sendNewsletterForm.php (GIF Image, 3 × 3 pixels)

Modellings tips and answers - Model railway wiring the easy way - Videos

Hello

Don't forget to read our latest modelling tips and unboxing videos located at the bottom of the newsletter.

Feel free to send this newsletter to your friends, family and club members if you think they will benefit from it. They can subscribe for free.

This week in history

At midnight on the 30th January 1933, the railwaymen of the Great Northern Railway (Ireland) walked out in a strike action that was to last 67 days. The dispute was in protest over the railway company's plans to cut staff wages. The cuts were seen at the time as a way to combat depleting profits resulting from road competition. Despite the severe hardship of the striking employees and support from other industries, the strike ended with the battle being lost.

Tool of the week

This week's tool of the week is a plank bending tool by Expotools. It is a hand-held device that can be used to make a series of incisions into wooden planks of up to 2mm in thickness. After enough incisions have been made, the plank will start to adopt a curved shape. This tool is especially useful for model ship and boat makers but will benefit anyone who works with wood.

A swith to a neat solution

Once you have gotten your head around the components and wiring needed to install accessories such as lights, signals, electric points or anything else involving electricity, you may well be starting to think about how your switches, knobs or buttons might look at the business end of your layout. The good news is, the solution has already been thought about for you!

Peco has a comprehensive range of switches to cover almost any accessory that you could ever want to install. More on the switches later, but what is really interesting is the various methods they have come up with to make the switches look neat and tidy. There is even an option for solderless installation.

But first, if you are comfortable attaching a few wires to their switches, the PL-27 switch console is a neat unit that houses up to six of their switches. The unit is surface mounted onto the baseboard and comes with stickers numbered from 1-12, so if you have more than six switches, the numbering can continue across to a second unit. If, however, you wanted to countersink your switches into a baseboard or control panel, Peco also produces a switch mounting plate for just that purpose and provides an equally desirable finish.

For the solderless option, the PL-50 switch module unit is a console that your switches plug straight into without wiring them first. The wires from your accessories simply plug into a special sprung socket on the outside of the unit making installation quick, neat and solder-free. The module has space for three switches and can be extended infinitely using single module add-on units. It should be noted though, only switches of the same type and purpose can be installed into each PL-50 console unit. That means you will need one unit for your turnout switches and another for your signals and so on.

If it's turnouts that are to be controlled by your new switches, the easy, no soldering solutions just keep on coming. Peco's PL-34 wiring harness is specifically designed to slot straight onto PL-10 point motors using spade connectors, again avoiding any soldering. If you have a larger layout and the harness doesn't quite reach your switches, simply use terminal blocks to add additional wire to the circuit.

As for the actual switches, all you have to do is decide which colour levers you want. Peco's range of passing contact changeover switches (mainly used for point motors) come with black, red, white or yellow signal box style levers to replicate real life procedures. Add to that a blue single-pole on-off switch and a green single-pole changeover switch (on-on switch), and you can control everything from turnouts and signals to building lighting and sections of isolated track all from the same neat and organised consoles.

Modelling tips

We keep on adding modelling tips to our website. Here are the latest ones:

You can read all the articles sorted by categories or from the most recent published one on our website.

Unboxing videos

You want to know what is inside the boxes of modelling products? We open them for you! Subscribe to our YouTube channel to be notified before everyone else or simply click on this selection. Please note that videos are at the bottom of each page.

You can access all the unboxing videos by visiting this page or simply click on the link called "videos" on our websit e.

Events and exhibitions

Find all the latest events and exhibitions for the model railway world, on the UK Model Shop Events directory. Hopefully, 2022 will give us plenty of opportunities to attend events all over the country.

Do you need to order?

Send us an email or give us a call to check availability or to reserve anything, whatever scale you model in. As usual, if we do not have in stock what you are looking for, we will order it for you and you will get it fast (usually within a week if the manufacturer has it in stock). We place weekly orders with most suppliers.

Remember, you can park for free for one hour on the High Street. So no excuse not to come and visit us!

Upstairs Downstairs is open Tuesday to Saturday 10am till 4.30pm. Obviously, our website is open 24h a day and we can post to most locations, including Europe, USA and Australia.

Upstairs Downstairs
3 Pier Street
Sandown, PO36 8JR
Isle of Wight
Tel: 01983 406 616
http://www.trainshop.co.uk or find us on Facebook

If for some reason you do not want to receive this newsletter anymore, click this link to unsubscribe