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Please see the dedicated thread: Although there's been very little progress to show since the last post, but hoping to get some more done in the next few weeks.

Good you did not drop by Sakatsu or you would have been broke! jeff

Maybe someday, This was "Oh this is a cool item let me buy it now purchase"

Jeff Thank you and yes i will leave you alone now and get back to cleaning up my messy layout, but thank you for confirming me me i can proceed with an easy mind Cheers Tony

Tony, no worries! Easiest way is to just snip off the plug end a few inches and solder on your main power cable to your terminal strip that it will distribute from to your block control panel wiring. Best to use your 18g wire here. Unfortunately the tomix wire is pretty wimpy, but why you want it for a shorter section rather than long [the longer the skinny wire the more the voltage drop potential]. Just strip each wire end and retwisting clean. Then pretin both ends and you can put them next to each other and just hit with the soldering iron to fuse them. Remember to have a pice of heat shrink on the wire up the insulation to then pull over exposed wire and hit with a heat gun to shrink up and reinstate the joint. Silicone seal or caulking works well to hold down track. You can get it up, but it takes some prying and such and picking of caulking off the track for reuse. Yep you dont need a lot with silicone sealant as it sticks pretty well to plastic and EPS. Personally I’ve never liked gluing track down, im a screw guy, hence why my brain went to using the pins! But like a lot of things in the hobby there are a lot of personal preferences or things that have just worked better for others or just work better in different hands. Now get back to work! cheers jeff

Hi guys, I’m planning to go to Japan in a few weeks, just would like to know if there’s any store in Japan (specifically Osaka and Tokyo) which provide Custom DCC installations? I’m looking to convert some steam trains, such as the C63 and the D51 steam trains to DCC, but I’m not sure how to go about it. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

We're at the Diamond Creek Easter Model Train Show this weekend, hosted by the Yarra Valley Model Railway Club: https://www.yvmrc.org.au/easter-show/

Jeff One last question then i will leave you alone before you pull your hair out LOL, for my main power lines to connect them to my controllers i could only think of cutting the plugs of some Tomix track feeders and soldering the plugs with attached cable to my main power cable so i can plug them into my controllers, is this what most would do ?? i cant see another way to wire into my Tomix controllers I can see that my main power cables will be wired into my plug sockets at the bridge section, i think this will be correct and of course the power drops wired to the main power cables , and continue the main power cable across under the bridge section. I have also added a photo of my practice track glued down a bit messy but it does hold firmly i think id only put dobs of sealant next time in a few spots only and weigh down till set.

In general most KATO locomotives (ie locomotive hauled trains like EFxx EDxx etc) will take a Digitrax or equivalent replacement light board decoder. Sometimes minor work needs to be done to make LED work etc, like trimming a light pipe or moving an LED. For the EMU/DMU type trains then the EM13 compatibility, the DCC-ready that KATO lists, is your friend.

There is a prohobby coming along with a hippo and alpaca… https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10177871 jeff

I wish the Kato panda came in N scale 😢

🤯 No wonder the Carry DA-16T is faster! It's only 655kg! Maybe you do need the Turbo! 😄

No worries at all, this topic is the never ending stream of purchases, no real rhyme, nor reason, nor order. going to do a zoo?! jeff

Tony, might experiment with pins in the track. Just drill some small holes at an angle into the edge of the road bed from each side and sink some pins in. Im thinking it could hold your track quite well and leave you open to easily pulling it up if needed. Ive used pins to hold track in place into wood while lining everything up before screwing things down and it’s worked well. But there i was just using the vertical screw/nail holes. Going in at a 45 from each side might be quite sturdy. Just drop of paint then on the pin head to cover it up like ballast. Could put a drop of pva just under the pin head to lock it in place, but you could still easily pop it loose later with needle nose pliers as pva doesn’t really bond chemically to plastic or metal more of just a space filling bond. Experiment! Yeah magnetic uncouplers are a whole nother ballgame to have to experiment with. I never used the magnamatic kadees and such. I did have decent success in the old days with the old rapido electromagnet rapido coupler uncouplers. Noisy suckers and took some practice but got good at it. I even converted one of my yards to a hump yard as i could run it over the uncoupler and stop right at the uncoupler and the cars would roll down the yard some. dont worry if it takes you a few tries getting track cut well. It’s a bit of a practiced art using a cut off wheel, but you get the hang of it after a while. Again a scraficial piece of track is your friend! Luckily the little cut off discs are cheap! jeff

I also went to Joshin Super Kids and picked up a few odds and ends. Maybe the mods can combine my recent post and this one together i apologize.

