January 2020 Meeting

The first meeting of the new decade! Apart from the annual membership fee collection, our meeting consisted of ongoing business and preparing to take Lightermans Yard to the Southampton Exhibition at the end of the month.

Howard showed a servo mounting kit that he had recently bought and suggested a servo selection that he (and MERG) were considering.

DINGO SERVO MOUNT 'low profile' (www.dingoservo.co.uk) parts and built kit.

Howard has provided some information from MERG about servos (see note at the end of this blog entry).

Alan Smith showed the progress on the brass split chassis for the Peckett 0-4-0 that he is manufacturing for the 3D printed body. Richard hopes to use the completed loco on a 'Challenge' layout he is constructing.

The two parts of the chassis and the gear set and the axle buffs in place. Below; Matching the chassis to the body, the weight should help the running performance of such a small locomotive.

Lightermans Yard is stored in the loft of the church hall. We have perfected the method of getting the layout down for either working on it or running the layout at meetings. In this case we are readying it for travel the next exhibition. This involves loading the components into two cars for transportation.

Luckily most of the layout travels well in boxes and cases.

Having loaded  the cars we spent some time just talking about the past year and looking forward to the next decade!

The Lightermans Yard team. Standing from left to right; Alan Smith, Richard Doust, Howard Watkins, Gordon Reed, Alan Brasier, Pete King; Sitting David Smith - absent is Keith Gloster

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MERG's notes on Servo Selection;
Good quality servos are now available at prices that could only be dreamt of a few years ago Based upon the experience of many members, we now recommend the HobbyKing servos for model railway applications.

•    For semaphore signals, we recommend the HobbyKin9 HKSCM9-5V digital servo. This completely eliminates any tendency to twitch at power up and is completely quiet when the drive pulses cease.
•    For turnouts, we recommend the HobbyKing HK15178 analogue servo. Although this can suffer from a power-up twitch, ii is ideal where, small amount of pressure is desired to hold the switch blade against its stock rail, Again, it is completely quiet and draws no current when the drive pulses cease. If you have a stock of TowerPro SG90 or similar servos, then they will be equally suitable for turnouts.

At the time of writing, there is only a small difference in price between the two HobbyKing servos recommended above, so it makes sense to chose the most appropriate servo for the job.
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Next blog report will be from the Southampton Model Railway Exhibition 25th/26th January2020