Maitland

Just thought of another advantage: you can get really small cameras quite cheap these days, and wifi has the bandwidth to transmit a realtime view of the track ahead back to your computer... now that's REALLY driving the train!

Big advantages over DCC- much faster data transmission, inherently bidirectional, every module inherently has its own unique address, no dedicated transmitter hardware needed, fewer dropped packets due to dirty wheels or track. DC power can be used so interworkable with non- chipped locos. DC also potentially means lower radiated interference. Processors like the STM32W series and some MSP430s have built-in wireless systems so implementation should be fairly easy and modern chips can come in very small packages (6mm square for the smallest STM32). 2.4GHz chip antennae are minute, probably smaller than the components required to extract the DCC signal from the power. Downside: there could be problems with the signal with a receiver located in a metal loco body. Metal enclosures only block the signal when you don't want them to. Might make your internet access slower if you've got lots of locos and you use a wireless ADSL hub (probably not noticeably). The receiver needs an accurate crystal, though against this you can probably reduce the size of local smoothing capacitors. It may be expensive for do-it-youselfers to buy the protocol stack. Yes, this is quite possibly the future, though not necessarily this particular implementation. I don't think battery power is really a key feature, as any realistic battery is quite bulky and we lovers of small (but, of course, perfectly formed) prototypes find it hard enough to cram the bare motor in, let alone anything else. What's REALLY essential is an open protocol like DCC is. You don't want to be tied to one manufacturer.

Heirflick- (and Weshty)- sorry, that's not (as I thought when I posted) an SSM kit, it's one of the old TDM kits. I subsequently find in another box, along with the buffers, springs and valves not yet put on the J26, a half- built J15... this time actually SSM. I've forgotten a lot in 20 years! By the way, anyone need a MGWR chimney casting? I used a friend's lathe to make the later variety all those years ago. Also, sadly, with 20 years' storage, the mechanism is rather siezed. A bit of chassis rebuild is called for- with great trepidation as the way I built it, you can't remove the motor without taking the wheels off their axles, and with P4 tolerances getting them back on, and aligned, and still sticking together, is a project I could have done without. I'll try to do it right this time. Anyway, planning the place to run it- no name yet (Lissamona? Gortnalour? Knockannamurnagh? Kenieragh Wharf?)- it's going to be a small town, probably by the sea (Baltimore- or Timoleague- ish), with the town clustered about. So it will need a pub. This one is not a million miles from one I had a good time in, back in the Seventies, in Ballycotton, a bit east of Cork: http://irishrailwaymodeller.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=9514&d=1381535392&thumb=1&stc=1 (Tin whistle, flute and fiddle in decreasing order of aptitude if anyone's interested). McGrath's Bar.pdf

David Holman has a good point about formative experiences. In 1962 I was 10 going on 11, head full of Biggles and biplanes. Then we went on a holiday in the Isle of Man. I'd never heard the words "narrow gauge" up till then, and I was simply knocked over by my first sight, after the rather forbidding entrance to Douglas station, of the wooden- carriage train and the dark red loco with big brass dome. We stayed near Colby, and the trek to the station started every day's outing. The wait at cinder- ballasted track level, head down to the rails to get an early warning of the train's approach, climbing on the footboards into the compartment with its bare wooden seats, always as near to the loco as we could get. It only takes that combination of coal smoke and hot oil to take me straight back there. The locos most used on the Port Erin line in August that year were G.H.Wood, Hutchinson and Maitland, and I even got a little footplate ride on that last one as she ran round the train at Port Erin one time. Two weeks later when we returned home to Manchester the half built Keil Kraft biplane kit remained unfinished. We visited Ireland four years later, staying at Bray, sadly too late for steam but fascinated by the silver or black and tan single- cab diesels, the balloon- like carriages with their recessed doors, and the strange little four- wheeled vans whose purpose we didn't know for many years after. At the time my elder brother and all my friends who were into trainspotting kept firmly to ticking off the numbers in Ian Allen, but I raided the library and read about the Lynton and Barnstaple, the Lough Swilly and anything else offbeat or curious that I could find. And long chimneys and slightly dubious trackwork have been my preferred style ever since.

New member Maitland here- named after the Isle of Man Beyer Peacock 2-4-0T- having been out of modelling for many years while running a small electronics business and raising kids. My interests have always been the slightly off centre- narrow gauge, broad gauge, the ramshackle and the racketty, might-have-beens and so on. Anyway, I recently opened some boxes still as packed when we moved house twenty years ago, and thought maybe it's time to make something of the contents. My part- built SSM J26 looks a little sad and battered now, but I expect it will spruce up and I'll get round to finishing it. I've got to find the Scalefour Society 21mm track gauge, that must be in another box somewhere, and make up something to run it on. And get a few of the Worseley Works MGWR carriages. Nothing too big, there's still a lot of diplomatic work to be done as regards somewhere to put the layout. One thing I have done while I've been away is learned to use CAD, and I recently created this drawing of an SL&NC 0-6-4T - the forum doesn't seem to allow an attachment big enough to see it properly, but if anyone likes it and wants it as PDF or DXF just ask. I think it's mostly almost accurate. Anyway, times have moved on a long way since I last broke a piercing saw blade, so I'm sure I'll be asking for lots of advice over the next few months. It looks as though there's a lot of expertise to draw on here.