Jeff Wow all good advice yet again, i will concentrate on my bridge today while i take in all your wiring advice, i have already looked at the lower ladder section and yes i will insert a section of track there between the mainline and the ladder, i will loose some length but as you say its a trade off. I am trying to slow down but it is fun so that's hard, but yes i don't want a big mistake at this stage i wont be in to much of a hurry to glue everything down, Evan thinking about your idea of perhaps just tacking it down in a temporary sort of way. I want to place Neo magnets under the track for uncoupling that will slow me down some i think, but i will do some experimenting first. I did a test section with gluing a couple of peaces of track with silicon sealer, its stuck and would take some lifting so i think i have a way ahead for my bridge section, i don't think i will need to use the brass screws or the PCB copper board. I should be able to just glue and the cut through the track and road bed with my cut off wheel nice and clean and tidy. Well Jeff see you in a few weeks LOL Thank you again Cheers Tony

Tony, you are most welcome again. Glad it’s been helpful and getting your brain wrapped around it. It’s mostly that, getting you seeing the main idea then you will take off on the details then. Ive been around this tree quite a few times in the last 5 decades and walked into my number of corners! You are catching on well as you caught my boo boo right away. Bad on me experimenting on doing something like this on the ipad with my new Apple pencil and not just jumping on the laptop with the mouse! No worries we all go at these projects in different ways! Important thing is to keep your momentum up well, but dont rush your self into corners and mistakes. It’s a balance and needs input from your personality. Some are very risk adverse and just a few mistakes can really sour them so they need to be slower and more methodical. Others love rushing in and dont care if they make some mistakes and keeping their speed up is more important to them. Thing is to find your pace and keep to that balance as much as you can to keep things goign and you enjoying it all! Getting things like the trains running is a big big hump and this is a good sized layout and a bit of wiring using the block control. Nothing complex just a fair bit of it to get thru. With your little pwm boards you have you can think about turning them into wired walkaround throttles. You would just need a 4 conductor cable that is like 16g or 18g wire. You run the 12v out on two wires and the other two are the return power wire to the layout. Simple just need some heavier wire for it. Like a 4m piece for each throttle will let you easily walk around or sit in one area with throttle in your lap. Can make little holders for the handhelds at each side of the layout at the yard control panels. You might look at wiring up your mainline first and getting those two loops working and fastened down first. This way you can wire it up to two throttle and at least run trains around the mainline as you then work on the yards. Running trains now and then to take a break is very good to keep you playing and seeing where you are going. Then it lets you keep testing every bit as you add it on by just temporarily wiring up segments as you add them. Helps you see the process and it gets faster and lest prone to errors as well and find ways to speed the process or do it better. The mainlines are pretty simple, it’s the rest that will be more the wiring headache! I would even say wire the points of the mainline first into some, test bcd circuits to get that process and structure all laid out as well. I would not fasten your track down until your wiring is all done. If for some reason you get fed up with a control panel for all the block wiring you can always just pull the insulating joiners and use the mainline feeds to turn the layout back into a point power wiring layout. Should work ok that way as well. Always good to not paint yourself into a corner and have a backup. Once you are happy with the wiring then glue down your track as pulling it up once glued is a real PITA. With sectional track like this you could even not glue [except on your bridge module junctions] and just drill holes in the roadbed and push in like 1” pins at angles. Would be plenty of stability and easy to pull up if you need to. Will hold it well enough in place and even more in place once you add scenery up to the roadbed. Keep breathing, it’s a marathon more than a sprint! cheers, jeff

