On SRman's Workbench

Hi Ian. It runs fine, although I need to add a little more weight to the trailers - I have added some already, but more is needed for stability.

A couple more photos, this time with the orange 'swooshes' added. Both the blue and the orange are very crudely done at the moment. When Adam (Electra Railway Graphics) comes up with the vinyl overlays, I'll see what needs to be tidied up to get minimum 'show through' of the base colours.

 

Looking slightly more complete, livery-wise, the class 455 has had the black roofs and ends added.

 

It is quite a lively scheme.

There are broad yellow strips on each side of every pair of passenger doors too, but I am not intending to paint those, preferring to leave them to the vinyl overlays.

Just for a contrast, here's a reminder of previous SWT units I've done (or am still working on), in the outer suburban colour scheme - same colours,different arrangement.

 

I agree with you, Steve; I prefer the blue outer suburban livery, but the red gives a nice contrast for the models, and certainly adds a brighter note to the layout!

I also like the SWT intercity white-based livery, which seems quite classy to me. Unfortunately, I don't have any models that would go into that livery, with the possible exception of a class 159 which is already in NSE livery (which I also like). I wouldn't mind getting one of the SWT class 159s Bachmann put out years ago, despite them not being DCC ready, but those seem to be scarcer than hens' teeth.

 

Hi Keith. I have converted a 159 and a 158 to DCC (the latter with sound intended eventually for the 159). The conversion for the motor units is easy, but the lighting takes a bit more effort, with rewiring of the circuits needed, and either a separate decoder for each car, or, as I'm attempting in the 159, through connections to the central decoder.

I have also done a class 170 and a class 166, bit non-DCC-ready (officially!). The 170 uses incandescent bulbs so had a complete rewiring to allow separate operation of the head and tail lights, with future multiple operation in mind.
http://www.click

 

Spurred on by Keith's tackling of a Genesis kit for a Sealion wagon, I remembered that I had a Genesis Diesel Brake Tender sitting unmade on the "to do" shelf. This kit, being a lot simpler than a Sealion, has only taken a couple of short evening sessions to get to this stage.

The roof ends need trimming, and all the gaps need to be filled, but the basic shape is there and it is already capable of being run. Small details to add include the brake wheels and the vacuum pipes, with lamp irons having to be fabricated from some wire.

I used Hornby 14.1mm coach wheels, and NEM fishtail pockets with the actual fishtail bit cut off. A small fillet of wooden coffee stirring stick fills the recess in the bogie frame end, allowing the pockets to be glued at exactly the right height. I cheated slightly in using the correct wheelbase for mounting the bogies, but trimming off the end overhangs from the inner ends of the sideframes to allow a little extra swing. This vehicle will go around the tightest of model railway curves if required!

 

Continuing with the Bratchell class 455/9 kit, I have been roughly painting the front ends and tidying up the "swoops", although all are still very rough and unfinished.





I am still awaiting the vinyls from Electra, which will allow me to match the colours properly.

 

For my pre-grouping trains, I rather admired Hornby's forthcoming Crystalate wagon, but the catalogue illustrations showed the huge, clunky coupling. I had rather hoped they would use something finer, but when it came out very recently, sure enough, clunky and chunky couplings were present. However, a little bit of investigation showed that they were of the Dapol-style clip in type. A while back, I discovered that the first release new-style Hornby Pullman couplings were a direct clip-in replacement for the larger couplings. As the all of my early Hornby Pullmans were modified with the slightly later NEM pocket couplings and revised bogies (parts that Simon Kohler, in Hornby's name happily supplied), I have a reasonable supply of these finer couplings.

The original coupling type, removed from the wagon:



The replacement ex-Pullman coupling:



The underside of the wagon with the replacement couplings in place.



And the wagon as it is now. I'm much happier with it with the finer couplings. Perhaps it could do with a little weathering, but then again, a lot of my other P. O. and railway company wagons also need that.

 

Well, I got cracking and fitted the Kadee #20 couplings to both units. I was also going to perform a decoder swap with another (completely different) unit that I had recorded on my spreadsheet as having a Lenz decoder, but only requiring two functions. However, on reading the decoder on that unit, it turned out to be manufacturer 48, i.e. Hornby, which means I have now located my second Sapphire decoder! The result of this was that the Zimo MX634D decoder had to remain in the TC for the time being, so I decided to have another go at programming a Zimo to work the lights properly in these TC units.

I am extremely proud to announce I got it to work.

I started by programming a value of 3 into CV8, then 3 into CV 124 (actually already in there but I wanted to be sure). Then I moved to JMRI Decoder Pro to read the functions, and changed a few checkboxes. The screen shots below were actually a dummy run to duplicate the settings as I didn't take screen shots while I was actually doing the programming. The first shot is the "before" and the second is the "after" - the area with the orange highlight is the section I was playing with.






The upshot of all this is that both units now have operable interior lights. The following shots and video show the combined train in action, with blue unit 416 (with Lenz Silver 21 decoder) leading blue/grey unit 404 (with the Zimo decoder), propelled by Heljan 33/1 D6520 with legomanbiffo sound (ESU LokSound). The video also shows bif's drive lock feature in action; the speed is held while the engine has been ramped up to full thrash. The interior lights on the Lenz decoder work on F5, while the Zimo one works them on F3. I didn't want to tempt fate by fiddling further to try to get them on the same F keys!

 

As if I need more rolling stock, I have been doing another quick kit-build, this time it's a Parkside BR/SR plywood sided CCT, which were actually built in BR days to the same basic design as the previous SECR and Southern Railway versions. I pre-painted the sides before assembly to allow easier adding of the window glazing and bars. The bars are just plastic micro-strip, although the thicker ones are actually a fraction too wide, but they were the closest I could get. The first pic shows it in a raw state, with a few bits still to add, while the second shows it in nearly complete form awaiting a few paint touch-ups and some transfers.





This gives me yet another minor variation on the SECR/SR style CCTs and PMVs.

 

Yet another older locomotive has now been converted to DCC. This one was quite a decent runner to start with, but is an earlier Bachmann class 45 chassis, with an even older Mainline body. 45 048 has the giveaway moulded roofline that allowed Mainline to separate the roof colour on the BR green versions - Bachmann themselves used slightly updated mouldings with that raised line correctly eliminated from the cabs back.

I needed a fairly thin decoder but the footprint was unimportant as there is lots of room in that regard; a Lenz Standard+ decoder with the 8-pin plug cut off was what was required. I analysed the fairly simple PCB and wiring to see what was needed. The brush wires were easily identified and desoldered, then the orange and grey wires were soldered to those. The track feed wires were soldered to the PCB bus tracks at each end, again easily identified and left alone. The red and black decoder wires were soldered to the relevant PCB tracks (red to the right).

The trickiest bits were isolating the headlights, which had a small side track on the PCB and what I thought were resistor in line, but were more probably diodes. I cut the side tracks with a slitting disc in the Dremel, then soldered the white wire to the point where the diode connected to the headlight wire, and did the same with the yellow wire at the other end. The blue common return was connected to both ends, to the desoldered return wires for the headlight bulbs.

A test showed that the motor worked on DCC, but the wheels desperately needed cleaning. That task accomplished, I then tried out the directional headlights; forwards worked but reverse did not. At that point I decided that I had done enough for the night, so ran the loco back and forth a few times on the main lines, then took the photos. For some reason all of the photos came out slightly fuzzy, but they'll do for now. I'll deal with the non-working light tomorrow.





After this, I need to cut off the body-mounted buffer beams and put them where they should be, on the bogies.