KingEdwardII

No, but there will be more interest where the junction is right off the end of the platforms - and there are prototypes for this. At Yatton, both junctions are right off the ends of the platforms - off both the up side and down side at the west end of the station. Notable that each branch gets a bay platform and both can operate without fouling the main lines. The other end of the Cheddar Valley branch at Witham also has the junction close to the station, with a bay for the branch. Here though, branch goods traffic had to cross the double track main line to get to the goods yard. Yours, Mike.

That simply depends on where the town gasworks was located. Even a small town like Wells in Somerset had a gasworks and it had a very fine gasometer. This was located at the edge of the East Somerset goods yard, a little distance from GWR Tucker Street station. Yours, Mike.

When I hard wired a decoder into my older Hornby County 4-6-0, I got decoder wire & shrinkwrap from DCC Concepts. They are showing £3.95 for 6m of any one of a range of colours, £4.95 for 6m of twin Red/Black, or £29.95 for an assorted pack with a range of colours. 32g. All in stock as far as I can tell. https://www.dccconcepts.com/product-category/decoders-and-installation/dccconcepts-decoder-wire-and-special-fine-wire/ Yours, Mike.

Note that the wires listed are for mains voltage - i.e. 600V. These require greater thickness of insulation than wires designed for low voltage. Yours, Mike

Except that the timing for the rail route via London is 2h 30m, which I think makes a benchmark for any journey over EWR. The quoted times from EWR look something like 2h 10m (45 + 45 + 35) - but I note that these times seem to be "all stations" and NOT express-style timings. The shame is that the current plans for the upgrade of Bletchley - Bedford have been pared back with slower speeds and some remaining single track sections. This does not bode well for the idea of express style workings. Bit reminiscent of the current Salisbury - Exeter route. This is perhaps more significant than the lack of electrification. If we think of EWR as also providing connections to the various N/S main lines, the overall timings matter a lot. Yours, Mike.

Oxford to Cambridge is around 87 miles by road, using a route roughly equivalent to the planned EWR route. The road journey takes about 2h 30m. What you'd ideally like to see is a train with a similar timing, stopping only at St Neots, Bedford, Bletchley and Bicester (say). Whether that will ever come to pass remains to be seen. However, this is what is required for the route to be competitive in terms of speed. I wonder if anyone could get their minds around a more ambitious express route starting in Bristol then via Oxford and EWR to Cambridge then onwards to Norwich. Connections are all very well, but they usually lose a lot of time - nothing like having a direct train. Yours, Mike

Nah, 35006 is far too clean and shiny. :-) Yours, Mike.

To me, this all looks like a pile of hard work for very little gain. It seems like a solution looking for a problem. I have a Dapol Manor - and I got a Next 18 decoder and slid it into place using Dapol's mechanism. Simple and straightforward... Yours, Mike.

The really sad thing is to check out the old timings from Cambridge to Oxford. Well over 4 hours. It is much quicker than that today to take a train from Cambridge to Oxford via London (~ 2h 30mins). So for EWR to be a useful link between the University cities, they will have to find an inventive way of getting much faster times than of old. Yours, Mike.

Come on, Dapol. Hurry up with your new 28xx OO model... Yours, Mike.

I've got a Pi 400 running JMRI, but I have a very large (22") touchscreen display - the Pi is relatively low cost, but the touchscreen of this size bumps up the price. You don't have to use a screen of this size, but my fingers and my eyesight can't cope with small screens. I do use my Android mobile phone for wireless control of locos, linked via the Pi 400 - although the phone is again one of the largest Samsung devices. I have a Digikeijs DR5000 system providing the DCC controller - no longer available, although YaMoRc have something equivalent available. Yours, Mike.

One big "con" concerns computer connections. The Gaugemaster Prodigy does have a computer connection available, but it is a specialized bit of extra kit that comes with a hefty price tag. The connection is also relatively slow and requires direct connection to a computer (i.e. you can't use a home network to connect from the Prodigy to your computer). When I started to connect my layout to computer software, I replaced my Prodigy with a Digikeijs system since this has a high speed network connection out of the box. There are plenty of other DCC controllers with good computer connections of this type - unfortunately the Prodigy isn't one of them, possibly an indication of the age of the system. Yours, Mike. PS Why did I want a computer connection: a) Automation b) Touch screen control of points, signals, etc

I can't decide whether it is some weirdly misplaced idea relating to impartiality (etc) or whether it's because the folk at the BBC simply don't understand how the world wide web actually works. Some of the decisions they make about (not) providing links between some of their own web pages tends to make me think the latter... Yours, Mike.

