murphaph

I think a lot of people use 1 sound decoder when double heading just to keep the costs down. I guess 2 would be better but ESU in fairness realised that the cost would be prohibitive for many, especially US modellers where you could have 4 or 5 locos in consist. The sound decoders would double the cost of your locos over there in most cases. If you do run two locos in consist with sound decoders or bluetooth sound, the sound files should be slightly modified so that the prime mover frequencies are not identical. You get weird phasing if they are both the exact same. If I had to choose between cheap sound and Rocrail (which supports hardware offering the opendcc bidib protocol, which is more important to me than sound) I would choose Rocrail but I'm optimistic the NextGen stuff will be further developed. It's "European" in origin and is reasonably likely to see requests to better integrate it with Rocrail, JMRI being more popular in Anglo-Saxon countries, especially North America. You can see that with bidib support in Rocrail. Funnily enough I just went looking and bidib support is being added to JMRI but it's only available in a development branch, it hasn't been merged with the main branch yet: https://forum.opendcc.de/viewtopic.php?t=6879 (sorry it's all in German) I think I'll wait until it's stable and included in JMRI before I bother with it though. Nice to have an alternative to Rocrail some day though.

Interesting Sean. I guess that makes sense as the LP is designed to work in tandem with the LS (for example in a double header setup). It's good to know it works though. I'm hoping NextGen is further developed and possibly integrated into Rocrail though the dependency on dlls makes that unlikely I reckon. I don't think Rob Versluis (not sure on the spelling) would be too keen on the Windows reliance for any part of Rocrail.

Lol, reminds me of my pal back when I lived in Berlin. We had a party and he got well oiled. Took the train to Potsdam instead of Potsdamer Platz.

I've never associated the two places as having the same name, despite knowing of both of them. Isn't that strange?!

It sure does, though a toothbrush is still required after an overnight soaking. It might fall off if left for longer. Interestingly the plastic was a close approximation to the final colour in both cases, but the models were still sprayed rather than just relying on the coloured plastic. I wonder what the rationale was for selecting a "very close to the final colour" plastic, only to spray over it anyway. My guess is that after QA, the colour wasn't close enough perhaps and a decision was taken to spray the base colour rather than rely on the plastic itself. Who knows. I found it curious anyway.

086 has been joined by 088, also ex-ST. Both models were stripped down to bare plastic after an initial attempt to feather the edges of the paint lines before priming was less than satisfactory. You could still see a shadow under a vertical light source and as these models may well be lit from above I wasn't happy with that and after experimenting on 086 above, 088 went into the dip to remove the primer and factory paint underneath and also bring it back to bare plastic. Stripping was done in 99.99% IPA. Afterwards rinsed in soapy water and then sprayed off with distilled water through the airbrush, just to be sure everything was neutralised. Probably overkill but these aren't my locos oh and the mould lines around the cabs were sanded out while I was at it. After drying overnight, the primer was applied from a rattle can (buffer shanks were masked up first). I had one can of Vallejo Hobby Paint left and decided this would be a suitable application as I wouldn't have too much waste and detail is maintained due to the finer pigments compared to automotive sprays, allegedly. I already decided not to buy any more aerosol paints, including primers, simply because you waste so much as you have to keep 20cm away from the subject and most of the spray goes to waste like that. I guess I could have depressurised the can and decanted the contents off for use in an airbrush but I'm too lazy for all that so I sprayed it from the can. A couple of hours later I began applying the final colours, working from light to dark. The colours were matched as closely as possible to my MM0112. The yellow is Vallejo 71.135 Chrome Yellow from the Air range. The red is RAL 3013 Tomato Red from Oesling Modellbau. Both paints are water based acrylics. The yellow warning panel as well as the buffer bosses will be reverse masked before the blue is applied. The centre grab irons on the cabs were removed to make it easier for the masking tape to sit flat. I will have to make up custom masks, approximating the curve radius of the corners.

Not for sale as far as I know lol.

Yeah it's really well done isn't it. Very hard to see where the real stuff ends and the backscene begins.

When did the Norfolk Liner(s) actually start?

Former 086 to become 111 ca. 1995. Sanding down the top mould line.

Oh very nice work. Really looks the part. Are the transits prototypical for 1995 or are the later or freelance? I have looked for pics of similar but only ever found plain blue and red transits. Be cool if these existed in reality.

