ejstubbs

Easily found on eBay and elsewhere: search for 'pluggable terminal strip'. The commercial product has sprung connector pins so the strips plug together securely without needing any screws tightening (or loosening, when you want to dismantle the baseboards again). Depends on how often you plan to be assembling and disassembling the layout, I guess. I suspect the sprung pins and/or the holes they plug in to may go slack after a unknown number of insertions/disconnections anyway. If you're going to be connecting and disconnecting a lot then a connector system designed to stand up to that kind of mechanical use would probably be preferable.

When I was a kid it was still quite common in certain places - mainly European countries I believe - for 1 and 7 to be distinguished in handwriting by putting a horizontal dash across the middle of the 7. That was because the digit 1 was written as it appears in Arial (ie RMWeb's default font) with one short slanting upstroke followed by a full-height vertical downstroke. The absence of the "foot" such as in Tahoma ("1"), Verdana ("1") or Times New Roman ("1") means that, written clumsily, a 1 can easily look like a 7. For a while at school I took to writing my 7s with the crossbar, as a sort of teenage affectation. My maths teacher soon persuaded me of the error of my ways! There seem to be very few computer fonts that use the crossed seven. On my Mac only Lucida Blackletter, Handwriting Dakota and Bradley Hand Bold use that form of the 7. EDIT: According to Wiki, the use of the crossbar to differentiate 7 from 1 is still common in continental Europe and "increasingly in the UK and Ireland". That latter statement I would seriously question, based purely on my own observation and experience. I can't remember seeing a crossed 7 on a handwritten document from anyone in the UK since the I stopped doing it myself in the 1970s!

I think that was just rather obviously and gratuitously taking advantage of the Flora MacDonald statue outside Inverness Castle to play a somewhat over-wrought version of A Well Known Scottish Song as background to the general (and certainly deserved) celebrations. (I was actually a bit miffed that they felt it necessary to add some utterly unmemorable background music over the sequence of the loco approaching the station, drowning out the piper that was playing. I mean, I know some people aren't that fond of the pipes but hey, suck it up, we're in Scotland!) Speaking of railways on Skye, in the early 1900s Skye Marble Ltd built a 4 mile long 3ft gauge railway to carry (you guessed it) marble from their quarries at Kilbride to Broadford. Unfortunately the company didn't last long, going in to liquidation in 1912 with the railway equipment was sold off in 1913. You can still walk the trackbed from Broadford to Kilbride - and there is an operational marble quarry in Kilbride these days (albeit using road haulage to transport its product). There's even a remote Flora MacDonald link, since Kilbride was where her bonnie boat landed when she made the trip over the sea to Skye carrying Charles Edward Stuart in drag. There were other industrial railways on Skye at various times, built to help exploit deposits of quartzite and diatomite. There was also an opencast iron ore mine on Raasay which had a railway. In the late 1890s there were a couple of proposals for "real" railways on Skye. The Highland had an idea to build a railway from Kyleakin, on the other side of the water from Kyle of Lochalsh, to Torrin a bit north of Kilbride. A more ambitious proposal was the Hebridean Light Railway, with the North British as backer, which envisaged a line from Isleoronsay, via Broadford, Sligachan and Portree to Uig, with a branch to Dunvegan, giving a total length of around 70 miles. Needless to say, neither of these came to fruition. Having spent time at Isleoronsay last summer, I do rather think that in this instance the presence of a railway might actually have spoilt the location somewhat (heresy, I know).

And there was me thinking that nothing could be less interesting than the nit-picking, though frequently mistaken, pseudo-pedantry on the "Channel 4 model railway challenge" thread.

There is a minimum speed limit of 30mph on motorways in the Republic of Ireland.

Well, the process has finally reached its tortuous conclusion. The seller failed to respond within the initial deadline so I escalated the case to eBay and they immediately found in my favour. The process was actually very straightforward: eBay provided a prepaid mailing label so all I had to do was to re-package the damaged item and drop it in at a PO. It was delivered to the seller today and eBay have issued my refund, one day short of two weeks after the item was originally delivered to me in its damaged state. I am a tad miffed with the seller, for two reasons: 1) If they had replied promptly to my original refund request, we could perhaps have agreed a partial refund to cover the damage and I could have kept the loco as a repair job. As it is, they now have a damaged item that they'll have to try to sell in that state, and I have to look for another. 2) In the time it took for the process to be completed, another example of the same loco was listed, at a very similar price, but got snapped up before my refund was issued (I also note that the seller still has the item - even using the same photo as their eBay listing - showing as available to purchase in its non-damaged state from their standalone online shop!)

