Dublo 3 Rail Layout

Progress on the station forecourt includes erecting fencing:

 

What do you do when you find yourself with one too many Dublo Co-Co diesels (I mean the plain green ones, not the Deltics)? I selected the one with the worst appearance and painted it blue. The yellow ends need another coat of paint, and there's a bit of touching up around the buffers to be done, as well as affixing transfers and nameplates. It will be named "Meld", a strange name to be sure, but it was the first Deltic I travelled behind - from Montrose to Aberdeen.

 

Just to show that things are running on the layout:

 

In case you're wondering and haven't noticed my Highland Railway thread, the green 0-6-0 is a (present day) Hornby Southern Railway Dugald Drummond 700 class ‘Black Motor’, which I am modifying to look like (I say "like" as there are some discrepancies) a Highland Railway Peter Drummond "Barney" 0-6-0. The paint job is only partly finished. I used Southern Railway olive green, as it's available here and fairly close to HR green.

Basically what I did with the chassis was to reroute all the pickup wires to one pole of the motor, and fitted a Marklin skate to the locomotive chassis that I then connected to the other pole. I must have done something right, because it works.

 

Things are proceeding on the layout, albeit a bit more slowly than intended. Here's where I'm up to:

 

Here are three more photos of the layout. This time I've gone a bit retro, as they're in black and white - or maybe I should say a lot retro, as the camera I used dates back to 1936, making it older than Hornby Dublo:

 

A few more photos showing where everything is at now. This time taken with a digital compact camera - it makes it easier and quicker to upload images.....

The ex-SECR D Class is a recent acquisition and will have to be converted to three rail. It is a bit rough around the edges, but it's all there and, given that it has wheels and motor, it was a bargain, as it cost me less that a kit (still available from South East Finecast), less wheels and motor would have done. It will eventually end up being something a bit different from a D Class.

 

Well, I wasted a couple of hours at least yesterday doing some faultfinding when it appeared that the inner loop had developed a short circuit. Whenever I tried to start a locomotive, the ammeter shot up to its limit of travel (the ones I used measure up to 1 amp) and the loco would crawl away when full power was applied, only to grind to a halt a few inches away.

I had assumed it was some sort of short circuit but, if I had looked a bit closer, i would have seen it was a simple matter to get things running again. What had happened was that one of our grandsons, who were staying with us in the afternoon had, after we had finished running trains, flicked the levers on the isolating sections so that they were all energised and, as all the sidings that had stationary locomotives on them were connected to the inner loop, when I thought I was starting one locomotive, I was actually trying to start four - it wasn't immediately obvious that the other three were trying to run, as they were all up against the buffer stops and the locomotive I was trying to run was the diesel shunter, the noisiest of them all.

After I reset all the switches, everything was back to normal.....

 

I have heard that you can convert Dublo to run on DCC but it's nowhere near as easy as converting modern models. As I have well over 40 locomotives, I don't really want to go there.

 

I realised that, but I just thought I'd add a comment about it being possible. I'm far from being an expert about DCC, but I believe it can be done if you insulate the brush holders and insulate all the wheels first. I remember reading somewhere that at least one person had done it.

 

That could well be the person I was thinking of. Given though that I have over 40 Dublo locos (plus a few Trix as well as some converted Tri-ang) and a handful of modern locos either converted or awaiting conversion, as well as somewhere between 15 and 20 whitemetal kits to complete, life is too short to add DCC into the mix.

 

Some recent photos:

 

I decided to look into it further, not because I'm thinking of doing it, but rather to satisfy my curiosity (after all, it would be a bit like converting a Morris Minor to an electric car, hardly in keeping with the spirit of running the thing). It seems that locos of that vintage need a bigger output decoder than a standard 1A continuous output decoder, with a 1.5A continuous type as a minimum, with one recommendation I saw suggested using decoders recommended for use with 0 gauge locos. As these are premium decoders, I would assume that they’re not cheap.

One comment I rather liked, in explanation for the need to use heavier duty decoders, was that DCC as designed around more modern motors, watchmaker jobs rather than 20th Century heavy engineering.....

 

Here's one to horrify the purists - Cardean, in Caley blue (GEM kit on a three-railed Tri-ang B12 chassis), hauling a train composed of LNER teak Gresley stock, passing an English Electric Type 1 diesel-electric, hauling a rake of BR crimson and cream coaches.