There is always a little 'luck' in getting them to run well. The best thing on building is to change wheel sets to an all metal type. Next is couplers, height, type and location. You will still have potential running problems which is why my first one carries a couple of Oxford Diecast tractors, the added weight is a great help. My pulling is quite good - please don't ask me to reverse with any other stock !!!!!

@@dad1ipms ah some brilliant tips. I may try and build another if I can find a kit for under £8

Still a long way to go !!

Thanks for the support. I think the usual priority is to get running, but not taking enough time to deal with the inevitable problems. This has been a very slow process and I still need to make more track to be fully confident of creating non-standard components from scratch. It certainly does consume time !!

Copy Away - I tend to post things on KZfaq to encourage others to make & enjoy making railway layouts. For a novice I'll really only give one piece of advice. "Use live frog points" there is no difficulty with wiring, in fact 'Frog' switching while advisable is not 100% necessary. What you MUST do is have insulated rail joiners on both rails running out from the common crossing.

This is based on 48", which is the standard width of a 'full' 8'x4' sheet. You can squeeze a little extra by having a hole in the end walls for a coupler to pass through !! I've built 3 at this length, this loop and a couple of classic inglenook 3siding designs. All great fun to build & run. Geoff T.

These short shunting puzzles are easy enough to build and you only need one small locomotive and 8, or 9 wagons.

There is a build thread in Newrailwaymodellers forum and if this link carries onto this you will find it here www.newrailwaymodellers.co.uk/Forums/viewtopic.php?p=621756#p621756 There is another very similar build I did for my club here www.newrailwaymodellers.co.uk/Forums/viewtopic.php?p=677530#p677530 I hope the links work.

Thanks, Something that I didn't expect to be making, all good so far.

Hi Dudley, True, St Oval was never made for diesels. They were from the beginnings of Castell Mawr when I was only going to 'do' diesels. Then decided steam period freight was much more interesting !! The 3 Vi-trains 37's are initially offered on 'Newrailwaymodellers.co.uk forum where I'm a moderator at £75 each post free. If they don't go there or at an exhibition I must get around to ebay, but I'm not in a rush !!

Usually on the axles by teasing a small shred of a harder foam packing material between the coupling mountings and axle. A softer foam will grip the axle and get pulled out. In a few situations a small piece is eased into a void where the base has a cut-out for the wheel. Always a trial & error testing. Put the packing in and make certain the wheels still turn when pulled, but you have a rather 'dead' roll when pushed. It obviously limits the amount of wagons a loco can haul, a light loco like a Ruston will pull at least 4, but probably not 6.

Thank you very much😊

Love to see a video how to do this..@@dad1ipms

Now IF ONLY I'd known that my last Lowmac build would have used them. Too late now as my 4 would pull apart before you could get the existing axles out and I don't think I'll be building another. A mental note made, it may be useful later - Thanks for that info !!

No that wouldn't work. The magnetic forces needed are usually quite minimal. Even the difference height between code 100 & code 75 rails will change the operating forces beyond the workable envelope.

For pulling some slightly longer hooks can help, however with Tension-lock couplers you still have a pushing problem.

Yes using tension lock couplers I can see why you went for shorter buffers. They are also VERY light and although I have some white metal figures inside they are still a little too light.

Hi Geoff, I too have some almost finished 4wh Ratio coaches. I took the easy route and painted them in Southern (dirty) maunsell green, a lovely dark tone. I cut Slater's seating to fit and weighted each coach with self adhesive wheel balancing weights. Plus Nem coupling pockets; so I can see that the long buffers may need compressing. It's wonderful to see St Oval being used again, please don't stop! Best wishes, Dudley

@@dh9033 Hi Dudley, The big advantage of NEM pockets with Kadees is you can get the longer shank variants. I've fitted No.19's on my 4 wheelers and they do manage 1st radius. I've also got a few metal figures stuck on Ratio seating, even a 5 gram stick on car balance weight at each end to add weight, but a brown workman's version that has the original plastic wheel sets and is very draggy (like brakes on hard !! Just not quite enough to stop the wheels turning) and that drag was enough to de-rail by tipping the rest off the tracks in the turn. Easy answer, put the draggy brown coach behind the locomotive ....... Not tried with wagons, but by rights the wagons would be behind the coach anyway. Always More questions than answers !!

