New Railway Modellers Forums

Despite having a good soldering iron with a fair selection of tip sizes, I've always found it very difficult to solder direct to an N-gauge rail without damaging the plastic bits. So on my present layout I copped out and soldered a dropper to every rail joiner, and soldered the droppers to a 'ring ...

You already have a circuit that will do that for you, it's the same servo circuit as for your private siding gate, you just have to alter the servo movement parameters to suit your semaphore signal. Would that work with the Dapol signals as they only need a burst of power (not continuous) and no st...

I think what I am after is some sort of automation for the signals thus wanting to attach them to the points somehow rather than manually changing the signals. Thanks End2end E2E You already have a circuit that will do that for you, it's the same servo circuit as for your private siding gate, you j...

Whilst on the subject of soldering, just a heads up, Aldi are selling a 60W temperature controlled soldering station this Sunday for £20. This should be more than capable of soldering droppers onto rails. It's probably not the best quality set up but at that price plus a 3yr warranty it's certainly ...

i opted for 60W Mains LCD Solder Station from Maplin the reasons: price & availability of spare parts the good news is its on offer at 30% off so is now £45.49, the bad news it looks like Maplin are shutting down and the 30% off is due to its closing down sale - there foes the availability of s...

Thank you Rudy, most enlightening I am looking forward to further videos of this most interesting controller.

Richard

With regards to the cobalts, I have 40 of these and took the precaution of tinning all of the wire ends. At the risk of getting slightly off-topic, I was taught during in my apprenticeship never to tin wires that are going into a "clamping" type terminal and it specifically mentioned in t...

UH The only thing I can suggest is if you do not know what the specs for the type of connector you have regards the range of wires it is designed for, then sacrifice one on a test connection with the two wires you propose to use. If I recall opening them up tends to destroy them, however if you can ...

'... I would have thought that if suitcase connectors can stand the heat, damp, vibration and God knows what else you get in a car they'd be safe enough under a model railway layout. Used correctly they are good connector the issues with them relate to connecting wires of different diameters. Each ...

I agree with Mountain about how some of the larger layouts can be boring due to waiting for something to happen, I can never understand why trains are run at a crawl from fiddle yards instead of slowing them down as they enter the scenic section. Likewise I feel some operators simply go for the easy...

I do like to see part finished layouts if only to learn a few construction techniques. You can describe how a layout went together but there's nothing better then to see the real thing in progress.

Richard

I got to agree with Flashbang and Rog, leave the discolouration alone, just replace the tip. The element will simply discolour again as soon as the iron is switched on again, those oxides will have very little impact on heat transference from element to tip. The working tip is the bit you need to ke...

If you are talking about Hornby Railmaster software I believe that can only be used with their Elite controller. If you wish to use a tablet then it depends on whether you are using Android or Apple. Having an iPad I have TouchCab. I have not had the opportunity to use it yet as everything is disman...

As a minimum I would suggest 16/0.2 wire from the CDU to each point. Mains wire should be OK as long as it can handle 3-4A of current. Over specifying wire is never an issue.

Richard

I saw a layout that had a small working TV in a shop window. One of the operatives told me it was the view finder from a cannibalised video camera just playing back a saved file.

Richard