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I have recently been off work for a few weeks due to illness (I am fit again now after a short hospital stay last week) and had a couple of former work colleagues visit the garden this morning. This called for a couple of trains to be run, including a fairly recent OO steam loco purchase. 5274 is the standard Hornby model, now fitted with a basic, non sound decoder. I'm pleased to say, both the O and OO gauges ran perfectly with no derailments or problems during a 2 hour running session. This is a short video, taken after my guests had gone. I have taken a leaf out of DorkingIan's book and jus

Western Harrier - the video

We apologise for the delay.....

Hello Barry! Here is a link: https://www.ebay.de/itm/M1910-Truss-Bridge-HO-GA-Kit-Sofortkauf-325-00-/265069708888?_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49292R Regards Thomas

Stabling yard # 2 is finished so far, only the last points still have to be connected to the (still missing) decoder. And then next to # 2 there will also be the stabling yard # 3, which will have 9 tracks with a usable length of about 1500mm for push-pull trains and railcars. But two points are still missing for the beginning with #3.

The trouble with being off work and not having too much to do, is that retail therapy becomes too easy. I have recently aquired some Skytrex china clay hoods and a variety of LMS liveried freight stock - all in O gauge. The clay hoods were purchased from a facebook group ad, whilst the LMS stock was part of a bigger lot that Ellis Clark trains were selling. There were 3 more wagons in this lot, but I am going to move these on, as they werent required. Thius was an interesting lot, having been built from kits and possibly even some scratchbuilding - either way, they have all been well finished.

There's news from my bridge. eBay Global Shipping delivered these to Canada. And instead of bringing it back and delivering it to me, ebay stubbornly stood up to the seller and lied to me. The seller has now had it transported back from Canada at his own expense and will now forward it to me. And then we will try to get our money back from ebay.

I have rewired the bus wires to the terminal bus strips , I am going to do what Andrew has done with his bus wires not used any but used the rails but soldering the rail joins with wire , wire is pretty expensive, I still need plugs on all the decking and modules . All up 20 blocks controlling three throttles by rotary switches , designed the layout o be plug and play , don't think I will go DCC at this stage, can have just as much fun with DC just more wires. Looking at the track plan the two blocks on the bridge will be isolated from the rest of the rails , will still have to run bu

Hi, I have now made a prototype using a simplified circuit which charges from a buffer stop into the loco buffers these are modified to steel with leads going into the on board control circuit. The track buffer stop is modified with molibium magnets 3mm dia x 3mm long. these make good electrical contact with the loco buffers, the buffers have a few mm movement to allow for poor alignment. the loco can be recharged or set to run by the changeover switch. If the loco is running towards the buffer stop and the switch is set to charge then the loco switches off soon as co

Finely after all these years sorted out the module legs the now they fold inwards to the centre of the module and the other side sits on top Also there is enough clearance for the bus wires especially coming from the control panel to the centre bus wire strips , can see them in pic three, I also moved them down to the first cross beam and the last 4 on there own are now right angles to the legs. Tomorrow I will connect them up ready for when I do the bus wiring , 7 more module to do, next one be quicker, be nice to my wife in letting me bring the modules up to the patio to do th

Looks a bit like the one here Barry https://www.custommodelrailroads.com/cmr-train-beaver-bridge.html might give you some ideas

Hello Thomas, Oh boy! That would be such a nice bridge, I keep my fingers tightly crossed for you that it does turn up at your house. It reminds me of the Chesapeake and Ohio’s bridge over the Ohio river at (I think!) Sciotoville or similar spelling. At one point this was the world’s strongest bridge. Good luck, John

Thanks all, yes there is a larger garden at the new house, blank canvas so will be interesting to see what develops, sadly it will have to wait for a while as other jobs. But hoping to get a new line up that is much easier to run and can use it more, lessons learnt for sure, perhaps not ground level next time, as getting harder to bend down and it gets very mucky..

I've got the same B&D drill (18v version) and it's done me proud... other than the PSU for the charger failing! I'll rebuild that some day, lol. I replaced it with a Ryobi One+ and I couldn't be more impressed with the performance..

Well under way, two modules are joined up, should of tested a carriage will next time , I decided not to use the fiberglass brass plated strips on holding the rails down on module joins. Decided to cross the join with track, sadly more rail joiners but far quicker, I am happy I modified the track and points on the approach module as the curves lined up far better , so pretty happy, Will have to run feeder wires to a plug on one module to connect to the bus wires, will start making up bus wire harness with feeder wires and feed through to the track blocks. I am thinking of powering the

On one of my 37's the previous owner had separated the fans from their mounting and carefully glued just the fans directly to the rim of the fan grills. Looks very neat. I also remember on one of my models I fastened the fans on top of the speaker itself but directly below the grills. Where there's a will there's a way...

I've put two videos together today, one featuring the Tilcon stone hoppers and the other the BZA steel coil wagons. Both are just about finished (though some of the BZA's are not quite dry) so unless I see something that bugs me I'll move on to something else shortly. Here's the Tilcon hoppers..... ....and here's the BZA steel coil wagons.

I would never rely on track connectors to conduct power the track, indoors or outdoors, but would bond each section to a power bus running round the track via droppers. For the mains bus I'd by a drum of 2.5mm cable from your local DIY store or the internet. This is WAY over rated for the power used by a model railway. But we are not talking about power levels here, but losses due to the resistance of the cable. ALL cable has resistance the thicker it is less less it has. 1.5mm wire has a loss of 29mVDC per meter per amp (rough figures for single core cable) 2.5mm wire has a l