woodenhead
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Posts posted by woodenhead
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11 minutes ago, adb968008 said:
it also means any other steam preservation groups 45596, 45305,777,70013,76084 wont be able to go mainline any more either unless a vac braked cdl solution emerges…
Not to mention as ECTS as it creeps northwards from London - it might not get everywhere but you can imagine there will be limited lines where steam will eventually be able to operate without ECTS. The A1 project are spearheading the design of the ECTS application onto a steam locomotive, they were also meant to be then fitting it to a WCRC/RIley Black 5 and an LSL Black 5.
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1 minute ago, Northmoor said:
How is this rake braked? I thought all air-con Mk2s were air braked only and wasn't aware the Black 5 provided air braking, so presumably the 47 is there to provide brake pressure (but how is it controlled?).
If Riley's Black 5s all have air braking then I have even less sympathy for WCRC than I started today with. CDL fitment is routine on air-braked stock, so WCRC could have used air braked Mark 1s all along, there are plenty of them around. This is, I suspect, why WCRC are stalling on CDL fitment; vacuum braking will become unacceptable on NR before too long so the company doesn't want to commit to the expense on stock that might have to be withdrawn altogether before they have earned the installation cost back. CDL is a red herring.
According to the KWVR who own 45212 it is air braked.
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9 minutes ago, jpendle said:
There's absolutely no need to make the changes recommended for OO points because the flangeways on N Gauge points are proportionately much wider than those on OO Gauge points so there is no real risk of wheels causing shorts when running through points.
Some might say too wide, but that's another story for another day 😀
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4 minutes ago, meatloaf said:
Thank you.
So the electrofrogs can be used straight from the box whilst making use of the insulated joiners and track feeds?
Can.
But I would not say it's the most reliable method, from past experience the curved points did not always perform as they should when it comes to electrical transmission to the blades.
I power the frog and use Cobalt IP Digitals.
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Going off the current 3 hourly interval timetable and the fact the train does not hang around in Blaenau then perhaps there is a gap for a heritage train to go to Blaenau before the 10:30 service and return later, to allow the patrons to then visit the Welsh Highland before returning.
You need need to berth & service the train somewhere at Blaenau and it assumes there would be enough time for a decent trip there and back on the Welsh Highland otherwise what would be the point.
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24 minutes ago, Hibelroad said:
I’m lucky in that I have a very good dentist at the moment and she is NHS, the only downside is that the surgery is now 90 miles away but I will hang on as a patient for as long as possible. She believes prevention is better than cure and recommended what I call a mouth karcher ( water flosser ). I got one and it’s amazing what bits it gets out. Her recommendation is to floss first then clean with an electric brush, but don’t rinse as the fluoride in the paste should be given a chance to get into your teeth. You should do this a least twice a day. I have followed this advice (well , sort of followed) and for the last three years all six monthly checks have given me a clean bill of health, so it may be worth trying.
Depends on your starting point I guess - good teeth are easier to maintain than ones that have taken a battering.
I believe I look after them now, but as a child I had to wait until a peer at secondary school commented on the state of my teeth to make me realise I was not doing something lots of other people were and my parents had not taught me this even though I had had to have a milk tooth removed under sedation. Don't look after you teeth early on and you pay the penalty later, both my children have good teeth through to adulthood so I hope they don't experience what I have.
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5 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:
Agree about the costs - nevertheless I think you’d still have to have some sort of shed and servicing facility for the stock if it was operated by a locally-based group, as @Ben B suggested. Is the spare face disused or is there track in it? And presumably it’s on the correct side of the station for the Conwy Valley line.
When I looked at Realtime Trains initially it looked as though there might be sufficient gaps at certain times but now I’m not so sure. It does all seem to depend on whether the timing is right for crossing at North Llanrwst, though presumably the loop there is sufficiently long as railtours have run through it. I do think though that in some ways this seems more sensible than the Trawsfynydd reopening idea, as arguably it could feed into and complement the Ffestiniog and other local tourist attractions rather than ineffectually competing with them (which was one of the criticisms levelled at the Trawsfynydd scheme, rightly imho).The station, there is the south face of the bottom platform, there is a track there but it looks rarely used now, the face is fenced off from the station.
The goods yard and coach sidings are long gone and concreted over, but perhaps there is a little space for a small servicing facility either at the station or around the periphery of the old goods yard.