I think a lot of these people aren't 'on the phone' in the sense of making calls. From what I've seen from the top deck of buses they're texting, surfing the web, and "keeping up" with Facebook, Twitter and all those other giant leaps of 21st century communications technology that mark the inexorable progress of mankind towards its ultimate fate destiny.

Peco no longer do templates for Setrack turnouts. It's difficult to tell for sure with the perspective of the photo but I think what the OP has is the more modern version of the Setrack curved point where both roads are nominal 2nd radius. I say that because, looking at the outer rail of at the toe end of the turnout, it seems to my eye that the rail starts off straight before the curve begins. A Setrack curved turnout is basically one 2nd radius curve superimposed on a 67mm straight followed by a 2nd radius curve - and that's the 67mm straight bit I'm seeing in the photo. Add more 2nd radius track segments to each road until you have two 90° bends (you need one of the 11.25° half curves on the inner road) and you end up with two parallel tracks at the standard Setrack 67mm spacing. The Streamline curved points are based around two curves of different radii - and significantly larger radii then the Setrack ones to boot.

99% of the people I see doing it round my way (as I said previously, there are two roundabouts near me where it happens on a regular basis) are driving expensive cars with Scottish registrations. I don't think they're all Polish plumbers, just arrogant, entitled s*ds. Same as the ones that think it's a good idea to pick an argument with an artic over road space.

Covered in Rule 187: In all cases watch out for and give plenty of room to...long vehicles (including those towing trailers). These might have to take a different course or straddle lanes either approaching or on the roundabout because of their length. Watch out for their signals.

I'm certain that the Highway Code used to say that if there were two lanes on the approach to a roundabout then you could use either lane if going straight on provided that the straight-on exit also had two lanes. The important point is that you were not supposed to change lanes as you went through the roundabout - it was pick one or the other and stick to it. It doesn't seem to say that these days. Here's the picture that accompanies Rule 185 in the current online version: If they fiddle about with quite important rules like this on the quiet, it's not surprising that we end up with different drivers each thinking the other is breaking is the rules. (Next thing you know, they'll quietly change it to say that the correct way to join a motorway is come down the slip road at any speed you fancy, bang your right indicator on, and blindly go for it. Sometimes I think it must already say that: it seems to be standard procedure for so many drivers.)

There was a brief shot of it at the start of episode 3 but the train didn't get that far up the line during the episode. I think the viaduct is on the concrete spillway from the Caledonian Canal down to the River Oich just north of Bridge of Oich ie here. Screenshot from the programme to compare: As an example of how the edit plays a little "fast and loose" with the timeline, I offer this sequence from episode 3: 1) Aerial establishing shot of Laggan Locks. Note that the lock gates 'point' north, so the loco will be arriving along the road which enters the frame at the right-hand side, and will need to cross the canal from right to left. (Inverness is off the 'bottom' of the screen.) You can see the truss bridge waiting to be deployed on the left-hand side of the canal. 2) The truss bridge deployment team standing next to the bridge and spotting the driving team approaching. They're looking and pointing in the right direction in this shot. 3) Two seconds later, what is obviously meant to be understood by the viewer to be a shot of the driving team approaching Laggan Locks. The only problem is, this location is actually a mile and a half further along the route, approaching the Laggan Swing Bridge at the south end of Loch Oich. According to the narrative, the loco's not even supposed to have got there yet! (Google Streetview image of the same location here, in case you don't believe me.)

Rule 185 of the Highway Code actually contains some sound advice on this point: "watch out for all other road users already on the roundabout; be aware they may not be signalling correctly or at all". (Arguably the first rule in the "Using the road" section should be: "watch out for all other road users; be aware that they might not be signalling correctly or at all, observing traffic laws or the Highway Code, acting rationally or with any evidence of a sense of self-preservation - and they may indeed give every impression of actively trying to kill you.") Another example of bad roundabout behaviour is approaching in the left-hand lane when you actually want to turn right - the reason being that there's a bit of a queue in the right-hand lane. Perpetrators of this inconsiderate stunt usually don't indicate until they're past the first exit, at which point they put their right indicator on. I suspect this is a feeble attempt to disguise their selfishness, maybe hoping that people will think, "Oh, he must have changed his mind, I'll be kind and let him in". No, more often than not they're just rude, impatient b*st*rds. Prime locations for the observation of this kind of behaviour in my neighbourhood are the roundabout coming off the A1 (southbound) to join the A720, and the southern roundabout at the Lothianburn junction coming off the A720 to join the A701 northbound. (The latter only has left and right turn options, so by turning right from the left lane you run the real risk of getting squeezed out at the right-turn exit. You pretty much put the onus on the other driver - who is doing what they're supposed to - not to drive in to you, simply because you chose to ignore the rules because of your selfish impatience.)

