Sean

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.

imagine taking that yoke for a spin down the red line

awh man i switched tabs and then i was like WTF when my laptop started off chuckling menacingly!

probabaly just a cd case or some shite, half considering a plastic chinese tub for slightly opaque/shaded windows since theres no real interior to speak of. more worried about how ill get thing masked up for black and the best way to go about adding the lining stripes. this will be happening also after seeing this, the whole idea of getting power from the rails was missing the one idea of how the hell i could make pickups easily, this solves that, also gives me scope to mount a speaker and some sort of audio decoder later on, that wont cost much at all since it will just be a generic mp3 player type circuit board getting power from the rails.

Celebrating the twelfth last night.

LOL it was an old bed a few weeks ago......

https://www.hobbymad.ie/textured-rolling-pins ive seen them for bridge stone before also

VID_20230711185949.mp4 Waiting at the DUBLIN platform for the DUBLIN service, 4 car set, funniest thing about gorey station is that the CTC dont seem to give a shit about what platform your train will arrive on so its very common to see a platform full of passengers scramble to get to the other side when the train pulls in to the wrong platform. you can see here also how they raised and extended all the platforms to accomodate these sets. kinda just ploppled it all down ontop of the old platform and called it a good job. VID20230711183907.mp4 Double trouble! had plannned to film a platform departure but this may just be better than that lol

a loco hauled service pulls many times it own weight though and the engine is generally ran pretty hard. requiring more frequent maintenance and overhauls. a dmu with power in every car would essentially be a number of "locomotives" running in multiple and the whole thing works together with each motor essentially running a relatively light load. I could only assume that this leads to reduced maintenance, running costs and overhauls as the engines would not need to be worked as hard to get up to speed etc. I dont have any hard data but ive often wondered how the running costs would vary between a single 121 or a pair of 121 running in multiple for lighter trains of course the engine technology is completely different to how it is in a modern 4 stroke DMU

seems to commonly be a 2x3 car down my way. heading over there in a half an hour so ill try an remember to grab a video of the rev up/drive away. If i recall right 6 is the maximum for the wexford line as most of the platforms are extended to accomodate the extra car. no more trailing beyond the end of the platform anymore! kato do a line of a very inexpensive trams with its own road embedded track system....

that is easy, im breaking my own rules and getting the later ones. very much dislike the bowling ball running numbers

supposedly both power cars run off a single decoder so surely that means theres going to be a wiring link running the length of the train to tap into the speaker bus......... just sayin.....

better get your soldering iron out...

2 speakers per set, buy a couple of three car sets and double head........

I quite enjoy standing in the station these days and hearing all of the engines revving up at once before the thing silently glides away.

Not my favourite thing but sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do, and these are nice and simple so what better place to start. went a bit overboard on the window so it will need a fill and profiling again lol the shoulders are looking SHARP though

it says hes got a few more of them, perhaps he has the box with something else in it

quite pleased with how shes looking after the wet sand and im finally finding myself happy with the window proportions although they are gonnna need another spot of filler into the corners for one last tidy up, that means im happy to move onto the other 3 sides of the thing now which im anticipating wont take as long, the shoulder shape isnt final yet as i think its better to leave them and the 2 ends until last, the gangway into the luggage compartment also needs to be cut down a bit so ill tackle all this together as my last few jobs but im doing the other side first as i need to match up the doors when the door is still fresh in my mind. found an engraver in the shed that apparently the mother bought from aldi at some stage, gonna try and engrave the EGV grilles, could be either delightful or a complete disaster.

Dj sent me pics of his dutch van the other night so ive kinda just been obsessively adjusting this side trying to get everything to roughly where i would like it to be. Having spent far too much time on the windows its a good relief to know the ends and the other side should take far much less fettling to get everything as i would like them to be. high build primer is great for highlighting and filling any imperfections, should feel lovely once it dries and i get to wetsand it. still on the lookout for some nice egv grilles, looking like 3d print is gonna be my best option.