Electrickery
by Phil Cooper
Firstly, an apology. I’m sure you’ve enjoyed the photos of real modellers like Sean but today it’s my photos you have to look at.
Hopefully you know that I am developing a theme of fleets on my board. My main priority is the Highland Fleet which features Class 37 and 47s and one Class 26. I hear Heljan are introducing some new Class 26 models and I bet they will be fantastic. I use eBay to buy many of my locos and I’ve had some good buys and some terrible ones as well. Thankfully most eBay sellers accept returns so please when you from eBay always make sure that the seller will accept returns. I’ve seen some adverts where the seller states “no returns”. I ask the question; Why not?
I’m able to create a league table of best manufacturers. This is my personal view, but I recommend you to be careful buying on eBay. You can read my eBay blog which also tells you how to win every auction without you needing to visit your “Personal Banker,” I’ve said before that some eBay sellers have a different meaning of “Runs well” to mine. But over the weekend I got some beauties on eBay. First arrival was a Class 47 from Heljan and it was followed in by a Vitrains Class 37 and they were both excellent purchases. They both ran first time, not even requiring a push. Of course, it helped that I had treated my track to a good much needed clean-up. I use Isopropyl on jewellery cloths to get the track very clean. I’m sure most of you will regularly look after your track because without clean track even your best locos will shudder to a halt. As a matter of fact, if you have a problem with locos running your track probably needs a good clean or, sometimes, in my position it’s because a wire has fallen out of the controller or one’s fallen out of the track.
If you want to have a look at my eBay Special, go to: https://tracksidesigns.co.uk/blog/ebay-is-it-worth-it-by-phil-cooper
Anyway, here’s my league table of eBay purchases. This was not a scientific test. These are my thoughts!
5 LIma
4 Hornby
3 Heljan
2 Vitrains
1 Bachmann
I’ve yet to receive a Bachmann that didn’t work. Vitrains, also, are brilliant.
I said in a previous blog that I hoped modellers can learn from my experiences as a not-any-good modeller. In fact, I’ve proven that I’m not a modeller over and over again.
One of the things I’ve learnt is that I should have done proper research and preparation. My lack of either sees me now in a difficult situation simply because I didn’t research or prepare- I just jumped in because I was very, very keen to get going. You’re probably the same. I started with my board laid out on the floor of the living room. My old injuries from basketball and rugby left me in a lot of pain in my knees. Nanny Barb allowed me to leave it up for a few days, but she was soon regretting that. We have our dining table in the living room and my next idea was to lay the board out on the opened-up table and that was fine too-for me! But it wasn’t very welcoming for visitors.
It was Iain, again, who got me to see common sense by suggesting I take the dining table and board to the spare room which gave me a bit more space and I could fit the table and board and 3 sets of drawers to keep my “stuff”. I started with 1 set but soon realised I needed 2 more. In fact, I really needed 4 sets but there wasn’t enough room so I bought some large boxes from Amazon that I could fill and then leave under the table. So, you need to think about space required, firstly, for your board (and later extensions and also places to store your locos and all running stock and, of course, your tools. I was never a DIYer so didn’t have many tools. Now, because of this great hobby I have a power drill plus accessories, a rotary drill and its accessories, a heat gun, and a glue gun. I feel very manly. Let me tell you about a glue gun. I firstly used it to fix my “little people” to platforms, etc. Don’t do this. Yes, it sticks very quickly but it will leave your “little people” standing in a large blob of glue and not-at-all realistic. They’re a mess. Best to use Superglue.
So, once again, Iain, my son came up with a good idea -not for the first time. Iain is far more sensible than me! So, with the table in the middle of the room we placed the board on top. I had just enough room to work round the table but following my stroke (Ed Comment-It was going so well but yet again we mention THE STROKE).
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And above is the result which gave me a 4-road main station and a wee branch line. You’ll see what appears to be 3 ovals, but the middle oval isn’t an oval. I discovered that at the bottom the 2 ovals were too close to each other meaning I had collisions so then I had a brainwave to elevate that isn’t an oval, the elevated track would lead to an elevated platform just behind the main, (Harrison City) station giving it a 5th road.
And using resources such as Any Rail is good for your track pieces. Every time you change the track on your board, you’re attacking it’s integrity and the more you do it the more damage you’re doing and you’ll soon find curved track becomes warped and the connectors on straight track fall apart so take the benefit of your computer software to do the hard work. So, two years into the hobby I had a good, satisfactory layout plan. I’ll tell you now that I’m into my third year of this layout and, already, I’m thinking about changing it!!! But let’s go back a few years. I should have used the Any rail prints to help me work out the placing of buildings and scenery. I should have used the plan to “position” the buildings and scenery into scale, but I was too eager. I used guestimates.
