Sean

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.

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....