PSi

Dear Moderators, The green banner mentioning about the ongoing resoration of lost pictures has gone. Have you given up? Should those still having the original pictures replace them now? I just could not fully understand what was said on message dated Posted "Tuesday at 15:52" [Why not say 26.5.2022 at 15:52?] from "AY Mod". Should one touch old messages or not? Please tell in plain English so that us foreigners can also figure out what to do.... Also please tell us why RMWeb removes all EXIF etc data from the jpg images — including the Copyright field...

This is a good lesson to all of us relying on single drive at home or a cloud service provider actually making data backups. I've heard of a urban legend of a service provider that in their customer contracts agreed to rediculously low penalties in case their backups failed. The story said that the company did not bother to take any proper backups as the cost of proper backing up was higher than paying for the data lost. When the server failed it turned out the company had not even attempted to make any backups whatsoever. I may have to regret saying this but: I hope the avatars lost were the moving gif type things that kept on flashing at the side of the screen while trying to read the messages. Due to design it is impossible to reduce the browser screen or zoom in the view to push the left hand column in to wings.

May I still return to 'Ashbourne (Midland)': Do you recall what was the lengh of your headshunt and how long a rake of coaches/wagons standing at platform track could be run around? /pekka

Thanks — Jim! If this is the case, I would have thought that the two extra "full feature" sets of contact wire and catenary wire were joined and be replaced with a single cable, supported with extra cantilever arms and be anchored at next possible location, and not being used as double or triple contact and catenary system. As the system is not tensioned with weights or springs, braking of a single contact or catenary wire will probably not cause sudden oscillating movement of the combined system. I wonder how the lower voltage (1500V etc) double contact wire systems are terminated: Are the contact wires just considered as "two strands of a cable"... Thankyou for quick and informative reply!

At a Finnish rail related site "vaunut.org" there is a photo taken from Crewe station platform about the catenary wires of the station. It appears that there are three parallel catenary and contact wires running on common cantilever arm and registration arm: http://vaunut.org/kuva/141457 There seems to be two parallel wires at least on platform 5: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Crewe_railway_station_MMB_02_350259.jpg Why two/three parallel wires? Why all are supproted on common supports so that they may not be individually tensioned? I have not found any technical reason or explanation for this. Where I could find a reason behind this? To my understanding, the vertical control of the contact wire is by cantilever arm or swivel arm supporting the catenary, and contact wire being supported from catenary with droppers. I trust that registration arms are only used to guide the contact wire horisontally. All reference I've seen so far suggests that parallel wires need their own cantilever arm to individually compensate the lengthwise movement due to expansion and tension. What I've seen is, that crossover wires have separate cantiliver arms (swing arms) and registration arms attached to it to make them mecanically independent, and to allow individual tensioning and lengthwise movement. The exception only being the anchoring cables attached to cantilever / swivel arm at the middle of long catenary wire. Do you know of any freely available matrial on the Internet that I could see about having parallel wires in same cantilever and/or registration arm in UK? The stuff I've found: "Network Rail: A Guide to Overhead Electrification", February 2015 Rev 10 by Alan Baxter, https://www.bathnes.gov.uk/sites/default/files/sitedocuments/Planning-and-Building-Control/Planning/nr_a_guide_to_overhead_electrification.pdf and "Overhead line electrification for railways", 4th edition 2016 by Garry Keenor, https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/ocs4rail/download/Overhead-Line-Electrification-for-Railways-4th-edition.pdf have no mention about having multiple catenary wires supported by common cantilever or multiple contact wires guided with common registration arm. A bit of googling (Google map googling) reveals that it appears that Crewe has "double wires" or "parallel wires" at least on tracks at Platform 5 and platform 6: https://goo.gl/maps/aevtpnj2RnT46ASXA but not at platform 11. The catenary on above photo is supported with single cantilever arm and the registration arm is connected to one contact wire and the parallel contact wires are connected to each other with some sort of links. The parallel catenary and contact wires cannot independently move lengthwise, so they must act as "strands of a common cable" or something. I still cannot find description telling why 25 kV line would needs doubled or tripled catenary and contact wires, and how the three wires are individually tensioned... E-mail to nationalrail.co.uk and avantiwestcoast.co.uk (on June 2021) has not come up with any help yet. pekka

Thanks, Nick! Having finally given up hope of having a large dream layout I've tried to scale down 'Ashbourne Midland' into N scale as a base of a layout one might get finished. Unfortunately all of my unfinished dream layout turnouts are long ones, so more compression is needed

Nick, On BRM January 2018 You mentioned that your trackwork is Peco Code 75. Are you using Long, Medium or Short turnouts? pekka

Again, some old shots, this time Copenhagen Fields. Sorry for lousy quality. pekka

Looking back — perhaps slightly off topic — some shots of the predecessor of Copenhagen Fields: Chiltern Green & Luton Hoo! These shots were taken at December 1981, roughly 40 years ago. The slides were shot on daylight film, quite under-exposed, now heavily adjusted to get something out of them. Sorry for the colours! pekka

I had been in correspondence with John Geach (snail mail) and luckily got myself invited to see Keen House during our visit to UK to see our relatives. This was my first ever visit to Keen House. I was in seventh heaven! Under construction were "Chiltern Green & Luton Hoo" and "Thame". The photo SGF mentioned seems to show some sections of "New Annington"? If my memory serves me right — and my command of English was good enough — I recall someone mention that the "Thame" canopy slates were cut from wine bottle caps, all wine drunk by one member of the club :)

Thanks! Looking forward to seeing the layout finished -- something I've always failed to accomplish pekka

My photos of Thame taken at the Model Railway Club around Xmas 1981 pekka

Slightly off topic: The term foam board is often mentioned at RMweb. What brand are You using? The thread "Remove paper from foam board" introduced several brand names: Westfoam, Peterboro and Kapa. It appears that different brands use different types of glue for laminating the paper/card on foam core. if foam board is used as track foundation, how does the paper/cardboard lamination stay on the foam core if the ballast is glued by liberally soaking it with diluted PVA glue, acrylic matte medium or Woodland Scenics' Scenic Cement? Was it necessary to coat the paper/card to make it waterproof? [I'm more of an armchair modeller now, with no experience of today's materials or techniques. If this is not the correct forum, then please move... /PSi] pekka

Ah! Thanks a lot! Yes, it was the sound of resetting of the overload trip that I faintly recalled. You made my day pekka

Please do! pekka