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Rossi Railways in the sun


Rossi
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Its about time I posted a few snap shots, although anything with the word "Technical" anywhere fills me with dread. Anyhow, here goes.

I have mentioned in other posts that my outdoor railway is way below the meterage of most that I have viewed on this site. In fact it maybe stretches in length to about six or seven metres, not much, but still more than I could have indoors. So, today, I've decided to have a test run and see if a couple of photos will transmit through the ether with a few descriptive words. I'm sure Mick will be first to get back to me if things are going astray.

IMG.20111208.00290bb.jpg

Lots of work to be done if you study carefully, but that's part and parcel of the hobby.
This week I've been trying to generate an image of a canal at the side of the main railway area. Whether it resembles anything like I'm not too sure. I did manage to throw an old tyre in if you look near the rowing boat.

IMG.20111208.00297.12.jpg

 

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Liking the railway! I am interested to see more pictures and if you are able to incorporate more real foliage. Youve probably got some interesting varieties of plant available to you that will make your railway really different. By the way, which Island are you on? My family and I holidayed in Fuerteventura this year and think its gorgeous - we are looking forward to going back another day.

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Looks excellent to me. I thought that with it being close to Christmas we'd not see anything new from anyone until the New Year so I'm really pleased that you've been able to share those photos and added something new to the forum.

As the old saying goes, it's not how big it is it's what you do with it that counts and I think you'll find that the less you have the more you'll be able to accomplish. I'm certain that you'll get no less enjoyment from a 6 or 7 metre run than you would if you had 3 or 4 times the space available to you. That's evident from the amount of scenic work and detailing you've done so far. I never made a start on anything like that with my old layout which is one reason why I intend to keep things much simpler the next time although I do admit that it's nice to be able to incorporate a continuous running line if you can.

I like the idea of the canal - railways and waterways really do compliment each other. I also like how, harking back to another unrelated thread, outdoors we are able to run anything we like and get away with it. Yes, there may be a few decades difference in the subjects of your photos but it doesn't look wrong in any way.

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Thanks for the comments. I'm actually quite pleased that I managed to negotiate the technicalities of posting photos.

Santa left me a new video camera under the tree this year, so I'll definitely be be snapping a few more shots this week. Also welcoming a couple of friends from the UK later today who just happened to have taken delivery of a Class 47 earlier in the week courtesy of Hattons (Liverpool).

To ba14eagle...We live in Tenerife, but a good number of miles from the touristy places. The island you visited (Fuerteventura) is one we've never been to...might rectify that in the new year.

To TGB...I'll get round to doing a long shot of the railway which will give a general idea of the layout. It's actually an elongated figure of eight (double tracked) with the middle section crossing under and over. Gradients were an absolute nightmare at first, but now that I've started to invest in new locos they don't seem so bad. The new Bachman class 25 (birthday pressy) really surprised me with the weight. It reminded me of the old Hornby Dublo engines from way back when.

Suspect that I'm going to be doing a bit of track replacement shortly. Yesterday a rail came adrift from its chairs and I've now noticed that some of the ballasting is tending to lift in certain areas. I used varnish onto the track and then laboriously sprinkled budgie grit between the sleepers. This did actually stop the track from separating from the chairs (due to the constant sunshine). It did the trick as its been down for about eighteen months without problems, so I cant really complain. I only ballasted the most severe places because I really didn't have the patience to do every piece, and I didn't like the idea of maybe having to lift track and not be able to use it again. (Peco is at a premium over here) although we do manage to get people to bring bits across in their luggage.

Mick, just been watching some of your Youtube videos. Sorry to hear about the dismantling, must have been a real wrench. I know when I start to replace an old section on mine, the job gets bigger than at first visualised. A couple of years ago I scrapped the lot (due to warped foundations etc and bad planning) and even recently the thought crossed my mind again. The things I'd do differently now are tenfold !!!

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i have scrapped more layouts than I like to admit to. some I wished I would have kept as they were really decent and just needed some tweaks to get them running right. I suppose it's all part of the learning curve with it, but I'm going to try to stick with this one if I can.

The worst is getting bogged down in planing and not having any railway at all.

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Well...As mentioned earlier, I am now the owner of a new class 47. Bachman certainly know how to wrap pressies! Maybe it was my haste, but getting into the goodies was difficult. No instructions how to enter the tantalising loco in view, but well worth the wait of unfolding the complex maze of cellophane and cardboard. But...

She runs like a dream compared with ALL of my old 47's...and here's that but again.

The loco seems to have found out every track mis alignment you can think of, and all of them in tunnel areas. Every engine of mine runs without serious derailment, but this one seems to find all the problems with track which my J39 did. I think its the wheel arrangement (co-co)...thank goodness I never went for the Hornby class 40.

Managed to run a few circuits with the help of strategic embedding of cork sheets at certain points, so it looks like I'm going to have to embark on a little track manipulation. If I iron out all these bad points I suppose it will be a big plus for future running. (Still love the loco by the way).

Not sure whether I need a new thread for this...

Maybe I'm the only person to revert back from DCC to analogue. (Its a long story), but I was wondering if anyone knows how to change my J39 (shop fitted decoder) to DC. The decoder is in the tender with wires running into the engine. I've not taken it apart yet but I'm assuming its going to look like a myriad of wiring. I googled for info and someone said it should actually run on analogue, but it doesn't. Any diagrams anywhere? Especially for non techno people like me!!!

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Been there! The Bachmann class 47 will find any and every misaligned area of your track laying but I look upon it as not being a problem with the loco, but a problem with the way I had laid the track in the first place. I had a curved section where the rails had a small degree of super-elevation. Not a problem for any other loco except the Bachmann 47. With a bit of tweaking and packing beneath the sleepers it was soon able to make it through the section without ending up on the ballast.

