The club tries to organise at least one workshop per month to help share knowledge  amongst its members. 

In 2019, we have held the following workshops:-

January – Coach Lighting

Members looked at different approaches to installing lighting in passenger coaches. A DC solution involved a very small circuit board that would easily fit in both OO and N scales. A DCC socution was also studied. Although the printed circuit board would easily fit in OO gauge, some trimming would be required to make it fit into N gauge.

February – Resistors

These fundamental components are at the heart of most electronic circuits. Members considered what resistance was and its relationship to voltage and current. Some experiments on the breadboards looked at resistor in series and parallel and how to make a potential divider. At the end of the session, members discussed how resistors were used in model railways. A late question let to a refresher on the use of multi-meters to measure voltage, current and resistance.

March – Capacitors

Capacitors are found in most electronic circuits. Topics included:-

• What is capacitance
• How to measure it
• Types of capacitor
• Capacitors in series

May – Diodes

Diodes, sometimes called rectifiers, are one of the fundamental components used in electronic circuits. This workshop covered the following topics:-

• What is a diode?
• Types of diode
• Bridge Rectifier
• Use in model railways

June – Soldering

After a light hearted discussion on how not to solder, we covered the basic principles of soldering printed circuit boards and then had a practical session where Ray demonstrated how it should be done and the rest of us struggled to meet his high standards. At the end of the session, we all had a track tester that worked.

2018

Some details of past workshops in 2018 can be found by clicking on the photo below.