Sean

been taking some time away whilst i sort out some other stuff around the place but yesterdays arrival (the bus) prompted me to get in for a tidy up and small running session, which then turned into me putting up the backscene and making a small carpark for the station as the train ran around, the code 75 seems to be very smooth and well laid. also have the unfinished dutch van on the line for testing purposes. still need to find somewhere to put all these green boxes

Are you referring to like a pure graphite stick from an art shop @murphaph?

.

when i looked into this a few months ago the consensus seemed to be that these three terms are used generically by manufacturers to allow them to avoid listing specific specs of lubricant to buy and best practice would just to be to go out and buy specific lube and grease from your local model shop. that said there are a few things ive learned over the years that might help. Silicone oil should be fine - I used to use it to oil my airsoft guns and in particular a part called the "hop up" which was an adjustable piece of very soft rubber that the BB strikes at full velocity before travelling down the barrel to add back spin. this was a specific recommendation and we were to NEVER use wd40 (dont wd40 your model train either lol) "sewing machine oil" seems to just be a different terminology for 3 in 1, I have the bottle of singer machine oil here and when you read closely it seems to just be 3 in 1 in a fancy bottle. same nozzle etc. in the end i tried a little bit of hair clipper oil as the hair clipper has lots of plastic parts and it seemed to fit the description of a light machine oil perfectly. I later read that this too is probabaly mineral based so could also be unsafe but so far things have been grand and if i need to relube ill use something more specific but it seems fine for now.

definitely looks sandy to me

id go for 5 or 10 in cie as well.

Perhaps "a man we know" can investigate the true story here and bring us the inside scoop from wexford street.

I didnt actually realise we were waiting for additional mk2d's lol Perhaps thats a good point as I dont recall hattons making ANY mention of the upcoming 141's, are they still listing the mk3's as upcoming?

outside of the arduino method the other end of the scale is the roco and nce options which most people seem to go for, I like the roco and have played with one a little and the app is nice but i dont think it can do anything that my arduino system cannot and is a little restricted as it uses its own protocol(not too badly mind you). however it is plug and play mostly straight out of the box. I think you need to stop an ask yourself how do you want to drive the trains? do you want handheld controls or do you want the ability for app control over bluetooth(and maybe you want both eventually). Do you want your trains to be smart controllable ie automated runs eventually etc or will you always drive them manually. Do you want something you can take out of the box and just plug in and go or do you mind spending additional time setting up a system for the first time. There are also small DCC controllers out there such as the bachmann ez command and ive always liked the look of these for their simplicity but at the same time they are supposed to be very limited in terms of programming and you might not be able to access all of the locomotives functions with one of these. @DJ Dangerous has one but i dont know if he has used his one too much yet. they come up used on hattons from time to time. Whatever route you go down, you will need to work approximate power needs for your layout before you start shopping. every decoder on the track will draw some amount of current even when doing nothing. it can be wise to leave some overhead for safety reasons and or future expansions.

whats your ideal price range and skill level? I built my dcc controller on a chinese arduino mega with an ethernet shield and the official arduino motor shield for less than 50 euro all in.(motor shield cost the most rather than risking a chinese one) it plugs into my home router and i control it via an app on one of my phones or tablets, or JMRI on a pc. Its actually not that difficult of a thing to set up, but i would say its not for complete beginners as you do need a very small bit of programming to get it up and running although all code is provided for on the projects website. if you can comfortably build a pc and install windows for example this should be no bother to you. you only get 2 amps of power though unless you invest in a different motor controller, which might not support 12 locos sitting idle on a layout although works just fine for running 2 or 3 trains

i keep putting off the i6 because its too modern for my liking and I'd been hovering over this for long enough to know that not buying it would be regretful. Have vivid memories of the horrid red machette, I think from taking BE busses from caslebar(shudder) to galway around ten years back. they still had these yokes knocking around.

ah i dunno im fairly delighted with the price i paid for this bus today, the price even dropped a little bit when i logged into my .ie account, not sure why though. https://www.ebay.ie/itm/115858008679 compare that to an hour or two before this where I was surfing facebook and stumbled upon some lad trying to flog oxford models for 3x their retail prices because they had Irish company liverys. a touch under 60 euro for an anpost ford cargo? Hey ill tell ya what, you amend .ie into your ebay urls and ill make more of an effort to trim mine deal?

