Model Railway Forum

I thought I would give this Hornby S15 a run - I took delivery of this loco on the 29th October 2015 - and it has been sitting in its box ever since. An hour or so on the rolling road, and it's up and running. Now fitted with a HM7000 decoder - there is plenty of room in the tender for everything, decoder, speaker and stay alive. I have not looked inside the loco, but it would sound better with the speaker at the front of the loco - a job for later.

IMG_1913 by Barry Clayton, on Flickr

Not one to be waiting for the postman so you can rip open the box and run the loco are you Barry. More a case of getting it upstairs before Pam sees it.

You have revealed my secret Brian I have not bought any loco's for sometime - I have thought about getting rid of a few I think Pam has now got used to parcels arriving.

All of the point push-buttons are now installed - now to plug them all in

IMG_1915 by Barry Clayton, on Flickr

IMG_1914 by Barry Clayton, on Flickr

I thought this was going to tidy your wiring?

It will be tidy - in place they will be hidden
Very professional looking, I have taken an easier (in wiring terms) solution and opted for most, if not all, points to be dcc controlled thanks to some cheap accessory decoders garnered a while back. That does mean no nice mimic panel like you have, and possibly operator confusion - but then thats nothing new for me

Too Tall - All of my points are DCC currently controlled through my Hornby Elite - only two wires to the track. However using the Elite means you have to call up accessories, then put in the point number etc., which all takes time (not long), with this new system, there are still only two wires to the track, the point motors take their power and operating signal directly from the track - the two wires from the point motor are the track power wires connected to the bus cables.

After some months of grovelling around under the boards removing miles of wiring, the point control panel is finally fully operational. All twenty five Cobalt point motors work as they should - and with only two wires from my Hornby Elite to the track.

It has taken some time, as when I created the layout back in 2013/14 I had full access to the undersides of the boards, but over the years as stock and model railway related paraphernalia increased, kitchen base units were placed under the boards for storage - these are now very difficult to move, and there is very little room between to the top of the unit and the underside of the boards, so access to the Cobalts was not as easy as it had been in the past.

I still have to add the voltage regulators for the layout lighting, but all existing wiring was labelled when the board under the window was removed to allow a new double=glazed window to be fitted - so hopefully that will not be to complicated a job? The "reddish" glow from under the panel, is from two illuminated readouts that tell you which point has been activated - I do not need these, but there is a plug which would allow external readouts to be installed. As mentioned before, the Gaugemaster Twin-Track controller operates the two turntables.

IMG_1922 by Barry Clayton, on Flickr

Nice work Barry. I expect that is about the last time you will need to crawl about on the floor………….hopefully.

A very well executed job Barry. And it all works - a bonus!