I was going to point you to an article dealing with the fitting of a DCC chip to the standard Bachmann J39 but it appears the site appears to be temporarily down. If/when it does come back online http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php/topic/897-bachmann-j39-split-chassis/' rel="external nofollow">this article may help you reverting the loco to DC. You should be able to program the chip to enable analogue running, depending on the type of chip in use, but you would need a controller capable of altering the CV's. Perhaps someone can offer some instructions/advice?

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I've been there too. In N scale it was my Kato E9 that would find and pick at tiny track problems. I ended up using it as a test loco figuring that if it could run on it then anything could. I assume it has 6 wheel trucks, my kato had 12 wheels total on two trucks.

I think I would also consider checking wheel gauges. I don't know about bachmann over there, but they are known here for putting out items that aren't perfectly aligned. Nice stuff though.

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Mick,

regarding the conversion of the J 39. I browsed a few other sites and had some joy.

Because the decoder was set in the tender, I was advised that it should be straight forward to remove the wires, thus isolating the chip.

Did this, and reconnected the trailing wires in the cab (which were obviously joined to the split chassis somehow). Fiddled around re-soldering them and ...nothing. Started again with different combinations and miracle upon miracle the engine regained its analogue touches.

PS. Trying to separate the chassis from the body does not look the easiest of jobs, which I'm going to have to do for a proper soldering attempt. I now realise my eyes are not what they were. How do they make those screws so small?

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Rossi said:

...I now realise my eyes are not what they were. How do they make those screws so small?

Welcome to the club! Seriously, I had considered disposing of my entire collection and going to O gauge so that I could at least see what I was doing but I'm not sure I'd want to get rid of anything. O gauge is very tempting as there are some nice models out there but then I'd probably be back to the old problem of there not being enough room to run anything.

Pleased that you've got the J39 running again. Very nice loco but one that I don't have just yet - I'm looking for a DCC one!

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Hi Rossi I'm Roy from Australia. I hope your enjoying a hot summer as we aren't,. Yesterday 42 degrees and today 17 degrees. I like your railway and the canal scene, a sort of Beckenscot. I gave up on split frame chassis locos and went DCC ready only. I'm not technically minded, which is one of the reasons I went DCC as there are no sections involved. Forgive my geographical ignorance but where are the Canary Islands?, and do you have Canaries there? :?

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Hi Roy,

Canary Isles are a couple of hundred miles off the north west coast of Africa in the Atlantic ocean.

Today we're celebrating the Spanish 3 Kings day, the equivalent of our Christmas. Last night the Kings rode into town on their camels with gifts for the kiddies (and not so young kiddies!)

Weather wise, we're doing ok, about 28 degrees and blue skies. In fact the all year temperature is quite steady, not really having any huge differences. Not had rain for months and we usually take a few downpours in November and December, but not yet. I fear we'll have the odd tropical storm in a week or so. I've actually bought a large canvas sheet ready to cover a lot of the railway when it happens. It might just stave off a couple of problems...who knows?

Got a camcorder as a pressie at Christmas, took some video and stills, then managed to download onto the computer, but so far I cant extract the pictures (stills) to anywhere. My techno knowledge is abysmal, but I'll get round it all somehow.

where are the Canary Islands?, and do you have Canaries there? .

No we dont actually have canary birds over here in the wild, but strangely, I used to keep canaries in our aviary. We've now moved onto budgies. I sometimes think the canary warblings were a little more pleasant than the screeching budgies...and we've just got another two babies in one of the nest boxes!!!

Going to run a parcels train with my newly arrived Deltic. I had to send the first delivery back to Hattons. The thing did a couple of circuits then failed. Hattons were brilliant. (Although I thought it wise to say nothing about it running in the open air). Posted the new one to my sister in laws house in Bury and she brought it out yesterday...so, an hour or so out of doors and then off for a few Kings Day celebrations.

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  • 2 weeks later...

After fiddling with new cam corder and various gadgets, I managed to shoot off some film. My gift at pushing buttons in the wrong place is well documented throughout my many "trial and error" scenarios.

In earlier correspondence, TGB asked about the layout/or diagram. These pixs might help.

PIC_0040.JPG

As you can probably deduce it is a simple stretched out figure of eight with up and over ascents. These were a nightmare at first, but with newer locos now purchased, they give no problems. The optical view gives out differing cameos, as two trains will appear to run parallel to each other and then after a few circuits will pass each other in different directions.

PIC_0035.JPG

This view shows an experiment with lights.

mov010_Capture.jpg

Its a bit shaky (festive period !!!) But maybe a road to go down as lights do enhance evening running.

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Thanks for the replies.

Simplicity is right. I've done other projects where I've realised too late that I've bitten off more than I can chew.

This attempt was actually governed by the space available, so it curtailed some of my wilder dreams, although if you look at the top end (towards the house/kitchen) just beyond the trees....well, that is a spare room (box type room) where we carefully store (throw things) that will come in useful in later years. Mmm...I have wondered about making just a small entrance from the railway into there. NO, NO ,NO, comes the reply from the household authority.

I did also wrestle with the notion of running the exact same railway (in mirror fashion) up the opposite side of the terrace, then linking at the bottom. That also was vetoed.

To be honest, I find that maintenance needs to be kept to the bare minimum to allow satisfaction. A while back, I despaired with some of the track warping and left it all alone for a while. The plants went wild and it became un-runnable, thus taking away the ideal.

Track cleaning before operation takes just a few minutes, and even if there is work to be done on the railway, I like it to be able to operate at some level of efficiency and the jobs finished in a day or two.

Don't get me wrong, there are loads of gremlins to flush out...one being the station approach point work, which, whilst working to an acceptable level at the moment, will need completely uprooting and relaying shortly.

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