It’s been a while – Bye Loft, Hello DCC.
2025, new things on the horizon! Last year I moved house which meant Loughtbury had to come out of the loft and is yet to find a new home. Breaking down a model railway is always sad, but it also gives the opportunity to create something new.
Loughtbury got to be almost “complete” or as complete as any model railway can ever be. It was also starting to struggle. In my excitement to build it, and with the Covid lockdowns I ended up using recycled boards and even loft boards as baseboards with little care or understanding on how they would be permanently supported. Over the years the boards have sagged in places and some track has become troublesome. So it is unlikely Loughtbury will return, however I have new plans to reinvent it and build a new layout!
Analogue, Electrofrog, DCC.
Loughtbury was built as an analogue DC layout with Insulfrog points and switches to act as isolation sections. This was fantastic as I could control a number of locos in a controlled manner. I wanted to see how Electrofrog would work compared to Insulfrog, so designed a very simple shunting layout to try it out.
Early in 2025 I built this little layout and was impressed that none of the locos would get stuck on the points. However things escalated when I bought a Revolution Trains Class 59 with sound. Even on DC this was a life changer, having realistic acceleration, sound and braking all on my existing layout.
So fast forward and my little Electrofrog shunting test has been upgraded to a Gaugemaster Prodigy2 DCC test. A few of my newer locos just needed a decoder upgrade and thankfully this is as simple as slotting in a 6 or 18 pin DCC chip, but I also have some aging locos that I would like to keep.
Last week I did my first DCC conversion on a Graham Farish Class 47, my very first N Gauge loco. And with a bit of bodging, bodywork cutting and soldering it works like a dream.
I followed the brilliant guide from Hookstone models: https://www.hookstonemodels.co.uk/dcc-conversion/graham-farish/diesel/class-47-chinese-split-chassis
So hopefully this year I will start work on new large layout, but may also build up my shunting test as a little run around. Watch this space for more!