Nothing easy here though, you need the will of the local councils to support it, you need NR and TFW on board and you need to find someone to provide traction and coaches (CDL fitted). Then does it have the wow factor of the Mallaig run, does it have something that will draw in tourists, if not then it will fail quickly and badly.
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11 minutes ago, 1andrew1 said:
Good point that the operations made a marginal profit last year but if you just include the finance costs it still made a loss.
The company as a whole made a loss due to four things:
- Finance costs
- Share of losses from associates
- Impairment loss from loans to an associate
- Deficit on revaluation of investment properties
It made 6.3% profit EBITDA, whereas in 2022 it made an operating loss.
Cost of finance has increased significantly and it's still writing off assets which has eaten all that profit.
So the plan for 2024 will be to stabilise the borrowing and increase revenue to create a bigger EBITDA next year.
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10 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:
For a heritage service, I don’t know how easy it would be to run into Llandudno Junction, across the main line and on to Deganwy and Llandudno town station, as most of the regular services do, but there seems to be a lot of disused railway land/old sidings at the junction so I wonder if you could create a separate station and shed/depot in some of that space on a siding off the branch instead, and have a sort of NYMR Whitby-style solution (where, as far as I understand it, the NYMR train shares track with the National Rail service on the way to Whitby, but once at Whitby itself it has its own platform on a separate siding). This might actually be better and safer anyway, as (much as the NYMR Network Rail connection is very remote from any fast or busy lines) it would mean the heritage train wouldn’t need to interact with the North Wales Coast Line itself. Though on the other hand, being able to run into Llandudno would be quite good.
There is a spare platform face at Llandudno Junction so no need to build anything new which would only balloon any costs and condemn any attempt to provide any sort of heritage service down the line to Blaenau. But I would guess the most complicated conundrum would be paths and operation like for example passing places with the TFW services and handling at Blaenau without interferring with the existing service. I wouldn't even contemplate going up to Llandudno itself.
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How the world changed
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15 minutes ago, rogerzilla said:
I REALLY miss the on-train brunch muffins from the 90s. The train coffee was terrible, so I always bought that at New Street, but the muffins were in the buffet car. I spent a summer working in Derby and was getting breakfast expenses because of the early start.
Is that Linda Lusardi advertising Travellers Fayre - a different form of muffins
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I had two teeth out last year, seeing an oral surgeon tomorrow for another one out, it's too close to my sinus for my private dentist to want to risk.
Only had a couple of weeks wait for the NHS appt with the surgeon so they may see you faster than you expect.
I did notice that private fees jumped massively after lockdown, having a tooth out was £65 before Covid but is now £125 and more expensive than a filling. But my own anxiety about the extraction meant I did not seek help until I was absolutely paranoid all my teeth were coming out last year (they weren't) and I finally agreed to what the dentist had been suggesting for years - remove the two infected ones.
This latest one isn't infected by I managed to grind out both sides of tooth around a filling leaving basically a tooth capped with several fillings which kept coming off. I finally admitted defeat last month and asked the dentist to remove it after which the willpower I had been using to hold it together broke and the various fillings on it fell apart in my mouth.
In terms of pain, I lived with pain through Covid not through the cost but the fear of the extraction which in the end was nothing.
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6 minutes ago, nightstar.train said:
Maybe. But I’d think a rake of Mk3s with 37s will attract a lot more rail enthusiasts than “civilians”.They would not sustain it for long and they won't spend a penny in Mallaig - the area needs tourist traffic not penny pinching enthusiasts.
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1 minute ago, nightstar.train said:
It’s such a shame they announce it with so little notice. Fort William is a long way from anywhere, and you’d have to stay overnight as even the sleeper doesn’t arrive early enough. I think they’d get a lot more punters if they announced it for a fortnight or sometime in May. I’m in Paisley and would quite like a trip, but can’t swing this Friday.
As to WCRC, I wonder if the guys and girls at the ORR are looking the Facebook videos with their heads in their hands, then stuffing a briefcase full of prohibition notices and booking tonight’s sleeper? I do think that WCRC are breaking the spirit, if not the letter, of the law. Also what are they thinking running a train without ETH? And presumably the Mk2Fs aren’t through piped for steam heating either, so all the coaches will be freezing. Temperatures up there aren’t breaking 10°c today.
