Trouble with Locos

 Since changing over to British OO I have purchased 4 locos. 1 45XX small prairie, 1 64XX pannier, 1 15XX pannier and Iford Manor 2-6-0. The 45XX and 64XX were both Bachmann whilst the 15XX was a new release Rapido and the Manor was an Accurascale model. All four are very nice models except the Rapido and the Manor were exceptionally detailed. But...

The 45XX and 64XX were bought from my local shop - Orwell Model Railways.

The 45XX was an indifferent runner and had no traction at all. It seems that, with these prairies the front and rear wheel sets often were badly adjusted and kept the main driving wheels a bit too proud losing traction. Eventually, it barely moved so I have decided to sell it. Rails of Sheffield have offered an indifferent price but they keep their word so it's off to them tomorrow.

The 15XX was bought from Rails. First off, the front steps fell off - no I didn't break them, they just fell off so I had to glue them back on. Then it stopped running and was returned to Rails. They sent me a new one.  On removing the body, the smokebox fell off - same comment as above. The glue area had a solid line of white glue around it so it obviously had never been glued properly. Then the 2nd loco stopped working. On exchanging e-mails with Rails, I sent them a video of the 64XX and the 15XX to show how the track was clean and fit for purpose and how the 15XX didn't work. I told them that I was rejecting the model as I wasn't prepared to have this one returned to Rapido with all the delays that would happen. They accepted this very nicely and I am getting a credit note. I think that I will use it to get a 94XX Bachmann pannier. It is a pity because I had it fitted with an ESU sound chip that I was given at the Warley show.

The 64XX is a nice little runner and I have been able to use that as a yardstick against the 45XX and the 15XX so not much more to say. The Manor is a lovely piece of kit and seems to work fine on my 8' long station layout.  As I now have a Next16 sound chip going spare, I am off to Coastal DCC tomorrow to get Kevin to set it up for the Manor.

Lastly, as a replacement for the 45XX, I used some Christmas Amazon vouchers to purchase a Dean Goods 0-6-0 from Oxford Rail. This is a nice little loco but the only one that I could get on Amazon was a War Department version. I need to get all of the markings off and renumber etc. for a 23XX. Railtec have a nice scheme where they print on demand after asking me lots of questions to which I didn't know the answers. I got there in the end so we shall see how it comes out. When I bought the loco, I also ordered an 8 pin wired decoder to go with. Unfortunately, the space in the tender for the decoder is very small and the decoder that I purchased didn't fit. Fortunately, being Amazon, it is going back and I will, again, take this up with Kevin tomorrow as I think that a tiny Zimo will fit.

So, all this started in September last year and, hopefully, might be over in a few days.

Two comments - about Rapido and Accurascale. Rapido's 15XX is a nice little loco with wonderful valve gear but manufacturing needs a bit of look at as bits fell of and the mechanisms didn't work at all well. Accurascale make wonderfully detailed models but you do pay for them. The Manor looks to be worth the money but we have to wait and see when I begin to run it regularly. I have also bought one of their Siphon G vans. This was expensive for a van and all I got that seemed to justify the price was some hugely detailed undercarriage. As most of this can't be seen, it seems to me that it could have been made cheaper but then I am not fully into modern demands.

That's it. Hopefully, in a few days, I will have a full compliment of locos that all work as expected. Let's wait and see.

Signal Box Levers

 When I was at the Warley show in November I was watching a layout supported by my local model railway/DCC shops - Orwell Model Railways and Coastal DCC. This layout was Long Melford, which was featured in Model Rail magazine recently. The bit that I liked was the bank of levers for the signal box - AKA point and signal control.  These levers were a DCC Concepts product and I vowed to get some for my railway. As Christmas was coming, I persuaded the wife to buy me a box of 6. I had already bought a single one to test out. As I only have seven points this was going to be fine. 

However, it was clear that there were going to have to be 21 wires between the levers and the railway and I couldn't think of how I was going to connect these up because there was nowhere on the layout that I could put the lever frame so it would have to be a stand alone box. I had spoken to Richard from DCC Cncepts at Warley about how to make a mimic board and he told me about their ESP transmitters and receivers. At the time, I thought that he was just suggesting these because of their cost but I realised later that they were a sensible way to go. If I used these, I could build a stand along lever frame that didn't need ANY wires between the frame and the layout.

I decided to find the funds necessary and acquired two ESP sets - one with a transmitter and a receiver and the other one with two transmitters. As each tran emitter handles 3 inputs, this gives me my seven and leaves two more for when I put some signals in. I bought a 12V battery power pack from eBay (rechargeable) and a small crate from my local Hobbycraft and set about making it happen. Here are some photos of the build and the final item.

These are the three transmitters in place.

and in the crate.

You can see the Power Bank. This is rechargeable. I am going to add an LED power-on indicator.

This is the receiver on the layout wired into the DCC bus.

Here is the finished product

The action comes from wires 8 and 9 from each lever - one being the common and the other being one of the poles on the switch. The blue tails are the other 7 wires coming from each lever. I was glad that I left these as it turned out that when the levers were pushed away, the points were thrown and I wanted this to indicate a through switch. Hence, I had to swap wires 7 and 8 which meant cutting back one and extending the other. Amazingly, it all worked first time and I am really happy with it. I am still an Arduino junkie at heart so messing around with stuff like this is what model railways are for me. 

The next steps are as follows:

• fit a 12v indicator LED
• add a 5V power bank with an LED indicator
• see about fitting a double signal at the exit to the station run around
• fit two new levers in the space left on the bank to operate these two signals.

The next major project will be to set the layout mimic panel up with two colour LEDs - red and green - to indicate the way each point it set. These bi-color LEDs will be managed from the 4 - 6 wires on each lever's switches. Regarding my comment about being an Arduino junkie I have the following history.

Back in 1969/1970 I built a Heathkit valve Hifi amplifier. Following that, I build a TATIII (true action throttle) which was one of the first transistorised throttles providing slow acceleration and braking. This was a built from plans in an article in Model Railroader in March 1969. Additionally, I bought the book and eventually made a couple of them. I have some photos of my N scale layout of that time with the throttle in place.  Additionally, I started an Open University degree in 1974 and in 1976 completed  a module on Electronics. Give me a pile of components and a soldering iron and I am like a pig in xxxx.

Here are the only two images that I can find of the TATIII throttle.