New Railway Modellers Forums

Easy enough to solder droppers on yourself, especially as you get to choose whether you need one on that piece of track (not everyone is necessarily using DCC) and where. Track with pre-attached wires will occur additional cost which I suspect most modellers would prefer to avoid by doing it themsel...

Indeed it is a very good model. I have one and it runs superbly. I also like the way Hornby have managed to produce models that reflect the variations between various members of the class. For example, I have 30863 Lord Rodney which was the only member of the class not to receive Bulleid cylinders, ...

The RMWeb thread is already well over 800 posts and is growing by 100-150 posts a day. I often wonder how many of the posters there actually have railways to run! I expect it will top 1000 posts by the end of tomorrow ….

Likewise I bought a DJM class 71. It came with a QC Assurance card, initialled personally the checker. Even before I got the model out of the box I could see a big splash of back paint on the white roof the size of my thumbnail. So sent it back for a replacement. Hooked this one it up to 7 Bachmann ...

They're also available on Ebay - just search on "Preci-Dip" (eg https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Preci-Dip-2-54mm-2-Way-1-Row-Straight-Through-Hole-Male-Spring-Loaded-Connector/113026787048?epid=15020001946&hash=item1a50ebe6e8:g:g~kAAOSwAnJbYB8X ). But the large picture perhaps doesn't show ...

Credit to Hornby though: when my Q1 started suffering this problem they repaired it free of charge even though the model was 7 years old! In my case the problem wasn't intermittent, it was permanent.

The simplest way of representing a double slip is as two separate turnouts, as in reality the slip is just two turnouts overlaid on each other. Then it's very easy to see which route is set.

I found it a bit overwhelming at first, as normally when I access forums the first thing I go to is "New Content". It wasn't easy to see how to do this with RMWeb at first, but I've now cracked it. If you're on a PC full screen then "activity" appears in a bar at the top. Hover o...

In that case it's your choice as to how granular you want to be. Where you have the issue of crossovers you could simply treat the track there as single blocks with the turnout in the middle of the block. But you will need IRJs on both diverging rails so that a train passing on the adjacent track do...

How are you going to use the detection, and in particular what software are you planning to use? Are you going to be using some form of automation to drive trains, as the software will need to know where in a block a train is so that it can stop the train in the right position. Having turnouts in th...

Surely I will need to supply the point with power and give each point its own dropper if I'm to isolate the point from the track that requires the detection? I'm using DigiRails occupancy detection - so current based detection. For a simple length of track leading into a point and having two siding...

No need for a separate power bus for the points. But you will need to isolate the points from the detected sections with insulated rail joiners so that trains passing over the points do not activate the detection. This assumes that you are using a detection method that uses occupancy detectors via t...

It depends what you are trying to achieve with the monitoring. I run Traincontroller from RR&Co and the recommendation there is not to include points in monitoring. Trains move from block to block and knowing which way the turnouts are set allows TC to keep track of where trains are. My station ...

The blue dot one is a Hornby R8249.

Definitely don't solder rail joiners, especially in a loft layout or your track will buckle in the next heatwave. If you really want reliable electrical connectivity then solder a track feed onto every piece of rail, advice which is often given if you are using DCC. Do leave a gap to allow for expan...