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About Us

This is the Cumbria and Scottish Border Area Group blog site, members of 


The Scottish Border Area Group normally meet at the Men's Shed in Hawick, but due to current Covid 19 restrictions we have started this blog site so that our members and potential members can keep in touch with each other. Further information about our group can be found on the MERG website


The recently started Cumbria Area Group covers all of the CA  and LA post codes which is a large geographic this link  area with members potentially having to travel  long distances to meet up. Although a location for meetings has yet to be decided, the Kendal or Penrith area is probably the most central. Further information about our group can also be found in this area of the MERG Website..

 As both of our groups are fairly small, a shared blog for people with shared interests seemed a logical development. You are therefore welcome to share the Blog URL with anyone who you think may be interested.

We have regular Zoom meetings but for reasons of privacy and security, links are for members only and either sent by secure email or found on the non public areas of the MERG website for which a login and password are required,

For non members interested in Electronics for Model Railways, you can use this link to find details of  what MERG membership offers and how you can join us. You can be assured of a warm Welcome.


Popular posts from this blog

Train sequence / timetable using Arduino

                              Following discussions in a MERG Zoom meeting about potential projects for the Cumbria virtual area group I have started this blog to share my ideas for building a train sequence / timetable system based on an Arduino UNO. The trigger for this project was Andy Robb's article in the MERG journal (June 2020 edition). In it Andy describes using an UNO with a OLED display to produce an electronic station display board.  Having tried out Andy's version I started thinking about expanding the idea and have come up the following list of possibilities: 1. Replace my card index train sequence with an electronic version. 2. Have the train sequence synchronised with the on platform displays. 3. Display an analogue clock on the station display and have it display the train times. 4. Store the position reached in the sequence so that it starts where it left off on power up.  To mak...
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Cumbria Group Meeting Friday 9th October

 Although this was only a coffee and chat meeting, eleven members joined us for an interesting session which basically covered what was on our workbenches. Some members suffered from technical gremlins on the Zoom session but hopefully they will have that sorted for next time. Andy Woolass had volunteered to be a guinea pig for building the latest version of an EzyBus Input Module. It was a fairly straightforward build but the lack of sufficient ground points for external connections was a suggested improvement. The original Input board which used an MCP23017 Module was originally supplied by Davy Dick for £2. Members trying to build their own using a provided PCB, sometimes fell foul of the different form factors of this Module which caused obvious fitting problems. It is for this reason the PCB has been redesigned to accept a more standard 28 Pin DIL device. The Kit will be available in the Kitlocker, but at £7.20 it is a little expensive. Various members showed Arduino developme...
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Shuttle Plus or Super Shuttle?

 A really interesting project was discussed at tonight's JALSIG Zoom meeting. The Basic shuttle kit PMP4 was designed in February 2013 and remains one of the most popular Pocket Money Kits. It uses a 555 circuit as a basic timer  and changes the state of a relay to reverse the polarity of the track. Davy Dick has revisited this circuit but this time used a 14 Pin PIC (16F676) to replicate the circuit and  add a few enhancements to take advantage of the additional pins available. It is hoped that this will eventually appear as a Pocket Money Kit with PCB sometime in the New Year. Potential features include adjustable cycle times, controlling semaphore or lights using a delay or detectors set by an option jumper and incorporation of PMP4a  for shuttles with branches.   Two additional pins might be used to control crossing gates or trigger sound effects or anything else your imagination fancies. Using around 12 components and some simple coding techniques, thi...
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