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Regularity

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  1. The S4 units are much better. Hadn’t realised how expensive those GEM frames were. No, not that type of control tube: more like this: https://www.sussex-model-centre.co.uk/accessories/aircraft-accessories/control-rods-snakes/snakes/snake-heavyweight-fittings-1m-pr Found that randomly on a search, but it’s the snakes you want. You might not need other rodding: levers can push against microswitches, as can turnout operating units and cranks. If you want to use under baseboard rodding, see Trevor Nunn’s articles on East Lynn in MRJ, or better still, the various articles he wrote for the S Scale Newsletter in the 90s.
  2. On the railway at least, they are keeping a look out, plus if anything happens to the guy down by the track, they need to have not been hurt so they can get him out.
  3. An interesting place to be, as the sun starts to set, as I once (accidentally) discovered, but thankfully soon enough to get the **** out of there pdq!
  4. Plenty of layouts are operated from the front, with the operator with his back to the public. If this position is occupied by the signalman, then the other operators can be behind the layout, and the public get to see how railways were run in the past, so it’s educational, too - especially if the locking frame is visible! You can use model aircraft control cables to operate you points and signals, and won’t have to worry about cranks, compensators: simpler than traditional steel wire in nylon tube, and worth any extra expense. Start off with GEM lever frames, and replace later with a handbuilt version.
  5. True, but it’s still a disdain for their own process. Sunak has too much sticking to him, and Truss can’t even trot out her (presumably?) rehearsed ad-libs without sounding like a robot. Neither of them have done well out of this. As a “thought experiment” it would interesting to see who the membership would vote for out of PM and TT: the former appeals to the party faithful (slowly dying off) and the latter represents the best chance they have of winning the next GE. The Wolf of Badenoch should, I think, go back to ranting in the sixth form common room.
  6. Does that mean these two candidates have self-disqualified themselves? For the absence of doubt, I know that the answer to that question is no. Boris showed his disdain for the public by lying to cover up his tracks, and for his colleagues by expecting them to do it for him. He was so shambolic at this, that he was bound to get caught out. Sunak and Truss show their disdain for the democratic process by refusing to engage with it. Disgusting.
  7. …and realise that marriage isn’t a word. It’s a sentence!
  8. That still requires a switched feed, to what I termed “turntable road”.
  9. You don’t have to have a rotary switch. By pulling any of the home or subsidiary signals on the gantry, power could also be applied to the up main. Similarly, for shunting moves onto the up main, power could be applied to the up main. The single sub on the gantry for the down main would similarly apply power to the down main, as would the main signals from the platforms, and pulling off the advanced starter would disconnect the down main feed from BV and connect it to the fiddle yard. To make this easier, you would either need two levers each for discs U and V, one for up main and one for down main for each route out, although one disc could serve for exit from loop or carriage siding, depending on the points setting, with a lever for “to up main” and another for “to down main”. Don’t know it is suitable for the LBSC in your era, but there are other options, too, such as a disc for up and one for main, operated by a single lever, but selected by turnout F ( which shouldn’t be labelled as such, that being for the subsidiary signal: I missed labelling this crossover!) Also, using one lever and a five-way switch for signal F might be more electrically complicated than using 5 levers.
  10. You’ve got it. It’s all done to avoid relays, and so that when driving a train into the next section, it is done by the receiver and not the sender, allowing signals to be returned after the train has passed, and for the local controller to resume local work.
  11. You can put that into one sentence: “East European migrants exploiting free movement to come here and use our hospitals”. See, I said the Tory policy/press was a master at making something complicated truthful easy and false.
