Sean

Thats actually super surprising, i had assumed that esu would want to cease and desist him to bits for such use of their ip but all the better if not. im probabaly going to end up buying at least one loksound in the end due to nextgen so theres always that angle to it. (on a slightly unrelated but surprising note, I think the JMRI software decoder is based on the audio engine from the game trainz, at least thats what some of the notes within the downloaded sounds suggested to me,the guy seems to have just repacked the sound from trainz plugins, i wouldnt be surprised esu used somthing similar to assemble all the final sounds....somthing to revisit if i end up not liking rocrail) your right about needing a stay alive, could be even more annoying than with an actual decoder cutting out as the unit rebooting could drop the bluetooth connection altogether. at least the long wheelbase of the 201 makes it extremely reliable in that regard but they seem like a simple addition either way. https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=bd6099c6664fb31e9a4f5dce765aa087&topic=29654.msg321036#msg321036 have done a bit of digging with the google tonight and somthing like this should do the job well im thinking. it is explained in depth on the linked forum but some modification may be helpful for my purposes. BR1 is a bridge rectifier, connected directly to the rails this will give us a dc power source. R1 is a 150 OHM resistor for overload protection, i shall leave this alone. C1 is the stay alive, the bigger the better, should be ample room for a large cap within the 201. R2 is another resistor with an unspecified value(experiment until you find one you like) its in that circuit to set LED brightness however this will not apply to our application and the circuit as built so far will be supplying 15/16vdc which could blow up our bluetooth board so I will most likely exchange this component for a voltage regulator . this should in theory give us the 5vdc we need to power up the board without stealing power from the lokpilot. its going to take a week or two to gather the components as shipping is high and id like to add a few other bits to make it worthwhile. in the mean time if anybody spots anything glaringly obviously with this plan and or schematic please do chime in and let me know. I shall also keep searching for smaller components as i want this in my baby GM! much easier doing the R&D on a big loco though.

i used to use nothing but parcel motel and free uk postage, them were the days.

If the last post didn't give it away I'm gonna be working with a 201 class for this. The baby GM's are a bit too small for the PCB I got so that will have to be looked at again. The A is still too new to go pullin apart. Loads of room inside this so I won't be hard for space. I DO have another railway planned for it eventually anyway Top off and a borrowed from another loco decoder fitted to ensure it all runs. Loads and loads of room inside this body shell, I will simply just gorilla tape the board in as shown above. Pin 12 is on the very left and will be easy to solder a wire to the pad here. Pin 20 is earth and it's in the middle of this connector so much harder to add a wire to. I'm gonna seek out alternatives as I know too well how to ruin a PCB Yup. There's 5v between these points with the loco on the track. This pad is earth according to the multimeter and verified with the esu Manual. Painless to add a wire here. There are no components to damage with heat. Bit more hassle soldering this. As expected I bridged loads of the pads with solder but I persevered until it was on. Made sure the decoder still worked at this stage So With all this said and done it doesn't work. The Bluetooth board keeps on power cycling as if it is not getting enough current. The decoder does not respond at all. As soon as the Bluetooth board is disconnected the decoder begins working just fine. To me this is either one of two things. Either the board isn't getting enough power from the decoder. Or is there a possibility that it's still an ac current at pin 12? Not really sure what's going wrong so may have to wait until someone more knowledgeable can chime in with any suggestions. What about taking power directly from the rails and converting it to 5vdc?

"perhaps ensure everything is working before trying to power it from the unknown" - probably somebody wise VID20220323231419.mp4

Sound board arrived today, it's already mounted inside of a loco (pics to come) https://dccwiki.com/21MTC_Connector Time to start probing for 5v, I think the earlier suggestion of pin 12 could be the way to go. Once the multimeter confirms that I'll trace it back to the easiest solder point and we will pick things up from there

nah its still 25 for an old scooter. the one good thing about the global shipping program is that all the charges are paid in advance so customs typically wont interfere with the package. in the case of a motor vehicle its still all down to VRT as far as i know. Think ive found a niche that commands even more money than irish GM's https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/353935855151?hash=item5268388e2f:g:lugAAOSwWGdhwxHO tube stock!

chaps, I can import an entire 1:1 scale motorcycle with a real working engine that goes brum brum and i would have to pay less than that in taxes and charges to get the thing road legal here. infact i have in the past through the GSP! I thought second hand stuff wasn't taxed as harshly or at all. guess i thought wrong

60 quid in taxes on an ancient toy train, jesus wept..... would be a good deal only for that.

