South East Area Group Report February 2019

Since the last report we have continued to have well attended monthly meetings with between nine and eleven members present. 

At our last meeting, just after Christmas, several people brought stock to run. The DCC wiring has now been extended to the whole layout. Prior to this only two thirds was connected to DCC, which caused an incident when my 7-year-old grandson was operating my new Masterpiece London Transport Pannier Tank. He had driven it almost to the end of the DCC when it suddenly took off at high speed on the section not connected to DCC. Only a mad dash by me to close down the section concerned stopped a crash. It took me some time to realise what happened. The loco had in fact just crossed into the section not on DCC which should have been dead. However, my 3-year-old grandson (cousin of the 7-year-old) unbeknown to me was fiddling with the DC controller and had in fact switched it to full power. Fortunately no damage was done. 

There is in fact an important lesson here, and it is not about banning grand children from the Railway. It is most important on layouts wired for both DC and DCC that the switching and power supply are arranged so that only one system is live at a time and that only the appropriate stock is on the track. This is why just before our last meeting I completed the wiring for the DCC. The London Transport Pannier ran very well. 

Ian Norman brought a 2 coach DMU which he had built and it ran well. Stock was also brought by David and Rob Wigley and Rob Thompson. Unfortunately, I have mislaid the details and I apologise to them for this. 

Quite a lot of my time is now taken up with the Model Railway Club’s Scale7 layout for which by default I have become the leader. Hopefully in the future I will be able to report on this, but we are planning on scratch building several North London tank engines and at present are looking for information on the outside cylinder 4-4-0T, so if anyone knows where we can access a drawing we would be most grateful for the information. 

Peter Mann