Wykeham - Somewhere in the South.

[bulleidboy]

My Hornby Bluetooth Legacy Dongle arrived this morning. I followed the set-up instructions to the letter,and I am pleased to say that it worked first time - no problems whatsoever. As my Hornby Elite is fairly old (2009 purchase), it has two Xpressnet ports on the back (later models only have one), so I could plug two Dongles into the Elite. Once set-up I added my Class 205 Thumper unit which has sound, and it all worked. The Legacy Dongle enables you to operate a normal decoder chipped loco - sound or non-sound from your mobile phone or Ipad which has had the Hornby HM7000 App loaded onto it. You can also add many loco's to the Dongle. The App allows you to take a photograph of your loco, so it is very easy to identify what loco's you have on the App - you just pick one and away you go. A great piece of kit for £39.99.

[bulleidboy]

I have just added Hornby TXS sound to this loco, together with a power bank. A fairly simple job, although I lengthened the speaker wires so that the speaker now sits under the loco chimney rather than in the tender - much better to have sound coming from the front of the loco.

IMG_1689 by Barry Clayton, on Flickr

[Dad-1]

I like that.
Can't add much more as I don't do Southern, or run large Locos !!

Geoff T.

[Peterm]

I like it too.

[bulleidboy]

Many thanks for the comments. I cannot run much at the moment as a large section of the layout has had to be removed to enable access to the window - new double-glazing being fitted next month. The section which also had attached my control board has allowed me to have a re-think on the control panel. All of the points in the scenic section of the layout are DCC Concepts Cobalt Digital iP's that were wired for both DCC and toggle switch operation - toggle switch is quicker All of the points in the fiddle yard are Peco solenoid - I have decided to change these over to digital Cobalts and change the operation to digital push-button - it should get rid of a lot of wire - hopefully. When removing the board that ran across the window, I lifted most of the track, so I have to replace that, and have the Code 75 ready to go back down. So a few jobs to be done over the next couple of months.
Everything in front of the window has now been removed - the control desk has already gone -
IMG_1683 by Barry Clayton, on Flickr

[Dad-1]

Access the bugbear of a built in layout.
From that I gather you're putting new track back rather than that lifted.
In my opinion the ideal option that as near as possible promises perfect track.

Geoff T.

[Jaz]

The schoolboys on the latforms taking notes look really nice

[bulleidboy]

Again thanks for the comments.
Geoff - very hot water helped get the ballast removed. I used self-adhesive cork underlay when I started and that has remained in place, so it should be easy to lay the new track.

Jaz - the trainspotters are, I think(?) Bachmann Scenecraft. I have just bought some 3-D printed "spotters" from Modelu - superb detail, but still need to be painted.

Not the trainspotters, but some Modelu loco crew awaiting placement:

IMG_1655 by Barry Clayton, on Flickr

[Phred]

Nice paint job on the loco crew.