Welcome to the Cumbria & Scottish Borders Area Group Forum

 Another great session at the West of Scotland Group yesterday. Keith Shovelin treated us to an excellent presentation and demonstration on carriage lighting for both DC and DCC layouts, Featuring Davy Dick's original Pocket Money Kit PMP 19 created back in 2015, Keith showed how this strip-board circuit could be installed in a 00 gauge coach with reasonable modelling skills. He did give the warning to try this on some old coaches first as disassembling detailed modern coaches does present some risks to the unwary. For those using DCC an additional diode bridge circuit can be installed so that power can be taken from the track rather than the 3 volt button cell. An image above of Brendan Harris's Pullman Coach (WOSAG) To make it easier to place the circuit within the carriage, a surface mount version was designed using a board designed by Fraser Smith. This might also be suitable for undermounting and even on N gauge stock. This is unlikely to be available as a kit because of t...

 This is the way I added SMD LED's to my Scalescenes station roof (Kit R005)     Link to Scalescenes Station What you will need  SMD Led's warm white or bright light or what other colour you like (order more than you need, if you drop one they are hard to find again) I used size 1206 as I work in OO The  1 206 dimensions are: 3.2 x 1.6 x 1.1mm  The SMD came from Ebay, one seller is on this link £0.99 plus P&P for 10 UK seller Some adhesive conductive copper foil tape from ebay sold as slug repellent 3mm or 5 mm Soldering Iron and solder Sharp knife Magnifying glass to see the SMD Inner roof marked out for cutting slots to pass copper tape through Copper Tape fitted to inside of roof the large tabs on end are for connecting to the next building part Pass the tape through the card with the sticky side down on the inside, it makes soldering the LED's to it easier. Also cut the extra off so the two pads do not touch. Copper Tape passed through the roof and ...

 Davy Dick wrote the original book in 2014 and has made it available for MERG and potential MERG members to download. He has obviously been using his "lockdown" spare time to update and write new Chapters for this really useful publication. It further benefits by being split into 28 Chapters and an Appendix which are downloadable separately, rather then the original's two parts making it much easier to drill down to the relevant information. I particularly liked the new Chapters on Animation and 3D Printing/ Have a look for yourself. Thanks Davy - your a star. Andy R

 Sunday's Scottish Border Zoom Meeting featured a talk by John Gowers on Control Panels.  Twenty one members joined from around the country with our normal group numbers swelling to over fifty as a result of Covid-19 and the adoption of Zoom meetings. John started his talk with how he used to do things with switch panels and complex wiring before turning to JMRI (Java Model Railroad Interface) an open source project that consists of JMRI, DecoderPro and PanelPro. These programs are available as a free single download from JMRI He predominately uses CBUS modules to transfer signals across the layout and they have designed their own PCB's to ensure switches and lights exactly match the laser etched front panel. This is made of a two colour layered acrylic sheet with the top black layer being etched away to reveal the white tracks underneath, Holes are drilled through to accommodate the push button led switches mounted on the PCB below. Some custom CBUS kits have been made by the...

 A big thanks to Andrew Woolass and Derek Coulthard for setting up the Cumbria Group. Eleven members joined us for the first meeting including Alan Geekie who has been instrumental in getting this Area Group up and running. There was a general chat to try and establish the main interests of those attending and what they would like to see in future meetings. Subjects suggested were: -  CBUS from a beginners perspective                                          - Ezybus                                          -Train detection                                          - Route Setting  As usual in these meetings there was something to be learned. PMP 22 the laser dete...

 Another very well attended Zoom meeting with 34 participants. Davy showed us the commercially available automatic train stopping unit available at £12.53 from Brimar and compared it with the almost identical PMP 15 kit from the MERG Kitlocker at  only £2.65.  With these kind of savings, MERG membership is worth every penny. Chic Thomson treated us to a very entertaining presentation on simulation software for Electronics. INKSCAPE  is a free open  source drawing package. There are many Arduino Simulators available but Arduino Simulator 1.5.1 is an excellent open source offering.  For those interested in PICs simulators are available within the JAL compiler (Just Another Language) and MPLAB Sim is available within MPLAB but seldom advertised. Electronics Workshop 5.1 is a program no longer being developed but a useful tool for investigating any electrical or electronic circuit. Apparently you can Google it but there are a few insecure sites so be careful. F...