Jeff Thank you again for that, at least you can see that i am paying attention and studying your diagrams carefully. Again i will print this out and read it through carefully, but i can see breaking the yards into there own control panel is the way to go, and on there own side of the layout but close to the controllers. I think i can get a peace of track between the ladder and the main line i will look at that today, and look at every thing else as well, i feel as if im moving forward i knew this part was going to be the hardest for me its a good job your here Jeff I will read through this again and then have a good tidy up out there, it gets so cluttered so fast, perhaps im just a messy modeler Cheers Tony

Yes get that feeling as well. Presentation wise it will be complete overload after 10% of it even for diehard model train folks. With ttrak being 2-4x more scene per linear length of ntrak it’s going to just exhaust the brain quickly. So much we do seems to be if its good it will be gooder bigger. Years ago when the talk of doing one of the first records was fermenting I raised my hand and wondered if maybe doing 4 smaller layouts that were themed some what or otherwise had some help to focus each to be a bit different might be better than a monster layout. Less of the ‘huge’ issues, may let more folks easily operate more trains, allow dc and dcc setups easily [and layouts designed for each better]. I was shouted down so hard, angerly, and fast I walked away. It would be really fun to do some visitor observation of the setup and even some visitor interviews on this. One thing I’ve noticed talking to the general public at events about getting into the hobby is size. Many have said they are very intimidated by the hobby some as layout need to be big and take up a lot of space. I fear for the general public these huge displays can take something that can be small and personal like ttrak and push it up to huge scale can be further intimidation. All my thinking as been going the opposite direction of trying to do more smaller setups to the general public to help the hobby. I realize folks enjoy being a part of something big like this, but I dont see it really helping the hobby in the long run and i fear takes the attention off of trying to bring the hobby to new generations and audiences to maintain and grow it. jeff

Ah i didn't realize DHL dint have a Canadian hub. So far ive seen no talk of any trans shipping tariffs, but parcels getting backed up for us customs could really muck their hub up and potentially slowing the relay to canada. Im guessing if other japanese suppliers do restrictions it will be similar focusing just using EMS so it’s only the USPS on the state side. Its still so unclear what will happen on May 4 with de minimis, will it be all packages loose exemption or just china and Hong Kong? Even if it’s just china that is going to stress the shipping system some. Or will it get another extension here. I just don't see how they can set up a whole duty collection process with USPS here by may 4. jeff

For me : Now onto next part which is paying for the incoming khaho may preorder and modellippe order. Might pickup some of the discount N stuff there myself. Its absolutely fun balancing all my preorders and then forced to be careful what i pickup I have decided on getting the sudexpress euro9000 too after seeing the recent german trade show. I also badly want the hobbytrain/kato lemke dcc stadler kiss (four car version with sound), the six carriage one is going to be expensive.

Oh dear! I wonder if this will prorogate down to other shippers to the US, e.g., Plaza Japan, etc.? Probably yes I'm afraid. 😞

Those non-traditional delivery companies have a weight limit of about 25 pounds. I found this out when I purchased a pair of balcony chairs and they shipped UPS rather than the gig courier. Any Canadian DHL shipments go through Cincinnati. I'm betting US duty would be charged before the shipment is cleared for export to Canada. That's what you get on a back of the napkin agenda. No matter the size of the order they have always charged HST and service charge. There is a sliding scale of costs with various levels of delivery. These figures are Canadian. The government post office runs on an operating cost of $50 to $60 per hour. Private Logistics companies like UPS and Purolator have an estimated operating cost of between $40 and $50 per hour. I have seen mention of wages of $35.69 an hour for UPS package car drivers. The estimated operating cost for gig parcel delivery like Intercom is between $20 and $30 an hour, plus I believe they supply their own vehicle.

"Next Code"???!!!! Uh oh! 😲 (What's that noise? Mr. Wallet is running away.)

I am adding this to my mental category of "good things taken to a bad extreme." The other things on that list are trained operatic singing and bodybuilding. 😀 Rich K.