We're maybe not their general target audience, it's not for trainspotters but local tourists wanting to see the area plus a trip on 'that' viaduct. Their first trip attracted attention, but perhaps they wanted that to get the trip onto social media.
LSL and WCRC don't fill their trains with rail enthusiasts at the prices they sell at, there will be some, but they need tourist money to profit.
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@Bri.dolan Ahh from the days when much of Tinsley was surrounded by fields with horses on them.
I can remember the field directly above the shed we'd sneak onto to see what was in that couldn't be seen from the other side. There were always horses there that would worry me.
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Here is a link to the financials.
https://www.kader.com.hk/investor_relations/pdf/press_240327_2e.pdf
It interesting to note that the model division made an operating profit last year, it in fact the company as a whole made an operating profit, it is the interest on loans, depreciation and reevaluations of properties that is dragging it down.
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3 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:
Being a sometimes cynical person, especially when it comes to the machination of WCRC, I have wondered if their clearly intended use of vehicles without opening quarter lights and not looking like the 'Hogwarts Express' vehicles is yet another ploy on their part? Are they hoping that customer reaction to these 'modern' coaches will lead to demands to reinstate 'the old coaches' on the train. Or do they really think they have lost the battle?
Something along the lines of American lady "Why can't we sit in the Harry Potter coaches" to which they reply "Well the government tell us we cannot let you as it is dangerous" and then "What business does your federal government have in telling you how to run a train" "Exactly" says the WCRC spokesperson.
They want to actually have people complain by locking carriages out of use - it's quite specific isn't it to go Mk1, Mk2, Mk1, Mk2 - if it was operational i.e. brakes they could have put the Mk1s all together.
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11 minutes ago, ThaneofFife said:
Loss making even after ridding a 5th of the permo staff???
Depends when they let them go and how they accounted for any severance costs.
But depending on what those persons were earning it probably won't solve all the losses problem and still require more revenue and more profit per item sold.
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Couldn't see a loco on the back of for ETH etc and why is there a mk1 between each mk2.
Are they trying to prove something here or finding a way to get around the regulations and avoid fitting CDL to the Mk1s.
It certainly arrived with a 47 on the tail as the ECS from Carnforth.
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- Popular Post
- Popular Post
1 hour ago, DaveF said:Talking of cars, I have a Toyota Yaris Hybrid. On the journey home from the garage on Saturday the fuel consumption was exactly 100mpg. It drives nicely, it is comfortable, quiet and has enough space for me. It has more power than you might expect as when I put my foot down it uses both engine and battery, very useful when joining dual carriageways from slip roads at busy times. I intend to keep it for as long as possible, the previous one was just 5 years old when I swopped it last autumn and this new model is better. The only annoying thing is the lane change warning and that is mainly becasue of the way some road markings are painted.
David
Plus the messages that pop up on the dashboard warning you to do something like "Brake" - the car bleeps, the message flashes and then disappears before you've had chance to locate it and read it, all the more worrying is that it takes your eyes off the road exactly when it thinks you should be paying extra attention to the road! Yesterday it flashed up some orange symbol as I was entering a motorway on a slip road, no cars in front, none behind, between the lines and no speed restrictions. Absolutely no idea what it was worried about and as usual it was a split second warning and then gone.
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2 minutes ago, Hroth said:
Windy, but presently dry.
Waiting to see what NHN is experiencing, as advanced warning...
I'm a little more east tha NHN in Manchester - Very wet, very windy and I am staying in doors.
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News from California
https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/california-renewable-energy-100-percent-grid/
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Rather puts into perspective the challenge that Bachmann has whilst somehow still delivering very high quality models and expanding ranges such as 009 and NG7 now.
It's easy to sit at home demanding more models, quicker and with extra features without understanding there is a business trying to stay afloat and actually keep up with the likes of Accurascale.
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Cameron Bridge would make an interesting model, a little larger than a cameo though.
Kader reduces its losses
in Bachmann
Posted
You don't look a gift horse in the mouth as they say!
A commissioned item is covered by the commissioner unless Kader agree to take a risk, so if a Rails or Kernow come to you and ask you to produce x model and they are paying for it then it's good business because it's not your risk, it's theirs and Kader will have their profit from the endeavour which feeds into their bottom line. It's then down to the commissioner to sell the stock they paid for not Kader's.
If all your work was commissioned and paid for life would be so much easier for Kader.