Little has happened over the last few days. Set myself a little ultimatum of you've got a nice layout built up so calm down on scenics for a little while, get it wired and play trains for a bit. You've been watching the news too much again anyway! I also really need to appraise how well the design works and make any nessesary changes before scenic stuff becomes more permanent and difficult to change. Midway through the wiring process, during a test session of running different rolling stock it was quickly realised that the original trackplan was unviable. As the series of points leading into the middle siding was causing all sorts of weird derailment issues with most stock. A quick alteration to the track plan was made and things have been running much better now as a result. I can't take rolling stock into the loop still but that's not really the end of the world once every other movement is reliable. So with that all said and done and the track given a good clean it was time for an IR driver and shunter training day. The aim was to assemble the ballast train on the loop with a component from each of the sidings, this allowed me to give the new pointwork a good running test to see if there are any more hickups, and bar one everything seems to finally be running lovely. Not much of the session was captured on tape however the instructor did manage to get out for a short clip near the end of the session. VID_20220322035424.mp4 Seeing her run that slow over hard standing for the first time definitely brings a huge grin , as did being able to run trains like this for over an hour with very few technical snags that will be fixed by the time I do another track cleaning. Next up turntable. I'm getting the boss and turntable pieces cut out tomorrow so that won't be long in coming together!

emergency alterations to the track plan must be proposed after another disastrous running session with this design. It is fairly well documented that if you put a curve directly after a hornby point, theres a good chance that a full train load of rolling stock wont be able to get over it without incident, a fact largely ignored within this design. I had intended to go all peco with the pointwork, alas the one peco point in this plan is also suffering the same issue so i dont know how much of a difference such an upgrade would make in my case. for the most part the pointwork is okay but to access the middle siding its literally a snake way of turnouts. what im noticing is that the narrow modern couplings seem to nearly always bind up momentarily when going through this trio of points, seems to effect most of my rolling stock wether its 4w or bogie based, so enough is enough, decided this is what im going to do, experimented with making the loop larger but unfortunately that would sacrifice the turntable road and i will also have to go cutting new track to size, so for handiness sake this is the only real option to get things running smoothly. is the cross over more of less prototypical? it should be more reliable in the long run so it must stay for practicality sake, plus i already own the crossover so theres no expense involved. does it all alter the "irishness" of the track plan all that much? my gorey layout DID have somthing similar enough.

The last number of updates have focused on one end of the layout, mostly because nothing has been happening on the other end. Until now. Might as well show you what else has been going on. Slowly this end will populate now. Got a start on the street Site of future turntable, must contact my carpenter. Site of filling facilities Another corner to hide. Not really sure how just yet. I was going to just stick in a low relief building but I kinda want that carpark to exclusively serve the train station for reasons I will allude to later. Might have to settle for another hill or just leaving it as is. Evergreen left behind with a hot box "Drone shot" of a station overview. Buildings are just temporary. I have interesting plans for this area.

initially my interest was intermodal with short 2-3 wagon liners as would have been seen around nenagh with guinness tacked on also. figured i would then expand things with pallet cement and beet(given my geography).. to that effect a JCB and a large hyster would be needed. my earliest memory of a train is an absolutely FILTHY 121+141 header with beet doubles coming accross the raised railway bridges as it came out of the gorey station. I am not a million miles from being able to recreate that train now in model form 20-30 years later, just need to acquire some beets. I bring this up because that train has always stuck in my mind, which means it probabaly left me fascinated and so the railway journey began, so to speak. loco roster is 141, 121, and an A class, given the fuel point where it is, we could see any of these prime movers turning up at one one time for fuelling, 121 is to be the sort of "pilot" taking care of any inwards fuel trains and of course pilot duties(of which i have already identified a couple if a longer train happens to serve the yard, otherwise its off site or on the fuelling siding, which can double up as the loco display siding when not being used for fuel. the return fuel train is always tacked on to the back of the next available liner, which means a pretty large train ends up leaving the layout given its small size. the same can sometimes happen with cement, or a 4w flat with guinness, but its not an every day thing. then it kind of dawned on me that there could be a lot more versatility as a side effect of having these selected industries as anything that is pallet or jcb loaded could plausibly visit the layout at any given time. this actually brings up one additional topic in my mind, its a seperate topic of which i am going to start a thread on soon. but station design. its intended to be an IR era layout, with a similarly decorated station, however if one were to construct a cie styled station then it may allow some elasticity within the tropes of era to allow for running of earlier trains ie supertrain era with loose coupled goods. it would still be possible to run IR era stuff on the layout if one argued that it is set right around 1987 during the crossover period and therefore whilst the locos are freshly painted the station has not been suitably refreshed with IR signage just yet. in essence the layout could easily fit different eras which would overall be dictated by the operators available rolling stock for a given session. the vehicles placed around the layout would also have a similar sort of effect on the overall theme.

why the resistors i would personally just wire directly to the board

I have myself set a limit that I would be willing to pay for one. slightly more than a new loco at todays prices but nowhere near the 300 quid point, and it has to be pretty much MINT condition, otherwise its too much. I suspect that although that looks tempting now its going to get a few more than the one bid it has now and there will be at least another 50 quid on it by the end if not more.