It makes a good fine finishing polish. I've also used toothpaste as a polishing agent BUT NOT on railway lines. Brasso & toothpaste have been used by me to bring vehicle headlights back to clear, removing the oxidised yellowing surface deposit. The dried out yellow deposit in a (preferably lint free) rag that's been used for Brasso still makes a good loco wheel & rail cleaning agent.

Remember no matter how clean your rails are Brasso will give you a black deposit of metal oxides on the rag. After another clean rag wipe it should be deposit free and very shiny.

Would be if I get around to finishing them !! - I'm always frightened of painting.

I have them working perfectly on a couple of layouts. The biggest problem on this one was using insulated frog points where small locomotives can't run reliably at very low speeds. They were used to keep this whole layout as short as possible. In addition the magnets were cut to 1/2 of the manufacturers supplied length. Even then the locomotive was still in the curve of the points on the two back magnets and this takes the couplers off the track centreline. My HSII & the clubs Green Frog Brewery will work 100%. To work by gentle magnetic forces any stock needs to be harmonised for a specific layout. Then you can add additional set-up problems by using under the track invisible magnets. Because of low magnetic forces changing track depth, and sleeper depth will need specific tuning.

The slightly stretched head shunt will take 4 wagons & the loco. By having 9 wagons the number of spare places is 2, it simply won't work with 10 waggons, 1 spare place is not enough, I have tried !! Cards for individual wagons gives a higher number of possible Puzzles, but with a club layout they would loose one or more. With set cards of the 5 required wagons should they loose one. or two it won't matter. They are brilliant 'Time wasters', I'll just do 1 puzzle can easily run into an hour

I currently have 6 layputs, recently given my big one away to a friend who worked on it with me over 15 years ago. I don't make for sale, they are for personal use and as per this last weekend a 2 day exhibition with my 'Thomas' layout.

They are commercial Couplers from an American company Called Kadee.They are designed to work by running over a magnet, The company do 2 types of magnets, 1 for use resting on '00' sleepers, easy to see and easy enough to set-up. This is what I have on this strip of test track. The other big magnets are for use hidden in the baseboard and when track is correctly ballasted you don't know where they are, so somewhere within the scenery you need to have secret markers. These can be a problem setting up although invisible they MUST be exactly on the running track centre line. They will give a different magnetic pull on each track type. Peco Code 100 track becomes the furthest away therefore the weakest 'pull'. Peco Code 75 has the same sleeper thickness, but a shallow rail, some 25% less depth, slightly more pull. Then with fine scale track you have thin sleepers with code 75 track, this places the magnet the nearest so for each one you may have to make adjustment. So can be difficult to set=up.

Thanks for the comment.

Missed this for a long time, so thanks for the comment. Otherwise distracted - started making my own fine scale turnouts in code 75 for my last shunting puzzle.

That must be an optical illusion as the track is as near to level all the way around.as I could get. The scenery was designed to obtain the maximum altitude variation possible in just 6 feet,, or just under 1900 mm.. There is a short passing loop hidden behind the scenic divider.

Hi Dudley, It's not a big sell out, but being 81 I know that I'll not be building anything that warrants heavy haulage locomotives and in this case I had 3 x 9F's which is excessive. Particularly when St Oval is now my only continuous run. I've not used ebay, usually moving my retired locomotives to club members, or on a couple of occasions at exhibitions. As such there is no list, even I don't know what I'll decide to move on next although I'll never again be running my Waterloo - Weymouth Heljan blue class 33 and the 7 blue/grey coach train it used to haul. It'll just be a slow and steady run-down. Geoff.