Looking at it the other way round, when I was doing Computer Science at Uni, the lecturer whose job it was to teach us the rudiments of COBOL opened his first lecture with the following story: Hundreds of years in the future, the buried remains of this computer laboratory may be discovered and excavated by archaeologists. They will carefully conserve and document their finds, and put some of them on display in a museum. A fragment of FORTRAN might be labelled "Apparently used primarily for programming scientific and mathematical functions". A scrap of BASIC might be identified as "a simple programming language designed for end users with limited technical knowledge". A deck of 80 column cards containing an entire COBOL program would likely be categorised as "probably used for religious or ceremonial purposes". (Note: this joke usually only works with computer scientists of a certain age.)

Buy a cheap second-hand Windows PC/laptop on eBay/Gumtree? If you still want to use the Mac then run the free VMWare P2V tool on the Windows machine to get a virtual machine image that you can import in to VirtualBox (also free) on the Mac, then install your Windows layout design tool of choice on that. It's what I do. Or try running AnyRail or what-have-you under WINE. It is reported to work but I've not tried it (I found WINE impenetrable, whereas virtual machines make sense to me). It's really not necessary to be tied solely to the OS that comes installed on your computer these days.

Quick answer: see post #220 on this very thread.

uksteam.info has her doing the Cumbrian Mountain Express in August this year, and the Waverley five times across August and early September. Is the Railway Touring Company going to have to change its plans? Hmm, checked their web site and it says the 4th August CME will be hauled by 60103, and offers a list of three possible locomotives for the Waverley - though still including 46233 at the moment. The Princess Royal Class Locomotive Trust web site says: "The Railway Touring Company ‘Cumbrian Mountain Express’ trips are operated by a pool of several locomotives of which 6233 ‘Duchess of Sutherland’ is one. The dates on this list are ones which 6233 is currently planned to operate but this is subject to change." I couldn't immediately see a formal announcement on there that she is going to stay 'down south'. Was any reason given for this decision?

This is precisely my concern, and I can't immediately think of an elegant way to resolve it. Perhaps a registered letter to the seller stating that if they don't contact me within x days of receipt of the letter to arrange return of the item at their cost, I shall consider them to have renounced any claim to it and will treat it as my own property to dispose of as I choose.

Aah, gotcha. It's not on a tab - I'm still on the old non-tabbed version of the page for some reason - it's way, way down at the bottom of the screen (and I can access the original listing from there, too). They didn't move it there straight away, though, that's what confused me. It was definitely still sitting in the main body of the purchase history, with the 'return requested' indication against it, for at least 24 hours before they moved it. That wasn't confusing at all... I guess I'll have to wait and see what happens. It's annoying, though, that they're taking so long to respond, because I've seen another item I'd like to spend the money on instead and it'll probably go while I'm waiting for this to get sorted out. Hey ho. If I get my money back the seller doesn't respond to further communication, I wonder how long I have to hang on to the item before I can legitimately treat as mine to keep or dispose of as I see fit.

I bought a loco on eBay last weekend. When it arrived the front buffer beam was cracked and broken - one buffer was completely off and rattling around inside the box, the other one fell off as I unpacked it. I requested a return via eBay the same day, stating the reason as "damaged in transit" and provided some photos in evidence of the damage. eBay acknowledged my return request but I've yet to hear from the seller. I've checked the seller's activity and they've listed a fair few items in the last few days, so it doesn't look as if they're on holiday or anything like that. Oddly, the purchase has disappeared from my purchase history. The acknowledgement of the return request is still in my eBay Inbox, though. I've also discovered that the listing I purchased it from has completely disappeared - even searching on the item number turns up nothing. Is this normal with return requests? eBay have said that if I haven't heard from the seller by the 27th I can ask them to intervene. If I do that, and the seller doesn't respond to them either, then I suspect that eBay will just refund me anyway. If that happens, what am I supposed to do with the damaged item? If I send it back to the seller at that point I'll be out of pocket the cost of return postage. But if I've been refunded the purchase price then surely the item doesn't belong to me so I can't keep it. I can't recall ever having to return an eBay purchase for this reason before, so I'm unsure of how it is all supposed to work. (I feel a bit bad for the seller because the loco was packed pretty well - he'd even put some extra foam inside the manufacturer's packaging. But it clearly wasn't enough to save it when Royal Mail dropped it - though there's no obvious sign of a serious impact on the outer packaging so I assume they must have dropped it square on its end, and the loco slid forward inside the box and whacked its front end hard enough on the interior of the packaging to break the buffer beam.)