hey phil @murphaph just getting back to this late, i have not yet gotten around to running trains or nextgen since our last conversation(I will soon) however I am just about to order one of those bluetooth boards(or an identical looking one) and one thing that has me stumped is the electrical connection for the speakers, how could i go about identifying the speaker connector on the board and where would i get one, I will probabaly solder ground and +5v as theres convienient pads but i dont fancy soldering the pads on the back of that connector or it would probabaly be a very quick recipe for a hot melted mess! regards

only just seen this, oh why oh why must i not have a pot to piss in right now

Super thread noel. was about to start a thread about all the coupling woes i am having at present but said i would quickly ask here before going down a rabbit hole. the modern tension lock couplings do not suit my layout at all, far too often i am trying to couple up to my set rake lenghts and BAM the train is on a corner and it just wont work without manual intervention.(and if the hooks are on the wrong side of one another its a real hassle that potentially causes derails on opposing bends.) its not an issue on straight track and i dont think it was an issue 20 years ago on those big oversized hook and loop TLC's. never mind that, i DONT want to go back to those things in a million years. its 2022 now. if i fit the kadees do they work well on bends? when im referring to bends i merely mean a second radius track coming off a point to straighten the siding back out. so the train has to run through an "S" shape before it can touch a wagon.. seeing how much closer they bring the wagons too is also a big plus for me. finally, can the kadee be somehow wired into the DCC chip for remote uncoupling? I would much prefer this to having like 4/5 decoupling ramps littered around like my current plan calls for. cheers.

heres another one to throw into the mix. my previous layout. this is actually using the same baseboard as my current layout although one panel was removed to bring the length down. the last siding isnt finished in the first pic hence the second one to show it completed. this was to be a micro layout in that it was only 45cm wide. unfortunately i went a bit overboard and it ended up being 240cm long, mostly defeating any advantage gained by the micro size, the tight curves did present some technical issues with coupling also which i was never 100% happy with. deserves a mention however as the track plan is nearly identical to gorey on one of the old OS maps albeit with one less platform and shortened sidings. it was a very functional station with 2 loops and 3 sidings, and could handle decent sized trains once you stayed within loose goods era. was interesting visiting the station and being able to approximate where the old goods sidings were and seeing how they could have been accessed. a lot of the old trackwork looks to have survived right up to the IR period with the exception of the 2 sidings nearest the station so era wise things could be quite flexible on this one until the operator decides on a theme. the track plan itself leaves potential to have 4-5 consists on the layout at any one time, but lack of any type of fiddle yard in the design made this impractical, hence why a smaller scale may be desirable. definitely worth revisiting at some point in a smaller scale or with a wider board for proper radius curves and an actual fiddle yard.

Have been playing around with this idea for use as a beet hopper. It's not bad although the box may be a little short to be an accurate representation. Sean

No, we have spoken, now get to work on acquiring that tooling

no i mean, look closer at your 121, it has the bearings too.

your 121 should have rolling bearings and your A should have sprung buffers

cool idea for a thread, particularly like westport quay, its the basis for my own layout but using a different drawing, which was posted here a number of years ago, I too have tweaked away from the original design to accomodate a much later era but it still retains most of the original track design, the goods shed area is removed and the goods platform survives for loading hopper trains. you wouldnt really know by looking at it now that it used to be westport so i think that makes me a bit happier too. i managed to get a turntable in albeit not as long as one would normally be. and an oil depot siding. so things do deviate quite a bit. initially the level crossing had been down in the bottom right corner where there is now hard standing, this would have allowed me to turn this siding into a through road, to a smaller modular boxfile or somthing, which would have allowed me to change the use of the layout by simply changing out the box. settled for this design in the end though as i had a fairly rigid set of freight industry that i am interested in running. the size of this layout could be reduced dramatically if one decided to stick with small tank engines and loose coupled stock, however in this guise its a 90's terminus so the larger size was essential. the train does leave the scene whilst shunting as mentioned as a possible annoyance in an opening post. yes, but its a fairly long diesel consist doing pretty long shunts so if i was standing there with a camera in real life, similarly a large part of the train would go off scene during the clip.

a question on my lips for a while now that has piqued my interest with this thread. why not a regauge class 66? would that not have been cheaper than designing the 201 from scratch? i mean they are pretty similar locos under the hood right? in the last 20 years we have seen the 66 deployed accross europe and even into africa. The GL8 went all over the world with only minimal modifications, how come 201 had to be a bespoke design?

https://www.ebay.es/itm/304393992647?_trkparms=amclksrc%3DITM%26aid%3D1110006%26algo%3DHOMESPLICE.SIM%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20200818143230%26meid%3Ddb5e5f6910154eb5b13a3cf706675ae6%26pid%3D101224%26rk%3D5%26rkt%3D5%26sd%3D115275885680%26itm%3D304393992647%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2047675%26algv%3DDefaultOrganicWeb%26brand%3DHornby&_trksid=p2047675.c101224.m-1 lol.