Hi Dudley, It looks like we're not having The Dorset Steam Fair in 2024. Though I'd have my own ..... Although I'd need more, perhaps a steam lorry ?. St Oval has had a quiet year, now my eldest son has moved out I might be able to get into the garage when/if he moves more of his stuff. My trouble is I've run out of space and energy. Space ? well those 560 wagons do take up quite a lot of space.

They are super little locos - I couldn't resist buying this one when I saw an advert for £69.99, I suppose the yellow Grant Rail wasn't particularly popular, but I plan to paint the top blue so it's in the Ukrainian flag colours. Also named by me as ANNA - I often watch Anna from Ukraine's videos on youtube.

@@dad1ipms very nice. I look forward to seeing this done.

Yes that's me - Was club chairman for a short while but promised I'd quit when I was going to be 80 ! I still run my Thomas and shunting puzzles if requested although age IS catching up with me

@@dad1ipms Aha.... I wonder if it was your shunting puzzle I saw at the Wey valley exhibition a few years back that encouraged me incorporate a 3-3-5 inglenook into my layout.

It probably was, I have a 2019 Weymouth exhibitors plaque on my HSII shunting puzzle, but we've also has the Green Frog Brewery one there as well, but that would have been after Covid as although it was a Club layout I made it all during Covid lock down. One works left hand, the other right hand in an attempt to make them sufficiently different. You must be quite local to big "W"@@dibsyardshuntinglayout

Agreed, I have the money, but love beating the current inflationary prices.

At my age going slowly comes naturally !!

Thanks, I can spend cost free hours making certain everything works well. That's not always easy, like why will something work fine travelling in one direction, but not the other way !!

Thanks. Been there and done the bigger layout, 12 boards, but don't do much exhibition work now, can't hire a van so the big one has became a 'white elephant'. I did always enjoy doing dioramas where you have to work at developing a scene that didn't have a running railway. Small CAN work, although still a way to go !!

Go for it - Although I did have a Hornby Dublo 3 rail collection in the early to mid 1950's I didn't start again until I was nearly 65. Now looking back in the rear view mirror at when I was 80 !!

Some really are bargains, and it's always nice to find something you have a place for.

Well there are times !!!!

Hi Donni, One up from a diorama and although I hope to spend very little all the 'stuff' I have has cost in the past and needs to be used before I'm past tense ! I had 2 Lima versions, but swapped one for half a dozen eggs on a club night, but having 2 Bachmann versions my Lima's became redundant. The Bachmann versions wouldn't like this tight circle at all, so after years in my shed this one still works very well.

The whole thing is 34" (833 mm ) deep & 33" (808 mm) wide. The track is Flexitrack and slightly tighter than 1st radius. Anyone trying a similar small running circle would be best using Hornby 1st radius, this is the minimum you can comfortably take flexi and it's difficult to get a consistent circle.

Thanks, still a long way to go !

Hope you see some benefit - it works for me.

Hi Dudley, more or less the standard Hornby trim. The 06 wasn't in the Railroad range at the time, but I don't think there's been any changes in the last 16 + years What I have done is load as much lead into any space I could find, even little voids in the plastic chassis mouldings. Then of course she is DCC fitted, but again just the standard Hornby decoder hard wired in. Everything is kept VERY clean and I rub a 3B pencil over the wheel insides to lubricate and improve the wipers electrical pick-up. The plastic chassis are slightly flexible and because she sits permanently on track in the loft I dare say the high summer temperatures let her settle square on my rails. Marilyn is high maintenance, likes attention, wiggles as she moves, but I love her !!

Ah yes, extra weight can make a big difference. I've got a DJ Models J94 and extra lead in the boiler/smokebox has really improved performance.

Thanks for the comment - I like small locomotives !