No problem. It's hard to tell the tone sometimes online

Anything coming into the EU is in principle subject to duties and VAT, new or used. The value and whether or not the item is a gift are what determine whether duties and/or VAT is charged. Many categories of items, including model railways are zero rated for duties (tariffs) but VAT is still due on virtually everything, unless it's a gift and even then the threshold is only €45 before VAT is due. I thought the UK was still following the same regime to be honest. HMRC might be waving stuff from the EU through, however that is an "operational decision" I guess. In Germany customs are waving nothing through. It's now very rare a parcel makes it through. Robert Shrives sent me a gift for 10GBP and it was stopped and VAT levied, incorrectly as well below the threshold. A book I bought from Jim Markle was incorrectly levied with 19% VAT instead of 7%. I make a point of claiming refunds for these very small amounts to cause more work than they are worth collecting. Many others are doing the same in the hope of getting the Zoll (German customs) to put pressure on the federal government to bring the issue back to Brussels to find a better solution for us all. We shouldn't be stopping small stuff from reputable countries just because certain predominantly far eastern sellers have been defrauding the tax authorities of the EU for years, by systematically under-declaring the value of commercial items. The solution is to stop everything from those countries and check it. They are still under-declaring the goods of course, just paying less in import duties and VAT! A threshold of €100 is totally normal elsewhere in the world. The effective €5 threshold in the EU is ridiculous and should go. Stricter checks on goods from the far east are the solution. Given the huge geopolitical changes we are experiencing right now, I can see this happening in that context.

No Jason I think you're reading something into my response that I certainly didn't intend. Apologies if I wasn't clear. I'll try to clarify... I've reread my post and can only assume it's the "tendency" word that made you think I was talking about your advice. In fact I was talking generally because the cab tends to naturally tilt forward when you pull up on it and this is because it's clipped to the chassis at the front base in the centre. Squeezing the cab sides forces the clip receptacle outward and allows the cab to be lifted straight up. I just thought I could add to the forum by adding to this thread rather than creating a separate one. Sorry for any offence caused. None was intended.

Hi all, Does anyone have any good colour code matches for the red buffers and yellow warning panel on these? The most important thing, the blue is ok, Revell 52. I think it was actually RAL 5010. Revell 52 and my RAL 5010 are dead ringers for each other on a sample anyway so it's the red and yellow details I'm after. Cheers!

Seeing as this thread was resurrected elsewhere I can contribute something useful to it. The above pictures show a design flaw with the babies leading to light bleed. There's a hint of white light being emitted from the red marker light. Paddy seems to have corrected this on the big GMs as I found out a couple of days ago when dismantling one. The light pipe design was modified thus: The light pipes received a silver paint (NOT where the light enters or exits obviously!) to help refract light internally presumably but also that black strip of plastic was inserted between those adjacent light pipes to ensure no cross contamination as a belt and braces approach. This improvement could fairly easily be retrofitted to the babies if you are going to the trouble of fixing the independent marker lights problem.

Apologies. I wasn't sure anymore. It was a great find

Was thinking the same. It rivals anything I've seen.

No probs. I think it may have been Sean who figured out that it was fairly easy to get the headlights to work independently of the marker lights on the babies. I had always assumed the same LEDs were responsible for the light but it seems they aren't.

Not me. I've never played around with the 141s beyond fitting a speaker and Loksound in one. I modified a 201 to allow the red marker lights to be switched off with an F button when hauling a train, maybe that's what you're thinking about

Ok I got impatient. In answer to my own question... There is a trick to releasing the cab. The tendency is to tilt the cab forward as initially this appears to be the only way to get any movement going. In fact this may just cause damage to the lamp irons. Luckily for me the first cab came off despite tilting it forward like this. Then I could see clearly how to properly do it. Lucky for me as the second cab was far stiffer. There's a clip at the front in the centre that holds the cab down. To release you need to squeeze the sides of the cab where the numbers are. This caused the front to bow out enough to let it slip up over the clip. The clip is visible in the exploded diagram if you know what you're looking for. By the way, everything else that needs to come off to respray the cab comes off without breaking except the windscreen wipers. The plastic is very soft and welds to the body such that removing them cleanly appears impossible to me. They will have to be glued back at the end.

I'm about to remove the cabs from my first 071 to respray it. Before I break something, is there any further details beyond wiggling it that might be of help? The cab does come apart from the sole plate I take it? Is it glued in or just clipped or what? Appreciate any pointers folks.

Oh it looks brilliant in its new home. You can appreciate the scale of it much more here. I always thought it was much smaller than it is in reality!

Very much looking forward to following your progress!

What year was that SNCF livery and did the loco ever run in revenue service like that?