02/02/10: Signs of Life

There are signs that Faller may well continue trading and, more importantly, continue producing the Car System. They have released their new products listing for 2010 and things actually look quite bright. They are producing new models, rather than raiding their back catalogue, as well as introducing some new technology in the shape of laser-cut wood pieces in some of the kits.

The big news for the Car System, apart from the fact that it is still in the catalogue, is a new roadway system (the third that they have produced). This time they are using laser-cut 3mm ply sections of single lane road with the guide wire groove already cut. The geometry allows for two lane (i.e. normal two-way traffic) roads by placing two sections side by side - the two curve radii fit neatly together. There are no junctions yet, only a bus lay-by (for left-hand drive - the junction aperture is at the wrong end for the UK).

I have extracted the Car System pages from the new product listing so that you don't have to download the whole thing, and they are available here.

DCCar has evolved too. There are now new decodera, the DC05 and DC06 which are smaller than the previous decoders. The DC06 comes in at a massive 15 x 7 x 2.5 mm. Although it doesn't have quite as much functionality as its big brother it will still do pretty much anything you need.

I do not sell, distribute or produce any of these items - for Car System items you should contact a Faller stockist and for DCCar you should contact Model Autobahnen. Their site isn't the easiest to navigate but if you email an enquiry they do speak English. The other way to get information on DCCar is to join the Faller Car System Yahoo Group. Claus Ichmann, the man behind DCCar, is a member there and is happy to give advice in what you need and how to use it.

And what of Redhill? Well, I had to take the boards down last year to make room for a video shoot covering layout building (you can see the resulting layout here). Whilst they were down thoughts turned to some aspects of the design that I wasn’t happy about and one thing led to another. The boards have been scrapped and Redhill's component parts are scattered amongst various boxes. It will probably resurface at some point, but for the moment I have to exorcise other demons - I need to build a large N gauge layout, something that I first started to do well over 30 years ago - and still haven’t managed. You can follow my progress here.

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