[Savage GT]

Thanks Rallyhub.

@ BARacer Its actually Blink Bonny not FS 
The Pacifics did occasionally haul express freight, and until there is something more suitable available or I can build, BB has the job 

1962 - A3 on Fast Freight. | Gresley ex-LNER A3 pacific 6010… | Flickr

[Savage GT]

A couple of videos while I have been learning the  digital ropes.

First off a slow crawl ... actually it can do about half this speed again, quite impressive I thought.



And a bit of acceleration and coast down settings with auto sound I did have to manually brake the last bit as I was going to overshoot some, but you still get the brake squeal if you let it coast to a stop   
I love how I can dial it to my desired speed and let it build itself up to it 

[Savage GT]

Forgive me all you Railway modellers, but the next couple of paragraphs are intended for the uninitiated !
One of the downsides to having a smaller engine, (perhaps also smaller scale?) especially a shunter which by nature travels slowly, and dead "frog" (the plastic bit) points like mine, is they will often stop on the non powered frog. Despite the wheelbase being technically long enough to bridge the dead section, and with power pick ups on all 6 wheels, it should not really be a problem, but it is.
So we have things called Stay-Alives, or Powerbanks, which are basically some capacitors and protection circuitry, and build a reserve of power that is utilized to overcome small interuptions.

Of course finding room for these in a small loco with very little spare space is another issue, but with a small supercapacitor set, I managed and this is the result.
For the smallest stay alive I could find, I think the 30 odd seconds runtime when I lift the loco of the track is quite impressive !
Please excuse my ballasting, it appears its another thing I am not very good at 

[BAracer]

Does it still run for 30 seconds after you lift the trigger?

(I once spent a memorable evening in the signal box of a large marshaling yard directing engines like that to push lines of waggons over the hump when they then rolled down to whichever branch the points directed them.)

[Anthony B]

Very very nice - I have built mine up from excluively 2nd hand equipment - from track to rolling stock and Locos. And that includes power. SO I dont have any form of digital equipment - and thus I love what you can do with your set.

[Savage GT]

Does it still run for 30 seconds after you lift the trigger?

(I once spent a memorable evening in the signal box of a large marshaling yard directing engines like that to push lines of waggons over the hump when they then rolled down to whichever branch the points directed them.)

Trigger ?? 
no once its diallled to a stop it stops, how quickly depends on the deceleration setting.
As its digital, the chip remembers the last command or throttle position if no further command received, ie no power from the track.
On the blue tooth decoders (and one presumes with the forthcoming legacy dongle that will allow blue tooth on non BT decoders through the controller) you could lift it off the track and increase the speed if desired !
However, I am assuming the stay alive does negate the emergency stop button for averting imminent disasters when I forget to set the points correctly.
As this is a shunter, so will not be going fast and not often sharing the mainline with the faster locos, hopefully that won't be an issue 

@Anthony B, yes the best way TBH, but with British outline TT1:120 its all to new. There are odd bits becoming available, but not for much less than new atm, especially given the decent discounts and incentives us early adopters got from Hornby !

[Savage GT]

A PC DCC programming/Rolling Road test board has been set up:

   

One of my Class 08 has now been re-liveried to an early BR version and weathered. 

The other had an oops moment and is currently awaiting parts, but will be painted to represent a J45/DES1 (A forerunner to the class 08, which were about in later LNER days).

[Savage GT]

And the 08 re-liveried to resemble the earlier J45/DES1 in LNER guise.
There are some differences in the shape detail, but overall look is similar enough for me to be happy to invoke rule 1 
Actual solid information on the colours for these is thin on the ground but I decided to go with a grey blue as I had seen someone else's 00 model conversion and liked that !
It would have been 2-3 years old so I wanted it to look used but not as heavily as the BR one. I may have overdone it, but  it is what it is  

   

   

[Savage GT]

I was having an little issue with the big loco's randomly stopping when crawling.
I had a clean track I had checked all the wheel contacts,  but it was still happening, I guessed the DCC chip was being very fussy and the tiniest loss of connection was upsetting it and causing a reset. This is what it was doing: 



The obvious fix was to fit a stay alive even though one would not expect too on a loco with pickup on 7 axles ! But despite all the electronics being in the tender, there is little room unless you want to undertake major surgery. I didn't so I looked for a smaller solution, I knew I didn't need lots of run time, just a reserve for a micro interruption in power. I found a board that could be fitted with up to 5 small capacity tantalum capacitors, only it would only fit with a maximum of 2 in the space available without taking a dremel to it, so I gave it a whirl.
There is no discernible run time when lifted from track, but it does exactly as I hoped and provides enough to keep it moving.



But ... I didn't have the sound running, so had to check that didn't push the power draw that little bit to much and cause the stopping to return, thankfully all was still good.



Of course, someone had to come and find out what I was up to, causing an outake:

[Anthony B]

Your track is looking wonderful!! Great work