The BBC are notorious for not providing links to the stuff they discuss in their online news articles. They did it again yesterday with respect to the publication of the latest ORR data for passenger traffic through stations. Yours, Mike.

So how does the timing work out for the non-stop journey? How much faster than the booked stopping service? I imagine that it must be like the few non-stop Winchester to London trains, a few minutes faster than the quickest of the stopping services. But that is assuming that the non-stop Salisbury service gets a clear path on what is a very congested route. Yours, Mike.

"The Salisbury Flyer" Now there's an idea!! I'd pay to go on that one. Yours, Mike.

The "emissions" that matter in a solar storm are electromagnetic ones and the focus of concern is on induced currents in conductors - long ones in particular. This is why the impact on electric transmission systems is significant - it can cause circuits to trip and also damage equipment like transformers: https://earthsky.org/sun/solar-storms-affect-on-power-grid-internet/ Similar damage could occur to railway equipment, which may not have the same level of protection as components of the electric grid - which has to deal with frequent natural events like lightning strikes. However, the simple loss of electrical power to railway systems is probably the first thing a solar storm would do to the railways. Yours, Mike.

A really strong solar storm could cause major problems, especially for the electricity transmission system. It has happened once in recent times in Canada in 1989, as other folk have already mentioned, causing an outage of the electric transmission system there. Lookup the "Carrington Event", which is the most intense solar storm in recorded history, which took place 1-2 Sept 1859. Since electric transmission systems had yet to be invented at the time, the one notable impact was on telegraph systems, with their long lines stretching across countries. There have been "Carrington scale" solar flares observed in recent times, but these have missed hitting the Earth - so there is a reasonable probability that another solar storm of Carrington scale will occur again. But now, we are much more vulnerable due to our extensive electricity transmission systems and our dependence on them. Yours, Mike.

You can add to the list: "if the service is unreliable" I think that this is a real killer. No-one wants to end up stranded. You can also add: "if it is too far to get to/from the service" ...since most public transport runs between fixed locations that are not always close to where people want to go. Our nearest bus service is over 1/2 mile from our house. While doing that walk might be OK on a fine sunny day, we're not going to do it in wet and windy weather. It is fashionable to knock the use of cars, but frankly our country districts would be unliveable without them. When we take the train, we almost always drive to the station - it's either 3 miles or 10 miles depending on the route we want to use. Yours, Mike.

You don't need to use sockets on your locos. It is possible to directly solder up decoders to the wiring on the loco. This may also be easier, since older locos did not make any allowance for the installation of decoders and you may have trouble finding a suitable space - made even harder by the presence of a socket. But as you observe, having a socket does make exchanging a decoder much easier. One item you will probably need for direct wiring is some small diameter shrink wrap, to avoid any length of exposed wire that might touch other conductors or exposed metal. It might also be necessary to have shrink wrap when installing a socket, since the socket location may not match existing wiring and require some extension pieces. There are various threads on rmweb that deal with installing decoders on older locos which may be of assistance. I did some direct wiring on a vintage Hornby County 4-6-0 - the wiring was easy, finding a good location for the installed decoder, much harder. Yours, Mike.

Yes indeed - I bought a Bachmann 36-570 (Plux 22) for my 117 and the box insert holding the decoder has the Zimo logo printed at the top of a listing of the CV settings. It worked out cheaper to buy the Bachmann than the equivalent Zimo decoder. The 117 is designed to accommodate this non-sound decoder, which keeps things simple. Yours, Mike.

Some of the later Bachmann DMUs like the 117 come ready through-wired and so only require a single decoder for the whole set. Yours, Mike.

One trick on joining flexitrack on curves is to pre-bend the very end sections of the rail, so that they don't have the tendency to go back to being straight. You can do this with a suitable pair of pliers and some gentle persuasion. This avoids any kinks at the join. It's particularly important if the join has a plastic insulating fishplate, since these are nowhere near as rigid as the metal ones. Yours, Mike.

I simply use the 1:1 printouts and place the track on top of those. This has the advantage of allowing for variable-radius curves, especially useful in handling transitions to/from straight track. XTrackCad and other similar tools have support for creating such curves. I don't think tracksetta can really handle such variable radius curves. This approach also allows for curves of any radius. Yours, Mike.

Shaftesbury is famously on top of a major hill and never had a railway in the town itself. It had a local station on the Salisbury-Exeter line at Semley, about 2 1/2 miles north, closed in 1966. Shaftesbury even today only has a population of about 9,000 - smaller than Gillingham, which is now the nearest place with a station on the line, with the station just over 4 miles from the centre of Shaftesbury. I can't see much of a case for reopening Semley station. Yours, Mike.