  12. In case anyone is interested, these are the diagrams I originally produced. William is using common-return wiring, which simplifies the wiring a bit. The basic idea is that the local “Brighton Victoria” operator has a 4-position rotary switch, selecting “Off”, “Up main”, “Down main” or “Turntable road” (my designation). Pulling J transfers the fiddle yard to the down main, allowing BV to drive trains in, and W transfers the down main to the fiddle yard, the latter position driving the train out. “Turntable road” (or horse dock road, or whatever) is used for local shunts only. Everything else is selected via the turnouts, but power feeds to P1 (etc) are switched by the signals: K feeds both the platform and the loco isolator, N only the platform, and F1 (five different levers for the one signal, according to route!) feeds only the platform road, and so on across the routes. To get locos out, Each platform end has a push and hold to make switch, so that locos can be driven up to the platform starter. Main arms provide power to the Up main, subsidiary signals to the Down Main. Etc. The only extra would be the ability (another push and hold to make) feed to the main part of the platform, to allow BV to have a loco move away from the stops to the end of the platform. Looks good, is authentic, but maybe too much? The loco release on Platform 3 connects to the platform road (via an isolator) or to the loop, depending on the position of the crossover. In practice, without interlocking, setting the turnouts provides power up to but including the platforms: the correct signal is required for that, otherwise the loco will come to a sudden stop. Signals and interlocking (if desired) do not have to be installed from the get ho, but the switches or levers do need installing at the start. (Spaces can be left for later installation of signal switches, if do required.) If including the facing point locks (for verisimilitude of operation if interlocking installed), then at least 36 levers are indicated as required for this “simple” terminus!
  13. Presumably it worked chimney-first up the grade to Liskeard? I’ve always had a soft spot for the Monmouthshire Railway and Canal 4-4-0T, as used latterly at Abbotsbury and Abingdon. (Have to post a link, as the site is not https.) 4-4-0t at Radley Does anyone know if there has ever been a published drawing?
  14. No forgiveness required: it was just a suggestion to get you thinking, which you are doing. There are several conceptual ways to wire a layout: it is wise to consider as many as possible because ultimately, it has to work for you, and no one else. Here are some of those ideas: 1) Traditional approach with many sections and isolators. Advantages: well documented method, signals can come later. Disadvantages: lots of switches and signalling is largely divorced from everything else (although a degree of only allowing electrically operated signals to be reversed if the route/sections are correctly set can be incorporated); 2) DCC: run two busbars down the layout for near and far rails, with frog juicers powering each vee. Advantages: easy to wire, signals can come later, separates function of signalling from driving (as per the prototype, you can drive against the signals). Disadvantages: it’s DCC, which isn’t for everyone. (And no, you don’t have to fit sound and lights to everything. With simple decoders, the cost isn’t that high.). 3) Use the signals to link sections to a minimal number of locally powered sections, using reversed linked section control. Advantages: power is routed via signals and pointwork, and if there is an interlocked lever frame, this is a good way to provide foolproof operation. Disadvantages: it requires a number of multipole switches from day one, which can be fired as relays from a bank of switches as an interim control panel, or mechanical point and signal operation is installed along with microswitches; the wiring is a little more complicated at first. 4) Battery powered radio control. Advantages: no wiring of layout required at all. Disadvantages: slightly more involved wiring of locos, getting a cell/battery and required circuitry into small locos below 7mm scale is somewhat of a challenge. Locos need regular charging. 5) Set up a computer/logic system using ICs and/or relays. Advantages: pulling the levers sorts out the power, etc, as per option 3. Disadvantages: complexity. From my point of view, option 1 is the worst (and I stopped doing it this way in my early teens), 2 and 4 are my personal favourites, but in DC mode, I would go for option 3: a combination of Buckingham, Lewis Carrol, and Stewart Hines’ suggestions in MR November 1979, in an article entitled “Complexity for Simplicity’s Sake”, or similar.
  15. Which wheel arrangement was that? (If both, was one better than the other?)
  16. Ah, that brings us to the old saw about the tragedy of marriage: ”She marries him, hoping he will change, but he doesn’t. He marries her, hoping she won’t change, but she does.” But congratulations on your approaching 50th wedding anniversary. I didn’t quite make it half way to that… Adopted that a long time ago, in a slightly modified form: do unto others as they do unto others. It has a couple of distinct advantages, I have found: It means observing others that are new to you, rather than going in feet first. (Helpful for people with conditions like ADHD and ASD, as it removes pressure to understand immediately and to comply with unwritten rules.); You save a lot of time in the long run by finding out who the a***holes, b*st*Ed’s and c***s are before they get to do to you, and you can simply not engage with them. Added bonus: you don’t waste your time on people who will waste yours!
