These titles get worse, it took me at least 3 minutes to think that one up. Yes, ped-antics on my workbench this week as my Class 31 project gets its upgrade from v3.5 to v4. Relive the glory days of the Birmingham-Norwich in it's full audio splendour. The photo of such a working dates from Summer 82 and is one of my favourites from that period. Eagle-eyed viewers will note that it's running wrong-line through platform 1 at Nuneaton instead of the more usual 5 going in that direction (towards Leicester). The mists of time have obscured the reason why. Back then we used to detour to the railway on the way to school to see what was on the first Birmingham-Norwich of the day. I don't remember actually being late for school but we did have to run a few times when it ran late.

The upgrade to v4 involves several broad steps;

1. Making various changes to the project in order to improve the driving response. Without giving away 'trade secrets', the aim here is to ensure that any significant change to the throttle elicits a (sound) reaction as quickly as possible, typically within 0-2 seconds. None of the 'open the throttle wide and wait 10 seconds for the sound to catch up' here.

2. Reviewing the recordings I've got with a view to extracting new clips to take advantage of the extra space. In particular I have a look to see what I've got in the way of priming, cranking and starting, to see what 'multistart' options will be possible. If suitable recordings exist, the necessary clips are extracted and incorporated into the project.

3. Sourcing / extracting an extra set of horns so that the two ends sound different, just like the real thing. Locos in preservation that have two sets of working horns that all sound good are few and far between so often these have to be sourced from different locos. For the 31 I've only got one set so I'll be looking for an opportunity to record another in the future.

4. Sourcing / extracting additional clips of door slams, buffer clash, brake application sounds etc, to add variety to the project.

5. I'm sure there are more steps but it's time for bed now...