“Hi Al. Best tip I can give anyone – If your track work does not work flawlessly, no amount of electronics. scenery, realism, operations, etc will ever make you want to head for the train room. Take your time on the track work, make if bullet proof, and everything else will be a delight!
Mark”
“Hi Alastair
A model train tip that will save a lot of frustration: Leave room around your baseboard so you can reach track and rolling stock on top and wiring underneath. In a confined space make an operator hole in the baseboard to achieve the same object. I recently designed a new baseboard and discovered that I would not be able to reach the wiring.
Best wishes
Geoff”
And the latest from Dangerous Dave:
“Hi Al
Back from Scotland now , so decided to go in the loft and test that class 33 on pulling power here is the result
Regards
Dave”
Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.
Big thanks Everyone! And of course, Dangerous Dave. Don’t know what it is about his stuff, but it’s always very watchable.
Best
Al
17 coaches!? On an incline? I am glad I saw it on video because I would not have believed it otherwise. I gave up on the idea of a gradient on my yet to be built layout because some of my consists of only 4 coaches would just slow down and spin. I used Hornby supports at the shallowest gradient, and cleaned everything. Well thanks Dave for the demo, it has given me the incentive to try harder.
It is fantastic ! How lucky to have such space to develop a layout.
Congratulations.
Paco Gayon
Amen to your post, Mark.
The tip on getting the track work working flawlessly is a really good one. Great also to see another instalment from Dave.
DCC concepts sell some plates and magnets for help on inclines very good
great tips they are filed. thanks for the video on the incline just about ready to put one in.
Wow Dave, that is one hake of an long train coming through town. Can you just see waiting at a crossing and this long passager train come by, loll. Great job on keeping them on the rails. Can’t wait to get on with mine. Week end wedding coming up, my son is tying the knot. I made a lot of signs for his wedding, your almost there, This way and that way. ect. One more week and it is going to be nothen but trains.
I have to agree with Mark, take your time and everything will fall in place.
SDG St.Petersburg Fl USA
O Magoo You’ve done it again!
Great tip from Marc again. It is the most important tip anyone can give fellow builders. The frustration of not being able to reliably run your trains cannot be stressed enough. Many of the videos shown show bad point installation with trains rocking and bumping over the turnouts. I would bet that when reversing a long train over such installations they derail more often than not. Bad installation spoils the whole visual pleasure of watching your trains run. Similarly, when laying a straight piece of track use a temporary long straight edge against the sleepers to ensure perfect alignment. It is worth the extra effort and will stop a lot of disappointment when running your trains.
From another Mark: With regard to making sure the track is laid properly, test your trains at a slow speeds as well as fast. When I put down my track, all was well. But I used an old, cheap controller that basically went from STOP to FAST. I got a new controller as a Christmas gift to myself and when the trains went slow, they stopped running in various places along the layout. At faster speeds, the trains simply skipped over the problematic areas and continued as if nothing was wrong. I needed to pull up and re-lay the bad areas. Now, no issues! Cheers! NJ Mark
I’m building a small 4×6 layout. I call it my “practice” layout. I’m keeping notes of what not to do when I get to the big layout I want to build. Taking lots of pictures. I’ve got four scenes I’m building based on the prototype Milwaukee Road(now Canadian Pacific main to Chicago) that I grew up with. My old neighborhood was a block away from the main. Being a small layout, I’ve had to use “modeler’s license” to truncate the scenes to fit.
Hope every one is ok !! as far as the china 19 virus and I hope all are safe !
and I hope you are going to keep up with the site Al.
George
Mark,
Thanks for your bullet proof comment. I fully agree and that is why none of my buildings or scenery are glued down yet. While I can get my trains to run around my track sometimes up to a dozen times, there is usually a derailment or uncoupling just waiting to happen. So I’m patiently correcting every possible cause and making steady progress but not 100% there yet.