I made some stupid buys on eBay of buildings, many of which I had to jettison. I really should have kept these buildings to adjust my later buildings, but I knew Nanny Barb would soon hit boiling point and order me to throw them out. It’s only now I see that I could/should use these “unwanted” kits to add to newer buildings. So, my second bit of advice. Try to keep everything as it may come in useful one day. I suppose I’m suggesting you future-proof your layout, very technical of me.
I have a small farm on my layout, and it helps to provide a little natural colour but as with your little people don’t use a glue gun as it will look like your cattle are standing in huge puddles. And glue guns give a strong fitting so when you try to lift your figures away from the “puddles” you’ll find it is very difficult to prize them away and you’ll end up with lots of amputated legs on the platform which is not a nice look!
I was too eager to build my layout and that was stupid of me so let me remind you what Peter from my local model shop advised me, “take your time”.
Moving on to other things I’ve learnt the hard way. Let’s go to one of my favourite subjects, eBay. Regular readers will know that I’ve bought some duffs in the past that I’ve had to return to the sellers. That said, though, my last 3 purchases have been terrific and didn’t even need a push to get going. They were a Lima Class 47, a Vitrains Class37 and a Heljan Class 47. They’ve all been added to my Highland Fleet. The best one is the Lima 47 which throws my “league table” out the door. I’ve been looking for Inverness-based locomotives (with the stag antlers logo). I love them. Now I have 15 of these Class 37 and 47 locos not forgetting the very first member, a Class 26 which is my oldest loco and still going very well. Just to ruin my league table again, it’s a Lima too!!!
To illuminate the station roof I used 2 cheap LED chains which work well
Another benefit of a good-sized layout is that my exercise bike is almost impossible to use!
My first (successfulish) Winter theme
Part of the 10 strong HST Fleet on the first extension giving me an TMD and what will become a fuel depot and container port
Another 2 of the fleet (as the snow thaws)
The now lengthened extension board (in Winter) which shows the new container port gantry (Ignore Harrisons tank!)
But I’ve discovered a big problem with tankers and (troublesome) trucks. They all looked fine in their photos and were described as “excellent”! The problem is that the couplings were of different heights which caused them to derail. The tankers, especially, were problems not just because of the couplings. The tankers had wheels of a different height too, ruining their balance and again led to derailment . I’ve made 3 or 4 purchases of trucks and tankers, and many have had to be returned. My advice is to only buy new trucks/tankers still in their boxes or put up with the fact for every 4 you might receive 1 dud. You could be buying trouble with used items. Be careful.
A miracle has happened which I must tell you about. I’ve got several Class 37s with sound but one of them Inverness TMD was a problem. To turn on the sound you have to press Function and 1 on your controller. To sound the horn, you press Function and 2 but in inverness TMD there was a fault-after pressing Function 2 the horn sounded and stayed ON-you can imagine Nanny Barb’s anger. Anyway, I posted a “help” message onto the Hornby Forum. There are some incredibly knowledgeable people in that Forum, and they’ve always been happy to help. In fact, if you have any problems with Hornby stuff the forum should be your first port of call.
At this point I will remind you of what happened when I installed a dimmer switch to control my living room lights. I bought the dimmer from B&Q and took it home. I removed the switch plate from the wall and saw funny wires and metal “things” inside. I was intrigued so used my screwdriver to poke at this “stuff”. There was a big bang and I shot backwards. Stupid eh! I returned to the funny wires and metal things and did exactly the same thing and it happened again. Only then did I consult the instructions and saw the warning to switch off the electricity at the Mains. You’ll be pleased to know that now I have Phillips Hue smart lights installed. They are brilliant, you can change colour and intensity with, just your voice if you have Amazon’s Alexa. Grandson Harrison finds it hilarious to shout instructions to Alexa. Back to my problem, the chaps in the Forum talked about looking at CVs and adjusting them. One chap sent this possible answer –
Good to know that select with latest firmware will CV8 8 for you. On TTS to reset only the sounds to default, it's CV8 to 5. On TTS to reset decoder but not sounds it's CV8 to 8.
I have no idea about CVs. I found out that to adjust CVs you needed a much more expensive controller (£250+)
So, I was in trouble but I had a brainwave. I use the number 4 for this loco on my Hornby Select controller, so I placed it on the track and the horn sounded loudly. Thankfully Nanny Barb had gone shopping! Then I simply assigned another number on my controller for this locomotive. The horn stopped and, with its new number, the locomotive powered away with just the engine sounds but no horn. I was seriously impressed with myself. I had become an electrickery master. I think even Terry, who is the genius down at my local hobby shop (Turners Models in Dover) would have been impressed with my bit of geniusness.
Before I go, I’ve not received any interest at all for my book-sale and Nanny Barb isn’t happy. I’ve got to get rid of them before I buy any new books. What’s wrong with you lot? I’m practically giving them away and I’m not charging any delivery fees. Get your credit cards out.
See you next time.
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The views and opinions expressed within the content are solely the author's and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of Trackside Signs or its affiliates.