nice batch of mir kits going here; 7 taras and a few flats and 6 more ferts https://www.ebay.ie/itm/126014176323?hash=item1d5707bc43:g:U34AAOSwi8xksU4H&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA4CvRRYibGSmCJigOn%2FYUdyIpby%2BLySQ1FmJkNqRyoCt2wa58jHdUqMdI1wX%2B7Ew8SV8ToBxL8WPg%2Fknk7n4Kxj4Qi51kFFCCL0pI63ZydS6pFtD4aYWVCFO%2BI0IRMekxLzWWcSwhHHppeyZEBaiisArpBiHrmlk1%2FA5YPuxlixmHtSunIlFkBNOtSJqA23jdeNpV941jR85lQBz5bNXaK9oE0Rpym9M518%2BXeHiJ82fgKWd7H2dyJCdPgQdHIJnc4yTd80Z32ItBL7n9xQdwGT2NSgxh9t%2F8jcLpZryQyHvz|tkp%3ABk9SR4rD9_WuYg https://www.ebay.ie/itm/126014195625?hash=item1d570807a9:g:3mcAAOSwg6RksVOJ https://www.ebay.ie/itm/126014532749?hash=item1d570d2c8d:g:He4AAOSwi0NksaSf&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA4F1t9HS5bfY0JdJoUMB7qGopheFJvVZJEZF7NjxIHR4%2BYZy2mUm9r%2Fditdd1Z9gvFsCtbr8hMT7kY61iwn7FU2nZ2hD2aIBSjC6RFLh2YGNHph2cKfniG4F%2BIEF9%2B12LgsHDC%2BExWPP0lSAYriUUY3UTr4tSOhARAZ4MZp1heVgKt%2BkYtOjYpKaxEobraJSKy%2BJ3%2FPh077i8%2B%2BhG145LP0bp0fmqF9EZV45pbawqf6pykexuN2ukxUJe%2B%2BLKsd2B9Sc%2FOjvY8o1olpQc%2Fc5cokRXR%2BJ5VpcctXnu%2BDeuQCgj|tkp%3ABk9SR4rD9_WuYg I would of bought these but got 12 blue ones instead recently.

ya but you get unlimited sun and bud clubs so its a fair trade off Postman came in the end. he was just late LOL

where it will sit until christmas? man im borderline annoyed that stuff i ordered yesterday wasnt sitting in the postbox this morning.

How long did you have the power applied patrick? did you try to drive on the DC channel of your DCC controller, and what controller is it? the buzzing sound would be considered "normal" as it is the motor taking the full voltage of your dcc system but not moving until the dc channel lets it move. since the motors arent moving they heat up to dissapate the power and this is why failure is common when people do this as motors overheat easily.

should be there in time for winter

the white paint was still soft and lifty this morning, whilst the black roof and ends presented no issues whatsoever, reminding me why i swore not to buy dealz paint ever again. masked off again and brushed on an enamel which dried properly this time, once that dried i remasked and did another black coat with the aim of sharpening the lines which seemed to work, sadly could not do the same with the orange layer which would have tidied things right up as i ran out of orange paint, ill get back to that in a few days though when i get to the shop. kinda happy with it now except for the last orange paint coat but im still gonna be on the look out for something to use as a suitable gangway and handrails as well as a decal kit and a source of egv grilles. only built this yoke out of the OCD factor of needing the right egv to go with the particular set of coaches im running. when the IRM ones arrive im gonna need to build a second one. so gonna start planning that soon also.

my base station cost me around 30 quid in new parts and gives me smartphone app control and my non sound decoders cost 12.50 a pop ive been tempted to go back a few times specialy with smaller layouts but i just cant bring myself to it. DC with a DCC decoder in the loco can be a good compromise on smaller layouts as you can stop trains without turning the lights off and you cam program whatever lights you do want and you still get the same fancy momentum you would get on a full dcc system

lighting control is literally the only reason i went dcc everywhere,

Well that didn't take long..... To deal with my impatience I'm after putting together this paint drying contraption from a YouTube video and it seems to be doing the desired job.

So there's good news and there's bad On one hand my masking all worked out good. On the other I half arsed the prep for the white lines and took the tape off too soon so now it's payback time for the paintwork. At least the strip is lifting without damaging the lower layers , Overall I'm happy since the lining actually worked out in theory lol

One must take care when warming up spray paint from dealz, this happened as I was shaking the can

Haulbowline is the other notable one.

experimenting with the masking yesterday an today, this may not work out but so far is actually looking straight so i have some faith in the idea,I guess ill know in a few more hours haha. Parking a coach at either end I am starting the mask on one of the coaches until i have the tape lined up perfectly with the livery stripes and then i am going and doing the exact same thing on the other coach but ignoring the van until i have either side perfectly leaving a little bit of slack in the tape. when im happy with the alignment on the coaches i wheel them apart and let the tape naturally tighten up until all slack is gone and then I am gently pressing the tape into place, never seems to be straight the first time but its usually quiet close and at this stage if i need to adjust it im lifting the tape off the coach and reapplying it along the livery line which seems to begin to iron out all of the kinks.