[John Webb]

For the last couple of weeks (when the Model Railway Express website has been available!) considerable support has been posted there for a range of ready-made, preferably operable, 00 scale signals. Ideas expressed include:
'Snap together' assembly with a range of options for brackets etc.
Tougher than the Ratio plastic kits to resist knocks on the layout
Easy installation
Remote electrical operation.
Working lamps

Has anybody here got any comments or additional features they'd like to see if such a range was available?

Regards,
John Webb

 

[Makemineadouble]

possibly powered with a standard turnout motor - slow acting like a tortoise. I agree with all the other posters on Pat Hammond's site that signals are almost the last frontier everything else has been done. Coloured lights on a period layout are hardly the thing. Yes I know Bristol had electronic signalling system in the mid 1930's but in the main semaphore signals are far more attractive.

Did you read on Doga that Peco might revise their sleeper spacing on code 75 track. Apparently the tooling is getting worn and they have felt a bit of pressure recently to revise things.

 

[7113]

QUOTE (Makemineadouble @ 27 Jun 2007, 17:09) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Did you read on Doga that Peco might revise their sleeper spacing on code 75 track. Apparently the tooling is getting worn and they have felt a bit of pressure recently to revise things.

Whoops they'll be needing the ambulances with that sort of shock to the system.

Regards

John

 

[Colombo]

John,

One of my reasons for choosing York as a prototype was that I would not have to get to grips with semaphore signalling, colour lights having been introduced in 1951/2. I had my fill of semaphores on my previous layout.

To make a modular range of semaphore signals is a tall order (deliberate pun). Clearly anything based on a motor under the baseboard is not going to work as each design of signal would need a different set of actuating wires. What you need is an actuator that can be hidden in the post immediately next to the signal arm. In these days of mobile phones that double as computers, sat navs and Ipods, perhaps that is not a impossible, but it sounds hideously expensive.

I can imagine a tiny solenoid inside a 25mm section of the post with a soft iron core suspended on a spring with an attachment to an actuating lever fixed onto the signal arm spindle. The power being supplied by fine wires. It would then be possible to fix this unit onto another to make a home and distant signal, or onto a signal gantry. You would need to make upper and lower quadrant versions. Too difficult perhaps?

An alternative arrangement would involve memory wire in place of the solenoid and soft iron core, still inside the signal post, which could be either square or round. Actually that does not sound too difficult to arrange..................

Thats set another hare running.

Colombo

 

[alastairq]

QUOTE Working lamps

I feel the idea may have related to the oil lamp and coloured glass in the arms.....rather than just plain colour light signals?

Are Eckon still on the go?

 

[John Webb]

Alastairq,

Yes I'm sure the correspondents on MRE were meaning the oil lamps as they were talking about semaphores.

Eckon/Berko are still being advertised by CCH Models in the current 'Railway Modeller'.

Regards,
John Webb

 

[alastairq]

thanks John.....

I recall many years since, a modeller describing in the 'press' how working signal lamps were constructed using fibre optic.

dunno what scale.....don't think it was N gauge!!!

Whilst on the topic of 'signals'........there is a strong link currently posted in MRE, between 'signalling' and DCC control.

no, not about flipping the arms...but about the 'operator' (you and I) actually controlling the layout as the signal(person) rather than as the engine driver.
With the actual engine having modern technology sensible control of its own?
ie....we exercise control through the signals, as in 'reality'....with the trains actually responding in an appropriate, sensible manner to the signals and conditions...doing 'their' own thing?

thus the train would not simply chase its own tail......but would 'progress' in a railway-like manner, doing things trains do...in response to the signal status, set by the operator?

Imagine if one got called away to the phone..no, that wouldn't happen today..ok got called for tea?

forgetting to close down the box...or not....to return to find the trains in completely different positions...goods trains shunted correctly, engines stabled....and refusing to run because the 'crews' have all gone 'home?'

 

[John Webb]

Yes, I saw that one too! There do seem to be suggestions from several persons that the development of better batteries means that locos can be independently powered and not via the track, as indeed happens in real life.
The argument seems to go that this should make running better - because there are no problems with live or dead frogs at points or elsewhere to create pickup problems; that the track can then be used for track-circuiting as it is in real life; and that control can be exercised by radio. Also one would need to 'service' locos when the battery starts running down just as one had to when the prototypes started running out of water and/or coal.
It has its attractions, one must admit.

I like the idea of being 'signalman', hence my interest in signalling both prototype and model. But I wonder if one could program into the locos something of the human element? IE late running due to a 'poor fire' or incompetent fireman or loco needing overhaul, the occasional lapse in observing signals....
I wonder what will eventually happen!

Regards,
John Webb

 

[beast66606]

QUOTE (John Webb @ 28 Jun 2007, 11:00) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>I like the idea of being 'signalman', hence my interest in signalling both prototype and model. But I wonder if one could program into the locos something of the human element? IE late running due to a 'poor fire' or incompetent fireman or loco needing overhaul, the occasional lapse in observing signals....

I was one of the contributors to the debate on MREMAG

The system we use allows for just such problems to be introduced, in fact up to 10 problems can be given weightings which will reflect how often they are chosen to occur - although for shows we normally just run in plain mode - i.e. no computer generated problems

hth