When you are designing and printing 3D parts, it is essential to have accurate measurements. My original set of digital calipers was bought around twenty years ago and have served me well. Unfortunately the electrical connections have eventually worn out, battery life was becoming shorter and replacements are not cheap. I decided to bite the bullet and invest in a new set at about one fifth of the price I first paid.  Surprisingly they even came with a spare battery. They are light weight and measure up to six inches / 150 mm with a very clear display. You will sometimes find that what you drew in CAD is not what is actually printed.  It is essential that you are able to measure that difference accurately to be able adjust the drawing and then print what you originally intended. This tool will certainly help

 Monday's meeting of the JAL Special Interest Group was very well attended.  This was not a beginners meeting but one for members to share their current PIC projects.  As many of us are very new to PIC programming using JAL (Just Another Language), we were relying on a more experienced member to show us something. Simon West gave us an excellent description of a dual seven segment display which is used to broadcast sequence numbers to the operators at his local model railway club. The video of this presentation is now available on the MERG website. You will have to join JALSIG to view the video. The next meeting will be a beginner's one where we will all attempt to switch on a couple of LED's with a couple of switches. We all have to start somewhere. Interested?  JOIN JALSIG NOW Andy R

 At last Sundays West of Scotland Area Group Meeting, I showed a MERG advert running on a 128 x 64 OLED display. One of their group contacted me to ask if that could work on the 128 x 32 station display which he had just ordered from me. The original image is 290 x 115 pixels so this needs to be reduced with the aspect ratio maintained. The original is also a colour image which we will also need to convert to run on a monochrome display. Paint is a very basic program installed on most Windows machines but is perfect for what we need to do. Open the original image in Paint and select Resize The OLED display width is 128 pixels By selecting the pixel radio button and typing 128 in the horizontal field and ensuring the maintain aspect ratio box is ticked, the picture is reduced to 128 x 50 , perfect for a 128 x 64 display. For 128 x 32 we must instead select 32 in the vertical field which will produce a final image size of 81 x 32 pixels. All that remains to do, is to save it as a m...

The third edition is now available. I was tempted to buy an earlier version but a lot has happened to the available Arduino devices since the second edition was published in 2012. This is not really a beginners book for Arduino or for programming in C, but its eighteen chapters and seven appendices makes it an excellent sourcebook for writing code that works. With the introduction of chips like ESP32 and beyond, the chapters on Wireless, Bluetooth, WiFi and Ethernet are particularly welcome. The layout using Discussions, Problems and Solutions makes the book very readable and with over 200 coding examples the forty pound price tag is quite reasonable. I think if your serious about learning and using Arduinos on your layout projects, then the  Arduino Cookbook 3rd Edition should be on your bookshelf  

This new SIG is being run by John Fletcher and already has more than fifty members. Details can be found on the MERG Website. There has been an enormous amount of work done on the website bringing together coding samples, members projects and discussions on the forum. Yesterday evening's Virtual Area Group meeting featured a presentation from Ron Pluck showing his method of developing a railway project from circuit diagram to working device. Although some technical problems were encountered, the session has been recorded. The link is now available and I understand that both the completed sketch and a Word document explaining its development is now available in the Arduino SIG area of the website. I would recommend that you download these documents to have them available as you watch. Andy R

If you missed Sven's excellent presentation on Monday, or would like to revisit it, it is now available on MERG TV. SVEN's PRESENTATION Sven demonstrates how you can take your first steps in programming an Arduino. You may have heard about the Arduino microcontroller. It is a small and cheap programmable device that is popular in model railways. It is used for controlling lights and motors on a layout. This is an overview of what Arduino is and how to get started with your own Arduino project and demonstrate how to connect an Arduino to a PC and make it control some  LED 's and servos. No knowledge of Arduinos or programming is needed. Great Introduction and well worth a watch Andy R

Another well attended Zoom Meeting for the West of Scotland and its increasing number of followers from other regions. Davy carried on from the previous sessions on servos showing a members implementation of a traverser utilising a lead-screw and simple kitchen drawer runners. It is a very flexible and compact method to store trains in a confined space where there is no room for a more typical point operated fiddle yard. Neil McNulty and myself did a presentation on Station Displays using the Arduino  For those who missed it here is a couple of links to some you tube videos Station display   https://youtu.be/ IeHQJ2KWlJg Oled Projects     https://youtu.be/BVtIPwhyprs Andy R

If you ever wanted to find out about Arduino, this is probably the best time to do it. THREE yes 3 days of Arduino based content will be available to MERG members. Starting on Sunday we have the West of Scotland Area Group Zoom meeting where there will be a discussion on an Arduino / Nano station display board. Look in the Zoom Meetings page for the link to editing your profile if you are not a member of this group. On Monday, another course in the series of  Understanding Components will cover the Arduino. This course assumes no prior knowledge and is ideal for beginners. As this is a course, you will have to book onto it,  Booking Form Finally on Tuesday, the Virtual Area Group is running its zoom meeting, where Ron Pluck will describe his own individual approach to programming Arduino modules. You will have to join VAG to see the link. Details on the Zoom Meeting Page. Across the three days there is something for everyone. It's all free, so make the most of your membership....