murphaph

Be proud of your outpost in the middle of the Atlantic!

Perfect!! That's really nice.

Indeed there could and should be no compulsion to divulge ones physical location, but it would be cool for members to see who else is in their area if they do decide to divulge it. When I joined the S4 society I was surprised to get a list of "people near me". Two chaps in Berlin. I have found and visited a very nice gentleman and talented modeller (who is a non-posting member here) on a German language forum for British and Irish prototype railfans and modellers. He only lives about 30 minutes drive from me. When the pandemic is over I'm sure we'll see more of each other. I'm in Brieselang, near Berlin. The Berlin-Hamburg mainline passes through here but it's not all that interesting. Mostly regional passenger multiple units, some regional push pulls, ICE trains and a bit of freight (mostly containers, the odd heavy coal train with double heading locos). Almost all electric. Very rare to see a diesel.

I think there's too much overlap on each side of the border and then throwing NI and the Republic together adds to the confusion. What about removing the layer of abstraction (Era/Epoch) altogether and just state the approximate years an item was in service in that livery? I know it's not as elegant but I'm not convinced there is an elegant solution that encompasses even the individual parts of the island, nevermind the whole island. If I was hellbent on introducing an era system with abstraction it would be simple numbers like the German one. Epoch 1 to epoch x.

Is there an assembled example in each box to help the staff orient themselves with the different variants or why do they do that?

Funny. I watched a YouTube video shot in and around Cordele, GA yesterday. Seems like a cool place to see some long trains.

It'd be cool if we could see a map of members (rough) locations based on their profile location.

With pre-orders that high I can't see them hanging around very long at all. Some people will undoubtedly want to wait until things are actually in stock before paying.

Yeah with a Lokprogrammer it's trivial to turn on full throttle. I map all mine like the Americans do as to me these are American locos, so F9 is drive hold etc. but that's personal choice. I want to have things so the same F buttons do the same job (insofar as possible) on all my locos.

Yeah it looks great. Noel, did you respray the whole thing or just add the white lines and weather it? In real life it looks like they often added the lining and left the coach in service for years sometimes. There are lots of photos of rakes where the odd coach is obviously just ST golden brown with white lines rather than orange.

Looking for a 1994 or preferably a 1995 Working timetable (IE) if anyone is willing to part with one for a reasonable amount (€15 or so plus postage would be fine). Cheers! I'm in Germany but it can be posted to Dublin as well if it's easier. Cheers, Phil

Probably not but I bet the seller did

Ah ok I thought you were using DCC. The DC blanking plug is inserted in the DCC socket I take it? I suspect you'll find it's just a couple of broken solder joints at the pickups to be honest. It's far more likely to be that than a defective component on the PCB and testing continuity from front left to rear left and front right to rear right wheels will quickly tell you without even taking the loco apart

No, but you can just use 4 tiny balls of black tack to fix containers to the flats as an alternative. Holds firm but can be removed with a gentle tug.

Do you have continuity from the pickups to the PCB? You can quickly check continuity between the front and rear left and right wheels respectively. You should have continuity between wheels on the same side (I can't remember if both wheels on each bogie have pickups but definitely both bogies have at least one set of pickups. This will quickly establish if a wire has broken inside loco between pickup and PCB. You may have already eliminated this when you "jumped the terminals" (it's not clear exactly what you jumped). If you have continuity from wheels to PCB terminals and the decoder works in another loco and you have continuity from the PCB terminals to the motor, then yeah the PCB is defective but there's hardly anything on it to break. The little transistors if present (will be marked Q1, Q2 etc.) have nothing to do with motor control, those will be for function outputs. The capacitors or inductors that may be present in the motor control circuity can actually be removed if using DCC only. The output of the motor pins can be bridged directly to the terminals on the motor. In older locos people usually strip all the capacitors and inductors out when converting to DCC. But I think it's actually unlikely any of these have failed. A dry solder joint is the most likely cause of failure of the PCB, especially the surface mounted 21pin socket that is subject to mechanical stress when the decoder is inserted and removed. A quick touch of the soldering iron on every joint is what I'd do first after checking for basic continuity. If the loco is completely dead (ie headlights and marker lights also dead) then I'd be amazed if the problem isn't the continuity between pickups and PCB or at the 21pin socket. I've had both pickup wires break at the bogie end on MM locos so it happens. You should be able to troubleshoot this without any test track or rolling road if you have a multimeter.

I don't have a schematic but there's very little on those boards to go wrong and if you are comfortable soldering you will almost certainly be able to repair it. Have you tried just reflowing all the solder joints? There's a very good chance there's a dry joint and before you start trying to debug it you would be done reflowing the joints in 2 minutes. What is the exact symptom of failure? Is it completely dead or just some functions aren't working? Even without a circuit diagram you will be able to check continuity from the MTC21 socket to most of the various components. You can find a pinout diagram like this: https://images.app.goo.gl/RcW1oMsB1i1nEVf18 And then check for continuity from the pins to things like the pickups/wheels (there will probably be capacitors between the motor and 21MTC pin (on the Bachmann board) so you shouldn't expect DC continuity from socket to motor as the capacitor "blocks".

I've never built a loco kit but I guess on "one offs" the likelihood of later needing to remove a decoder is minimal, unless it fails. It's maybe just my OCD. I just like a clean interface between decoder and the permanent wiring of the loco. It also allows a person to whip the decoder out and put in a DC blanking plate to allow the loco to run (natively) on DC (at a friend's or in a club layout for example). Edit: it also allows an easy upgrade. I will probably initially equip a lot of my locos with lokpilots due to the sheer cost of sound decoders. As and when funds are available, I can upgrade the locos to loksounds and cascade the lokpilots down to coach lighting duties, without having to get the soldering iron out.

I guess this is the product he talks about: http://www.esu.eu/en/products/loksound/loksound-5-dcc-direct-with-integrated-powerpack/ Personally I don't like hardwired decoders like this as you are committing to leave the expensive sound decoder installed in that particular loco "forever". No swapping loksounds with lokpilots as your fleet changes or whatever. It's also a pain to replace the decoder should it fail and you have to program it on a programming track or rolling road (I like to remove my decoders and programme the programming board (ESU Prüfstand)) I'm any case it looks like it's a north American model and will not be readily available here (though you'll probably be able to find it somewhere if it meets your needs) Obviously the product might well suit your needs or they wouldn't be selling them so please don't be put off by what I say. Most of this is personal preference.

Another thread revival, sorry! Does anybody know where these tanktainers (Harp, Satzenbrau) would have been going to or from? I am assuming it was bulk product being sent somewhere to be bottled or put in kegs perhaps? Were similar containers ever seen around Kilkenny (Smithwicks)?

These are brass kits, requiring soldering together Shane.

Cheers John, then you can put me down for one also so

John, Is the weed spray van this one?

Yeah they are brilliant. Several interesting movements caught on camera. The Athy pictures showing what appears to be the delayed up Bell liner reversing into the Ballylinan branch siding to make way for the crossing of the two scheduled passenger services is really super. Probably a rare occurrence as the liner should have been approaching Heuston already at that stage.

And I guess the kadee is actually as close to prototypical looking as you'll get on the mk3, with the drop head buckeye couplers used on the intermediate couplings.