  17. Also used for carry pulpwood, at least on the CofG when they were short of gondolas and before they started modifying old cars and building new one specifically for that service.
  18. Nice. If it breaks down or runs out of charge, can you leave it on an overbridge? I’ll get me coat…
  19. I agree. I tend to be rather dismissive about “economics”, joking that “micro/behavioural” economics is basic psychology (I tried reading “Freakonomics”. I am not a violent person, but I wanted to commit murder - nothing in there which isn’t covered by the first term of a psychology undergraduate degree, and then we move to acknowledge that things are more complicated than that) and “macro economics” is untestable, so not a science and not even a theory, just some people observing changes in societies and trying to work out what went on, but there is more to it than that. Mark was not so much a theorist as a syncretic, taking other people’s ideas and merging them into a big picture - for which I have the greatest respect - and I am reminded of Dr. Johnson, “Your work is both original and good. Unfortunately, the parts which are good are not original, and the parts which are original and not good.” Although “almost unreadable” might be a better phrase than “not good”… But, if people would rather have bread and circuses than think for themselves and their enlightened long-term self-interest, then we’ll, we get tend to get that.
  20. I disagree. Partly. Taxation is also a social tool: it effectively serves two purposes. One is to pay for things like defence of the nation - which is how it came into being. That is purely an economic tool, necessary because people don’t fight wars: governments do. The other is to redistribute wealth via public services, paid for by progressive taxation, so that those with more to spare pay a greater share, so that the basics of a civilised society such as education, health, support in old age, are available to a decent level for everyone without having to worry about paying for it. Those with very high incomes or inherited wealth can get these things directly and privately - and still do (public schools, private healthcare and personal pension funds). By putting more into the system, though, it helps all of us. Whilst the process is economic, the function is social. And it also a practical thing: if you are a multimillionaire businessman who employs thousands of people, you need them to be educated, healthy and not working until they drop so that your workforce is productive. Paying more in taxes (and also I business rates) is a way of supporting this. The same argument can be put forward for transportation, power distribution, and anything else which benefits the whole of society. The debate should be about how much we want out of the commonwealth of our nation, how much we are prepared to pay for it, and most difficultly, how we are going to pay for it? Maggie managed to make the populace equate total taxation with income tax. Labour (under Michael Foot*) failed to fight that lie, and produced the longest suicide note in electoral history. She also picked up on certain resentments about control and intrusion into people’s lives (such as not being able to do much by way of home improvements in a council house) and used this promote personal ownership (by selling off the council-owned houses). By opposing this, Labour lost a lot of its traditional heartlands, such as Romford. A lot of the population outside of the coal mining districts didn’t like what the miners did in the 70s, either, and supported the government in the fight with Scargill. (Labour, under Neil Kinnock, shot itself in the foot by not demanding a national ballot in the NUM - admits this.). She tapped into three rich veins, each of which was powerful on its own to a fair sized chunk of the electorate, and then the Falkland’s “conflict” turned public opinion towards her. Yes, she was fairly resolute in the battle, but she was the primary cause of it by insisting that HMS Endurance be withdrawn, despite warnings from the FCO that the Argentinian junta would misinterpret this. But with the press bias in the UK, where foreign ownership and control is allowed, it was and is a hostile environment for anyone with a more balanced view, and downright dangerous for those further on the left. * I had the great privilege of seeing him in full flow in the late 80s. An impressive orator. A towering intellect. A great person. He exuded charisma from every pore. Just not the most appealing choice as a possible Prime Minister as far as the electorate were concerned, especially when you put him on TV. Which is the main problem: Margaret Thatcher was brilliant at simplifying complicated things into short sentences: lower income tax is good for you; home ownership is a decent aspiration; [some] unions have become too powerful; no one invades British Territory without a fierce response. But these are complicated things, and people don’t want complicated. And with everything increasing in price, no one wants to hear about increased taxation. It ain’t easy: but it would be nice is someone who supposedly leads “The Opposition” was actually trying to make the argument rather than relying on, “I’m not Boris Johnson”.
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