I'm sure I read in the extended discussion in the Cally Sleeper here that they switch one coach from Aberdeen to Fort William in the summer. (More tourists needed to feed the midgies I expect.)

Explanation from the horse's mouth linked from post #660 of this very thread.

They did explain it properly (if a bit quickly, blink-and-you'd-miss-it-style) in episode 2. I didn't notice the "lazy shorthand" being repeated in episode 3 - but then I missed the first ten minutes or so (what happened with the viaduct, did it get washed away when the river rose or was it all OK?) and it may be part of the same introductory sequence they use for every episode. The trestle bridge was impressive - but again I wasn't convinced by Mr Spooner's contribution. His argument that Silver Lady couldn't negotiate a right-angle seemed a bit dubious. Didn't they put turntables in on one of the other difficult sections (albeit he and Dick went along later and 'engineered' at least half of them out)? And the segment about crossing the truss bridge over Laggan Locks clearly showed the loco negotiating a pretty damn tight 90° bend. Given they only have to get the loco through once (and given some of the shenanigans they've resorted to elsewhere along the route - cough, the train ferry, cough - picking her up and turning her by hand would appear to be within their own rules!) I can only conclude that either Hadrian was being needlessly fussy, or 'someone' decided that they needed to extend the scope of the job part way through in order to inject a bit of drama into a job that was going all too smoothly. These volunteer navvies sometimes seem to be altogether too competent! (Old engineering adage: the trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was.) Yes, I'm interested to see how they coped with that, especially since the track will presumably have had to have been left on site for a few days while the train caught up. I will admit that I am finding the 'story' a bit confusing to follow - perhaps because the progress of the loco is so far behind the track laying and engineering. The truss bridge was shown being constructed in episode 1, and they only to drive the loco over it in episode 3. It's entirely unclear to me whether they were able to spend the intervening time finessing the design and construction, or if it had been sitting around in its as-originally-built state for N days until the driving team turned up. Judging by the teaser at the end of episode 3 I assume we'll get to see the funicular in episode 4, when the track was being laid for it in episode 2. It seems a bit disjointed; but maybe that's just me. (I'd have been inclined to structure it around the progress of the loco, showing each tracklaying and engineering 'challenge' as a single flashback sequence when the loco approached the section in question. It is, after all, the slow progress of the loco, not the track, that's putting the successful completion of the 'challenge' in jeopardy.) I did enjoy seeing the party at the campsite - good to get some insight in to what the "navvies" got up to once they've ditched the hi-viz! I agree that Cameron seems to be becoming a low-key star in the driving team. (I have to say that driving in shifts doesn't actually sound too arduous to me, despite Dick's dramatic 'revelation' at the meeting. It basically seems to consist of walking rather slowly and taking a break every 20 minutes or so! Then again, maybe that's just me: I've done 12+ hour continuous walks in the Highlands a number of times so maybe I'm just used to it.) I also agree with those who observed before that some of the interviews with the navvies seemed a bit intrusive. OK, they probably agreed to do it but I still found it uncomfortable the way they kept the camera focused and running as the lassie choked up talking about her memories of her ex-commando granddad, for example. They could at least have allowed her to "take a moment" before going on. Overall, though, it's not too demanding Sunday evening viewing and I'll probably tune in for the last two episodes to pass the time if nothing else.

Had to have a play with this myself to understand what you meant but I think I've got it now: the round-ended thingummy pivots around the bolt & washer, so with a fulcrum somewhere along metal rod the linear motion of the slider can be turned in to a sort-of rotary motion. Would need some experimentation to find out whether it could be used for eg a level crossing gate. UPDATE: According to this German online shop, there are now two new point motors from MTB: MP6 and MP7. It seems that they are triggered by a pulse, like a solenoid point motor, but I struggle to make out any more details since the technical information is presented in jpg format which Google Translate won't translate. I can't see anything on MTB's own web site about them.

Thank you for that helpful answer; makes a nice change from snidey ridicule. (It's often said in other threads on RMWeb that there's no such thing as a stupid question. Apparently some would seem to disagree.) Sorry to appear dim, can you clarify this for me? Are you saying: that if the loco was operating off the national network then it wouldn't have to be compliant with current regulations (ignoring for a moment the fact that the Valenta would be allowed anyway under grandfather rights), or the fact that it's been preserved makes no difference to the regulations it must comply with.