test these installations on the programming track with my NCE Power Cab at every stage: having tested the decoder with the speaker loosely perched on the chassis and found all was well, I then squeezed it all into the body, but left the body loose and tested again. Once again, all was well. I added the body screws, and carefully sat it all down properly, then retested on the programming track. This time it was a failure, with the Power Cab reporting a dead short and cutting the power to the track. Off came the body again, to discover that I had done the same thing as happened to one of the Pecketts, that is I had managed to trap and sever a wire - perhaps 'guillotined' would be a better word to describe it! So it was out with the soldering iron and heat-shrink tubing again to repair the damaged wire, then tuck everything much more carefully out of the way. I used a few lumps of black mastic to secure the decoder to the chassis, and the speaker to the decoder, plus a few of the wires to tidy them out of the way, and I went through the testing processes again, this time culminating in the body being secured to the chassis and the sound and motion working perfectly. The volume from this small speaker was actually too loud for my ears, so I duly turned it down a bit, and was happy with that. I had considered putting the speaker in the cab but that would have involved flying leads and possibly a way of separating the speaker from the decoder using 2-pin connectors; I think the way I have done it is neater and completely self-contained. Anyway, being pleased with myself, I took it to DougN's place to show it off. It acquitted itself well on Doug's layout too, until I caught it with my sleeve and sent it crashing to the wooden floor. Electrically it survived well, but the unexpected meeting with the floor cracked the chimney off, and sent the dome flying (no damage to the latter, it just clipped back in), dislodged the crew fro the cab, bent the whistle, and dislodged and bent the handrail along the left-hand side of the boiler. Fortunately all buffers, lamp irons and couplings remained undamaged. I have repaired most of the damage, although there is still a crack evident at the base of the chimney and 579 now sports a Markits' LSWR whistle. I also discovered that the left-hand cabside handrails had gone missing so replaced them with some brass wire, which had only had a single coat of black paint at the time of the photo, hence the scrappy appearance. She doesn't look to bad on the SECR birdcage stock, and sounds really good now. I'll try to post a video of 579 in action in the near future. Bachmann LBSC E4 - 1 by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr

Canterbury, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia: The view from my office window a few days ago, with Autumn colours starting to show. IMG_20180507_142436 by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr

Nice ones, Neil; something a little different.

Is there anyone here who hasn't shorted out their layout by leaving a steel rule, pair of metal pliers, hammer or screwdriver across the tracks, then spending ages trying to find the cause? Raise your hand if you can honestly say you haven't. My hands are staying firmly down on this one.

There are many sea spiders (pycnogonidae) around the Australian coast but none are harmful. No, this was done by one of the larger huntsman spiders ... you know, the ones that are too big to live under the sun visors or dashboard in our cars!

I can vouch for the fact that the layout is every bit as good in the flesh as it is in the videos. Peter has a great eye for detail.

Probably done by one of our spiders!

Hi Jamie, I think you are referring to the class 128 Gloucester Diesel Parcels Unit (DPU). Class 419 were the Southern Region third rail electric Motor Luggage Vans.

Yes, LokSound decoders it is a matter of setting CV13 to a value of 1. Many of the earlier Bachmann sound locos had the sound on DC turned off (CV13 = 0) but it was a very simple tweak to set it - I did this for a few friends who were on DC only but wanted the sounds.

Yes, I agree; the wrap-around yellow on the previous DMS was what fooled me into thinking it was a class 104 in BSYP livery. The pic is just too fuzzy to make out the bogies properly. If they are B4 bogies then that would clinch it as a class 123 trailer.

It is possible - there were all sorts of oddities in the earlier years of BR blue. Looking at the pic in Jonny777's post, I still can't say for sure it's a 123. It may be optical illusion due to the darker colour, but the large windows on the blue vehicle look smaller than those on the blue and grey one. However, I would be very happy to be proved wrong, as it gives modellers even more excuse to mix liveries.

Robert, I don't think that's a class 123 car in blue. From the profile and window arrangement (such as I can make out), it looks more like a class 104.

Thanks for the offer, Doug, but I was oversimplifying: it's really just the lifting section where it joins at the left - I did have some packing in there but I suspect it has fallen out when I opened it to wire the point frogs back in March. It should be a simple matter to glue a little cork on the plank the lifting bit rests on at that end.

Ditto here: I removed the "C crest R" and numbers from my Caledonian liveried example with T-cut, but it did leave some more polished areas on the tanks. I have partially disguised this by extending the polished area to the tank ends (as Stuart/Caledonian suggested above) then further disguised it with some weathering powders.

Thanks Jamie. The layout size was the maximum I could get into the available space and still leave room for access, as well as for bookshelves and storage. As always, there are compromises. There was actually a 3-car birdcage set behind the camera wagon too, although you would never pick it from the impeccable performance of the AB. There is one board joint that has dropped very slightly - the bump upwards at that spot in the video annoys me every time, exaggerated by the short wheelbase of the loco.

No problems here: a wagon ride behind the ex-CR one:

Sydney who???

Beat me to it - I was thinking along the same lines!

I have just done yet another video of the high level tracks, this time behind one of the Andrew Barclays. I tried to achieve lots of movement; see what you think if you do watch it.

Under the seated area - where the original PCB was.

I would guess that the problem is the blue wire is for a positive return - you need a common anode LED for it to work but it appears you have a common cathode one.. You could prove this by connecting the white or yellow wire (but not both) to the common rail and the blue wire to one of the outer tags, then trying it with power. Don't forget to retain a resistor in the line. Edited slightly to correct an error in my original wording.