irishthump

Oh that's right, you're not. You're one of those "real modellers" who makes something better rather than settling for inferior RTR models. Missing an axle, but better.....

Bloody gorgeous! A good layer of carefully unwashed filth and you're grand!

A little unfair. Nothing wrong with striving to get your model trains to run in a prototypical manner. When you bring sound into the equation it becomes much more important to get a loco to run at prototypical speeds. Please, don't start accusing other people of double standards after that statement! You continually criticize manufacturers and their products for incorrect or missing detail yet it's ok for YOU to omit an axle?

You see there's a justification, IMHO, of why the powers-that-be might be reluctant to allow hobbysists to look after the layout. I've seen far too much of this myslef at exhibitions.

The 121's worked the push pulls on the Bray/Greystones shuttle until the Dart was extended to Greystones.

Wise words! In that case I would go back to the retailer. It's clearly not running as it should and they should sort it for you.

A knocking noise fro the loco would indicate a mechanical issue. Maybe one of the drive shafts has become misaligned and is causing the mechanism to bind. Would you feel confident opening up the loco to check? If not I'd go back to the retailer again and tell them it's making a noise.

It's quite possible that the chip is fine but just doesn't work well with the select. NMRA standards are designed to ensure that any decoder will work with any DCC controller. Since the Select is not NMRA compliant it's a well documented fact that it doesn't play well with certain makes of decoder. I used a Select myself so I know about this! Bachmann, TCS and Gaugemaster decoders have all been known to cause issues so it's worthwhile finding out which decoder you have in the loco. Hornby decoders all work fine, understandably enough. So if all you want to do is run the occasional loco then the select will do the job if you stick to the Hornby chips. It might also be worthwhile making sure your Select has the latest firmware version installed. You can check this by looking at the display when you turn the controller on. It will display a series of 3 numbers, if you see 15-30-03 in that order then you have the latest version. Version 1.5 is the latest firmware, the 15 representing this. If you get a different number then you can send the unit to Hornby for a free upgrade. The newer firmware allows the controller to access more functions (originally you could only access 9, now you can access 29) as well as fixing some (but not all) compatibility issues. If you don't have the latest firmware you can send the unit to Hornby for a free upgrade.

You can always gut the loco and try to scratchbuild a suitable chassis. At the very least it would be the right size...

That's true. Modellers just won't accept bad drives in locos anymore. The Railroad stuff IS bad, but you get what you pay for.

A font of information as always, thanks lads!

Thanks Garfield. And how were these positioned? Was it with the 2 white lights to the outside? ie: White Red Red White

Guys, How many rear facing red marker lights did the A class have? There seem to be 2 pairs of light housings on each end of the loco but any photos I've seen only show one red marker (the same as the 141/181/071's) and two white when running forward. Specifically referring to Supertrain era locos here. Cheers,

Brian, Have you got a list of traders for this Sunday's fair?

To be honest I doubt if you will get great smooth slow running from those Hornby Deltic chassis'. I recently cobbled together a chassis from spare ho parts. It uses an Athearn frame, Atlas bogies and a Walthers Proto motor and is a very smooth runner. Here's a link to the workbench thread - http://irishrailwaymodeller.com/showthread.php/77-Graham-s-Workbench?p=74181&viewfull=1#post74181

Well one thing's for sure, I won't sleep a bleedin' wink tonight.... Clowns are scary!

What makes me laugh is you never know it's a "Golden Age" of ANYTHING until after it has finished!

From the sounds of it I'd say it was recorded from lineside. You can hear it in the second half of this video... The rate at which the sound plays automatically adjusts to the speed of the loco.

Stunning, as always!

That sounds great. Is this the newer 645 non turbo that was recently uploaded to ESU website? Installing the cube speaker is simple enough. Just remove the installed cradle and you can fix the speaker to the back of the cab bulkhead.

Yes, but once again you forget the huge number of modellers who don't have the necessary skill, time or inclination to build their own models from kits or from scratch. These people will happily pay for RTR models and will accept any detail discrepancies, minor or major. You point out that 30 years ago they made what wasn't available. I would argue that the improvement of RTR model has probably sustained interest in the hobby, making it accessibly to many people who would otherwise not attempt railway modelling due to a lack of modelling skill.

Thanks for clearing that up, Noel! Would you be able to post a video of 161sa showing the startup/shutdown sequence and all the other sounds? I'm very interested in hearing how this decoder sounds.

Noel, I emailed DC kits a while back about any plans for Irish sounds and they pretty much said that they would be selling a suitable decoder for a 141 but that they wouldn't be recording any original soundfiles for it. So my guess is they are using the generic soundfiles from the ESU website. Not sure about Tara Junction Noel's video, it sounds like Mr Soundguy's decoder to me.

Well done to all involved in getting this up and running. Hope it goes well and I look forward to seeing the models "in the flesh"!

Thanks, David. I really want to get the painting started before the cold weather sets in, so the pressure's on!